Sunday, December 25, 2005

Fantastic Christmas Celebration

The parish hall of St. Markus Church was absolutely packed today as just over a hundred people were seated at the tables to celebrate Christmas Day together. Charles Michelo from Zambia led the first part of the celebration while several people participated in sharing the Christmas message. The two sisters Pascale and Marie Solveig played violin and cello. People brought lots of food to share with each other. This was a very encouraging end to the year 2005. Pray that God will continue to bless us in the coming year!

Menighetsavdelingen i St. Markus kirke var fullpakket i dag, da vel 100 mennesker satt til bords for å feire juledag sammen. Charles Michelo fra Zambia ledet den første delen av festen, og flere personer deltok i å fortelle julebudskapet. De to søstrene Pascale og Marie Solveig spilte fiolin og cello. Folk hadde tatt med seg mye mat som vi delte med hverandre. Dette var en svært oppmuntrende avslutning på 2005. Be om at Gud må fortsette å velsigne oss til neste år!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Fighting violence against women


At the time of writing, the total collected money from the national TV fundraising campaign last Sunday has reached 134,5 million Kroner. In our ecumenical worship service we collected 2606 kroner.
In the service we focused on women from various angles. Rev. Jacob Frode Olsen from Bergen Cathedral preached on how Jesus healed a woman (Luke 13:10-17). Mrs Lillian Michelo, who is a midwife from Zambia, informed us about the situation of women in Africa.
There was much music in the service. Our own member, Nathanael Hale played the prelude and the postlude on his bassoon. Vidar Hovden, the pastor of Adventkirken (the Adventist Church) played a piece on the panflute and accompanied the worship team, which was helped by a group from Fantoft Christian Fellowship.
About fifty people attended the service.

Ellen is seventy!


Congratulations to one of our oldest members, Ellen Eliassen, who turned seventy on October 15. Ellen is our church treasurer and has served as a missionary in Cameroun for more than forty years. She is often the person who greets you with a smile and a handshake when you enter the door of Bergen International Church.
Here she is together with Annabelle, our youngest member.
We love you, Ellen!

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Hårek and Mou in Pakistan: Fine but shaken

Our condolences and prayers go out to all those who have been afflicted by the terrible earthquake in Pakistan. In the midst of it all, we have received an email from former BIC members currently living in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. Hårek Aspenes and his wife Moushumi with children Vincent and Amias, were active in the church before we started regular services in the fall of 2002. They are safe, thank God, but obviously shocked and tired. We include some passages that Moushumi wrote:

"It is definitely the worst I have ever felt in my life. Coming from Bangladesh, I do not know much about earthquakes since we hardly had it in BD... I jumped up when I felt the terrible shaking of the house. Whole house was banging and shaking. I ran outside after going down and waited for Vincent and Harek to come down. When they were late, all I was asking God was to stop this thing. It stopped and no one was hurt, but we lost our strength...
Today is the second day and often we experience the aftershock. The house moves and we try to hurry to go out. But we are fed up now. It is too much to run all the time. No one in Islamabad slept last night. I felt constant trembling when I lay my head and I was up and around. I planned how I will carry the boys down and out if the quake began voilently again. But Harek is as usual more relaxed. Anyway, just to tell you all, we are fine but shaken.
But we are praying for those we are still under that 19 story building. May be dead and may be alive. And we have lost one Swedish mom with her 3 children. Till now no sign of their bodies. Also one frined of ours, named Raheela Gul. Does the name ring a bell? She was becoming famous for hiking in dangerous places. She is a Pakistani - Norwegian. She went to that building to see a relative and spent the night with her relatives. Last night at 2am, her brother was still frantically looking for her. Such a pity. I talked to her two weeks ago. She booked hotel for us in Khagan and Naran valley. I have not got a chance to say thanks to her. She was very tall and very thin. Full of adventure. Life is often harsh. I pray that Raheela comes out of the debris alive and well. "

Friday, October 07, 2005

From Bergen to Spitsbergen

Dag Erik and I just returned from a Nor-Can expedition to an Arctic research town (Ny Ålesund; population ca. 30) on an island called Spitsbergen (Svalbard). Dag Erik was going up to visit his sister, who works there as a cook, and I got to tag along. It was a great experience and the nature was fantastic with the snow-covered mountains, glaciers etc. I made some photo pages of the trip. The links are below if you're curious to see what life was like for two BIC members at 79 degrees north. And yes, it can get cold up there.

Dominic

http://www.geocities.com/dominicandre2/domnanton3pg1.html

http://www.geocities.com/dominicandre2/domnanton3pg2.html

http://www.geocities.com/dominicandre2/domnanton3pg3.html

http://www.geocities.com/dominicandre2/domnanton3pg4.html

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Church Camp


We had a great trip to Markhuset in the awesome valley of Eksingedalen last week-end. a perfect time and place to experience Norwegian nature at its best. Best of all: It didn't rain all the time - we even had some nice sunshine!


Of course the purpose of the trip wasn't only to enjoy the nature but to get to know each other better as a church family.

And is there a better way to get to know each other than making meals and sharing them and do the dishes together?

