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Greetings,
Last week was our first Europe and Central Asia forum where we completely covered the costs from within the Region. We had representatives from 24 countries with a total of 45 participants. The photo below is a group picture with most of us. We very much missed the presence of those countries who were unable to join us. My prayer is that next time we will all be able to be together.
During three days, we unpacked the verse, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” from Luke 14:28. This led to presentations and discussions on strategy development and kingdom resourcing with the aim of growing the outreach and impact of our work. As part of this, we also reviewed progress against our PF Europe and PFI strategies.
On a programmatic level, we focussed on working with foreigners in prison, supporting foreign ministry, restorative justice using our Sycamore Tree approach and progress with rolling out The Prisoner’s Journey. Whilst we could have featured many other aspects of our work, these seemed to be particularly pertinent for us in Europe and Central Asia at this time.
A highlight of our forum was an Echumenical service with Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical and Lutheran congregations coming together at the local Catholic Church in Cascais. This show of unity was poignant at this time when our Christian ministry is increasingly under pressure across the region. The photo is of the 4 Church leaders, and in the centre is the CEO of PF Portugal (CONFIAR) Mr. Luís Gagliardini Graça.
Leading from the forum, I believe we have a renewed sense of unity and a growing appreciation that our work needs to be strategy led and outcomes based if we are to successfully compete for space and time in the prisons we access.
You may see all the forum details including participants, agenda, presentations and video footage on our forum web page: http://www.pfinfo.org/forum
Many blessings
Hugh