Acts
As I write this, I am due to deliver my next expository sermon on the book of Acts from Chapter 9, verses 1-31. I am excited to proclaim the salvation of Saul (Paul) - the Apostle to the Gentiles. Acts has been a formative series for me, and I think also for others in the congregation. We have learned about mission, proclamation, and the church of the new covenant. We are all astounded - but not surprised - by the power of God's Word. For me, a special highlight of the series was Stephen's sermon in Acts 7. I entitled my exposition of his arrest, sermon, and stoning as "The desecration of the temple, and the consecration of exile."

Book Reviews
Our trainees have begun their book reviews for this semester, and I already had the pleasure to give them feedback on their first book: 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible. They are currently reading a history textbook on baptist history entitled The Baptist Story. Through that book I aim to supplement their general knowledge of church history from the apprenticeship program from last year with something explicitly from our theological heritage. I praise the Lord that I have the opportunity to instruct such gifted men. Please pray that the Lord would richly establish them in character, wisdom, insight, and knowledge so that they can be examples to the flock as our first two lay elders. That would be a profound blessing upon our church.

Theme Evening: Too young to die
On the first Wednesday of April, our church conducted an evening together with another Bible Church advocating for the lives of the unborn. By God's grace, we have a number of sisters in our church which have this issue deeply engraved on their hearts. I was able to give a theological overview of the topic of protecting the unborn. Then, a sister of our church conducted a dozens of hours of research and presented on different organizations where our brothers and sisters can be involved as advocates.

Street Evangelism
I have been especially encouraged recently by one family that moved to our church from Germany in order to homeschool. The father of that family, Samuel, is a passionate evangelist. Samuel and I have prepared a book table ministry, that we aim to start on Good Friday - just before our joint service with a local reforming bible church. Please pray that more of God's people would come to faith in our city. To that end, also that we meet some folks, and we are faithful to proclaim the saving message about Jesus.

Family Ministry
Our family ministry at Christus Gemeinde is growing. Due to the need to support our core seminar ministry, we are moving toward starting a ministry to children on Sunday mornings during that time. This is creating more logistical needs in our young and growing church, but we seem to have arrived at a point in our church's life where this is a wise investment. Please pray for the children that our church would partner together well with the parents to assist them to be the primary disciple makers of their children.

Home Groups
Although our church does not have the best history with starting home groups, we are starting them up again after easter. In the past, we did not have enough partcipants during the week to justify it, but we as elders deemed it was worth another shot. Our church is geographically quite spread out. The two family units who live furthest from one another live about 1 and 1/2 hours apart by car. We are praying that home groups will assist us to have good Christian fellowship in the years to come even though our members are so spread out. Please pray us to abide in the teaching of the apostles, the breaking of bread, and prayer.

Apprenticeship -> Institute?
Our church was involved about a year ago in an apprenticeship program with another church in our city. With seven teachers, we gave the equivalent of a one year bible school curriculum to about 15 students - who went on to become ministry leaders, elders, and even a church secretary.

Now we are aiming to start that up again. As teachers, all of us share the dream of one day seeing a confessionally sound seminary in our Austrian context - both German-speaking and English-speaking. This is one step along a long road, but this year our number of teachers has reached 9. I will again be responsible to teach Church History, and Kai will be teaching Old Testament. The program will be both more expansive and more flexible for students this time around. We aim to provide 3 tracks: Lay elder preparation, General Diploma program, and course auditing. I am excited that course auditing may also allow Lina to take a class or two even though her duties as a mom and wife do not allow her to pursue a diploma at this time.

Starting in February of this year, our church moved into a new space. This space grants us much more room to grow. As our Sunday attendees approached 50 people, our previous space was becoming a little cramped for us. Especially now that we have 21 children (19 six years old and under), we needed a space that could better accomodate our needs. After searching for a few months, and praying for the Lord to provide, we found this space in downtown Vienna.

Now we have around 300 chairs, two rooms for children's work, and another large room for our core seminars. We are very thankful for this space, and the very affordable rental agreement.

Please pray that we would iron out the kinks. Technological integration has become more difficult in this space. Also we are entering into a new era of logistical and storage needs. These are very much diaconal type needs, but they pile up over time.

More importantly, please pray for our faithful witness for the gospel in this new place. We long that the Lord would use this location to fill this place and see more churches planted out of Christus Gemeinde Wien. I am excited about our new proximity to the University of Vienna.