From Matt Price

February 14, 2007

  
  Great news about the growth of the West African church . . . from Norway .
I was in Cape Verde last August when they received an update about this new congregation.
Cape Verdeans are some of the best missionaries in our denomination, in my opinion.
Oslo Welcomes First Naz.
Church to Norway
Oslo, Norway––Approximately 70 people
met on 3 Dec., in Oslo , Norway to
celebrate the official organization of the
country’s first Nazarene Church .
Between 30 and 50 people, 23 of
whom were accepted as charter members,
now comprise the Portuguese-speaking
congregation, which began
as 15-20 people meeting in 2002 at the
home of Jorge Rocha, a Cape Verdean
pastor who works as a groundskeeper at
the South African embassy in Oslo .
For years, the church in Greve , Denmark
has been the sole congregation
in Scandinavia, so it adopted the Oslo
group as a church plant in 2003. In 2005,
the Oslo body outgrew Rocha’s home
and began renting the local Salvation
Army’s facilities on Sunday afternoons.
Rocha, who pastored several home
churches during the decade he lived in
Brazil, was ordained at the Scandinavia
District Assembly in May of 2006 after
15 years as a licensed minister. It marked
the district’s first ordination in 15 years.
Indicative of the city’s large Portuguese
and African communities, the Oslo
church is populated mostly by Spanish and
Portuguese-speaking immigrants, but
also has individuals from as far as Nigeria
and Bangladesh .
“This is one success story that I think
could help [the district] look for another
one,” said Northern Europe Field
Strategy Coordinator Philip McAlister.
“We’ve been looking at that in Denmark
for ages. That’s what we needed. I’m
hoping it’s going to be a springboard for
them to realize some significant things
can be done and that they’d like to plant
other churches.”
From Where Worlds Meet the monthly
e-newsletter for the Eurasia Region
of the Church of the Nazarene. To
subscribe, please e-mail the editor at
whereworldsmeet@eurasiaregion.org
J. Matthew Price, Ph.D.
01 B.P. 1350
Cotonou
REP DU BENIN