visionvienna

Here’s the (largely) uncut version of our story (written in 2006)—

As God has been preparing us for Vienna, He’s been doing major work in us of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.”  Back in 1998, we applied to a mission agency and headed up to their assessment center.  At the time, I (Brad) had an unshakable (read: prideful) confidence, “We are so ready!  I’ll graduate with a fine seminary degree; I already know German; let’s get packing.”  And Stacey recounts, “I was pregnant with Luke and just starting to get comfortable in Florida. There was no way we were ready, but I thought maybe God was calling Brad, so I agreed to check it out.”

That’s when our journey to Vienna ended, just barely after it had begun.   At the close of the mission assessment week, the verdict was handed to us, “The recommendation… is that you not pursue church planting with us at this time.  We saw in Brad what amounted to arrogance, which could do more harm than good on the mission field.  …We believe that you need to have more time experiencing some of the successes and failures in life and in ministry.”

“What?  They’ve got it all wrong!” we thought at the time.  Devastated, we licked our wounds and headed home.  Years passed.  I graduated from seminary, and the door to Vienna remained closed, even as a door to ministry in South Florida opened up.  More years passed.  Good years.  Years of success and of failure in ministry, just as predicted. Years of difficult pregnancies, the loss of my father, and just walking through life together.

And somewhere in that time, God’s double-edged work of comforting and afflicting began to change us.  I began to believe that my gifts and my degree would NEVER match up with the giants in Vienna.   Stacey began to see that the security and familiarity of life in the U.S. couldn’t compare to her position as an adopted and beloved daughter of God the Father.  My pride couldn’t take us to Vienna, and Stacey’s fear couldn’t keep us away.   We are starting to live by the words of Philippians 3:7-10a:

“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Chris Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish [lit: manure] in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him…”

As God was humbling us, He began again to lead us to Vienna.  With the support of our home church, we applied to World Harvest Mission and went through their Assessment Week.   World Harvest was encouraged to see the Spirit of God at work in breaking and mending us, and they were excited to see what God might do through Gospel-needy people like us in Vienna, Austria.

We’re excited, too, because we see God stirring both our hearts and the nation of Austria.  While Austria has historically been a nation resistant to the Gospel, we keep hearing from national Christians and missionaries that there is an increasing openness to the Gospel, and even small pockets of revival.  We are burdened by the need, see an ever greater openness in the Austrian people, and also see a scarcity of laborers.

Our prayer is that God would showcase His unstoppable grace by transforming the very fabric of Austrian society with the Gospel, so that in 100 years Austria would be a Gospel-saturated, mission-sending nation.  We know this is a radical prayer, and yet we love to pray for the impossible, because we believe that God’s glory is put on display as we watch His redemptive power at work.

It’s an understatement to say that it has been “difficult” to leave the safety net of our family, friends, our home church, and a language and culture we know and understand.  Walking with our Moms through the trials of surgeries and chemo over the past year made the prospect of moving even more daunting, yet through it all we have witnessed God in us, “comforting the afflicted.”  These trials stretched us before moving to Austria to depend more and more on the promises of God and the prayers of His people to provide for us, our children, and our Moms in all circumstances.

After moving to Vienna in June 2007, God has provided for us in so many ways already– from friendships old and new, to a centrally-located apartment, to good bilingual schools for the kids, to admission to the Ph.D. (Sociology) program at the University of Vienna, and to providing us with a facility for worship and outreach right in the city center, at the intersection of 3 subway lines. Our church plant is in its early phases, so we ask for your ongoing prayers for us and our work.

Please commit to praying for us.
Write us at 5hunters@mindspring.com to let us know if you want to receive our prayer journals by email (which we send out about every 2 months), and check out our past prayer journals by clicking HERE.