Some of you living abroad may have heard confused rumours of cataclysm in the Eurozone, that the UK is leaving the EU, or that David Cameron has left us marginalised and out in the cold.  Certainly a meeting in Brussels last Friday will have momentous consequences, although it’s too early to tell whether Cameron is Neville Chamberlain or Margaret Thatcher.  This week we will look at the Eurozone crisis and why it has arisen.

The Eurozone consists of 17 EU member countries who share a common currency, the unimaginatively-named Euro (€).  The UK is not one of them.  The new currency was introduced in 2002 in an attempt to bind Europe even closer together.  However the inventors of this plan overlooked the obvious fact that serious stresses would appear in the system if there were a) no common fiscal policy and b) no strong central government able to implement said fiscal policy.  This left a situation where many of the Eurozone countries are able to run their economies in ways which actually result in economic divergence.  This problem was not immediately apparent as the economic growth of the last decade obscured it.

However the crisis in the finance industry has led to liquidity problems in several governments, with many having to pay increasingly impractical rates of interest to borrow money.  So they are slashing spending, which leads to domestic discontent and higher unemployment, thereby reducing government revenues and increasing the need for borrowing.  These countries include the relatively minor economies of Ireland, Portugal, and (most notoriously) Greece, though Spain and Italy are also under pressure.  In the past, these countries would have devalued their currencies, and we’d all have gone there for cheap holidays, bought their cheap exports, and everything would get right in a few years.

The Euro prevents that happening, so these governments have to be given huge handouts.  The only Europeans  with enough money to do this are the Germans and (paradoxically) the UK, which finds itself forced to help the Euro out as the Eurozone is our major trading partner and Euro-chaos affects our exports.  But Germany is picking up the bulk of the bill and is getting increasingly annoyed about it.

So the Germans are trying to fix the problem.  They argue that they are not going to keep pouring money into a bottomless pit, and are particularly aggravated about having to bail out the Greeks, who retire earlier, pay less tax, and (allegedly) don’t work as hard as the Germans.  So heads of government spent the last week in Brussels discussing a new European treaty which would enforce some Germanic discipline in governance, and resolve the problem.  Part of these deals would mean more regulation on financial institutions.  David Cameron had already made it clear that the UK will cede no more sovereign power to the EU, and insisted that an exemption for UK financial institutions was his price for agreeing to the changes.

Europe said non.  Instead they made a separate deal to strengthen the Eurozone, with only the UK left out.  Some argue that Cameron has stood up for the UK, others that he has betrayed us.  The word being used a lot is isolated – some argue that by taking no further part in the discussions, the UK will have no say on important issues that will affect us.  Others claim that we are now effectively isolated from a coming Euro-disaster.

It is too early to tell whether Cameron’s action is heroic or suicidal, but one indicator is that the Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency last week threatened to downgrade the credit ratings of all the Eurozone countries.  This means that S&P thinks that they are less able to pay their debts, and their cost of borrowing will go up.  The UK however, continues to maintain its coveted AAA rating.  Which means that the UK government can borrow money at the cheapest rate for decades.  It could be a good time to invest in sterling.

Recently I came across a memorial to John Wesley which is situated near to the site in London where his heart was ‘strangely warmed’ as he gave his life to Jesus.  From there I went to visit the chapel where he once ministered, which is not too far away on City Road.  Then I discovered an old nonconformist cemetery just over the road.  Looking round, I realised how many influential people are buried there, and it set me thinking about how influential nonconformism has been on making the UK what it is today, and how nonconformists have taken the gospel to the world.

Nonconformist is a generic name given to protestants who are members of a church other than the Anglican churches, or in previous centuries it could also be used of evangelical members of the Church of England.  Historically, these churches have included Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Puritans, Quakers, Salvationists, Unitarians, and a number of other independent or free churches.  Taken en bloc they currently have more members than the Roman Catholic church and nearly as many as the combined Anglican churches of the UK (source: Operation World, 2005) yet they are often thought of as an insignificant minority because they represent so many different, and frequently small, streams.

Spiritually, most of these groups arose out of huge revival movements of the 17^th – 20^th centuries and many had a massive social impact on their communities.  Many of them campaigned for the abolition of slavery, improvement of housing and working conditions for poor people and the provision of relief for the destitute.  Their impact has been so great as to lead some secular historians to suggest that it was nonconformism that saved Britain from undergoing revolutions like those experienced on the continent in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, though of course that was not what motivated the likes of Elizabeth Fry or William Booth.  If the Anglican church is ‘the Tory party on its knees’, Labour owes more to Methodism than it does to Marxism, and it can be no coincidence that the Liberal Democrats are strong in parts of the country where nonconformism has been the most influential.  The desire to make the world a better place is strong in nonconformism and historically it has not been afraid to be politically involved.

Banned by law from investing in property during the 18^th century, many nonconformists went into trade and finance, and many well-known companies owe their origin to them, including Barclays, Cadburys, GKN, Lloyds TSB, Rowntrees and Wedgwood.  Pioneers of steam power Thomas Newcomen and James Watt were both nonconformists.  Others, finding their way into education barred by the entry requirement of being an Anglican, went on to found their own educational establishments.  Some expressed their views through their writing, most notably John Bunyan and the poet/artist William Blake.  Joseph Priestly, a nonconformist minister, was also an influential scientist.  Many others were notable scientists, theologians politicians and rights activists.

