On December 21 2007 the borders between old enemies finally fell away.

Passport free travel between Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia on the one side and Austria, Germany, France and most of the rest of the EU (apart from the UK) became possible.

• 1.5 million Central Europeans study or work in the UK
• 10% of the population of Romania work in Italy, Spain or Portugal
• There is a new iron curtain excluding people from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Turkey. A new frontier of suspicion and contempt!
• Economic investment is pouring into the region. The shopping mall and the hyper market are now normal.
• If the traffic on our street is anything to go by parking has become a nightmare!
• Cheap airlines criss-cross the continent and travel to the many of the smaller cities of Central Europe
• The busy life, the search for a parking space, the feeling of being left behind and the treadmill of prosperity are normal
• A generation has grown up that knows travel and freedom of thought in ways their parents never dreamed could be true
• But this "branded generation" has no more answers to the fundamental questions of life and remain unrecognized to their creator

The dominant worldview and value system is now consumerism. The value of a person is measured by what they have not what they can produce. Communism is but a distant memory. The reduced reality of consumerism sucks life from human relationships but is impossible to escape.

This is now the context in which we work. People are over stimulated in their desires but have little time to process the hungers aroused. Now we must present the risen Christ in a new context. Ancient truths for these changing times. We must resist the temptation to be relevant and present is eternally true and always real. Speaking to the eternal hungers of the heart.