Belgium

Lauro and Rosane Castelli have been on the mission field for many years. They first received a call for full time overseas mission when they were involved in Church ministry in Brazil (their home nation). They spent 10 years in India working amongst drug addicts and Aids victims before being led to move from India to Belgium. I always remember Lauro – who has been a personal friend of mine for many years – describing the reaction of many of his supporting Churches when he shared this news ‘…why go to Belgium? They do not need missionaries, Belgium is a rich country!…’ The truth is that we, as Christians, are called to take the gospel to every nation of the world, and we must not lose sight of the need to reach the ‘lost’, whether materially poor or rich.

Belgium is often referred to as the ‘missionary graveyard’ it is a hard place to work. For example, Evangelical Christian Churches have only been recognised by the Belgium Government since around 2005, before that they were classed as ‘cults’

Lauro and Rosane, along with their daughters, Keren and Andressa, are currently leading a new Church planting initiative in Liege – and we at One Church are committing to help them by delivering a Programme of leadership development to encourage solid foundations to be laid at the start of this new initiative. The Church plant is called ‘Go-Generation’ and has already grown from a handful of people at the start of 2009 to currently over 60 people.

Here are a few photos of our first trip, held in March 2010.