As I listened to Sam Rotman play the piano, my spirit soared and swooped along with the music. As the last notes sounded, I felt drained but elated. And from the thunderous applause, I suspect others felt the same.

This month's theme arose through a curious set of "coincidences." A friend in America wrote and asked if I'd ever heard of concert pianist Sam Rotman. Sam is a minister in my friend's home church, as well as a world-renowned musician who has played in dozens of countries. And he was coming to Europe to do a series of concerts on behalf of Agape. I had never heard of Sam, but my friend encouraged me to attend a concert.

A couple of days later I bumped into Rubén Fernández, national director of Spain, who mentioned his enthusiasm over how the Madrid team was working together to put on several Sam Rotman concerts. Rubén invited me to Madrid to experience this for myself.

Since Agape Europe is focusing ministry on the "mega-cities," we thought this would be an excellent opportunity to learn more about Madrid, then put together a special issue on it. And since the London Consultation on reaching Current Leaders and Influencers dovetails nicely with reaching cities, we're including a short report on it as well.

The centre of the Madrid outreach, of course, was the Sam Rotman concert. It was so encouraging to see how God blessed as the Madrid city team worked together in organizing this event. And God continued to bless as the Sam Rotman tour went on to Nice, France, Tubingen, Germany and Berlin.

In Nice, for example, some 100 non-Christian businessmen and women turned out to hear Sam's concert and story! Several are now involved in follow-up Bible studies, according to Royce Johnson of the Riviera Project.

Reaching cities like Madrid will never be easy, humanly speaking, but as we step out in faith like they did in Madrid, God can work in ways we never imagined – even through a Jewish lad from New York!