“Our ambition is to be approved workmen
so that the truth is entrusted to other faithful men in Italy.”
APRIL 2022
Rome Church Plant
I have never considered myself a church planter. The ministry of Italian Theological Academy has over the years discussed church planting as a worthy endeavor to pursue through its students but nothing went beyond the discussion stage.
Our transition to Rome, moreover, was with the aim of reaching existing churches in the city by partnering with one such church. Even this did not at first thought consider church planting.
Divine providence has as of recent led to the very thing that was not one of the main objectives for ITA. Both our advisory counsel and the team members serving the training center in Italy have come to embrace a common resolve. We are persuaded that the time is ripe to commence the founding of a new local church in Rome.
Hence, we are in the present praying and pursuing the work of church planting. This is in addition to the established training curriculum and commitments ITA already has with local churches and church members in Rome and Italy at large.
The biblical, theological, and pastoral equipping that has defined who we are for the past 18 years in Italy is determined to continue by God’s grace. The Rome church plant is deemed a need designed to fulfill locally in Rome what ITA in the classroom has for years taught about: a local church founded upon the regular expositional ministry of the whole counsel of God.
Amidst the array of biblically based churches in Rome, relatively few practice this discipline as their staple diet for worship and for the week in and week out life of the body. Though churches that demonstrably affirm and uphold the Bible, they do not give priority to their own constant nourishment “on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine” (1 Tim 4:6).
Our purpose right now is to pursue more frequent Sunday night gatherings at the Roman theater location that has hosted us for just over a year now.
With the blessing of the existing church that has been our church home from the move to Rome, the Gravino and Albanesi families plan to launch later this year or early next year. More help is on the way as well.
An additional missionary family and a single man, elder at present at the Bible Church of Messina, and faithful ITA team member and friend, Simone Marini, will also be joining us soon.
Your prayers and overall encouragement for this new labor are much appreciated.