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Since the late 1960's, BMW has sent a total of 6 families and 2 single ladies to serve as church planters in the province of Limburg, the southern most and most Catholic part of the country. As a result, six churches have been established in five cities (see for instance Bijbelgemeente Venlo). A major difficulty has been to transition a church from missionary leadership to Dutch leadership. This has often resulted in some major struggles in the churches, so that three of these churches are now growing and flourishing, while the others struggle or have folded. At least three additional churches have come forth from these missionary efforts and sometimes from the later struggles. Current
Need Leadership
Training Assisting
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What
Is BMW Doing
Few
major urban areas still need churches, although many towns and villages
remain. Many feel that these would be best evangelized by the Dutch
themselves, while at the same time realizing that this isn't happening
yet on a large scale. The remaining BMW missionaries in the Netherlands,
Jack and Pat Barentsen, therefore focus their effort on leadership
training. In addition, missionary help can have great impact by
focusing on strengthening existing churches, while inspiring and
equipping them for reaching out and planting more churches.
And
how do you train leaders for these churches? After all, it takes
a good deal of training to lead a church in a society that is itself
highly educated. One way is by coordinating small groups - motivating
and training its leaders. Another is by teaching in a Saturday Bible
institute once a month, providing more depth than is generally available
in the churches. Most training is done through teaching at the 
Recently,
the Maastricht Baptist Church (which was started by Dutch believers
in 1995) has received additional missionary assistance to strengthen
the church's ministries in outreach and evangelism. We are also
seeking to involve some qualified students in the day-to-day work
of the church. Our vision is to assist the church in training new
leadership, so that the church can expand in size and in its ministries,
and begin to plant daughter churches in another 5 years.
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