Good Relations for the "Spotted's" Sake!

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. 33With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all.

Acts 4:32-33

I am sooo happy for my siblings in the different churches in Stockholm... Had lunch with the Youth Pastor of Finnish Filadelfia Church this week and planned a Youth Conference for this coming Easter. I will preach at Jerusalem Church, the Ethiopian church, tomorrow morning and then head over to SOS Church to have the kids church at 4 pm... We are cooperationg with St Clara Church, Allhelgona Church, Filadelfia Church, the City Church, New Fellowship, The Cross Church, Dynamic, Credo and the Salvation Army in a project where we provide supper, lodging and breakfast for the homeless every day... We'll work in different teams and shifts and are hoping for the grace and power that the Book of Acts talks about to be over this... Imagine to be able to take a cooperate responsibility for the poor of the city - thank You Jesus!

...in the daily distribution of food.

Acts 6:1b

Lately I have heard the Spirit whisper to me to stretch out even more to the poor... Unreached Peoples - those no one else wants to go to or preach to and those in Stockholm that no one else cares about... God is giving us the striped, spreckled, and the spotted (Gen 31:12). I am also sensing a completely new love to and gratefulness in my heart toward my siblings in all the other churches around the city... The work of the Spirit in our lives is both beautiful and precious... Fellowship that is built on a practical cooperation for a common cause is true fellowship. Focus on the harvest = Unity.

Yesterday I had lunch with a Swedish Indian businessman in the city who wants to be baptized and join our church and today I am meeting a Swedish Armenian seeker for another lunch meeting that hopefully will lead into Bible reading, confession of sin and repentance... God give is Stockholm!

Tomorrow is Sunday again! "I love Sundays!" as Pastor Brian Houston so often says...

See ya!

Pastoral Duties?!

I am actually enjoying being a pastor more than I imagined... For close to 17 years I have traveled more or less full time as festival evangelist / missionary, conference speaker and teacher, preceded by an intense year as a youth pastor in the early 90's... 2009 was very pioneer and exciting with vision and restaurant meetings, building a church, church launch, CD release, baptism teaching and more teaching on baptism :) God is truly a very good God!

2010 has begun with even more excitement as the flow of people continues to increase to our celebrations on Sundays at 4pm – this past Sunday we had 180 people (including children)! At the moment we are talking about the need to soon run two services on Sundays. Mid February we will launch youth services on Friday nights...

This morning I led prayer school at SOS Mission Bible College and then continued to teach on Homiletics (the art of preaching) at our School of Leadership. Tomorrow I will continue with our cadets and share how to outline, illustrate, conclude and write your sermon notes that all hopefully will result in powerful ministry time and a harvest for the Kingdom of God ;). We are training preachers of the Gospel – the Good News!

I then went to purchase a 52” flat screen TV for our café, together with Ronny Salvo, church member and friend... Maria and I have encouraged all our leaders and faithful workers (ie SOS staff) with a small gift for soccer and relaxing evenings at church! (Maria and I are buying the TV. Might as be CLEAR and spell it our here – so that no one can say that we buy luxurious equipment for the church's money...)


Being a pastor is more than counseling, marriage counseling, funerals, it is building the Kingdom of God in the middle of Stockholm with my best friends!

See ya!

Expansion on all fronts!

We are experiencing enormous expansion in SOS Church, on absolutely all fronts at the moment! We have a great need to consecrate (purify, ransack) ourselves, pray and seek God m ore intensely than ever before to keep us from being distracted by wrong things. Instead of missing the target, we want to hit the bulls eye of God's wonderful will!

SOS Internationally;

1) SOS Mission will conduct 4 festivals during 2010 – Nepal, Tanzania, Haiti, and Dominican Republic!
2) The mission bases are growing stronger and stronger – it is soon time to plant a new base!
3) Our portable festival equipment will see the light of day this fall after 5 years of hard work with this project!
4) SOS Bible Colleges will be graduating more students and missionaries in Ethiopia, Thailand, Bulgaria and the USA
5) HarvestCry will be conducted in Sweden, Norway and the USA!

Harvest Cry 2009...

Home in Stockholm;

1) SOS Kids is growing!
2) The house churches are growing and need to be divided and more and more come into existence!
3) We will be launching SOS Youth!
4) Applications have begun to come in for SOS Mission Bible College and this fall the school will be larger.
5) SOS Media will purchase TV equipment and in March we will begin airing two programs per week!

Today I preached at SOS Church on the office of the Evangelist! Next week it seems we will be baptizing 5 newly saved and completely fresh disciples of Jesus again. God is good!

See ya.

Youth Pastors!

Anna and Jonatan Kvist will be Youth Pastors at SOS Church....

This Sunday we will ordain new pastors in SOS Church again! Anna and Jonatan Kvist will join the team as Youth Pastors and Katarina and Fernan Santos will be the assistant leaders in the Youth ministry... Oh, I am looking foward to this!

You'll be there, right?!

See ya!

