My Albania Mission Trip
Nanette and I just returned from our sixth trip to Albania. The first four were with the team that works at the summer camps. The camp ministry is a joint effort of two Cru ministries in Albania, the International School Project (ISP, aimed at educators) and Leader Impact (aimed at business leaders). In our last two trips to Albania I worked exclusively with ISP, giving lectures to teachers.
I gave four lectures over a period of two days in the city of Shkoder:
· “The Art of the Apology”
· “The Four Types” (from the Book of Proverbs: wise, simple, fool, scorner)
· “Emotional Capital” (nine strategies for building trust and loyalty)
· “Servant Leadership”
After we finished in Shkoder, we drove to Vlora and repeated the same conference.
ISP staff and volunteers are eager to share the Gospel, of course, but we never want to be guilty of bait-and-switch: we don’t want to invite educators to a professional development event and give them an altar call instead. So I wove the Gospel into my presentations in a way that was (I hope) natural and integral.
I used the concept of emotional capital as a frame for understanding my favorite parable, the story of the prodigal son. That son had humiliated his father, destroying any possibility of a healthy relationship. When the son comes to his senses and returns to apologize, he has nothing to offer. He has squandered not only his portion of the estate but also (he assumes) the entirety of his father’s goodwill. Now his only hope is to work as a hired hand on the farm.
Dad will not even let him finish his apology. Notwithstanding all that the son has done to drain the emotional capital from his relationship with his Dad, when the son comes in repentance he finds only grace and mercy. This is a glorious picture of the Gospel!
Albania is in a Book of Acts phase of her Christian history.
It’s a first-generation church dealing with all the problems the early church had to deal with. The church there is a small minority. And with everyone being new to the faith, spiritual maturity is always an issue, especially when it comes to finding mature spiritual leaders.
But they are a plucky bunch, not lacking in zeal. At one worship service we attended, there were three prayer requests, all for mission trip teams going out this summer to serve in other nations. In another worship service, we learned that they are planting another church in a neighborhood in the city.
Our most precious memory of our time there was the long drive from Vlora back to the capital Tirana after the last conference. We got to hear how our ISP partners Pellum and Ellie came to faith in Christ. They were both in college, where friends introduced them to other Christians, who introduced them to Jesus. Now they are working full time with Cru. (They are PPC-supported missionaries. You can see their 2023 report here.)
Another highlight: I got to preach in one of the churches in Tirana! What a joy to open the Word with those beloved brothers and sisters!
I asked our ISP partners what their biggest challenges are right now.
They mentioned a cooling interest in spiritual conversations. When the atheistic government fell in the early 1990s, there was an eagerness to learn more about spiritual things. That eagerness is cooling now as Albanians are getting caught up in the same thorn-like distractions that plague American culture: materialism, busyness, exhaustion.
Pray for Pellum and Ellie (with whom we worked most closely) and Pellum’s boss Genti and his wife Djana. Pray that they will not grow weary in well-doing.
Pray for the educators who attended the conferences in Shkoder and Vlora. Pray that God’s Spirit will patiently draw them to faith.
(On our way back, we stopped in Rome to visit with Joel and Amy Hardman, PPC-supported missionaries also working with Cru. Joel is head of Cru’s student ministries for the entire country. Joel grew up in Dayton; they will be here this summer. You will want to meet them.)
Persevere, Paul Pyle Pastor of Discipleship