Reflections on Eurasia Regional Conference 2025
Conferences can be tiring, especially with young children. But when our family recently attended the Eurasia Regional Conference for the Church of the Nazarene, I left filled with a gratitude that outweighed my exhaustion. We spent the beginning days of November gathered together with leaders and Nazarene church members from across the Eurasia Region (representing over 285,000 Eurasia church members and close to 8,000 churches, more info here) in a time of worship, prayer, trainings, celebrations, and lots of shared meals with good friends.
And God showed up in many beautiful ways through this gathering of brothers and sisters in Christ.
Here are a few of my highlights from this conference:
Relationships: Our family shared meals with friends we haven’t seen in-person in over a decade, enjoyed coffee with close colleagues from other countries, and engaged in conversations with new friends we made at the conference. The importance of in-person gatherings was highlighted by the new friendships formed and the times of collective worship.
Prayer and Worship: I personally loved our worship services together. In these large group gatherings, we heard reports from ministries and leaders across the Eurasia region, shared prayer requests together, received communion as a global family, and worshiped in numerous languages together.
Unity and Diversity: The multi-lingual worship was just one example of the consistent thread throughout the conference that we are better together - unified in Christ as we reflect the glorious diversity of God’s global family. We need each other and we need the global Church as we engage in God’s Kingdom on the local level in our communities and cities. (Dr. Carla Sunberg and Dr. Dany Gomis wrote this great book on this topic.)
Discipleship is Key: I also walked away from the conference reminded of the important of one-on-one discipleship in this Christian journey and how we need to make sure we are being discipled by someone AND that we are discipling someone else too. Can you name those two people in your own life? (Here is a great podcast episode from the “All Things Discipleship” podcast on this topic.)
I’m thankful that my family was able to participate in our Eurasia Regional Conference and that my children were able to see a snapshot of our global church family and of our glocal (global + local) God. God is at work on a global scale through local churches and communities of Jesus-followers.
My friends, God is on the move in Eurasia.
As my family boarded our very early flight taking us from Albania back to our home in Croatia, I was reflecting on the events of the preceding days and thinking about the question my mentor (shoutout Pastor Shawna Songer Gaines!) so often asks:
What might God be up to?
I can’t wait to see how that question is answered in amazing and surprising ways through the lives and churches of Nazarenes across Eurasia in the weeks and months to come.
If you attended the conference, what was a highlight for you?
