Letters from the Pastor

January 2008 - A Walk Down Memory Lane

When we arrived in Fethiye back in the first part of November 2004, I suppose the first thing that stuck me was the wonderful view from the harbor. Of course the view only improved as winter came on and the snow slowly capped those surrounding mountains. But we had arrived with a purpose in mind. We had arrived to connect with Margret Collins, whom we had never met. I had no idea that this was the beginning of something that would lead us on such an amazing journey.

The next 2 months were filled with prayer as Mary and Maggie met regularly and the children joined in prayer walks throughout the city. Then in January of 2005 we began meeting on Sunday Morning with a handful of people in Maggie's flat to encourage each other, to sing and pray, to seek strength and encouragement from the Bible. I am very grateful to our Heavenly Father as we celebrate our 3rd year of regular Sunday meetings. This is a great story, that I would be happy to tell you… over coffee sometime.

Of course we prayed to grow. Even more we prayed that the presence of God would be here. That as people would come to find this little church, they would be blessed. And as many times happens in the Kingdom of God WE were blessed many times more as one or two at a time, God would lead people to find this home church on a Sunday morning. As you came you brought with you a blessing for me… and received one of your own as well.

Somehow, throughout all of this, God really changed my focus as well. When we (Mary and I) first arrived we thought of ourselves as short to medium term "helpers" that would serve for a time and then continue as God would lead us. While we have started a church before, back in the states, this experience here in Fethiye was altogether new to us. God himself gathered people together to become what we would call Fethiye Community Church.

Now, just as we were truly out-growing a home, but unwilling to divide into two groups, our Lord answers our prayers with two solutions of his own. When the manager of Yacht Plaza Hotel offered to let us meet in a room, it was actually quite a surprise to me after so many closed doors (about a place to meet) over the past several months. It is not a permanent solution but sure helps us for the short term. Then, completely out of the blue, comes James from Antalya who founded the St. Paul Cultural Center (http://www.stpaulcc-turkey.com), James would like to build another cultural center here, in Fethiye, as a place for our church to meet.

I must admit that my first response was a bit skeptical. After all there is a culture of sorts at this church, a culture that is held very dear to all of us. And we cannot allow that to change. I suppose in this day of business mergers, hostile take-overs, and the like it's easy to become cynical. But after talking at length to James, a number of times, I am assured that far from wanting to change us, they are looking to us for help to make this new cultural center in Fethiye a success. In fact they are pleased that there is a stable church here in Fethiye to help out in all of this. They want us to help in finding a suitable site, and defining a facility. There are a lot of details, and questions to be answered here, more than can be answered in this letter. This is something that I will be talking about as we travel through England in February.

On January 10th we had a meeting where this issue was discussed in detail. There we decided that we should take this next step towards the establishment of a cultural center (currently called "John Mark Cultural Center"). The scope of this project seems daunting at first glance. But our desire here is to take prayerful steps forward, allowing our Lord to direct as we continue. The illustration I received is that, like the Israelites crossing the Jordan River in Joshua chapter 3, as we take the next step we will see God respond with acts of his own. This project will be a series of steps where, as we prayerfully move, we see how God moves alongside and even ahead of us. From that meeting it was clear that we should begin raising funds in order to start this process - as our next step. While the large majority of the funds will come from across Europe and America through James, the seed which begins this is from us.

There will be a lot of discussion about the many details of this in the future. We will be discussing what sort of a facility is best suited to us here, and possible locations for that facility, and many more questions as well. I have experienced a few "building projects" in churches, as you may have as well. Many times these projects can become divisive. But then again here, at Fethiye Community Church, we are a different sort of group. I say this not to foster pride (God forbid), but to encourage hope as I see the hand of God in this. It is up to us to prayerfully take steps with Him and watch what He will do.

A final admonition was brought out at that meeting. This admonition is as much for me as for all of us. Prayer is not something that we can "bolt-on to a program", it must be an integral part of this journey. Indeed prayer is the means, and the facilitator of this journey. And as in many cases in our Christian walk, how we arrive is every bit as important as where we arrive.

