The story of ‘Light of the World’ Church began six years ago. We (Graham and Mairi McBain) are based in an area called Shkoze which has grown out of the sprawl of Tirana, the capital city of Albania. The church started when a Christian family from Shkoze invited ‘Jorge’ a Brazilian church planter to start a church in the community... The community was growing as more and more people moved from the rural villages of Albania to the capital city in search of jobs and money. This is a trend that has been happening throughout Albania for the last 15 years or so since Communism came to an end. Another trend that has occurred is the growth of the evangelical church. Under communism all religious activities were banned, but when democracy arrived, borders were opened, in came the missionaries and churches grew at a phenomenal rate throughout the country.

In 2001 Shkoze was growing. The Bektashi’s (a branch of folk Islam – very popular in Albania) had already marked Shkoze as their base of operations for the whole of the country so it seemed appropriate for the evangelical church to also be a presence in the community.

The family suggested the church could meet in the ground floor of their house, at the time the ground floor had no walls and the floors hadn’t been tiled. Jorge began to speak to people in the community and after a few months a small group of people came to hear more about Jesus.  The initial meetings took place in this building with no walls, but eventually walls were built but it was a long time before any tiles could be put down, so the church just used the hard concrete floor.

Another strategy of Jorge’s was to provide courses and projects for the community and he did this with English language courses and computer courses. The computer courses started with one Windows 95 computer which people gathered around to see how it worked. The power supply was so poor that the household above had to turn off all their electrical items in order to work the computer.  As the courses became more popular Jorge was able to raise funds to buy new computers and to get the buildings finished.

We joined ‘Light of the World’ church two years ago.  We had previously pastored a small Baptist church in Dagenham, East London and been part of its transition into a church which young local families were able to join. We’d always felt God’s call to work abroad and so after four years in Dagenham we followed his call to join BMS World Mission church planting in Albania.

Jorge the Brazilian church planter was leaving Albania and wanted to ensure that the work he had been a part of would continue; we were looking for an opportunity to serve, so worked along side Jorge for some months then carried on leading the church after he left.

Our focus has been that the church really does become a community centre for Shkoze which is a centre-less community; but the challenge is how to do this when the church is so small and people seem so apathetic towards it.  Our solution was to serve the community that we are in.

In the past one of the criticisms of the courses the church offered the community was that they seemed to only be interested in getting people through the door to evangelise them. We felt that if the church was to have real integrity in the community, the courses must be able to stand up in their own right, so we managed to secure a volunteer couple from England to teach both courses for the next two years. The initial courses have gone well and there is a growing interest in the courses starting in September.

Another way of serving the community has been through football for the local lads.  Albanian boys are football mad; they live, eat and drink it so we have arranged football competitions with other groups in Tirana. We now have a good group of teenage boys who enjoy learning about the Bible and some would call themselves Christians, although none of them show much interest in being baptised yet.

There are only a handful of men in the church but once a week we go out for a beer and qoftë night. (Qofte is a spicy Albanian sausage). Its just a low key thing but we’ve found that local men want to join in with us and so it’s a way of reaching into the community.

We are also trying to build relationships with the Roma people of Shkoze. Roma are the poorest of the poor in Albanian, they live in shacks we wouldn’t consider suitable to use as a garden shed in the UK. In Albania they are discriminated against and victimised and they survive by begging, stealing and searching through the bins for food or things to sell. Over the months we’ve got to know people in the community and are now welcomed into their homes.  We’ve been able to help some families get medical care and operations at the hospital and occasionally we visit with food parcels to try and make their lives easier.

Another project that our church is looking into as we seek to serve our community is providing a medical clinic for Shkoze.  As with most things in Shkoze, if people need to see doctors then they have to catch a bus to the city centre. We are hoping to build a clinic in Shkoze so that people can stay in their community. If this is possible it will be a huge project to undertake, but we feel it may be how God is leading us.

These things may sound exciting but the reality is often so different: events and activities are organised that no one comes to, some weeks our services have over 30 people, other weeks we’re lucky if we can get three.  We have good contact with people in the community and the locals accept and welcome our church but many of them still remain indifferent to the idea of actually coming to any of our activities. While we are a busy, small church we worry that the business and ideas may be distracting us from our core work of church planting. The sad fact is that there have not been many conversions or baptisms over the six years of the church . We believe we’re in the right place, doing the right thing but at the moment despite much prayer and much effort, people are not being saved. Many of our ideas just haven’t worked despite incredible prayer support both in Albania and in the UK.

However, we believe God hasn’t given up on Shkoze and neither will we, maybe for some reason the seed sown takes a little longer to grow, but we believe it will grow one day soon.