Chris and Lotta’s April Prayer Letter

April Prayer 2023

‘He exerted his mighty strength when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.’ Eph. 1:20

Dear friends and mission partners,

We had our first lunch on our balcony, listened to the birdsong and saw the snow melting. But to our surprise, this morning, the snow was back and turned everything white again. Who could imagine that we will have a white Easter?!

Last Sunday was our last service with the group from Södertälje and afterwards we had a big pot-luck. It was a bitter-sweet moment, special for us as a couple, when we commissioned them.

We have followed Simon since he was a student and attended our bible study group in Uppsala. And now he, his wife and a group of keen and ambitious young people are starting their own church plant in Södertälje.

They will always have a special place in our hearts. On Saturday the 22nd April, there will be an ordination and installation services for Simon in Södertälje and the next day on the 23rd April they will have their first public Worship Service, which we will be attending. Please keep them in your prayers as they prepare for the launching day.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!

Praise points

  • For Simon & Smedra and their growing team in Södertälje.
  • For a wonderful week we had in Gothenburg, visiting our families and friends and attending the Equip conference which is our Swedish “EMA”. The speaker for this year was Vaughan Roberts.

Prayer points

  • For our upcoming Easter service, we will invite a lot of new people and hope they will come and that the gospel message will speak to their heart.
  • Södertälje’s first public Worship Service, pray for the core team and for their preparations.

Yours in Christ,Chris & Lotta

Prayer Letter from Chris and Lotta Strajnic in Sweden

Chris and Lotta’s Prayer Letter: January 2023


Dear friends and mission partners,

“I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.” Ps. 143:5

Hope you all had a good rest and good Christmas and New Year celebrations. We spent our time off having family and friends over to visit us in our new apartment. 
2023 is going to be an exciting but also challenging year. On one hand we are going to commission our brothers and sisters in Södertälje to plant their church there and it saddens us that about 20 people will leave, but at the same time we are excited, happy and are rejoicing that a new church is being planted. 
As we are in the process of helping Södertälje, we are also looking at outreach in Åkersberga. One of the new things we will start up again is the Café church, a great opportunity for new people to come and where we will discuss relevant themes.
The bible books that we will be focusing on preaching from this semester are: texts from the gospel of Luke, Ephesians and the book of Ezra.

Praise points:

  • We are so grateful to the Lord for our new home and we had the opportunity to invite some of our new neighbours. 
  • For the core team in Södertälje and specially for Simon and his wife Smedra, and for what God is doing in Södertälje.


Prayer points:

  • For this coming year we will be even more gospel oriented in Åkersberga
  • For our Café church ministry and our outreach
  • For health and strength as we prepare all the material for teaching and preaching and training
     

Yours in Christ,
Chris & Lotta Strajnic

Rector’s Letter

Flowers and Worry

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith.  Luke 12.27

As we begin to leave winter behind and approach spring, let’s do what Jesus commands to remove anxiety: consider the lilies.  Perhaps you are beginning to see little shoots appearing in the garden.  Perhaps you prefer to buy arrangements of flowers and put them in a vase in the house.  Perhaps you are allergic to lilies specifically and they make you sneeze!

Consider them, says Jesus.  Stare at them.  They just sit there, unstressed, neither toiling nor spinning.  The beauty of flowers is unsurpassed – but it’s not earned, just given by God.  If God dresses them like that even though they are temporary, will he not also clothe you, who have an eternal soul?  So why be anxious?

Is it because of our desires?  We tend to want more than just enough to eat, enough to wear.  We tend to want better food, better clothes, better friends, a better reputation and a better place to live.  I want a multitude of things that may or may not be possible.  I want, I want, I want.  What would Jesus say about all these desires which can lead to worries?  Consider the flowers.

Flowers don’t try to be something they’re not.  They soak up the water and nutrients provided by God and grow in obscurity for most of the year.  Then when the seasons turn and the sun comes out they rejoice!  They fulfil their purpose, given to them by Him.

Flowers don’t compete with each other.  Roses don’t long to be as tall or as bright or as yellow as sunflowers.  They have been made by God just as they are – and that doesn’t concern them one bit!  Flowers are fragile.  Petals can be destroyed by the wind and yet the flower can reappear the next year.  God resurrects them.  Will he not much more resurrect you, O you of little faith?

If you get anxious, don’t consider Facebook or Instagram; don’t consider your bank account, or your work, or your car, or your possessions.  Consider the flowers around you and the God who made them.  That will help you find peace, calm and contentment.  Augustine said, ‘You made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.’

