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By Andrew Wippler
It still amazes me that Europe is often
overlooked as a mission field. Perhaps
this is so because much of our Christian
heritage comes from the work of the Apostle
Paul in Europe, from the fact that our
New Testament is written in a European
language, or from the Reformation which
portrays Europe as being a heavily-saturated
Christian continent.

Since arriving in Finland at the end of
Coronavirus restrictions in 2022, our family
has had little opportunity to perform—
in the traditional sense—ministry work.

Instead, God has given us a few connections
that have developed into something more.

We came to Finland with the knowledge that
while there were a handful of like-minded
Christian works, none of them really held to
traditional independent Baptist distinctives
such as biblical separation. While we have
met a few Christians who were kind enough
to help us locate a few national services, our
interactions with them are quite limited.

The pioneer missionary role presented
itself rather abruptly to our family. We were
on our own in a field without a veteran
independent Baptist missionary. There was
8 BIMI Number 1, 2024
no established work we could rely upon for
spiritual nourishment while going through
language school. Our first concern was that
our children would be able to experience a
weekly junior church time. In America, our
children would participate in weekly, hour-
long Bible lessons, crafts, and songs. It was
important to us that our four children could
benefit from the same type of structure.

From there, we began a weekly English Bible
study in our home. While we could just view
streamed services of our home church, the
experience is not the same. We wanted to
keep church important in our family. As
Spurgeon once said, “Some Christians try to
go to heaven alone, in solitude, but believers
are not compared to bears, or lions, or other
animals that wander alone, but those who
belong to Christ are sheep in this respect
that they love to get together. Sheep go in
flocks, and so do God’s people.” Because
we had begun this formalized Bible study
gathering on Sunday, God has brought a
few English-speaking immigrants and some
English-speaking Finns who occasionally
meet with us.

While the majority of Finns speak English
as a second language, English is not one