The Snowball training programme for evangelists ran amazingly
well in the first year. We had four students - two each
from Austria and Slovakia. The course ran from September
1999 to June 2000.
Since they finished, all four students have been using what
they learned in their native countries. It has been very
exciting to see them engaged in evangelism and training others to
do the same.
During this time, we were talking to other people about the
possibility of taking part in Snowball. By the Summer, we had
around a dozen people who had expressed an interest, but not
one of them was in a position to start in September 2000.
Year Two
The initial plan was for us to have a break from running the
course for one year, and use that year to get the course
documentation in order and either achieve accreditation or make
serious progress twoards achieving it.
However, it soon became clear that the changes within MEPA -
the French part of OACI - had left Mark Howe insufficiently clear
about the details of the ministry we were preparing people to go
into.
The focus of Europe Now has always been on Southern Europe, as
this is by far the most needy - in Christian terms - part of the
continent. There are a number of patterns of ministry which
work well in the Northern European context, but when we started
the course, MEPA was the only example of a successful OAC ministry
in Southern Europe.
The restructuring of MEPA means that we no longer have a viable
example of a team of evangelists working together in Southern
Europe, so attempting to prepare people for such a ministry is not
straightforward.
In addition, none of the people who have so far expressed an
interest in taking part in Snowball either come from Southern
Europe or have an intention of going to work there as an
evangelist. While this is not a fatal problem - we always
knew that we would be training some people who would not go on to
work in Southern Europe - it does raise questions about the
viability of the programme as a way of establishing evangelists
in Southern Europe.
The Staff
The availability of the key members of staff have also changed
since June 2000.
Mark Howe is now highly committed to establishing an
evangelistic Cybercafé near his home in France. This
project will take a great deal of his time for the next few years,
and he is consequently unable to commit a siginficant amount of
his year to the training programme.
Rob Davis is seriously looking at the possibility of moving
with his family to Italy, to engage in evangelism there in a more
'hands-on' way. The preparation for this move is likely to
take much of his time and energy when he is not running puppet
shows and puppet training seminars, so his availability for the
training programme is seriously limited.
Paul Hazelden is working as the General Manager of Crisis
Centre Ministries in Bristol, and has agreed to continue in this
role for four days a week until the end of June 2002. This
has left much less time than planned for working on the course
documentation and making progress with accreditation.