Welcome

Whether you are new here to the Aviano-Pordenone area or you have been here a while, our Serenissima family would like to share a very warm CIAO and BENVENUTO with you.God has really done amazing things for our special family here in North Italia, and we want to share his joy with you. We first share his joy by recognizing that God wants to be personally known through the Bible. So, the Bible is our love letter from Heaven and our guidebook to life. The Bible reveals Jesus who created every person with dignity. No matter what culture, ethnicity, or language background you come from, the Good News is for you, too! Then, God shares his joy and life with you through his special community — real people, really changed by the love of God, who really care about our cities and world as God asks us to do.So, we are a church community here to serve you and serve God with you. If you have any questions, needs, or would like more information, please do not hesitate to write us here on our contact form.Welcome to our area, and may the Serenissima (joy & peace) of God be with you today!

Here are some more of the services we provide.

Our Story

Welcome! Regardless of where you come from, there is a genuine, new family of the Bride of Christ here for you.

In 1998 the Lord led Robert and Sandy Krause as a young missionary couple to the people of northern Italy. After finishing an internship in Singapore, they obtained their official visas and began gathering a small group of believers in their home. With a great amount of prayer and very hard work, the group had grown to about 40 people in about 6 months, most of whom did not know Christ.Planting in those early years was slow and arduous. However, from the beginning Serenissima gathered regularly as God’s people. We gathered in large groups and small groups and trained our servant-leaders regularly in the missional work of opening their homes to others. So, our church grew, and diminished, and grew again as it has for more than 25 years.One of the main reasons for this expansion and contraction scenario was due to the sizable military population nearby in the city of Aviano which would come for a season and then leave (similar to a university town). Numerous missionaries and pastors said that it was impossible to plant a ministry in Italy with Americans or any foreigners for that matter. Often, that has seemed the case. Joyfully however, we can report that God is regularly doing the impossible through the ordinary people He has gathered as His own.Similar to a vineyard that needs to be de-cultivated before it can be re-cultivated, we also struggled through a few unsuccessful attempts to plant ministries among the Italian people during the first twelve years. Now, however, some of our richest and most fruitful growth is coming from among the Italian people as they sacrificially serve and creatively reach their countrymen. We only needed to farm the field long enough.The staggering fact persists that over 30,000 localities remain without a Gospel witness in Italy, and these cities are tremendously difficult to penetrate. Only the Gospel can bring resurrection life to the Italian people. Twenty-six years ago, we could only hope to see the vision flourishing as it is right now.We believe that God has a great heart for the European people. And, at the same time, the faces and languages of Europe are changing. People are moving here to Italy and Europe from all over the world. Serenissima Ministries is now comprised of 20+ people groups of different nationalities, such as Italians, Americans, Africans, Filipinos, Romanians, Spaniards and Moldovans.In fact, way back in 2003, we began the Serenissima Ministry Group to establish and care for new ministries and projects which would become points of light and hope to Italy and beyond. The ministry group has now grown to over 15 churches in 5 countries, and it continues to grow to reach more and more people groups. If you're interested, you can read more about it at our ministry group site at smgi.org.Therefore, as the community of the Messiah, we strive to be a people of God where each culture is welcomed and loved but not made superior to any other culture. In other words, regardless of where you come from, there is a genuine, new family of the Bride of Christ here for you at Serenissima.

Why the name "Serenissima"?

From the very first days meeting together with some young Italian believers, the name for these ministries was apparent. We took the historic, Venetian word "Serenissima" as our own. Serenissima literally means “most peaceful” and we have come to see that it is one of the best equivalents of the Hebrew word shalom in the Italian language. It was also the historic name of the 1100-year reign of the Venetian kingdom. This is significant because it is not only a powerful and popular word throughout the regions of northern Italy, but it also embodies the concept of a prospering people. Serenissima is equivalent to “the Italian dream” for the northern regions. Our work has been to show a new Serenissima who is wrapped-up not only in virtues and wealth, but the very person of Jesus Christ. He is our shalom-King, our Serenissima, and we joyfully live under His gracious reign.

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Our Beliefs

Here are our core beliefs and our church family covenant which is a succinct, Bible-based, and a local expression of the New Covenant of Christ with His people.

The Bible
We believe the Word of God is sacred, true, and powerful. We uphold it as the supreme guide for life, faith, and practice. It is the Good News for all mankind.The Tri-une God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.Revelation
God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God’s truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God’s revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.Creation of Humanity
We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Adam and Eve belonged to the created order that God himself declared to be very good, serving as God’s agents to care for, manage, and govern creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Maker. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to move beyond passive self-indulgence to significant private and public engagement in family, church, and civic life. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern of sexual relations for men and women, such that marriage ultimately serves as a type of the union between Christ and his church. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.The Fall
We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness—for himself and all his progen—by falling into sin through Satan’s temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (e.g., physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, spiritually) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and restore us to himself.The Plan of God
We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.The Gospel
We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news is christological, centering on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if his death and resurrection are not central (the message is: “Christ died for our sins . . . [and] was raised”). This good news is biblical (his death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures), theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God), historical (if the saving events did not happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others), apostolic (the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events), and intensely personal (where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved).The Redemption of Christ
We believe that moved by love and in obedience to his Father, the eternal Son became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As the mediatorial King, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, exercising in heaven and on earth all of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that by his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did this so that in him we might become the righteousness of God: on the cross, he canceled sin, propitiated God, and, by bearing the full penalty of our sins, reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over it, and brought everlasting life to all his people; by his ascension, he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. Because God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, no human being can ever boast before him—Christ Jesus has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.“WE ARE HIS PEOPLE”
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. – 1 Peter 2:9The Justification of Sinners
We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God. Inasmuch as Christ was given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own, freely and not for anything in us, this justification is solely of free grace, in order that both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. We believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification.The Power of the Holy Spirit
We believe that this salvation, attested in all Scripture and secured by Jesus Christ, is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as the other Paraclete, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit’s agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God’s family; they participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.The Kingdom of God
We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world, nor become indistinguishable from it: rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God. Recognizing whose created order this is, and because we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The kingdom of God, already present but not fully realized, is the exercise of God’s sovereignty in the world toward the eventual redemption of all creation. The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God.God’s New People
We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; they are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye, graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members’ love for one another and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world.Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. Together they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vows of submission to the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipations of his return and of the consummation of all things.The Restoration of All Things
We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

