When we came to the decision, a little over 12 years ago now, that God was calling us to move to another country we immediately began to learn the language, Swedish. It was our simple & straightforward belief that to plant a church in Stockholm meant Swedish. We were both right and wrong about that.

We were wrong because the last decade has proved that not to be the case. Grace Church is, at present, a church that primarily works in English. Team meetings are held in English, prayer meetings in English, our worship is sung in English and I preach in English. We have an international community who have found us, in many cases, because we worship in English.

I knew that Swedes are pretty competent at English but I hadn’t really thought through how international Stockholm was. I failed to appreciate that there are lots of people living here who will always be more comfortable in English than Swedish. This is the world of English as first and second language speakers.

North Americans, Brits, & South Africans head for an English language church because it is (often) their first language. Indians, Kenyans, Nigerians, Ugandans, Singaporeans, Chinese, Italians, Spanish, Dutch, Romanian come searching for us because English is their second language and they can speak that far better than they can Swedish.

The other thing I hadn’t really appreciated was how dominant English is. It takes over like Japanese knot-weed in a garden. Swedes have been learning English since they were seven, you’ve been learning Swedish for a month. Sooner rather than later, you’re all speaking English.

That’s pretty much how we became an international church in Stockholm.

But we’re not just an international church. We’re a multi-lingual church. One Sunday in 2018, for reasons mostly known only to God, we found a largish group of Congolese refugees sitting in church waiting for the service to begin. It didn’t take long to figure out they spoke neither English nor Swedish. We were faced with a choice – encourage them to go elsewhere, which didn’t feel very welcoming or try to help them have a service in Swahili (their common tongue). We chose the second option and despite not really knowing how it would all turn out, nearly five years later they’re still with us and we’re still supporting them.

That made us a two-language church.

But the original dream was still there, we came to Sweden to make disciples here and that means, later rather than sooner, Swedish. English might be a language of convenience or trade but Swedish is still the language of the heart. Doing bi-lingual services was very jobbigt (annoying) & we quickly decided that route was not for us. So this year we’ve launched a Swedish speaking service that is worshipping, preaching and praying entirely in Swedish.

That makes us a three-language church.

And I guess, who knows, if it made sense to add more services in other languages in the future then we might. Sudanese Arabic has the biggest chance of being next.

The languages aren’t quite equal in weighting (and we haven’t tried to make them so) in what we use & how we work but it gives us a window into a whole set of ideas and gives the line, ‘O for a thousand tongues to sing’ a new dimension.

Lessons learned

A few quick bullets on what I’ve learned:

• Some languages dominate & that can get in the way of your mission
• Some languages & some cities are global & that can open new avenues for mission
• Some languages speak to people’s hearts more than others. Worship flows from the heart