Tommie and Gunilla

ABOUT US

Tommie and Gunilla are parents of four children with the blessing of seeing grandchildren come to birth and grow. Since their conversion in the early 1970's they have been involved in Christian ministry, having worked with mission behind the Iron Curtain during the Communist era. They were also part of a team that planted a radical Christian community in Malmo, Sweden, a community that became influential both locally as well as nationally.

As part of their journey that also, for a time were part of the leadership in a Catholic Charismatic Community in Vienna, Austria. Prior to them leaving northern Europe, they pastored a church in Helsingborg, Sweden.

In 1995 they moved to the Balkan region where they have lived ever since. For most of the time they have lived and worked in Skopje, Macedonia but now live in Thessaloniki,Greece.

Over the last 10 years they have planted several churches in Macedonia, which has led them into a position of leading a network of churches in the Balkans with the vision that "the motherlands shall give birth again".

They are also actively involved in nations like Turkey, Syria and Jordan.

In spite of the Covid situation our work over here is continually growing. Many of the people we have led to the Lord and trained our now in other countries, Germany being the main one, for us this means our work is spreading and one from our team is now working full time up there. Some of us might very well join in this part of our work. The Lord is preparing us for this so we will see, at the same time we know that at the moment more than 300 000 Afghanis has crossed the border to Iran and knowing how this works there is no way that the majority of them will stay in Iran. We will see what will happen, the EU has already sounded the alarm for a new wave.

Prophetic words
The motherlands shall give birth again
In the first part of the nineteen nineties a very good friend of mine Robert Mearns dropped a word that hit my heart. “ The motherlands shall give birth again.” This gave us a geographical region to put our lives into, and having prayed and meditated about this for many years, I have gotten the thoughts that something would happen in this region that the region could not contain. Now more than twenty five years later it seems we may be on the verge of this happening. The guys I am working together with recently gave us some statistics, and there is now roughly 25 000 groups or house churches existing and this is likely to double the next year.

Enlarge your territory (Isaiah 54:2-3)
When my friend Jonas moved here with his family in august 2017, him and I started to pray together and actually became good friends by praying together. At one morning the Lord spoke to us about enlarging our territory, at that time we only worked very locally in Perea. We talked maybe we will start to work in the city of Thessaloniki as well. Then 2018 God threw a work in our laps and the work started to spread all over northern Greece and then down south in Greece as well. Today Jonas is back in Sweden but continues to work with us being responsible for our work north of the Alps, meaning Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and England. He will soon be joined by more team members. Never in our wildest fantasy could we have thought about this when we got this word.

One quarter of our Iranian-Afghanian group in Athens

Put your heart where the fruit is
At a birthday party in January of 2018, the Lord spoke this words to me I mailed Jonas and my wife as I was in the States, their response was this was a liberating word, just a week later the Lord dumped this work with refugees big time in our laps. Since then we have baptized around 500 people and trained numerous leaders.

Blessed are those that have their hearts set on pilgrimage (Psalm 84:5)
We got this word recently and we do sense that the Lord is about to prepare not to get settled in our comfort zones, some of us will most probably move to northern countries on this continent.

Non Churchy
Those of us that have quite a long history in church are often reflecting and conversing on the fact that what we are doing right now is so much outside the walls of the church and so much outside usual church practices.

For example we are clinically clean from asking people to respond to our message. We have never asked anyone to commit his or her life to Jesus.

We are not bound to buildings, our facilities are everywhere, under bridges, on fields, under trees, in coffee bars and so on. Mersad one of our Persian team members with no church background told me as we were driving home one day, our work has no ends it goes everywhere.

No religious lingo, we need to speak the language people understand, it is incredible how easy it is to become blind to the religious language we get used to using, a language that without us really being aware of it separates us from the people that are not insiders.

Our team, a training hub
Today our immediate team consists of two American families, two Iranian families, one Syrian family one Syrian couple and one Syrian man all of us living very close to one another here in Perea a suburb of Thessaloniki. In addition to our travels we are now considering our team a training hub, so we have started to bring people here to spend some days with friends from various camps having intense training, so far this has proven to be very good with good fruits.

My friend Radovan in Belgrade told me that he is now on the way to Montenegro, having been invited by the main priest in the Orthodox Church in that nation.

A story from Yemen
One lady got married and gave birth to a child it happened to become a girl as a result her husband divorced her because it was not a boy, she remarried and got another baby girl with the same result divorce again. Later on she became a follower of Jesus and was very vocal about this and ended up in prison. In prison she became good friends with one of the guards. She was released from prison and the guard she had gotten to know had the same thing happen to her, she gave birth to a baby girl and her husband divorced her. She remembered her friend from the prison, that in spite of her situation always was so glad, found out we’re this lady was now living contacted her and as a result gave her life to Jesus. From this friendship a year later there is now 124 groups or house churches.

Iranians and some Afghanians outside Larissa, typical church meeting

Gabriel to the left is now in Germany and is leading people to Jesus there as well, Andreas in the middle our man in Athens for the Iranians and Brad part of our team

Nushin our Iranian interpreter in Hamburg was so powerfully touched by the Holy Spirit - she asked 'can I do this at home?'.

And let me say we are so extremely thankful for the support we get!

Tommie and Gunilla Naumann
November 2021