We are encouraged that there are now five church plants.
Tomas answers our questions about his faith and the Church Planting in Slovakia.
Tell us about your background and how you came
to faith.
I was blessed to be born into a Christian family and very much part of a local church. But as a child I tried to live in the opposite way to my parents. The changing point came when a friend at High School asked me to read the Bible with him before class. I agreed but on condition that we were alone.
The second day the room was full of students and some teachers! We read the Bible together and the students asked many questions about the meaning of suffering and life. We had no answers and had reached a junction in our lives. We could either stop calling ourselves Christians or we could dig deeper into the Bible. In God’s grace we took the second option, studied more, came to understand our sinfulness and the beauty of the Gospel.
Some other students and even teachers came to faith as well. You could say we came to faith doing evangelism! That attitude has stayed with me.
How did you get involved in church-planting?
I wanted to become a pastor, but wise people advised me to wait. I reluctantly decided to study medicine. Mid-way through medical school I took a gap year and went to be a missionary in Tanzania. It was there I witnessed church planting for the first time and was drawn to it.
After completing medical school, I went to Bible college in London. Following this I returned to Slovakia to the only church plant I knew of. This was in the city of Nitra. Silvia and I were now married, but soon after our arrival the pastor left on sabbatical and never returned.
We started looking for a replacement but no one suitable could be found. It eventually became clear that we should step into the situation. That was ten years ago. Three years ago, the Nitra church became “mother” of a new church plant in Bratislava and sent us there.
How do you support the work of church-planting?
We brought together a group of like-minded pastors and formed PLANT.SK. The aim is to help each other and encourage established churches to get involved in church planting.
We are encouraged that there are now five church plants and we praise God! We have an ABC: Assess potential church-planters, provide Basic training, and then ongoing Coaching for church planters.
We also formed Re:Formatio to equip pastors and church planters and we publish four books per year. We also started a Slovak version of the Gospel Coalition website on which we publish an article each day.
Through these two resources we are equipping a new generation of church planters.