So I look forward to what the short and medium term future holds for us here in Fethiye.

I look forward to discussing this in more detail with you as well…

In HIS service, and serving you as well,

Mike Calva, Pastor

December 2007

Great is Thy Faithfulness!

That was the hymn we sang on Sunday morning and it was truly appropriate.  God has been so faithful! There is a lot happening in a hurry so we decided we should keep you updated on what God is doing in Fethiye. We had our Sunday service in the conference room of the Yacht Plaza Hotel.  We are hoping to have our meetings there for the next year.  Please keep this in your prayers as the hotel management has only agreed to let us meet there until April.  We will be speaking to the owner of the hotel when he arrives in the city in a couple of weeks.  We are at the stage where we can no longer meet in homes during the summer months because of the number of people attending, but of course now, in the winter season is the time to make arrangements. Praise the Lord for these kinds of challenges!

We were approached by the group that built and operate the St. Paul Cultural Center in Antalya recently. They would like to expand their operations, and want to build a cultural center here in Fethiye as a place where churches can meet. They want to work closely with us, actually they are looking to us to take significant role in the planning and operation of this new venture. These are long term plans of course, but we are very excited about the possibilities. This is in its early stages and as we know more, we will work very hard to keep you informed.

With all of this happening at once you can imagine that we would be overwhelmed with all of the necessary details required. But once again “Great is Thy Faithfulness”. We had a recent meeting and installed, officially, Jon Carter as Treasurer, and Peter and Rose Waring as Administrator of the Fethiye Community Church . This has been a HUGE blessing to Mary and me. And now we feel better able to meet details of the challenges that God is bringing to us.

Our preparations for the 2nd annual Christmas Eve Candle Light Service are in full swing. The theme for the service is “Jesus is the reason for the season”.  We have placed a very large advertisement in the “Land Of Lights” news paper and have been handing out flyers.  The response from people has been very positive.  Last year we had around 50 people in attendance and we did almost no advertising.  We are expecting at least double that amount this year!  We will be busy baking cakes and biscuits (or in American English cookies). We have a small group of people going to Tuesday market to hand out flyers, then in the afternoon we will decorate the conference room. Please pray that God will bring the people he has ordained to the service and that their hearts will be prepared to hear from God.

We are planning a trip to the UK in February. We are considering February 5th-25th.  Please contact us as soon as possible if you want us to visit people in your church or if you want us to speak at your church.

Sincerely,

Mike Calva, Pastor

March 2007

As one of the primary topics of the last letter I mentioned that our next step is to approach the Mayor of Fethiye with our plans. I came in contact with a mutual friend, with the Mayor, who agreed to approach him informally and "sound him out" as to the possibility of a church in Fethiye. Then after some false starts was able to find a translator to arrange a meeting with the Mayor. While the Mayor is a traditional and practicing Muslim, I found him to be extremely open-minded about the possibly of a church in Fethiye. In fact he related that while on a visit to the USA, he was able to attend a Mosque to pray, and saw no reason why there shouldn't be a church here in Fethiye as well. I was able to communicate with him what was important to me as well. Which is, if I were a mayor, I would want to know of something like this before it happened, not be surprised; so I came to ask his advice on how best to proceed. His advice is to proceed with the legal declarations, and he seemed ready to help in any way that he could.

I will be visiting the USA for 30 days beginning mid-March. On my return I will speak to an attorney, and nail down a more precise plan and what costs are involved. At that time, I will be able to present these options to you in more detail.

As we take these steps let us remember that we will proceed with deliberation, but also keeping our focus on what sort of a church we are. We take these steps, not to change who we are, but to provide a greater exposure so that others may know that we are here, and may join us. One concern I heard regarding this issue was whether we would now begin to look more "like church".

Sometimes I wonder if these concerns where thought, or spoken of nearly 2 millennia ago when the church of that day met in the courtyard of the temple (Acts 2:46). Then, as now, what holds us together is our commitment to prayer, and our sincerity to being in reality a disciple of Jesus Christ. Whether we meet in homes or in the courtyard, that is what defines us. That early church met together because they wanted to, they were genuinely excited about continuing in their walk. We hold this in common.

