From the July-September 2009 Issue
The call of the Lord in a Catholic country
Pietro and Teresa Lorefice
Mount EtnaAt the beginning of our ministry there is a charge that we receive from the Lord – the call of the Lord. There are several calls in the teaching of the Bible, but the first call is the call to live. In Adam we have that call, when the Lord gave to Adam life and afterwards the call to serve Him. The Lord has called us from a previous situation to new life –the call to a new life. God the Holy Spirit through His almighty work has called us. The situation is similar in a Protestant country and in a Catholic country – the Lord is the same.
However, in the Catholic country where I live the call of the Lord is subject to the Church as an institution. The Church must recognise a call. For the church is formed by the Pope, the cardinal and the bishops. They defined the church with words in Latin ‘Mater et Magistra’, which means the church is mother and teacher. The mother gave life and nutrition and the mother gave the instruction. But Christian believers know that according to the Bible the call is from the Lord Creator and Saviour, as recorded in the teaching of Paul.
We who live in a Catholic country have the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that the call comes from the Holy Spirit to be submitted to the hierarchy (Pope, bishop, priest), but the Lord gave us another instruction in the Bible. In our life we see that the Lord gave the call when we were dead to a new life. He gave the Word as instruction for our souls and our behaviour. And when I left a secular job to enter a Bible college, I received a call that gave me strength to begin a new phase of life, full of experiences, full of opportunity, full of preaching. The Lord gave us in our hearts the desire to look unto him for everything. He was for us our Lord and Father, full of providence, and our teacher – much better than the Catholic Church.
Literature
When the Lord called us to start the work with the books He gave us an interest in distributing literature, and this vision continues. In fact we have published more than sixteen books in Italian. And we go on. We hope to print three books this year. In the past year we printed two books – The Axe to the Root (a commentary on the book of Ezekiel) and The Attributes of God by Pink. We have other titles to be printed and we hope to see this project going ahead.
Radio
Another call was when the Lord gave us the vision to start a Radio Station. The Lord gave us the technician and the means to spread the Gospel this way. From a distance we have seen the fruits.
Fellowship
ACERI is a fellowship of churches of the same mind. We formed ACERI for fellowship and progress in the Reformed Churches. We have seen other Fellowships of the same mind in the north of Italy, but we live in Sicily and, because Italy is long rather than large, we have seen the necessity of this association. Every year we have a conference that is very useful for the Reformed churches in Sicily and the south of Italy. We have now reached the seventh conference this year and hope to keep going. During the year we have opportunities to gather like-minded churches, and we call such a meeting an Agape. Over the past year we have had three meetings like this, with a baptismal service included on one occasion. We rejoice in this because we see the hand of God. All the work is of the Lord and we serve this Almighty Lord and Saviour. The work belongs to Him and we are glad to serve Him.