SOS Church - My Life's Most Exciting Adventure!

This past week two of our Bible school students baptized newly saved in their bathtub at home! Anders and Carlos were the happy baptisers and they now disciple their own disciples... So, we have already baptized four people this January and we are continuing towards the goal; to baptize 50 people during 2010! Hallelujah! The Book of Acts in Stockholm city!

Our celebration in SOS Church was just better than best yesterday! Lots of people, creative, fun - we laughed spontaneously and from the heart several times! The service was warm and full of Holy Spirit! Yesterday's theme for the message was; The Situation of the Poor in Stockholm and how we can exterminate poverty in the city both personally and as a church!

However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you...

5 Deut 15:4

Here's a short summation for you that wasn't there, and repetition for you who were :).

How do we exterminate poverty practically?

1. Exterminate greed and guard the purity of your heart in regards to money. 1 Tim 6:10
2. Willingness, obedience and devotedness to the Great Comission. Is 1:17-19, Mark 10:29-30, 2 Tim 2:3-4
3. Save for the future. Deaut 28:8
4. Work hard. Prov 6:10-11, 10:4, 20:13
5. Give to the poor. Prov 14:31, 17:5, 28:27

The death of Jesus, the redemption on the cross of Calvary dealt with;

1) Spiritual death
2) Sickness
3) Poverty

In the New Testament we read;

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. .

2 Cor 8:9

And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Phil 4:19

Today I slept in, had a great meat casserole and even had time to work out at my favorite gym in Flemingsberg together with my brother in arms and associate pastor Walter...

Tomorrow our Leadership Days start in SOS Church Stockholm with guests from all over Sweden and Norway and people are still signing up - sooo much fun! We are so glad to have speakers like Thomas Jonsson, Christian Center West, Daniel Viklund from the Salvation Army in Västerås and Tommy Lilja from the People's Church in Sölvesborg.

Parents! Don't forget to sign your kids up for Kids Camp 24 in our church this weekend, January 23-24!

See ya!

The Mountains in Southern Norway

I'm sitting in Aslak and Ellen's cottage, embedded with deep snow in Hovden, Southern Norway... I'm here together with some of SOS Norway's network of business men - wonderful people and faithful mission partners... We're eating good, laughing, sharing life, skiing, having Bible studies infront of the fire, pray, take communion and sing worship together! God is good - there's an out door hot tub with about 104 degrees F in the water! And yes! We will roll ourselves in the snow afterwards - I promise ;).

I fly home via Oslo on Sunday morning to make to SOS Church at 4 pm to preach...

See ya later!

The Network Starts Again!

Next week we start up new with Scandinavian Network for Apostolic Christianity!

The theme for this gathering will be Church Planting and Pioneer Mission and will be hosted by SOS Church at our new premises on Warfvinges Väg 26 in Stockholm, Sweden. The dates for this next gathering are January 19-20, from noon till noon. We will pray for Stockholm, have fellowship, and listen to both relevant and practical teaching.

Tuesday January 19th

Noon-1:30 pm Registration

1:30 Information

1:45 Worship and Prayer

2:15 Prayer for Sweden, Pastor Tommy Lilja

3:15 Coffee break

3:30 Pastor Israel Pochtar, Church Planting

5:00 Time off

7:00 Celebration evening!

Wednesday January 20th

9 am Worship and Prayer

9:30 Pastor Thomas Jonsson, Pioneer Mission

10:30 Coffee break

11-12 noon Prayer for Sweden, Pastor Daniel Viklund

It is really fun and exciting to start up the Network again and we are so happy to have such

great speakers like Tommy Lilja, Thomas Jonsson, Israel Pochtar and Daniel Viklund... I am looking forward a lot to these days - you're coming, right? For more information, click here!

See ya!

The Power of the Holy Spirit

Yesterday I taught three hours between 12-3 pm from my latest book Priest For Those Who Don't Go to Church. I had time to work out at a dirty, runn down gym in the afternoon (4-5 pm) as well... Great with a gym that looks like it came from an old Rocky movie... I like shabby gyms that has a "garage-feel" to it rather than polished doll-house gyms...

The evening service last night (Saturday) was so spiritually strong. I preached about The Holy Spirit - Our Helper and about 10 people ran to the front at the salvation invitation and later about 20 people were baptized in Holy Spirit with the speaking in tongues and strong physical manifestations as sign! I love when the Holy Spirit fall on hungry people - the Arctic Church is full of hungry and wild newly saved! They invited me back next year at the same time! Hope it will work with my schedule - I so want to come back - very cool and great church!

My dear Stockholm...

I just preached my last service here and I'm soon flying home via Tromsö and Oslo to my dear Stockholm...

See ya!

