ECM International

Make a Difference in Italy

ECM has been ministering in Italy since the 1950’s and now has 5 missionaries working in 3 locations.

Introducing Italy
Italy is famous. A lot more of the history and culture of the West depends on it than you would expect from its size. The Roman Empire, the Renaissance (some estimate that one third of the Western World's art treasures are in Italy, not to mention its contributions to Science, Literature and Music), the Roman Catholic Church – and even the mafia. There are cities well known to tourists like Rome, Florence, Venice, as well as other sites like Pompeii, Cinque Terre, the Alps and the beaches of the Mediterranean. In fact Italy has more UNESCO World Heritage sites than any other country. The economy is one of the largest in the world, and "Made in Italy" is a synonym for excellent design – names like Armani, Ferrari, Campari, Benetton and many others are known the world over. And in sport, the Serie A is recognised as one of the strongest soccer competitions in the world.

Today Italy has almost 60 million inhabitants, and even though large scale immigration is only a recent phenomena, the country is rapidly becoming a multicultural society as the number of ethnic Italians decrease and age, and large numbers of immigrants (mainly from North Africa and East Europe) come in and have more children on average. But even before this input of new cultures, Italy has always been a very varied country, with big differences between the north and the south, and even every region (and often every city) has always had its own culture, usually speaking a dialect which is incomprehensible in the other regions.

Geography:                            (Operation World 2001) Area: 301,000 sq km               Population: 56 million                                                 Capital: Rome                        Population: 3.8 million

Language: Italian Website:  Italy Tourism

Spiritual Climate
"To be Italian is to be Catholic" but many don't want anything to do with spiritual things.
How do you reach a nation who are Catholic by birth and deeply skeptical of alternative expressions of the Christian faith? This is the problem posed to those who work in Italy. Catholic traditions and mindset permeate every aspect of national and personal life, but only 5-10% of those professing to be Catholic actually practice their faith.

 

The church has lost millions of adherents to New Age thinking, cults, the occult and materialistic secularism, so that even the Pope has stated that Italy is a mission field.  Religious freedom has been met with indifference and church growth has been slow.  Moreover, the Protestant witness is weak and divided, with most congregations being small and ineffective.

Religion: (Operation World 2001)            Catholic           77.4% Non-Religious  20.0% Islam                  2.4% Protestant          0.6%	Bible Schools Istituto Biblico Evangelico Italiano
	National Organization: Evangelical Alliance

ECM in Italy

ECM has been ministering in Italy since the 1950s, initially in Florence and then focusing on Ravenna and the North East. Church planting forms the core of the work, with other ministries supporting this central aim, including a multimedia and a radio ministry. The work has continued to develop and now includes ministries which stretch from the very north to the south of Italy. For more information in Italian, see the ECM-Italy website.

Trentino

ECMI started working in the province of Trentino in the 1960's, and as a result of its ministry saw the first evangelical church in the area planted at Trento, the main city of the province - the Chiesa Evangelica di Trento. In 2001 the church became officially independent of the mission, but instead of separating from each other, it was decided that the church and the mission should work in partnership. In the rest of the province 350,000 people live, mostly without an evangelical witness in their own town. In fact, the church is already working towards the planting of second generation churches with bible study groups in three of the nearby valleys and towns. The prayer is that one day these groups will grow into independent churches witnessing in their own area.

 

Additional web sites and blog

Richard Wilson blog

Brescia

In the province of Brescia, another couple is working together with a church at Desenzano with the aim of planting a new church in the town of Montichiari.

Multimedia

Building on our experience of radio broadcasting over many years (both in the Brianza area near Milan and at Ravenna) and now evangelism with Internet (see for example the site of the Italian Bible) and through the arts, ECM facilitated the collaborative working of many evangelical Christian media agencies in Italy to produce high quality evangelical multimedia products for the family. There is now an independent organisation committed to the bringing about of the vision called Creactio, and ECM partners with it to bring about our common vision of planting new churches.

Ministry Opportunities

• There are 5 locations in northern Italy where ECM workers are involved in
  church planning and development, but there is currently no evangelical
  church in any of these locations. Church planters are needed in these
  locations to work together with the mother church, to pioneer a witness
  where there is none or to work with an existing small group.
  

Additional web site

http://italianministries.org

Contact

Please send your name and country of origin to one of the addresses to the right. Be sure to include Italy on the subject line.

Prayer

• For new missionaries willing to pioneer new church plants in towns and
  areas which have no evangelical witness at all.
• That the churches that ECM work with will continue to have a vision to
  reach out and plant churches in the areas around them.
• That the multimedia resources that are produced help the churches in
  Italy to grow and witness.   
         

For many additional prayer points, click on these links:

Operation World – Italy 24-7 Prayer