Sincerely in Christ

Bill

Prayer letter from Chris & Lotta Strajnic in Sweden

Prayer Letter from Chris and Lotta Strajnic in Sweden

Dear friends,

As we write this newsletter, our apartment gets more and more filled with moving boxes. Yes, we are moving – again! As we have now moved over 20 times, we now consider ourselves as ‘moving experts’. With all the lists and labels, we even have pictures of every bookshelf so when we move into our new place on the 1 November, the unpacking process should be quite quick and painless, or so we hope.

Church update
By God’s grace, Emmaus church is doing well. We, as a church, are in the middle of preparations for the biggest annual outreach – Hallåvän (safe and non-scary Halloween party for children). We have a group of people in our church who want to become members. They have been coming regularly and are engaged in different church activities for some time now, so in two weeks’ time we are starting a new member’s class.

Apprenticeship and ministry
It’s our great privilege and joy to be able to announce that we are going to have our first apprentice. Until now we have only had a trainee, Simon, who is soon heading to plant a new church in Södertälje. As soon as we got to know our upcoming apprentice Henrik, we knew that he would be perfect for an apprenticeship. After time of prayer on both sides, we decided to proceed and will soon finalise all the practicalities. The apprenticeship journey can then begin at the end of November. Through our different ministries we have come across several young guys who have the same desire to be trained in a local church as an apprentice. Together with the church in Gothenburg, which we partner with, we want to develop an apprenticeship program that we can use in our churches. Our common goal for the future is to introduce and make the apprenticeship program available for the local church in Sweden.

Regional conference
Together with the church in Gothenburg, we are also running a small regional conference that started very spontaneously after seeing the need to encourage and train young potential leaders. Unfortunately many have no faithful Bible preaching church in their cities, and as they are meeting in homes, there is a possibility of planting more churches in the near future. This will be our third conference, held on 12 November. The theme will be the gospel: ‘What is the gospel, how to share and what is evangelism?’ Do pray!

Future ministries
In our cooperation with the church in Gothenburg we saw a great need for Bible training for our apprentices and for other interested. After a time of brainstorming and prayer, we came to the conclusion that we need a summer Bible school, which we hope will start next summer in 2023. Thanks to Trevor Watson from Northern Ireland (who was a Crosslinks missionary in Sweden but has now returned to NI), this might just happen. But there is more in the pipeline, also thanks to Trevor. Hopefully next autumn, we will start a Cornhill Swedish language group that will attend the Cornhill Training course online. These things are still in the early stages but so important for our need to train the next generation leaders in Sweden. So as you see, we have an exciting time ahead of us. As ever, we are so grateful for your prayers for us.

Praise points

  • For our cooperation with a church in Gothenburg and their pastor Daniel Noren
  • For our apprentice – Henrik
  • For the new members

Prayer points

  • For the outreach event – Hallåvän, which will be on 30 October
  • For the regional conference
  • For the upcoming summer Bible school in 2023
  • For the Cornhill Swedish language group

Yours in Christ,

Chris and Lotta

 

Rector’s Letter November

Dear Friends,

The Bible is a Letter

To the saints who are in Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, Belfast.

The Bible is a Library – 66 books, composed by over 40 writers, perfectly expressing the mind of God.  The Bible is a Landscape – a landscape of life, full of wisdom about living.  The Bible is also a Letter.

What is a letter?  It is writing addressed by a particular person, the composer, to a particular person or persons who read it.  Not everything that is written is a letter because not every document is addressed to particular people.  In Scripture, not only were all 66 books written by human authors who had an intended readership in mind (like Paul writing to the Thessalonians), but the whole Bible is God’s letter, consciously addressed by him to every single person who reads it.

Does that take your breath away?  This is the wisdom of God.  Holy Scripture is the Word of God addressed personally to everyone to whom it comes.  If you have a Bible and your name is written in the front of it, think of it as though the Lord himself had written it there.  And instead of something like RSV (Revised Standard Version) printed on the introductory page it could be RSVP (Reply if you please).  The Lord who has written to you this letter would like to know your response to it.

Just reflect on what Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.15-16, ‘you have known the scared writings [the Bible] which are able to make you [singular] wise for salvation.’  Paul is saying, ‘Timothy, think of those Scriptures that you have, and which you were brought up on, as the Lord’s personal word to you – given to make you personally wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.’

