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Call to Svitavy
Hearing the call to Svitavy
Hearing the call to SvitavyFirst in an occasional series
By Dan Lupton
By Dan Lupton
Editor's Note: Dan and Nancy Lupton moved to Svitavy, Czech Republic, on June 6 to be
full-time missionaries with First Love International Ministries. Called and Sent will be tracking the progress of the Luptons' ministry through Dan's columns.
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Dan Lupton feels privileged to lead the Czech people to salvation in the shadow of the factory where Oskar Schindler saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.
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Svitavy calls SOS.
Those were the words of the e-mail, the heart-piercing ones, anyway.
SOS is always a message of urgency. The ship is in distress. My wife, Nancy, and I understood SOS. It meant that a decision must be made. It meant that the battle was joined. It meant that the harvest was ready and now was the time for the Lord of the harvest to send more workers into it.
And we understood Svitavy, a city in the Bohemian Moravian highlands of eastern Czech Republic (see map). We had been there before. Now it was time to go again—for keeps.
Hearing the call
When I was a kid, Mom would call me to supper. That first call was usually ignored. It was the preliminary call. It meant a few more minutes of hide-and-seek before I had to desert the summer sun.
The second call let me know it was time to go in. Well, almost—as soon as this game of “horse” was done. It was the set-up call, like a runner in the starting blocks.
The third call was like the SOS: the urgent call, the now-or-nothing-until-breakfast call. The third call would bring me to the dinner table, even if I were up to bat.
We already had heard the preliminary call. Nancy and I had been going to the Czech Republic for years, working in outreach English camps primarily. I’d preached is several churches. I’d led a vision trip, exploring ways our church in Kenosha, Wis., could expand its ministry in the Czech Republic.
It didn’t occur to me that the primary expansion would be “us,” but the SOS call didn’t surprise us. We had a growing love for the Czech people, both the Christians we served with and the atheists we were calling friends.
Then we heard the second call to missionary work, the set-up call. Relationships were going deeper. We had young converts who saw us as their spiritual guides. Young Czech pastors began to sign their e-mails “Your Timothy.” These were not people we could turn our backs on.
Those were the words of the e-mail, the heart-piercing ones, anyway.
SOS is always a message of urgency. The ship is in distress. My wife, Nancy, and I understood SOS. It meant that a decision must be made. It meant that the battle was joined. It meant that the harvest was ready and now was the time for the Lord of the harvest to send more workers into it.
And we understood Svitavy, a city in the Bohemian Moravian highlands of eastern Czech Republic (see map). We had been there before. Now it was time to go again—for keeps.
Hearing the call
When I was a kid, Mom would call me to supper. That first call was usually ignored. It was the preliminary call. It meant a few more minutes of hide-and-seek before I had to desert the summer sun.
The second call let me know it was time to go in. Well, almost—as soon as this game of “horse” was done. It was the set-up call, like a runner in the starting blocks.
The third call was like the SOS: the urgent call, the now-or-nothing-until-breakfast call. The third call would bring me to the dinner table, even if I were up to bat.
We already had heard the preliminary call. Nancy and I had been going to the Czech Republic for years, working in outreach English camps primarily. I’d preached is several churches. I’d led a vision trip, exploring ways our church in Kenosha, Wis., could expand its ministry in the Czech Republic.
It didn’t occur to me that the primary expansion would be “us,” but the SOS call didn’t surprise us. We had a growing love for the Czech people, both the Christians we served with and the atheists we were calling friends.
Then we heard the second call to missionary work, the set-up call. Relationships were going deeper. We had young converts who saw us as their spiritual guides. Young Czech pastors began to sign their e-mails “Your Timothy.” These were not people we could turn our backs on.
Schindler’s mark
You’ve heard of Svitavy – you just don’t recognize the name. You’ve heard of Svitavy because you’ve heard of the book and movie "Schindler's List." Oskar Schindler was raised in Svitavy, and it was to the edge of Svitavy that he brought 1,100 Jews in 1944 and protected them in his factory during the Nazi Holocaust.
He bought and brought them to Svitavy. He didn’t just take them in. He was a savior who gave everything to ransom 1,100 Hebrew men and women from the gas chambers. He paid a price for every one he saved. Sound familiar?
Of all the cities of Eastern Europe, Svitavy must have a special place in the heart of God. While we can’t deny that many Jews from Svitavy perished in the Holocaust, we can also boast that only in Schindler’s Svitavy was there a place of refuge for 1,100 of God’s chosen people, the descendents of Abraham through whom the first coming Savior and second coming Messiah would be birthed.