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Get Involved

We love to gather as a church family in many forms of worship. Whether that be a festa, a feast or an activity, you are always welcome to worship with us in all of these various forms.

Just click on any of these pictures to find out more information about them and to connect.

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Give

Through Serenissima, you have the opportunity to give as an expression of your love and devotion to God to meet the financial needs of the ministry, those who serve within the ministry, and those to whom the ministry reaches with assistance.

When I give here, do the funds stay here?
Yes, whatever you give while at our church stays to care for and increase the local mission in Italia. The only time it is designated elsewhere is if you choose to support a project or ministry in our ministry group which is in another European country.Does Serenissima accept funds in dollars, euros, checks, or electronically?
The answer is — yes. You can give in all of those ways. If you wish to give in dollars, euros, or checks, you will find a small box to leave your gift in the entrance area of our ministry center.How do we give electronically?
This happens through our dedicated, online donation form which is very user-friendly and takes the hassle out of everything. For American donors, you are giving to our 501(c)3 association and that allows your gift to be tax-deductible to the fullest extent of US law.

• Give Online

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Sermons

Our sermon collection will have messages from Pastor Rob Krause, our local men, and other guest speakers who share in the teaching roles of Serenissima.

Please visit our sermons Youtube for our most recent and past sermons.

• Sermons on YouTube

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Contact Us

We're glad to answer any questions you may have.

Our church address is:
Via Zanon 43
Fontanafredda (PN) 33074Below, you can send a message to our church office, and we will try to respond as soon as we can.

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Child Dedications

Please fill out this form to reserve a time during one of our services to dedicate your child to the Lord.

Christian parents have been given a precious treasure from the Lord when they have a child, and they are charged with a sacred responsibility to raise them in a Christ-centered home and family. Baby or child dedication ceremonies are delightful moments in a church family to give thanks to God for His blessing upon the home, to devote the parents and then the church family to raise the child in the Gospel, to allow the couple to "give back" their child to the Lord for His glory, and then to pray for the child's future salvation through repentance and faith.

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Become a Church Member

Please fill out this form to be connected to the next membership class

At Serenissima, we practice a covenanted membership. This means we are committed to ensuring that all our members have been brought into Jesus' new covenant through His offer of salvation. We also dedicate time to understanding what it means to live out our faith together as a church, sharing our mutual expectations, our covenant, how our church operates, and the various areas of service where our members can join our mission.Upon receiving your application below, we will contact you and coordinate with you to join our next member's class. We currently hold classes 3 to 4 times per year. They are designed to help you understand Serenissima better and for us to get to know you better.We are grateful for your desire to become a part of God's family at Serenissima!

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Join a LifeTeam

Our small group communities for the purpose of blessing God, blessing each other, and blessing the world around us.

If you are new to the area, our American members would like you to know that LifeTeams are a wonderful opportunity to go deeper in the Word together in a relaxed setting, to build healthy and needed community while overseas, to have an impact through blessing the community around us, and to often make life-long friends.As a church, these special communities are a core component to how we live as a people with a purpose before God. You can read about that here in our covenant if you would like to see how much we prioritize community in the highly relational culture of Italia.We usually have between 5 and 10 English-speaking teams in a given year depending on the PCS factor. Please fill out the form below if you would like more information and would like to be connected with a LifeTeam in your area.

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Our DNA Groups

Men's and women's discipleship groups who go to the Word and the Cross together.

Our discipleship groups are gatherings of 3 men or 3 women who meet at different intervals during the year to see how God reveals Himself to us through the Scriptures and His Son, Jesus. Then, we encourage and strengthen each other in learning the Gospel and how to live it.
If you desire meaningful discipleship within a supportive community of great Christians here in the area, joining a DNA group is one of the best ways to experience it.

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Do you need prayer?

How can we pray for you?

If you have any need for prayer, please share your need or request here with us. Also, please let us know if we can share it with our prayer teams and if you would like someone from our church to contact you and pray with you over your need.

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Do you need to be baptized?

Visit with us about how to join the family of God

At Serenissima, we practice the baptism of believers who have given their lives to Jesus in faith and repentance. Our desire is that each person who wants to be baptized would be fully aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it. So, we take our time to have conversations together and do some training from the Bible about baptism with each candidate. Then, when the candidates are ready, we baptize them with full immersion in water in a wonderful celebration with our church family.
If you have questions about baptism or would like to have more information about when you can be baptized, please take a couple of minutes to fill out this form and we will follow up with you as quickly as we can.

Announcements & Highlights

Some of our highlighted announcements and upcoming events

Currently, Pastor Rob is teaching through a series on the books of 1-2 Thessalonians. Check out the playlist of the messages we have already covered in this series.

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