When I ask pastor Jan-Markus Jeromaa to share about his vision for a new church in Pirkkala, close to Tampere, he begins by quoting Donald McGavran: “The fruit of an apple-tree is not an apple, but another apple tree”. For some years the UMC-church in Tampere has been dreaming about a church-plant, a new apple-tree, in Pirkkala. Autumn 2009 Jan-Markus collected a group of people who started to envision and dream together. For one year they prayed, planned and prepared an opening meeting that took place this summer, August 1st, 2010. Almost 100 people came!
– With great astonishment we were watching them coming and thought to ourselves “who are all these people?”, Jan-Markus says. It felt as if God was smiling at us and we knew we were on the right track. Prior to the opening-meeting the team organised a campaign for five days with out-reach on the market-place in Pirkkala, distributing bread and talking to people, inviting them to the Opening meeting. The response was very positive. People felt the team was really genuinely interested in listening to what they shared, not just forcing their own “message” on them.
The name of the new church-plant is “Pirkkalan kotiseurakunta”, which means “Pirkkala home-church”. In practise it is an ecumenical fellowship under the roof of the United Methodist Church. - The name “home-church” tells a lot about our values, Jan-Markus says. We want to be close to people, warm-hearted, open for all ages – in other words, a home.
At the moment the Pirkkala church meets twice per month on Sunday after-noon for worship, teaching and fellowship. Once per month mothers meet with their babies and on Wednesdays there is either teaching and prayer or an “ABC-course”, where the basics in Christianity is introduced. The new people have already involved in the work of the new church-plant, for example with teaching, the children’s work, advertisements, webpage and music.
- I have read a lot about church-planting and had a lot of inspiration from there, Jan-Markus says. I also attended School of Congregational Development in Copenhagen 2007 and Oslo 2009. I guess I am a pioneer type of person and the simple thought of planting something new fuels me a lot.
Visit the Pirkkala home-church at www.pirkkalankotiseurakunta.fi
Camilla Klockars