Aalborg, Denmark
Six years ago, in 2010, when my wife and I came to Aalborg, Denmark, for a masters program at the university, we never imagined a church like Koinonia International Christian Fellowship existed. A fellowship of people that welcomes you with open arms, befriends you, and then gives you the opportunity to serve – a fellowship that has this innate gift of making itself a family for you, a gift that is pretty difficult to put into words – you just have to be there, to see it and feel it.
Relationships and friendship are the core of our ministry as a church in Aalborg. We want to get to know the people and city around us, to love them, and to serve them. Our greatest desire is to be the salt and light this city so greatly needs.
In these six years, Koinonia proved to be the place and the group of people God gracefully used to encourage me and my family, to help us grow and mature, and to be a living testimony of what it means to have brothers and sisters in the Lord who go out of their way to love you and help you and encourage you.
Over the years, one of the most uplifting aspects of Koinonia has been the flow of testimonies from the people who have been part of our fellowship. Either people who didn’t know the Lord before arriving or who were believers when they arrived here, both have attested how important, and at times difficult, is Koinonia’s role in Aalborg.
Like in many university centers around the world, Aalborg has a great number of young people, individuals, or young families that don’t know God, but who are searching for … ‘something.’ Most of the time, depending who you talk to, that ‘something’ can be either career, friends, a community to belong to, etc., but whatever it is, they are all searching for something to define their identity.
Being salt and light as a fellowship, among other things, means to be the mouthpiece in this city that testifies to the truth that only Christ is sufficient to satisfy the hunger of the human heart, no matter who you are, and that only He can provide an identity that never perishes. We want to show, by the strength that God provides, that the love of Christ is the most beautiful, satisfying, and powerful truth there is. As a church and family we know this is a hard task, especially now and here, in secular northern Europe, but we trust our Lord in everything and in every aspect of our lives, and we believe that He will use us as He sees fit.
Koinonia’s role, as we see it – and happily, the testimonies we get from the students and people who have been with us or just visited us through the years, testifies for this – is to provide the context where the beauty of the Gospel, the love of Christ, and His grace and mercy are manifested in a community where students from all over the world, young professionals, and families, come together to study the Word, pray, and have fellowship (‘koinonia’) together.
Marius Padurean