We are a very diverse group of people. Diverse in culture, in language, and in many different ways. We hold something in common, someONE that defines, that transcends all of this. We believe, and we are disciples of Jesus Christ. The love that we hold for each other is greater, because HE is greater. This will never change, regardless of what sort of legal documentation is filed, or the place that we meet. It will not change because we are committed to continue as we began, a community of people dedicated to encouraging each other in our journey, and enjoying fellowship along the way.

When difficulties arise many times they take the form of language; words misunderstood, or words underscoring an area of diversity. At times like these it becomes easy to judge, in the light of our own experience, what we understand the words of another to mean. Kathryn Kuhlman, a noted speaker, teacher, and evangelist once said that with every person we meet, we build either a bridge or a wall. In our diverse environment we need more bridges. We need to practice interpreting the words we hear in the light of what we know about the heart of the speaker. In this way we strengthen our small community of believers in this environment of diversity. This goal takes time and effort - if it were easy everyone would be doing it. But here, today, in Fethiye, it is the goal that is before us. I look forward to realizing this with you.

Sincerely,

Mike Calva, Pastor

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January 2007

Now with our initial congregational meeting behind us there is a need to communicate the challenges that we currently face, and how we intend to proceed.

Let me begin by stating that we are an international church. We have members that are English, Swiss, South African, American, German, and Turkish. Even that is a snapshot as the list will no doubt be expanded. With so many cultures represented in our small group it is natural that there will be even more denominations represented. But we do have much in common...

• Over the years that we have been meeting on a regular basis we share love and concern for each other that transcends doctrinal and cultural differences.
• In spite of our denominational differences we have a Statement of Faith that we all hold in common.
• In this regional area of at least 50,000 people there is only one church, and we are it.

Therefore I state the obvious: We are an International, Inter-Denominational Christian Church. Since that seems a bit of a mouthful, I prefer the Fethiye Community Church.

The goal of this international church, simply stated, is to gather and encourage each other to live the Christian life every moment of every day.

Recently there has been much said of the "Great Commission" in which Jesus said "Go into all the world...". Note that when Jesus said this he was speaking to a group of followers. This is not, obviously, an individual command that each person should personally go to all the world. Indeed the documented "missionary" work of the new testament is primarily done by about 6 people, compared to the probable 120+ people gathered to hear the "Great Commission" what did all the others do? Of course there was doubtless work done that was not documented in the new testament. Reason also tells us that there were many who went back to their jobs, took care of their families, met with others who believed as they did, and fulfilled I Peter 3:15 "always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." (NIV) We see here that the "Great Commission" is fulfilled in a variety of ways as Holy Spirit personally leads each of us, just as in the book of Acts. While there were people like Paul, Barnabas, Timothy and others who where sent specifically to certain areas, there were many others who "evangelized" their neighborhood by living their Christian lives in openness and without shame. We continue to encourage each other to live our lives in relationship with Christ, open to the leading of Holy Spirit, and respectful of each other and the variety of ways in which we are individually led.

Because of the growth of our group, it is time to approach the authorities and seek their advice about how best to proceed. The fact that there is a Church in Fethiye is an asset for a town with so many resident foreigners as well as tourists. The next step in this process is to approach the mayor and present to him what we are. I hope to establish a dialog with the mayor's office in the next month. In addition to keeping him "in the loop" as to what is happening, I hope to solicit his help in securing a place to meet, and the ability to advertise our existence. How we shall proceed from a legal point of view is dependent on the advice he gives.

This has been a year of growth both spiritually and numerically. Growth, as we all know, is not without its growing pains. This is natural, and this is a challenge we are equipped to overcome. As we consider the others in our fellowship, the love and respect that we share, dealing with this challenge becomes a joy. I look forward to what the next year will bring.

Sincerely in His Service,

Mike Calva, Pastor