Christianity knows no boundaries

Yesterday our family attended church for the first time in Prague. Prior to our move, we were put in contact with the Barnes family, who have been serving as missionaries in the Czech Republic for over four years. We had dinner with them in Georgia shortly before we moved and they returned to the Czech Republic just days before we arrived. They live about 2 hours south of Prague, but drove up to spend the day with us and we followed them to the International Baptist Church of Prague for the 11 am service.

It is so strange to be away from your own familiar church home, but at the same time, it is so inspiring and enriching to see that Christianity knows no geographic boundaries or language barriers. At the International Baptist Church, we sang familiar contemporary worship songs and heard a powerful message about healing, all in English, but the most humbling part of the service was hearing each person in attendance reciting the Lord’s Prayer in his/her native tongue. After church we were warmly welcomed to Prague and to the church by many people.

Our plans for the day included attending another church service at 4 pm, so between services we decided to eat lunch in downtown Prague at TGI Fridays – it looked, smelled, tasted and felt just like a TGI Fridays in Georgia. Also, once again, we were reminded what a small world it really is when the hostess told us that she was from Conyers, Georgia.

The International Church of Prague, like the first church, uses the facilities of a church that has different service times. They normally meet on Sunday morning, but the facilities were not available so they moved the service to the afternoon. Again we were warmly welcomed to Prague and the church. We even recognized some faces from the service we attended earlier. The worship songs were more traditional but still familiar, and the message included a powerful testimony from a young Czech man who is 25 years old and has been clean from drugs for over two years. His story was translated from Czech to English, which somehow made it even more powerful to me. He told of how he had been in and out of rehab and his family was giving up on him. The turning point for him was when his mother, who was a non-believer, in a desperate attempt to save him gave him a Christian book. This led him to a Christian facility, Betel, where he was rehabilitated, and as a result of his rehabilitation and faith, his mother is now also a Christian. I am constantly amazed at how God can even use non-believers for His purpose and plan. Now this young man is using his faith to help not only rehabilitate other drug-addicted lost souls but also show them the love and need of Jesus Christ.

I cannot say whether or not either of these churches will be our church home in Prague, but I can say that we will attend both of these churches again. There are several other churches that we have heard about, so we will continue our search until we feel that God is leading us in a particular direction. Regardless, it felt good to be in the house of the Lord and we look forward to seeing what else He has in store for us.