Dear Friends of Eastern Europe Renewal: 

The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

I hope you are having a good summer. We are both doing well. Mary is actually trying to organize a solo trip to Poland for the autumn. Please pray for God's leading and provision in this. My own travels have been a bit less frantic in the last few weeks and should stay that way, except for the last two weeks of October, which will be action packed.

Since writing in May, I have been in Donetsk, Ukraine with Marsh Moyle, a friend and colleague with City Gate in Bratislava, who is also involved with English L'Abri. We were teaching at the Eurasia Institute of Inter Varsity (IFES) where hundreds of Christian leaders from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc. came together for 2 weeks of study. Marsh taught one whole week but I had to rush away to England for the Interface Arts Conference in Kent. The airline lost my luggage, which caught up with me four days later. It was a learning experience to lecture in Kiev and Donetsk without notes. I had to buy some new clothes and a friend in Bratislava said it made him think of pouring old wine into new wineskins. Here in Ukraine, as in many places, I am often asking the students "Who was Jesus Christ before you were born?" This question is useful because many peoples' understanding of Jesus does not go beyond their own experience. Knowing everything by our own experience is what the devil encouraged Eve to do in the garden.

The Interface Artists' Conference was the second of its kind for me and we are planning a third in October in Edinburgh, just before the Film Festival at English L'Abri.

A totally new experience was SLOT, a Christian Arts Festival in Poland with more than 5000 people, mostly living in tents surrounding a very large, crumbling Cistercian Monastery. I lectured to a couple of hundred people sitting on the wet ground under a tree with a great deal of noise and activity around us on the first day. Then a room was kindly provided and the students and I connected very well. I'm hoping to go again next year. At least half the participants were not Christians so the discussions were lively and interesting.

The new work at the Church in Lausanne has had a good beginning. The people are lovely and I enjoy getting to know them. 2 weekends per month is not a lot but it is what I have to offer and seems to be better than nothing for the Church. In our own Church here in Basel, I am preaching once a month and we might start having a house group once a week in English in our home. There is also a possibility that I will give some preaching classes for some of the young men.

The time with the artists in Southern France (see photo) was relaxed in an atmosphere of profound hospitality and deep conversations. Some very gifted and thoughtful people gathered together.

Youth With A Mission continues to be a regular venue for my teaching. It was historically connecting to be in the base in Herrnhut where Zinzendorf welcomed the refugees and the great prayer and missionary work began. Next week I will teach in the Worldview school here in Switzerland and have plans for teaching in Augsburg and Hamburg as well as in Umea in very northern Sweden.

A highlight of the Spring was the European Leadership Forum (ELF) in Eger, Hungary. One of the best parts of that was going with the group of 40 American volunteers, who make the conference run, to Budapest and taking them into the Hungarian National Gallery for some artistic engagement.

Recent reading has included the Pope's new book on Jesus and the last Harry Potter book, which are quite different from each other. The book on Jesus is excellent and surprising in several ways. It is unusual in that the Pope praises Protestant scholars and engages at length with a Jewish scholar. Reading the book in no way made me want to become Catholic, but it made me realize that if Catholics believe what is in this book we have more in common than I thought. The ending of the Harry Potter series was disappointingly "happy ever after". The magic in the books doesn't bother me, but the naturalistic humanism does. People use great powers but they don't seem to have an ultimate source, except themselves or other people. There is no final ground or base for reality except human experience. There is no real supernatural, just a naturalism expanded to include magic.

Mary and I miss the cat and are moving toward getting a couple of parakeets.

Attached are a couple of little things I wrote recently. Questions? Comments? Thank you everyone who has prayed for us and the work of EER, given us friendship and financial support. By God's Grace and your generosity there always seems to be enough money to live and travel. God bless you and keep you.

Yours in Christ,

Ellis

Artists in Southern France

Return to Top

Copyright © 2007 Ellis Potter.