“Kurtuluş”, by Derke P. Bergsma, is Via Christus Publications' most recent book. Many of you know it by its English title “Redemption: The Triumph of God’s Great Plan”. It is a wonderful book for those who want to see how the different parts of the Bible fit together into the story of God’s grand design to redeem the world. It is particularly helpful for new believers to understand the main message of the Bible and also for those who study Biblical Theology in the Via Christus Academy in Turkey.
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Our first Bible Academy for 2017 was held in May. For this spring lecture, my friend Pastor John van Eyk came to Antalya to teach us about the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. We didn't just focus on the those five books and what it meant for Old Testament Israel, but we also studied the New Testament correlations to the Pentateuch. Much of our studies focused on Christ in these five books. Participants were challenged to create and share examples of sermons from the Pentateuch. It was a great time as always. We had pastors come to Antalya from all over Turkey; İzmir, İstanbul, Antalya, Balıkesir, Iğdır, Fethiye and even a pastor brother from Bulgaria to participate in this course. Plan and preparations are now underway for our next study to be held in October.
We just have had a great weekend away with our church. It was truly a refreshing times for all of us... During this time we have studied about the 'Coram Deo'. Living in Coram Deo is to live your life in the presence of God, under the authority of God and to the glory of God. It was great time of study but addition to that, we played games, take nice walks, eat together and enjoy the camp fire. Some of the more brave ones even swim in the cold water.
Plan by Colin S. Smith is the latest edition to our Via Christus Publications. It is a simple book however very really strong. It is a short summery of Biblical history and wonderful for new believers or those who wants to understand the plan of God.
Acts 29 is a global family of over six hundred churches. The goal of Acts 29 is to facilitate church planting. This is achieved by encouraging, equipping, coaching, and serving one another. All of our churches embrace a Reformed Soteriology, a Complementarian view of leadership, and strive to demonstrate a Gospel centered life. Our Acts 29 Turkey organization planned a conference for a time of strengthening and encouragement through rest and study. Acts 29 pastors, active leaders, colleagues, and friends gathered together on March 9th - 10th, 2017 in Antalya, Turkey. Since this is the 500th year of the Protestant Reformation we went back to the basics of church planting. We looked at our theology and focused on how it should reform us daily. As it was last year, we anticipated this Acts 29 gathering to be a blessing to us all and it truly become a great time. This gave us the opportunity to build and renew friendships, as well as to meet and make new friends.
Acts 29 Turkey Conference from Reach Turkey on Vimeo. ... we wanted to prepare a resource that would serve equally well as an introduction to doctrine, a manual of theology terms, or a devotional study. We chose Concise Theology by J. I. Packer. This proved to be a most challenging translation project. Many of the terms and concepts simply had no equivalent Turkish translation. In order to preserve the original intent in its writings, many hours were spent by our editing team in order to prepare an accurate document. The work has been published and is being distributed...
Read More about Via Christus Publications... Dear Friends,
We wanted to take the time to send you our most sincere Christmas wishes. We hope you have a beautiful holiday. Merry Christmas... Koç Family Dear Friends,
We would like to give you an update and share a few personal pictures so that you can see how things are going in our household. We are all doing well and things going okay in our family life. We are excited about David Kuzey's good health and active lifestyle. He is a very happy boy and loves to drag people into his room. Once he gets you there, you are done for the day. He won't let you get out of his room. To keep up with him, Buse must run behind him all day long. She is so happy to see his energy. David influences us and helps us to be more active and cheerful as well. Josiah has started his school once again. He loves school but not homework. I guess he takes after his father because I can relate to that for sure. This year he has a mandatory Islamic religious class for 2 hours every Friday. We decided that we didn't want him to join this class (and requested that he not participate). We think that we are in a better position to teach our children what to believe. So now he is separated from his classmates for 2 hours every Friday. It is a different challenge for sure, but so far things are going okay for him. He is enjoying being able to join other classes during that time. Please check some of the pictures below. These are mostly from our summer. Once again, we are so thankful for your love, prayers, and continued support and care for our family. Kerem for the Koç family Dear Friends,
I would love to update you about our recent Academy Lecture Series. As many of you know, the desire to start a Bible Academy for leaders in Turkey has been one of my most exciting goals. We had our first (trial) lecture during the Fall of last year. This year we provided two courses: the first was a study of Hermeneutics, and the second, was on Biblical Theology. Our Biblical Theology class was held between September 12-16 and was taught by Dr. Tim J.R. Trumper. The course of study was rich in theology and practical applications. We have learned a lot and it was a great time spent time in fellowship with one another. We had 14 students (unfortunately one couldn't attend the entire class because of family health issues) from 8 different cities (7 Turkey and 1 Bulgaria). All of these people are involved in various ministries in their cities. Most of them are pastors or pastors-in-training. Our academy lectures took 4 days to complete, with a total of 20 hours of study. This allowed us some extra time for prayer, devotional, and spending time with one another. We are now planning and looking forward to our next lecture series in April, 2017. Thank you for all your prayers. After I published my first book a commentary on Jonah, we have received so many great feedback. This book was the first commentary on Jonah in Turkish language and entire copies finished in 5 weeks. Because of great feedback and need for better books, we decided to add 'publication leg' to our Via Christus Ministries. And when I visited US last summer, I told many of my friends about the publication company we wanted to start. Soon after we partner with Christian publication company called GDK. They helped us forming a publication company after their own main brand. After we worked about 9 months, we have published our first two books. As you can see in the picture, both title has the word 'MUJDE' because we are all about MUJDE. This word simply means gospel and we feel that the need for gospel in this land is indescribable. So we hope that these two books will help us bringing gospel to this land. First book is a little booklet called 'What is the Gospel?' by Bryan Chapell. In english it is published by The Gospel Coalition (one of our partners) and simply explains gospel in a easy language. Great for people who just came in to our churches. Our second book is a larger book and it focuses gospel on a deeper level. This books also shows us what gospel is not and explains how watered down gospel methods can harm the Word. This book written by Paul Washer. We are so excited that we will be able to provide both of these books to all of the churches in Turkey for free of charge. It is a privilege to bring these resources to turkish and we are so thankful for your prayers, care and support. Here is the link of e-books, please feel free to share this link with your turkish friends https://yayinlar.viachristus.com Dear Friends…Blessings from Antalya