And he goes on, still in the singular: ‘All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuke, correction and instruction in righteousness, so that the man of God [that means you Timothy] might be equipped for every good work.’  All Scripture is breathed out by God – the product of God’s creative breath – so that it can be described in Article XX of the 39 Articles as ‘God’s Word Written.’

The Bible is totally human, of course, but it is totally divine also.  In that sense it is comparable only to the incarnate Christ – where total humanity and total deity were together in personal union.  This book comes from the Lord through human writers, the Holy Spirit prompting, guiding and inspiring each one of them to write God’s Letter.

Sincerely in Christ

Bill

Rector’s Letter October 2022

Dear Friends,

A Landscape of Life

Jesus said, ‘Truly I say to you that the one who hears my word and who believes the one who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.’  John 5.24

In the last edition of the Breda Messenger I began to write about how much I appreciate God’s Word, the Bible.  We discussed how it was a Library – a collection of 66 inspired books in which God is speaking to his world.  Continuing our series and following on from the concept of Library we can also describe the Bible as a Landscape – a landscape of life.  God’s Word is not only a message from Him, it is about people.  It is a God-book and a people-book.  It has a lot to say about life.

In the Bible you meet all sorts of people – some of them extremely fascinating.  As we read their stories we can learn a great deal about the right way to live – and often the many wrong ways to live.  We learn from the pitfalls they experience. We also learn from triumphs in God which many of them experience.

So, the Bible is not really about abstract formulas.  It is not like a theology textbook for undergraduates.  Yes, it is God’s teaching and preaching, but primarily it is a people-book.  It is about people to whom God spoke, who either did or did not respond, who obeyed or did not obey.  We have stories of people who found eternal life, who missed life, who spiritually triumphed, who experienced spiritual disaster.  All the way through it is people, people, people.

In the Bible there is a whole section called Wisdom Literature.  It too is about humanity and how we should go about the business of living.  There is Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament; and the Letter of James in the New.  An old summary of these Wisdom books says: the Psalms teach you how to pray, Proverbs how to live, Job how to suffer, the Song of Solomon how to love, and Ecclesiastes how to enjoy.  Then there is James who strikes all these notes together in the five succinct chapters of his letter.

Yes, the Bible is a Landscape of Life – a painting of how people can live – which we should pause and look at regularly.  It is full of real people from whose behaviour and faith we can learn a great deal.  Often they act foolishly and experience catastrophe.  Sometimes they meet with God and begin to walk with him.  The Landscape of Life gives us lessons about God and godliness the whole time.  Study the Bible and you will learn how under all circumstances to serve God.

Sincerely in Christ

Bill

Prayer Letter from Chris & Lotta Strajnic in Sweden

Dear friends and mission partners,

August has been an eventful month. First, we had the Family camp – what a success and a blessing. Everybody loved it, at the beautiful venue there were plenty of activities for children and families. The preaching and teaching were much appreciated by everybody too.
At the end of August, we had the big outreach event at Åkersbergas fair day.  A lot of people passed our Emmaus table (more than previous times) which gave us the opportunity to speak with people. We had a quiz with basic Christian facts questions and face painting for the children. Even though it rained at the end of the fair day it still was a very blessed day.

Our autumn’s church activities have started. In the bible study groups we will be focusing on the theme of “Mission”. We will have three bible study groups this autumn. In LiFT the women’s group Lotta has done a teaching on prayer “Why is prayer so important?” and is now preparing a teaching on “Why do we need to read the bible?”. Chris is continuing with the last part of his preaching series on Acts 24 -28. Chris is also continuing to work with the mentorship he has with several guys.

Next week we are attending another church camp where we are the guest speakers. Do pray for us as we are preparing our teachings and workshops. And pray for the camp and the people we are going to see there.

We are planning to visit Serbia in the middle of September. It has been a while since we have been there so we are really looking forward to seeing Riste and Tea and all our other friends there. We will do some training there too.

Praise points:

  • We are grateful to the Lord for a successful family camp
  • We give thanks for a fair day in Åkersberga.

Prayer points:

  • Please pray for all those people we connected with on the fair day. That the Gospel will reach through.
  • Pray also for the bible study groups and all other activities that have started
  • Pray for us as we prepare our teaching for the next church camp.
  • Pray for our upcoming trip to Serbia

Yours in Christ,
Chris & Lotta Strajnic

Harvest Thanksgiving Services

Join us for our Harvest Thanksgiving service at 10.30am where our preacher will be Rev Bryan Martin (St Anne’s, Dungannon).

Come along at 6.30pm where our preacher will be Stuart Balmer (Knockbreda Parish).

Everyone is very welcome.