C4I Global Executive Council kicks off!

The Global Executive Council has been established to provide a platform for the leaders of the Christians for Israel (C4I) movement around the world to gather together for fellowship, vision-building, strategising and prayer. As the C4I movement is growing rapidly in so many different countries, it is extremely important that we are united, support each other and make optimum use of our limited resources.

On 23-26 September the council came together for the first time in Doorn, Netherlands. The meeting was attended by our regional co-ordinators from Asia (Wilson Ng) and Africa (Elemi Samson and Drake Kanaabo), as well as C4I leaders from Australia (Ian and Mandy Worby), Austria (Marie Louise Weissenböck), UK (Phil South and Jenny Beardsmore), USA (Fred van Westing) and Israel (Marnix van Ede). They were joined by the C4I International leadership team (Harald Eckert, Willem Glashouwer, Andrew Tucker) and staff (Marloes van Westing, Jos van Westing, Ruud van Neijhof, Rita Quartel) and advisors (Dominique Fässler).

We had three wonderful days sharing experiences and preparing vision and strategies for the coming years in the following areas:

media
training teachers
coordinating our support for aliyah and projects in Israel
leadership development; and
expanding the C4I ministry into new geographical regions and language areas

We believe God is showing us that we need to be even more closely connected with our Heavenly Father and with each other as we move forward into times of confusion, darkness and spiritual attack. It will become increasingly difficult for Christians to stand in the gap for Israel and the Jewish people. At the same time, we sense that the Lord will raise more and more leaders in the nations who will understand the significance of Israel, the nearness of the Coming of the Lord, and the need for repentance.

As Willem Glashouwer explained, the restoration of the Jewish people confronts the church (and Christians) increasingly with a fundamental choice. Either we must accept that God is preparing the way for the coming of the King of Kings and the establishment of His kingdom on earth - in which Israel will be first among the nations. Or we will be dragged into the Babylonian spirit of worldliness, self-contentment and apathy, in which the church is mingled with the powers and principalities of the world. The restoration of Israel is therefore a wake-up call to the church. It is time to revisit our theology and self-understanding as church.

We really felt that the Lord was present in a powerful way in our meetings. We thank God for the many different skills and talents in the different C4I teams around the world.

under the new leadership of Graeme Lee and the board in New Zealand, the C4I work there is growing rapidly. They currently have about 7000 subscribers to their newspaper. C4I New Zealand is strongly supporting aliyah and several projects in Israel.
Ian and Mandy Worby have assumed the leadership in Australia following the recent passing of Rob Klaassen. Through his role as Executive Director of UCB, Ian is building a national leadership team, and forging a strategic alliance between C4I and UCB - one of the largest Christian media organisations in the world.
Wilson Ng is a businessman and international minister, based in Kuala Lumpur. Wilson oversees the development of the C4I ministry in South East Asia. He has many contacts in the region at senior levels. At the moment, we are working very hard with new leadership teams in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Thailand, China, Taiwan, and Korea.
Elemi Samson is developing the ministry in Nigeria and Central/West Africa. There are many challenges in this vast area. The ministry is steadily making ground.
The C4I office in Kampala under leadership of Drake Kanaabo has supported the establishment of new C4I offices in Zambia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Swaziland.
a new editorial team has been established for the international publication Israel & Christians Today, which is the subject of a new cross-media strategy to be implemented in 2014.
Training-the-teachers conferences are being planned in Asia, Africa and Oceania/Pacific in 2014 - as part of our vision to raise a new generation of teachers who can carry the Why Israel? message into their nations.
finally, we are conscious that all our plans are worthless if not grounded in prayer and the fear of the Lord. In the coming period we will be more focused on developing our prayer networks.

Following the meetings in Holland, most of the participants travelled on by car to Berlin, for a visit to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, a tour of Berlin, and and meetings with the C4I Germany board and leadership. The visit to Sachsenhausen demonstrated to us yet again how vulnerable the Jewish people are, how weak the church in Europe is in openly defending God's covenant people, and how susceptible the nations of Europe are to totalitarianism. We were reconfirmed in our commitment not to allow the events of the 1930s to happen again. As Harald Eckert explained, what happened to the Jews in the 1930s is happening today to Israel and the Jewish nation as a whole - a gradual process of stigmatisation, isolation, delegitimisation and ultimately annihilation. The church today cannot afford to be as naive, fearful or ignorant, as so many Christians were then.

We had wonderful fellowship with the C4I Germany team, who touched us with the work they are doing to build bridges between young Christians in Germany and Holocaust survivors.

	Visit to the Israel center in Nijkerk (C4I International head quarters)



	Setting out our media strategy
	Visit to Sachsenhausen Concentration camp


	Cemetery at Große Hamburger Strasse: Memorial for the former old-aged home and for the 55.000 Jews imprisoned here, to be sent to Auschwitz and later Theresienstadt.
	The Synagogue in Berlin
	The C4I Global Executive Council at the German Parliament

More news...