The GoAncona church-planting team was born in response to the request by several veteran missionaries and church leaders from the Christian Churches in Italy for a new wave of younger missionaries.  A partnership was formed between Team Expansion and Shively Christian Church to see a team formed.  Shively would serve as the P.A.C.E church, committed to Pray, Activate, Commit and Enlist toward fielding a new team while Team Expansion would serve to faciliate, promote, recruit, and train the missionaries.  So in some ways, to answer this question, we would say it is because there was a need to come in and continue on the work that was done before.

As we did initial research and then over the course of the years that our team has been here, we have seen for ourselves the needs and answer, perhaps differently, 'Why Italy?'

Of the 33,000 cities in Italy, 30,000 have no Evangelical witness or community.  Our own Chrisitan Churches/Churches of Christ number under 10.  There are well over a million university students with no outreach being done on campus.  While most Italians are raised in the Catholic Church, attend Catechism and are married and buried Catholic, very few are an active part of the church and relate to is more as a traditional landmark of their culture.  "Yes, there is a god.  Yes, Jesus died and rose again.  Yes, my sins are forgiven.  Now, let me get on with my life."  There is a lot of spiritual interest here - everything from Buddhism and Islam to Scientology and home-brewed New Age communities.  We've also heard about and spoken with some directly involved in witchcraft and Satanism.

Some have described Italy as a spiritual vaccum and I think that is accurate.  For centuries, this has been the center of Christianity.  But look at the numbers or talk with the people and you will see that any loyalty or involvement in the church, by the average Italian, is hollow and merely echoes of a living, breathing relationship with a community of God.  As Italians have distanced themselves in their lifestyles and beliefs from the Catholic Church's teaching, while maintaining that they are still Catholic, all kinds of other religions, beliefs and expressions have come in to fill that vaccum.

Italy is a land saturated in religious symbols and heritage.  You can't go anywhere without running into statues of Mary or Jesus, crucifixes, churches, monasteries, chapels or monuments.  And yet they dot the landscape in such a way that people here don't notice anymore.

Our team desires to redeem these images and this heritage.  We want to see people be reawakened in their faith.  We want to come alongside people where they are and lead them into a living, breathing relationship with Jesus.  We dream of seeing a community of people who have been changed by Christ and are committed to loving Him and loving others and changing the world around them.