Reconnecting with History
Through the call process I also began to feel a sense of duty and debt. I began to feel as Paul did in Romans chapter 1, when he felt like a debtor to the Greeks and other Gentiles.
The Cirkev bratrska [Czech Brethren] has 55 churches sponsoring 100 daughter churches and preaching stations. This is an aggressive re-evangelization of the Czech Republic after decades of communist atheism and suffocating persecution of the nation’s churches.
Soviet communism was more effective in atheistic teaching in the Czech Republic than any other portion of Eastern Europe: 61 percent of the Czech people call themselves atheists. I’ve learned to enjoy these people, to make them my friends, to talk with them and pray for them. Like an artist with her brushes or a builder with his tools, I have found my pleasure and passion in leading Czech atheists toward God and faith in Jesus.
I began to see the Czech Republic as more than a place that needed God again. I saw the Czech Republic historically as the source of the evangelical Protestant Reformation, the source of the world’s greatest missionary movement and the source of the Christian faith in America.
Jan Hus. The Reformation did not begin with Martin Luther. It began in Prague, the Czech Republic, with Jan Hus (John Huss)—three generations before Luther. The Czech Republic was far along the path of being an evangelical nation when Luther began to blaze that same path in Germany.
When the Roman Catholic Empire struck back at the Reformation, they struck first and hardest at Bohemia and Moravia—today’s Czech Republic. In the early 17th century virtually all of the Czech Republic’s leaders were born again. The beheading of these leaders is honored in Prague by 27 bronze crosses in Old Town Square next to the monument to Hus, who was martyred by fire.
During the decade after the Reformation-destroying Battle of White Mountain in the early 1600’s, the population of the Czech Republic dropped from three million to one million. The rest were slaughtered or driven into exile.
The Moravians. Many of these formed a missionary sending city in Hernhut, Germany. This became the Moravian missionary movement, the greatest missionary story in the 2,000 years of the Christian church. The Moravians evangelized the world, including the American colonies. They discipled John Wesley, and to some extent George Whitefield, the leaders of America’s First Great Awakening.
That awakening, in the 1740’s, turned America into a Christian nation for 200 years. I trace that revival upstream directly to the Czech Republic. I owe my nation and faith to this country, and I need to pay my debt to them.
The final push
Last summer my Czech friend, Jakub Mara, said to me, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time I saw you, you were a missionary here.”
“Where did that come from?” I thought. It came from God. It made me alert for the SOS call.
Indeed, late in summer 2005, God was weaning our hearts from my pastorate at Kenosha Bible Church. The church had prospered for many years with many new believers and had grown to four worship services.
The truth is that I served my church and territory more as a missionary than a traditional pastor. We had friendship Sundays and neighborhood fairs. My visitation night was only for those who I saw as prospects for the Gospel. Always my heart yearned to live more for the true mission of taking the Good News of salvation to those who needed it most. I wasn’t cut out for budget and board meetings.
Then that e-mail came: “All of us prayed intensively. We asked the Heavenly Father to reveal to us His will. We reached the same opinion. Yes, Svitavy calls SOS. Yes, Svitavy needs your active mission help.”
Ten elders in Litomysl, the Czech Republic had met to pray. Their church of 100 people was seeking to evangelize and plant churches in three other cities, including Svitavy.
The mission work in the first two cities, Vysoke Myto and Moravska Trebova, was growing; but nothing could get started in Svitavy. There was not even a core group of believers. Yet Svitavy was the county seat and the biggest of all the cities. It could not be neglected any longer. The elders decided outside help had to be found. So the SOS went out.
The word “call” is significant in Christian service, and especially in missionary service. It doesn’t work to become a pastor because the music or sales career didn’t succeed. It certainly isn’t wise to sell and leave all to go to a distant part of the world on a whim. One must be called.
Here was our call, in our face, demanding a response. Our response was, “Yes, Lord, we hear and obey your call.”
Now we’re in Svitavy to live for the mission—for the sake of the call.
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
You’ve heard of Svitavy – you just don’t recognize the name. You’ve heard of Svitavy because you’ve heard of the book and movie "Schindler's List." Oskar Schindler was raised in Svitavy, and it was to the edge of Svitavy that he brought 1,100 Jews in 1944 and protected them in his factory during the Nazi Holocaust.