Many of you have expressed concern about our situation here in the days following the coup attempt. I want to encourage you and let you know that things have calmed down after these recent events. The government is trying to dig every small hole to find the people responsible for this action. In doing so, we have seen many innocent people investigated as well as the guilty ones. These are difficult and very trying times for our country, not only because of the coup attempt, but also because the threat of terrorism is still a huge danger for us. For us, this is a clear indication that this country needs the Gospel desperately. I would also like to take this opportunity to pass along to you some information about our S.H.A.R.E. ministry. Two of our church members, Levent and Bahadir, have begun serving among the Syrian neighbourhoods to provide food and aid. These distributions occur every Friday as we rotate between three different neighbourhoods. Each neighbourhood has about one hundred households. The Syrian people, for whom we provide food, cannot legally work and are living in desperate conditions. They need a lot of prayer and care. If you would like to learn more about our Syrian Refugee Ministry, please check out our webpage, http://www.sharerelief.org. Thank you for your prayers and support for us, our ministry efforts, and our nation. Dear Friends,
As you may have heard last night in the news, there was a military coup attempt happened by a group within the Turkish military. It is not easy to say who these people are (lots of conspiracies out there) but certainly it effected badly entire nation. Military coup attempt was unsuccessful but for quiet few hours we thought that they take over the entire leadership. Now we are all OK and things are settled. Let me tell you more. Middle of the night, we have heard that tanks and soldiers were all over the Ankara and İstanbul. I started to follow news from twitter and see some pictures of soldiers that are not letting people walk pass the Bosphorus Bridge. Then some more bad news of soldiers started to shoot the crowd. We heard that people were dying. In few hours planes and helicopters started to shoot around especially to our own parliament (while MP's are in emergency meeting), soldiers were everywhere in major cities. At this stage military announced from the national tv that they have taken control, and there was a country wide curfew is in place. Truly shocking. Eventually President called people to go out, so that these people can not took over the cities. Even Imams made a call from the minarets around 2am 'go out and don't let these people take over'. Well this was a dangerous call, however people did it. Thousands of people started to go outside and try to stop coup attempt alongside with police force. President, Prime Minister and few Generals said that 'this was not the entire Army force but it was a small group of them (couple of thousands)'. Soon as people heard that this attempt was not done by the entire Turkish Army force things have changed pretty quickly. Police forces and people in the streets took a serious stance against these so called army since they knew that this was a small group. But at this stage there were already over 1000 injured and over 150 died. Well all these things happened in Ankara and İstanbul and it has not effected us in Antalya. We have only heard minaret calls (to go outside and not let army took over), car horns and people walking outside... But that's it. By the morning coup soldiers started to surrender. Things now calmed down and pretty much all of the coup army have taking over by the police. This was a shocking situation as you can imagine. We don't know what is expecting us at this point. Please continue to pray for us and our nation. Kerem Dear Brothers, A few days ago, some news was placed online from one of the radical Islamist newspapers about our church and one of our members. The title of the article is, ‘Not a Church, But a Terrorist Training Office’. The information placed in this article is saying that ‘One of our American brothers has a connection with the PKK (terror organisation) and that he trains terrorists at our church’s office’. Of course this accusation is unfounded and simply not true. I have known this brother for more than 14 years and he has helped and supported me in my faith boldly for many years. I can clearly say that he, and our church, have not had and will not have anything to do with terror organisations. Unfortunately, this news has spread all over the internet, thereby creating many damaging and threatening reviews related to this news article. The news article also shows a photograph of me, and our church service, that was taken 5 years ago. This newspaper has previously produced similar news articles about other churches in Turkey as well. So at this time we go to our Lord in prayer and seek legal council from lawyers. We greatly appreciate and give thanks for your prayers for us, and this situation. This news has been very stressful and discouraging for us. However, we know that these kinds of times are the best for our sanctification and we rejoice for our Lord and his disciplining and strengthening of us. May the Lord use this in His good and perfect plan. Blessings Kerem Koç Here is some exciting news from our church. I wrote a few weeks ago that a baptism service was forthcoming. We had a great day to celebrate the baptism of our brothers Ahmet and Levent last week. It has definitely not been easy for these two men to follow Christ. They have been subjected to pressure from family members and friends and even struggles within their own heart to push them away from our Lord for years. Through the work of the Holy Spirit to change their hearts and to express their desire to follow Christ, they declared their faith before the church and received the sign of baptism in the name of our Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was truly great moment to baptise these men and have them in our lives and in our church.
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About This BlogPictures and News from Archives
October 2019
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