Sweden Report
by Keith Malcomson SOC Director
The School of Christ Sweden has just completed a full-time School in Ljungskile, in the South-West of Sweden. The School was held over a three and a half week period and the class graduated on Saturday 12th February 2011. God willing this will now be an annual event. After visiting and preaching in Ljungskile the past three years it was a great joy for us to see the School run there again.
Sweden has the biggest population (9 million) of all Scandinavian countries, actually double that of any of its neighbours, and a heritage of Pentecost as brought through God's vessel Lewi Pethrus in the early part of the twentieth century. Much has come to quench and extinguish the message of Pentecost and a thirst for God's Word in recent decades, but there is a people in Ljungskile who have been inspired by God's Word and who have remained faithful.
From the mid-nineties Pastor Clendennen visited Solid Rock Church in Ljungskile, on an annual basis for about ten years. Brother and Sister Clendennen stayed in this beautiful village for five weeks beginning April 1998 to teach the School for four and a half weeks.
The interest in the School of Christ amongst the Church was great, and thirty-four members took time off their work in order to participate full-time. The School was of great importance to the Church. Many more attended the evening services; even young teenagers had powerful encounters with the Lord. An expectation and a longing for what God wanted to do in Sweden was raised up in many hearts.
This school in 1998 was videoed and the quality is excellent. This is a powerful tool for the future work in Sweden. During the following years additional Schools were held. More than eighty members of this church have now graduated the School, with a number of young men becoming involved in the realm of translating the school into different languages. Others have gone forth to be used very effectually in running schools in other continents. The fruit of the messages Pastor Clendennen preached when with this body is still evident today.
In February our Swedish SOC director was Robert Aberg. When attending our SOC European convention in 2008, his heart was stirred again to see revival in Sweden and to see the School run in the church, with a view to seeing more from other churches attend in future. Brother Aberg's testimony from earlier years follows:
"When I met Brother Clendennen in 1994, I met a man of God who not only spoke the Word but lived the Word. I therefore did everything to get time off of work, when we, four years later, were going to run the School of Christ for the first time in our Church. I longed for reality, I longed for the word of God to fill me, that Jesus, through his Holy Spirit, would fill me so that I had the strength to be His witness, that Jesus would become great and visible in my everyday life. During those weeks Jesus broke down my will, my pride, my trials and I came in contrition before God over and over again. He is exalted and mighty. All the power and authority is held by Him. He is worthy to be honoured and during those weeks He answered my prayers. I´ve got a burning desire to serve Him. The school had an impact not only on my life, but also on my wife, my children and throughout the Church."
Though the 2011 school was small in terms of full time students, a consistently higher number of church members attended early morning sessions which consisted of the prayer hour and at least one lesson and then again sessions each night.
We joined them for ten days for the last week and graduation. It was a powerful time of refreshment and encouragement. Each evening the Lord drew near in His own unique way as we tarried in the altars. We were all very aware that the Lord was speaking, stirring and restoring. It was a critical time for many as the Lord convicted hearts and as individuals repented, evenly publically.
On the Sunday night before we left we participated in a youth meeting where the Lord met with the teenagers and those in their twenties in a most powerful way. It was impossible to close the meeting as young lives knelt, wept, yielded and offered themselves to Christ a new. All we could do was look on and pray. The Lord drew near in a very special way. It was hard to get these young lives to finally leave the church and the blessing was carried back to their homes where parents were told that they had met with Christ anew and that they could not be the same again.
A young generation is coming forth with a desire for revival and true Pentecost as well as with a desire to serve God. A number of them have been burdened to learn foreign languages and it is very evident that the call of God is upon their lives. God is raising up workers for the harvest in Europe, there are very serious and earnest hearts among the young as well as the older people in this church and land, which has had a heritage of missionary work in foreign fields. Please join us in praying for them as a church and for the labourers who will be sent out from this church.
The Pentecostal revival in Sweden and Norway in the early 20th century, which swept across local churches, left the testimony behind of sending out more missionaries per head of Pentecostal believers than any other nation in the world. We believe the School has the ability to call the churches in Scandinavia back to this very same message, call and revival which they once had.
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