There are many things to consider when you’re planting a church, but time with new people should always be near the top of the list. It’s important to build relationships of course, it’s important to teach foundational values and principles but if you don’t meet new people and listen to their stories then right from the very start you’re forgetting what you’ve come to do.

For us that means thinking of different ways to open our home and invite people we’ve met. So recently we had our first ‘international food fest’. The basic idea is very simple, invite people to bring food from their nation or culture and we all share and eat together. So we invited families we met at the kids nursery (‘dagis’ in Swedish), people from our Swedish courses and anyone else we’ve bumped into at the park or wherever. The net result was around 30 people from 12 different nations (Lebanon, Pakistan, Finland, Britain, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Bulgaria, Greece, Eritrea & Romania).

I think that when people encounter the church what they see should reveal something of the kingdom of God and a multicultural gathering does that as God invites people from north, south, east & west and from every tribe and tongue to His royal feast.

Another picture was that we had those who were homeless with us and that’s a picture of how God cares for those in need and puts people in families. We had PhD students and the highly educated alongside the uneducated and unemployed, we’re all treated the same in God’s household. Equally welcomed, equally valued.

We had Muslims, atheists and Christians mingled together and the gospel reaches out across the belief gaps and builds bridges instead of placing defensive walls to protect your own.

All this was good and ‘missional’ and its great that I can see these connections but the goal is to help everyone make those connections too and ultimately to find the one who makes all these things possible in the first place.