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In June I traveled to Turkey to speak at a national conference on the Holy Spirit. It was an incredible experience. The Turkish church is small but dynamic, and Turkish believers love Jesus ("Isa" in Turkish) with all their hearts.

Turkey is 99.8 percent Muslim. Of a population of 78,000,000, there are about 3,000 Protestant Christians meeting in about 70 churches and home groups. Few of the churches are more than five years old, few attract more than 25 people to worship, all but a handful are pastored by foreigners, and none are self-supporting.

Most are Presbyterian, with a few charismatic congregations. I have not been able to find any United Methodist presence in Turkey.

Turkey is officially secular, and recently churches have been allowed to operate openly, though not without petty harassments, but very few Turkish believers have known the Lord for more than a few years.

About two years ago my son, Josh, and his family moved to Turkey. He volunteers as assistant pastor of the Batikent Christian Church in the capital city of Ankara, with pastors Ali Pektash, a Turk, and Dan Wickwire, an American.

Pastor Ali was a Muslim alcoholic who was delivered from alcoholism and became a Christian through a supernatural vision of Jesus.

This is not unusual in Turkey. When I preached in the Batikent church, a young Muslim man was there for the first time who had dreamed about Jesus and then found the church in the yellow pages.

A pair of excellent short videos about the Batikent church and Turkish miracles can be found, in English, on YouTube.com (search for Batikent Church).

While in Ankara we had lunch with a pastor from Iraq. He said that where there was only one church in Baghdad at the fall of Saddam, there are now ten. He told a fascinating story of how his church was miraculously spared from a car bomb. We also met a wonderful family of Iranian Christians.

As a result of our visit, the Batikent Protestant Church in Ankara, Turkey, and Trinity UMC

in Annapolis, are now sister churches. This is not a financial relationship, but one of praying for each other, sharing ministry tools, and visiting.

The people of Trinity UMC are excited and energized, and we are planning a tour to Turkey in the fall of 2009.

I was also invited to return and conduct a series of training conferences for Turkish pastors and church leaders. While some discipleship training is available in Turkish in print and on DVD, there is a great need for training in theology and church history.

These disciplines in particular are necessary to help church leaders recognize potential heresies and inappropriate practices before they can harm the church. I will be

taking two or three others along with me to lead one-week conferences in two Turkish cities this coming February.

We hope to repeat in two other cities next fall. Pastor Ali's vision is that this will become an annual series, hopefully leading to the establishment of a permanent base or school in Turkey.

I don't believe it is an accident that Trinity and the Turkish church have become connected in this way. These conferences will be a real opportunity to influence an emerging church in a very strategically placed nation.

I believe God plans to use Trinity UMC, and perhaps the entire Baltimore-Washington Conference, to sow seed into fertile ground that can literally change the world. Please keep us in prayer. And I'd love to share our story, with videos and photos and Turkish handicrafts, with anyone who is interested.

The Rev. David Wentz, pastor of Trinity UMC in Annapolis, can be contacted at 410-268-1620 or