Jan Lukl – Vlasim, Czech Republic

My name is Jan Lukl and I am a preacher at our church in Vlasim – a small town in the Czech Republic. I want to share with you the story of how God led us to found a new church in the nearby small town of Tynec nad Sazavou, 30 km from my home in Vlasim.

We began by looking for a place for us to meet in this new town, and I discovered a beautiful cafe called “Srory”. And around this time a friend – who had been a Christian for about a year – came to me and asked if I could meet his ex-girlfriend Lucia who happens to live in Tynec nad Sazavou; she wanted to hear something about Jesus!

After my first meeting with Lucia, she expressed an interest in participating in an Alfa course and so we spoke with the owner of the Srory Cafe in Tynec nad Sazavou – Jarda – who just happens to be a Christian!

We asked if we could organise Alfa courses in his cafe. Jarda himself even expressed an interest in taking part in our introductory session. The first meeting really interested him and he asked if he could advertise it in his cafe and so he brought about ten of his friends to the second Alfa session. Our Alfa course had begun to develop way beyond my expectations, however, after the first three sessions, the Covid pandemic came and we had to stop our meetings.

Nevertheless, Jarda and I started meeting regularly to pray for the city of Tynec and slowly, we began to realise how much we have in common – and not just in our relationship with Jesus, either. Jarda and I share a love for sports, for nature and for travel and so it didn’t take long before we got together as families. We also started praying together with our wives too. There is no church in the city of Tynec nad Sazavou (except for the traditional Catholic church) and so God put it on our hearts to start a new church. And so shortly after the pandemic, we went on a week-long trek to the mountains together to pray for the new church and to seek God´s vision and to plan concrete, first steps for this new church.

Soon after this time, I also started working in Jarda’s cafe so that I could get to know the staff better and to talk to them about Jesus. None of them are Christians right now, but we pray that they will all come to know Jesus personally. God has heard our prayers and has brought a third person to our team who is very gifted to run the cafe and who also wants to follow Jesus, so Jarda and I will have more time to start this new church.