Forlì ministry initiative



Forlì, a beautiful, family-oriented city characterized by lovely, tree-lined streets and spacious parks, is situated on via Emilia, an ancient road built by Roman proconsul Marco Emilio Lepido over 100 years before the birth of Christ.Situated on the rich agricultral plains of the Po river, only a few kilometres north of theApennine mountains and some 30 kilometres from the sun soaked beaches of the Adriatic Sea, Forlì enjoys a privelged geographic location.

A city with a growing population of 113,000, Forlì is known primarily for 2 things: piadina, a tasty, traditional flat bread eaten with cheese, cold cuts, sausage and onions or cooked vegetables, and as the city of the “Duce”, Benito Mussolini, who was born in the nearby town of Predappio, just 15 kilometres away.The people of Forlì, known as Forlivesi, are friendly and hard working.Generally speaking both husband and wife hold down full-time jobs so young children are often looked after by the grandparents who take them to school as well as to extracurricular activities.

TEAM’s first missionaries arrived in Forlì in 1983 and began a Bible study with a Christian family who lived across the street.Eventually this Bible study became a small church and in 2003, after some 20 years and the efforts of 7 different missionary units, this church became autonomous.Though the church planting effort began with an Italian family and the vision was to see an Italian church established, the church grew largely through immigration from Romania.What has taken place in Forlì is indicative of what is happening in cities and churches across northern Italy, where the evangelical church is becoming increasingly ethnic with churches from Africa, China and Romania outnumbering those composed primarily of Italians.We have had the privilege of being the final link in the chain of missionaries involved in the establishing of the Forlì church.

Though the church is fully autonomous, we have remained in the city in an effort to begin a new church plant, once again targeting Italians, with the vision of seeing a church planting movement birthed, capable of reaching both Forlivesi and foreigners with the Gospel.In an effort to love people around their needs and to “presence” the gospel in the community, so that our proclamation has a credible context, we began a children’s day camp (Summer Camp) in the summer.The program runs for 4 or 5 weeks as soon as school gets out in early June.This has given us much credibility and opened doors of opportunity to both develop friendships and share God’s Word with the children who attend the camp as well as begin friendships with the parents of the children.As a follow-up to this event, we seek to organize 2 family weekend retreats a year targeting these same families.We are also planning to begin a children’s club and, Lord willing, a middle and high school outreach in order to continue cultivating relationships with these children throughout the year.

We believe that building relationships is absolutely essential to the ministry of the Gospel here in Italy.So, in an effort to provide a public context for this, we recently opened a small office which also serves as an internet café.We hope that this will provide a non-threatening context in which to meet people and offer Bible-based courses in English, French and German.If you have experience in teaching one of these languages, or Spanish, this could be a great opportunity of service for you.

Finally, since a church planting movement is lead by qualified leaders at various levels, we also plan to develop a non-formal, multi-level program for training emerging leaders in and through the local church.

If you love people and want to reach out to them with the love of Christ, have experience in children’s or youth ministry or in teaching English, French or Spanish as a second language we have opportunities for you.Please contact ...