Om oss (about us): English ministry

We now come to the part of the service called “Om oss” or “About us”.

These are weekly short teaching blocks, where we try to explain one of the following three things. 

1. Why we as a church do what we do.
2. Why we as a church teach what we teach (this will include unpacking our doctrinal statement).
3. What we as a church should be doing.

And you may have noticed that I have changed languages. This is because the About us section for this week is about Sandefjord Evangelical Church’s English ministry. 

I would like to do this in four sections. The practicalities, the reasons, the help we need, and outside of Sunday services. 

Practicalities

1. We will be offering translation of Norwegian services to the English language for all those that need it. This means that we need help with this from those that are bilingual. Those that need the translation, are currently using the LiveVoice app to do this. Download the app, type in a code, and you can listen with your own headphones.  
2. You will notice this clearly in the preaching ministry of our church. I am honoured to be asked by Pastor Bob and Pastor Erlend to assist them with the weekly preaching of God’s Word. Although I will aim to do some preaching in Norwegian, every second sermon or so that I give will likely be in English. During these English sermons, we will even offer Norwegian translation to those who need it. Again, we will need volunteers to translate these. 

Reasons:

1. We want to love and care for those in our congregation that are English speaking. Learning a language takes time, energy and effort. And people have different levels of time, energy and effort that they can or are willing to put into language learning. We want to be respectful of differing abilities and circumstances. There was a time, remember, where the priests in this part of the world held their sermons in Latin, and the Bible was not available in one’s native language. We want to do better than them for those that do not fully understand Norwegian yet. 
2. Me preaching in English is a way that the elders would like to look after me. It takes maybe 2 to 3 times longer for me to prepare a sermon in Norwegian as it does for me to prepare one in English. That may not seem like much, but when 10-15 hours becomes 20 or 30, it is difficult to manage with a full time job, part time studies, a family that needs me, and a church to serve. I am eager to help out, and I want to serve in this way. But I do want to burn out and be far less good for anyone. Having the opportunity to preach occasionally in English is a great way to help that. 
3. As you may know, I have chosen to preach in English at the Sammen for Evangliet conference, as well as the Bible camp organised by Bibelkirken Oslo. I have received a lot of encouraging feedback, and suggestions to just continue preaching in English. I don’t know if that is a compliment to my English, or an insult to my Norwegian, but either way, to God be the glory for any benefit the listeners get from the pulpit whoever is preaching. Alternating languages seemed to be a good middle ground. But we are open to feedback on this. I wouldn’t mind preaching in English everytime if my Norwegian is difficult to follow!

How you can help:

1. First, we need volunteers to translate. If we have enough volunteers, then you may only need to translate once every 4-6 weeks. The notes can often be provided for you by the preacher. All you need to do is download the LiveVoice app on your phone, and I can set you up with a code for translating. This will be a different code than those that will receive the translating. Two codes. One for translating, one for listening to the translation. You may not have done this before, but I am sure that your translation is better than English speakers getting nothing at all. I don’t think many Norwegians understand how little Norwegian immigrants or foreigners have. You all grew up with English TV, English in schools, and yet many Norwegians think their English is bad. I can tell you this: there was no Norwegian TV in New Zealand. Any translation is better than none. 
2. We understand that having English sermons may be difficult for children, which is why I would like to try to alternate between English and Norwegian. This means that approximately 1 in every 6 sermons at Sandefjord Evangeliske Menighet will be in English. That would be 2-3 English sermons before the Summer break. We hope to have something up and running for the children to do either in the service or during the sermon at some stage. So that will hopefully help when having an English sermon every 6 weeks or so. These could be handouts for the children with questions or colouring in, or the AWANA program. But we need volunteers. We cannot run these without help from you all. Please let the elders or myself know if you are willing to help with something for the children. This is more in the area of “children ministry” than “English ministry”, but they are connected since this will affect the children who do not understand English. And we cannot run a functional children ministry without your willingness to help. The more volunteers, the less frequently leaders will miss the weekly sermon. So volunteers and patience is what we need for this to go well. 

Outside of the Sunday service and more in the future:

1. There are a couple of other ways we want to serve the English community. One is that I would like to start a SEM English podcast after the summer where I will interview church leaders and church members in Norway in order to share about what ministry is like here in this country. This will hopefully be a good resource to inform those new to Norway, but also as an international resource for the churches and people that are praying for us from other countries. 
2. And finally, sometime in the future when all the core aspects of the church are in place, I would like to begin an English Bible study where we go through the Institutes for Church Leadership certificate program. These are online lectures through multiple different areas of the faith that we can watch together and discuss. We may start this after the summer also, or once Erlend has finished the Old Testament Wednesday night studies. 

We understand that this may be different to what you are expecting, so feel free to ask any questions you have after the service to either the elders or myself. We also hope to have a public Q/A when Pastor Bob is back. Thank you all for serving the English speakers of the congregation.