Reflections in Hammerfest

I'm sitting at Thon Hotel at Hammerfest's harbour at the very northern tip of Scandinavia... Northern Norway is beautiful even in the dark winter and everything is somehow shining anyway because there's sooo much snow... Hammerfest is an old fishing village that nowadays live on gas and oil, directly from the ocean... Norway's riches; fish, oil and gas - it's really fantastic how such a small country way up at the Arctic Circle have become one of the richest countries in the world just by using its natural resources! Everything was there all the time and just needed to be discovered, reclaimed and exported! Yes... Last night the Arctic Church was full and several were saved - hallelujah! Pastor Birger is a good host and I am really enjoying this weekend :).

Back to Norway and its natural resources and long hidden treasures at sea... You are like Norway! Everything is already in you. As a disciple to Jesus you are rich - God has placed raw material in you, stock and enormous riches, and also the Holy Spirit, God Himself! 2010 is the year for you to both discover who you are in God and become rich! Norway is a blessing for many other countries today. When you start to reclaim and "export" everything that God has given you, you too will be a blessing to the nations! Norway needed a change of life style, or a total change of society almost to be able to use its resources. Fishermen and farmers became scientists, oil platform builders and global businessmen!

Maybe you need a radical change of life style as well. Change your life style now! Become who you are created, meant to be and really want to be!

- Fellowship more with God through Bible reading and spend more time in the wonderful prayer!
- Spend less time with Christians and more time with non-believers and new disciples to Jesus!
- Don't attend every "Christian" birthday party, weddings and cozy dinners you are invited to!
- Don't hide behind, or in "churchy activities" like different practices, gatherings with just Christians!
- Play soccer with you collegues, take a class like hunting examination, salsa dance or motor cycle license for example!
- Go on mission trips - festivals among the unreached peoples and see a lot of signs and wonders!
- Become a peer supporter or support family!
- Baptize, lay hands on new believers to baptism in the Holy Spirit and read the Bible for your non-Christian relatives!

Evangelism, being a fisher of men, and missions works sort of like prayer... You feel great when you pray, when you don't pray, you feel lousy. Flesh will be crucified and radical life style changes will take place during 2010! Long live the fishing of men!

See ya!

Oslo Filadelfia Church

I'm sitting at hotel Europa right across from the Filadelfia Church in Oslo, trying to sum up three very intense days on my little Norway tour so far... Flying all the way up north to Hammerfest tomorrow... I have taught Power Evangelism three days at the Filadelfia Church's bible school, for the 11th consequtive year... So wonderful classes of students (three different classes, one brand new international class this year) and what a time we have had! At the last session today about 10 students and guests were baptized in Holy Spirit and fire and starting speaking in tongues right away! We prayed, worshipped and flowed in the gifts of the Spirit, teachers, students together for almost an hour... I was also given the opportunity to speak and inspire about prayer at a prayer meeting here at the Filadelfia Church (Tuesday night) and I've spent a lot of time with my good friend Daniel Egeli and his wonderful family - his kids are sooo much fun and lovely... Many new friendships have been made during this time and we'll probably have a youth conference here pretty soon...

Oslo by night...

I've also had my great childrens pastor, Andreas Jensen, with me here and we have worked out and also had time to watch the old classic Forrest Gump at the hotel room's pay channel together. Andreas is super talented and has wild visions of expansion for SOS Kidz future - we are so happy to have him in our leadership team! Last night Pastor Daniel and I saw Avatar, wearing the great 3D glasses - a late night at the movies at its best! Really funny movie by the way!

See ya!

Ordination of a New Pastor, Salvation and Baptism!

We had such a great service at SOS Church Stockholm yesterday! We welcomed the Zuniga family home again after five years of pioneer work in Bulgaria and ordained Walter and Linda as Senior Associate Pastors in SOS Church... Two people gave their life to Jesus and we baptized two... We are so happy to start 2010 with batism and are hoping that it will continue in the same way!

The Leadership team prays over Walter and Linda...

Our faith goals as a church this year is:

- To baptize 50 people.

- To have 200 disciples in the small groups.
- To have 300 people at the Sunday Celebrations.

I leave early tomorrow morning for Oslo, Norway and then later this week all the way up north to Hammerfest!

See ya!

New Years Resolutions

Yeah, of course I made a trivial new years resolution for this year as well - no candy or eating cookies during 2010! (very unique and different - I know...) But more important than everything else is that we continue with the right focus and lifestyle during 2010, don't you agree?! For Maria and I this means that we will begin the new year with fasting and prayer and then we will continue the year with:

- A strong inner life! (Prayer, Bible reading, fasting and listening, obeying and following...)

- A winning lifestyle! (Fishing men and discipleship training every week...)

- A sound life! (Exercise, dates at restuarants just the two of us and fun and play with the kids...)

The same vision, the same style, and the same wife ;)

Then I am planning unreached peoples festivals, take the whole family on several exciting mission trips, give more aggresively to the Kingdom of God than any previous year and continue to preach the gospel with joy and passion. In June I will have preached for 19 years and the fire on the altar of my heart burns stronger than ever before! Visions are lining up! Joy of life and faith for the future form both my thoughts and words at the moment! Thank you God for your faithfulness!

What promises are you making to God, your self, and people around you for 2010?!

See ya!