2009 Pastors Conference

Last week (March 18-21) we had our annual Shepherds Pastors Conference here in Albania in a city called Durres. This is the second largest city in Albania and is an important port city. It has a very long history, it was once a Military and Naval Base for the Roman Empire and it eventually became the western end of the famous Roman Road called Via Egnatia. There is also a large Roman Amp theater where many people (many Christians) were forced to fight in unfair battles in which they died. Tradition says that Titus was martyred in Durres, potentially in this Amp theater.



Conference Update:
The pastors conference was a wonderful time of fellowship and encouragement. We had the opportunity to sit underneath the teaching of God's Word through two great keynote speakers. They were Scott Ardavanis who was our senior pastor at Grace Church of Dupage and is now the senior pastor at Placerita Baptist Church in CA, and Dr. Stuart Olyott who is a distinguished professor of the Evangelical Theological College of Wales.




There were around 70 people at the conference from all over Albania and even some from Kosovo. Our goal in putting on this conference was to equip these men who come from some very dark cities and villages, and also to give them a break from their daily lives much of which is face with much spiritual warefare.

Seminar:
I (Justin) personally had the opportunity to lead a seminar on youth ministry. There were about 20 people that attended the seminar. I went through the Preparation Section of "Christ's Strategy of Ministry " that was put together by Dann Spader with SonLife Ministries and is now used by Josiah Venture all accross Eastern Europe. This is a material that we have used with our youth group and has been a great model and a huge help as we think about healthy youth ministries and even healthy churches. I came out of the seminar very encouraged and I believe everyone who was in there came out very encouraged as well. I told them that what we would cover in this seminar was only about 1/3 of the material, but that we would be offering a training seminar in May and we would discuss the entire material. Not only did many sign-up for that seminary, I was also asked to go and speak in a few different cities around Albania and potentially even in Kosovo. This is a big answer to prayer as we have been trying to establish some key contacts to start networking and developing a group of leaders that we can help equip for youth ministry all across this region. Pray for us as we move forward in this.

Other Things coming up:
Josiah Venture Family Conference in May--We will be driving from Albania to Czech as a family, pray that it will be a refreshing time.

Camp Prep from now until July--Pray for our three Josiah Venture evangelistic camps that we are doing this summer. We are doing one with Grace Church of Tirana, and two with two other church plants just outside of the city. Pray for the teams that are coming and for the students who will be attending.

Training Seminars in May and June--Presently we have planned some Training Seminars to take place in May and June. One will be on "Christ's Strategy of Ministry" and the other will be on how to lead an "Elements" bible study.

The 180 Gathering-- Once a month our youth group does an Evangelistic service at our youth center (Streha). This is some that we have done the past two months, our next one will be on Saturday over Easter weekend. We will obviously be talking about the life of Christ and his death on the cross for our sins. Pray for the souls of the unsaved that will be coming.