Kelly Seely, IMB missionary serving in Germany, models how to start gospel conversations for the German short-term missions team and a Greek church.
ATHENS, Greece — Peppy music blared from the neon flashing speaker as members of the local Greek evangelical church walked up the cobblestone road, waving. They called to residents sitting on their balconies to meet them at the park in this Athens neighborhood.
Mixed in with the lively procession were seven volunteers from Germany. They laughed nervously, feeling self-conscious with everyone peering out windows and stopping on the street to watch. They’d never do something like this back home in Frankfurt, Germany. But as a short-term missions team, they’d prepared to work outside of their comfort zones to share the gospel and partner with this Greek church. So, they embraced the experience.
The group of seven were the first missions team sent from a church in Germany that International Mission Board (IMB) workers Kelly and Janice Seely helped start years ago. They now work with European churches to help them see what it means for a church to be involved in long-term missions.
“One of the biggest ways to encourage healthy missional relationships in your own city is to partner with people in another city and engage alongside them in sharing the gospel,” Kelly said. “These volunteer teams bring back to their church practical knowledge of cross-cultural evangelism and what it takes to enter a ministry all the way through to exit to partnership.”
Entry
A German volunteer blew bubbles across the park sidewalk as toddlers, hands high in the air, scampered to capture the flying soap. Just steps away, a group of boys kicked a ball around with another volunteer. Others played volleyball, giant Jenga, tic-tac-toe and catch. The largest group crowded around the face-painting table to get hearts, unicorns and superhero logos painted on their body.
These games in the park are a way The Breath of Life Community Center creates access to minister in this community. The center was opened years ago by a church across town to help refugees when Greece had an influx. Now, it seeks to bridge the gap between refugees and Greeks in the neighborhood while starting a church at the center.
As kids played, Pastor Erikos Petrou and members of his church walked the edges of the park talking to adults on park benches. Somi Park watched them out of the corner of her eye as she painted hearts on a 5-year-old’s face. They gave her confidence to talk to the mother standing next to her, using the hearts as an easy transition to the gospel.
“This isn’t something we do in Germany, going to a park and intentionally interacting with people, but these church members do it all the time,” Park said, referring to the park outreach. “I enjoyed doing this. It provided a natural way to start conversations.”
As if on cue, teammate Young Kwang Lee left the volleyball game to chat with two young men standing on the sideline. Before this trip, Lee didn’t think of himself as a “missions guy.” Some church leaders urged him to go and broaden his vision for sharing Christ. Until this week, he’d never thought about the importance of an entry point for sharing the gospel. This made it more natural and easier to share.
“The thing that impacted me most on this mission trip is that sharing the gospel feels so urgent. You only have so much time,” he said. “I want to keep this same urgency when I get back home to Germany.”
Cross-cultural, yet similar
Back at the community center, Petrou prepared the volunteer team for a rush of kids from age 5 to teenagers. The center serves as the only hang out spot in the neighborhood for this age group. The pastor explained in Greece, proselytizing to children is against the law so they share God’s love in culturally appropriate ways — tutoring, listening and being a safe space.
“We do this because of the love God has for us and not because we are trying to get anything,” Petrou said.
The German team understood. They know what it’s like to be questioned for choosing to be followers of Jesus. In some places in Europe, evangelical Christianity is often thought of as a cult. In this situation, they didn’t see a restraint; they recognized a shared cultural challenge and saw a natural way to show God cares for everyone on a very personal level.
This love translated to playing board games, weaving friendship bracelets, dodgeball in the basement and discussing a favorite book with a young avid reader. When teenagers sat around staring at their phones, the volunteer team made up a scavenger hunt to get the youth engaged.
The Seelys couldn’t stop smiling at how the German team plugged in seamlessly to the needs of the Greek church. This is what they envisioned when they began working with European churches to learn cross-cultural missions. They knew multicultural Europeans could have a different kind of impact on the mission field.
“Europeans are uniquely gifted because of their language skills and chameleon nature of going between cultures all of the time,” Kelly said. “It’s something that’s difficult to teach but it’s innate for them. What we can teach is when you are following Jesus, we are commanded to go to those who have not heard the good news. And we equip them to carry this out.”
Exit to partnership
As part of the short-term mission trip, the IMB workers provided training to understand this command of “go and tell” on a new and personal level. The German volunteers learned how to start a gospel conversation and went to the streets and coffee shops to practice. They encouraged new believers at the Greek church, many of whom, now young adults, had been the first teenagers to come to the community center years ago.
The one lesson that stood out the most to Daniel Lee was about exit-to-partnership. He’d done a mission trip before but never like this one where they purposely strategized long-term and thought about what happened after they left.
“How we exit is important because I really want to build something here, so something remains,” he said. “You know, be intentional where those we met this week will one day be sharing (the gospel) alongside us and even go somewhere else.”
Kelly glanced across the room to Janice. Her hands formed a heart and thumped from her chest to show how much she loved Lee’s statement. This is exactly what the IMB workers watched blossom all week. They “couldn’t be prouder of this German church” they planted years ago who are now partners in reaching the nations.
(EDITOR’S NOTE — Sue Sprenkle writes for the IMB.)
