Slovakia, officially known as the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Evangelical believers make up a very small proportion of the total population of 5.6 million people.
In this spiritually needy country there is a body of believers who have an optimistic view of church planting. During SGA’s 70th anniversary five church planters were added to our sponsorship programme.
One of those benefitting from this support is Tomáš Henzel serving in a church plant in the capital city, Bratislava. He is planning to expand the work into a new part of the city by establishing a new church.
Recently, while sharing at Mission Focus meetings, Tomáš outlined their nationwide church planting vision and how it is making progress.
Tomáš, Silvia & family
The Nitra church, located 95 km east of Bratislava, is gathering a team from across Slovakia to send to the city of Trenčín in western Slovakia, near the Czech border. Trenčín has a population of more than 55,000, which makes it the country’s eighth largest city.
An exciting new church plant is in Vítkovce, a Roma village in the Košice Region of central-eastern Slovakia. Tomáš points out that this is the first Roma church plant for his denomination, Cirkev Bratská.
He describes the uniqueness of this church planting initiative.
A beautiful thing about these planting projects is that they are initiated by young churches and pastors that have been planted themselves quite recently. The first churches planted after 2016 are themselves planting again.
While Tomáš is thrilled with the church planting progress he is acutely aware of the many challenges. SGA is committed to standing with Tomáš in his church planting ministry.
As SGA desires to sponsor more missionary families to coincide with 75 years of God’s faithfulness, we are open to helping others in Slovakia. In the following statement Tomáš sums up church planting in Slovakia.
Lots of challenges remain, but we are very thankful for every new believer, new church and every new church planter. The growth is small and the field is big, but we trust the Lord to raise, equip and send out more mature Slovak Christians into His harvest.