And when there are too few blankets, we get a good exercize in the spiritual discipline of sharing :-)

We should have been more than 18 people enjoying the fellowship, though. We hope for more people next time we go on a church trip somewhere.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Fire From The North




Wow! was the only word I could say after the first meeting at the Fire From The North Conference last week!

"Fire From The North" was the name of a prayer conference held in Lerwick in Shetland and lasted for a whole week! Brenda Robertson and I (Helga Sakseid) represented Bergen International Church.

The goal for the conference was to pray and intercede for North Europe. We were about 350 delegates from all over the world, but most of them from England. It was a most wonderful experience to worship and pray with people who were completely free in the Lord. People danced, waved banners, or people knelt silently, people shared words that God had given them to share, some had a prophecy, others a confession of sin on behalf of their nation. It was amazing to witness how The Holy Spirit gently took over the leading of some of the meetings.

Many people turn away from God in North Europe today, but intercessors from these countries don't give up pursuing the vision that God is going to create something new. God is going to raise up people who are totally comitted to Him and will obey His will no matter what. We must not allow any compromise with the Devil. For the Nordic countries(Norw.,Sweden and Finland) we have the vision that there will be a revival in the younger generation, youth will stand up to be pastors and leaders and share the Gospel with great boldness. A people not bound by the "Jante" spirit but free to be the unique, prescious child of God. There will be a united spirit between the three countries from the northen parts and southwards.
There were visions of more unity between the nations among the believers, and also a spirit of repentence of sin done to other nations. (E.g.during the war.)

I recommend you to visit the website of Fire From The North: http://www.ruachministries.org/fire/default.htm

Helga

Sunday, August 07, 2005

What has Paul got to do with us?


“Let’s get Paul out of the Bible and over in church history! I like reading the gospels, but I disagree with Paul’s views on women or gay people.” Statements like this are quite common these days. But if you don’t like Paul, what would be left of the faith we have?
What about those passages in Paul’s letters that we love to read?
- Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
- And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
- It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
- Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again. Rejoice!
All these are quotations from Paul’s letters. Which of them would you like to remove from the Bible? As for me, I would like to keep them all. If we can trust Paul when he speaks words that we love to hear, maybe we need to trust him when we hear words that are difficult to understand for people in our time and our society. We need to take time with Paul and let God speak to us through him. If we do we shall get a deeper understanding of the will of God.

This fall in Bergen International Church we shall focus on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. This small letter covers less than ten pages of the Bible but it has got a lot of deep insight in the mysteries of our faith, as well as much practical advice for our Christian life, relevant even today.

The author begins his letter by identifying himself as “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”. After Paul’s dramatic encounter with Christ on the way to Damascus, Jesus himself makes him his apostle. Paul becomes an official spokesman of Jesus. There is no contradiciton between the message of Jesus in the gospels and the message of Jesus through his apostle Paul. It is a mistake to allow same-sex “marriages” on the grounds that Jesus never talks about homosexuality in the gospels. It is the same Jesus who has given Paul and the other apostles the authority to instruct the church on his behalf.

In the Nicene creed we confess that we believe in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church”. What do we mean by that? Firstly that the church was established by the apostles. Our congregation wasn’t established by Paul, but we are part of the big, universal church that was established by the apostles. We are building on the foundation that the apostles made before us. (Eph. 2:20) Secondly that we need to be in agreement with the apostles. What we believe and how we behave is not for the public opinion to decide. Thirdly that we are in fellowship with the apostles. They belong to the part of the church that is in heaven, while we are still on this earth, but it is still one church. Paul is our apostle, also in the sense that his message is meant for us today.

The letter is addressed “to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus”.
We know that Paul had a special relationship with the church in Ephesus. On his third missionary journey he stayed there two years. But in the oldest manuscripts, the words “in Ephesus” are missing. Perhaps the letter was meant for the surrounding churches too. We really don’t know why. But we do know that not only the churches near Ephesus, but the churches all across the Christian world wanted to read this letter and the rest of Paul’s letters. Now it is our turn to see what this apostle has to say to our young congregation here in Bergen.

The first thing we notice is that he writes to “the saints”. This is not the elite Christians, but all God’s people. You are a saint because you belong to God.
Secondly we note the word “faithful”. This can mean “to have faith” or to be faithful or trustworthy. Probably it can mean both. Because someone who believes in Jesus Christ, must also be a trustworthy person.
Thirdly they are “in Christ”. That’s a key term in the Ephesians. To be in Christ is to be united with him, just as an arm belongs to the body. In the same way are we united with Christ and with one another.

There are no Christians in Ephesus today. It is a ruin city. But the apostle Paul has a message “to the saints, the faithful in Christ Jesus” wherever you are. What is that message?

Next time we’ll see that it is a message of grace. The word “grace” appears 12 times throughout the letter. It is a message where the person of Paul is overshadowed completely by the grace of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Geir Sakseid

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Friends across the world

Have you left Bergen? Did you go to Bergen International Church before? Would you like to send us a greeting? Add a comment on the Church Blog!
The pastor

Monday, February 28, 2005

Welcome to the Church Blog!

You're welcome to share your thoughts with us on this page. Perhaps you have a comment on the web pages, or an idea about the church ministry.

The Pastor