He bought and brought them to Svitavy. He didn’t just take them in. He was a savior who gave everything to ransom 1,100 Hebrew men and women from the gas chambers. He paid a price for every one he saved. Sound familiar?
Of all the cities of Eastern Europe, Svitavy must have a special place in the heart of God. While we can’t deny that many Jews from Svitavy perished in the Holocaust, we can also boast that only in Schindler’s Svitavy was there a place of refuge for 1,100 of God’s chosen people, the descendents of Abraham through whom the first coming Savior and second coming Messiah would be birthed.
Reconnecting with History
Through the call process I also began to feel a sense of duty and debt. I began to feel as Paul did in Romans chapter 1, when he felt like a debtor to the Greeks and other Gentiles.
The Cirkev bratrska [Czech Brethren] has 55 churches sponsoring 100 daughter churches and preaching stations. This is an aggressive re-evangelization of the Czech Republic after decades of communist atheism and suffocating persecution of the nation’s churches.
Soviet communism was more effective in atheistic teaching in the Czech Republic than any other portion of Eastern Europe: 61 percent of the Czech people call themselves atheists. I’ve learned to enjoy these people, to make them my friends, to talk with them and pray for them. Like an artist with her brushes or a builder with his tools, I have found my pleasure and passion in leading Czech atheists toward God and faith in Jesus.
I began to see the Czech Republic as more than a place that needed God again. I saw the Czech Republic historically as the source of the evangelical Protestant Reformation, the source of the world’s greatest missionary movement and the source of the Christian faith in America.
Jan Hus. The Reformation did not begin with Martin Luther. It began in Prague, the Czech Republic, with Jan Hus (John Huss)—three generations before Luther. The Czech Republic was far along the path of being an evangelical nation when Luther began to blaze that same path in Germany.
When the Roman Catholic Empire struck back at the Reformation, they struck first and hardest at Bohemia and Moravia—today’s Czech Republic. In the early 17th century virtually all of the Czech Republic’s leaders were born again. The beheading of these leaders is honored in Prague by 27 bronze crosses in Old Town Square next to the monument to Hus, who was martyred by fire.
During the decade after the Reformation-destroying Battle of White Mountain in the early 1600’s, the population of the Czech Republic dropped from three million to one million. The rest were slaughtered or driven into exile.
The Moravians. Many of these formed a missionary sending city in Hernhut, Germany. This became the Moravian missionary movement, the greatest missionary story in the 2,000 years of the Christian church. The Moravians evangelized the world, including the American colonies. They discipled John Wesley, and to some extent George Whitefield, the leaders of America’s First Great Awakening.
That awakening, in the 1740’s, turned America into a Christian nation for 200 years. I trace that revival upstream directly to the Czech Republic. I owe my nation and faith to this country, and I need to pay my debt to them.
The final push
Last summer my Czech friend, Jakub Mara, said to me, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time I saw you, you were a missionary here.”
“Where did that come from?” I thought. It came from God. It made me alert for the SOS call.
Indeed, late in summer 2005, God was weaning our hearts from my pastorate at Kenosha Bible Church. The church had prospered for many years with many new believers and had grown to four worship services.
The truth is that I served my church and territory more as a missionary than a traditional pastor. We had friendship Sundays and neighborhood fairs. My visitation night was only for those who I saw as prospects for the Gospel. Always my heart yearned to live more for the true mission of taking the Good News of salvation to those who needed it most. I wasn’t cut out for budget and board meetings.
Then that e-mail came: “All of us prayed intensively. We asked the Heavenly Father to reveal to us His will. We reached the same opinion. Yes, Svitavy calls SOS. Yes, Svitavy needs your active mission help.”
Ten elders in Litomysl, the Czech Republic had met to pray. Their church of 100 people was seeking to evangelize and plant churches in three other cities, including Svitavy.
The mission work in the first two cities, Vysoke Myto and Moravska Trebova, was growing; but nothing could get started in Svitavy. There was not even a core group of believers. Yet Svitavy was the county seat and the biggest of all the cities. It could not be neglected any longer. The elders decided outside help had to be found. So the SOS went out.
The word “call” is significant in Christian service, and especially in missionary service. It doesn’t work to become a pastor because the music or sales career didn’t succeed. It certainly isn’t wise to sell and leave all to go to a distant part of the world on a whim. One must be called.
Here was our call, in our face, demanding a response. Our response was, “Yes, Lord, we hear and obey your call.”
Now we’re in Svitavy to live for the mission—for the sake of the call.
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All Rights Reserved.