Sweden: friendship sparks a new network of simple churches
In 2002 Swedish church planter Charles Kridiotis from Stockholm had a dramatic burnout and as a consequence went into a season of prayer. “This led me on a journey where I founded my identity in Jesus more deeply, and started relearning from the Gospels and the Book of Acts about the Kingdom of God and the kind of church Jesus is building,” he says.
Two years later, in 2004, the Lord connected him with four younger leaders who were all involved in planting ‘alternative’ new churches. This led to the forming of a friendship-based group that held each other accountable for personal life, family, ministry and vision. They started ministering together as a team. “It was an apostolic and prophetic Kingdom culture as we see in the book of Acts,” says Charles. “The guys were amazing! All we did in the first year and a half was meet every second week to build relationship and pray. We began to be moulded into a ‘Band of Brothers’ as we shared our lifes, families, dreams and desires. We learned to function in our gifting and encouraged each other from the Scriptures. We prayed a lot and experienced God’s presence, empowerment and guidance.”
“We then began to invite one another to minister in each others churches, church camps and leadership groups. We came as friends. We saw fruit as we ministered and the ‘simple churches’ began to grow steadily. We recognised that it was because of the unity we were experiencing. In the six years we have been together we have not only experienced ups and growth, but also downs and stagnation. A couple of leaders left and others joined.”
“In the beginning of 2009 the Lord spoke clearly to us to ‘give away what you have got’. One of us received the prophetic picture of a Dandelion. Dandelions are flowers that grow in the hardest of places, they spread very quickly when the wind blows and they have medicinal properties. The word comes from ‘dent de lion’, which means ‘tooth of a lion’ in French, and of course reminds us of Jesus, our Lion! Dandelion became the name of the network/movement. In the following two months we worked out the practicalities of what it would mean.”
In May Charles put up a short note on his Facebook wall, inviting all his connections involved in church planting, or thinking about starting new churches, to a meeting. Three new leaders and their spouses joined the team. They began meeting once a month on Saturdays for three hours, sharing breakfast, fellowshipping and hearing from God in prophetic prayer and from the Bible. By that time ten ‘simple churches’ were involved, three new churches were started and ten new people turned to Christ of which seven got baptized. One of the new ‘simple churches’ reaches out in prisons and the criminal gang world.
The Dandelion team is now praying about the possibility of starting a similar network in the middle and western part of Sweden. “We are still in a fragile stage,” says Charles. “There is a sense that we cannot control what is happening. There is a lot of freedom and variation in the network, but we do have some foundational biblical principles and values that are the springboard for how we build and work together. We hope to see the birth of many new churches, and of course ultimately it is Jesus who is building his church. We firmly believe God is raising up a grass roots movement in Sweden and that we are just one part of this.”
Source: Charles Kridiotis
J Fokker