One reason for nonconformism being so popular in the UK is that its egalitarian philosophy and lack of ecclesiastical hierarchy had a great appeal among the English working class and struck a chord with the fundamentally democratic  spirit of the Anglo-Saxons.  Paradoxically, it attracted popular support in the celtic areas of the UK for precisely the same reason: it was not associated with the English establishment.  This egalitarianism expressed itself in congregational or presbyterian forms of government rather than Episcopalian, and gave rise to a sense of solidarity with the poor, leading to social action, and with the lost, leading to mission both at home and abroad.  Famous nonconformist missionaries include John Birch, Amy Carmichael, William Carey, David Livingstone, Mary Slessor, C T Studd, and Hudson Taylor, and many modern mission societies have their roots in nonconformism.

Today, the number of closed or near-empty nonconformist places of worship across the country are a testimony to the great revivals of the past, as nearly every village had its 18^th century chapel building as well as its church.  Many of those believing communities are now too small to maintain their rural buildings, and often congregate in the large town centre churches, which in turn are planting out small churches into homes and community centres throughout the country.  21^st century nonconformism may look different in many ways but the spirit is still the same.  The heritage of nonconformism is one we would do well to live up to, in expressing our compassion for the poor, or concern for the lost, and our desire to make the world a better place for all.

Last week Syzygy was at the City to City Conference in Berlin, where the headline speaker was pastor Tim Keller from the US, supported by a number of well-known church-planting specialists from a variety of European countries.  It was great to hear so many practical success stories and to meet so many young people all enthusiastically involved in church planting across the continent.  25 different countries were represented, and although some of their contingents were small, it was good to hear positive feedback from people from Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Russia, not countries normally associated with church-planting success.

Tim Keller was eloquent, thought-provoking and provided significant insights into a traditional-style church plant.  He has clearly thought through what he has done at Redeemer in New York and gave some detailed but necessarily condensed tips, particularly about understanding and engaging with city dwellers as opposed to suburbanites.  The most significant one was also one of the most obvious: if you do not really love the city you’re called to, the locals will see through you and not respond.

City to City Europe is a network growing out of Redeemer City to City, the international ministry of Keller and others, and has a vision for planting churches in city centre communities rather than the suburbs.  Their style is fairly traditional although their methodology is not, and if you are looking to plant an urban church anywhere in the world, you will find resources and networking opportunities through them.  They have on board people who know what they are doing, and to demonstrate it they have put on youtube some good quality videos about their churches in several European cities. Click to see the Dublin one.  I chose this partly because it’s in English, but also because I spent some time talking to Rob Jones at the conference and heard a lot more about his work, which sounds really good.

Although this conference was all about Europe, Redeemer City to City is active in some major cities of other continents and may well be of interest to those already at work in an urban context.

Celebrations in Bulgarian churches?

This month’s guest blogger is Valentin Kozhuharov, who lectures in missiology at the University of Plovdiv and is a consultant on missions to the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Since the changes of 1990 (and before that no religious life was possible in Eastern Europe because of the persecutions the communists systematically carried out against Christians and any other religion), the church in Bulgaria has grown rapidly and fruitfully.

The Orthodox church has mostly been occupied with restoring its internal ecclesiastical life, so mission has not been its main goal of church work, but anyway this church organised a nationwide network of Sunday schools, undertook various charitable activities and started (only in the last 7-8 years) mission in prisons, orphanages, old people’s homes and other social institutions.  It even started “external” mission by sending a priest to South Africa in July 2010 to plant an Orthodox church in Pretoria.

The amount of mission work, which has mostly been done in a bit chaotic way, needed systematisation and theoretical-practical foundations, and in the diocese of Veliko Tarnovo a mission department was opened in January 2010 and a missionary document has been developed: “Principles of mission for the Bulgarian Orthodox church”.  In June 2011 the Principles were considered by the Holy Synod, and now in several diocesan centres the bishops have appointed mission educators to further develop mission strategy in their dioceses and to practically carry out missionary activities.

Devotional art at Rila Monastery

The evangelical churches in Bulgaria have been more active in the so called “social mission” where they carried out mission work in almost all social institutions in the country dealing with children and the disadvantaged (children’s homes, prisons, orphanages, old people’s homes, hospitals, etc). In many areas the Orthodox church and the evangelical churches have competed with each other in these mission fields, and often they would oppose the mission work of the “other” church; in some instances the Orthodox church used the authority of the state to oust the “sectarian” Christian organisations (as they treated the evangelical churches in the country).

This made Christians of both the Orthodox and the evangelical churches to think, and to come to practical recommendations, about mission of Christian unity where all the churches in the country are able to combine resources and efforts in their God-commanded mission work in society.  In the last two to three years, in many social institutions these Christians work together with the same marginalised and needy people and children.  Still the day when they all will be working together in one spirit and one heart is far away, but a good start has been made.

Valentin Kozhuharov

Bulgarian missionaries take part (and some of them took the leading role) in the newly-established Orthodox Mission Network which aims to increase mission awareness within the Orthodox churches in Europe and to initiate true missions on their territories.  Bulgarian missiologists develop theoretical issues of mission, and for the first time missiology has been taught as a theological discipline since February 2011 in one of the university theological faculties.  These missionaries and missiologists cooperate with many other missionaries and missiologists both Orthodox and non-Orthodox and both in Europe and worldwide.

Please pray:

• for Valentin as he lectures on missiology and stimulates a passion for outreach among all Bulgarian denominations
• for the gospel to flourish in Bulgaria
• for more mission workers, both foreign and local, to train and inspire the church

For more information about praying for Bulgaria visit the World Prayer Map

Early autumn can be a beautiful time in England.  It’s often warm, and the golden sunshine lights the reds, russets and browns of turning leaves.  Fruit ripens, seedheads pop and dewdrops diamond the spiders’ webs.  In a tradition going back millennia before the start of their own religion, Christians take some of the harvest into their places of worship to honour the God who gives them food.  Yet in the midst of the rejoicing, there is hard work organising sheafs of wheat, displays of elaborately plaited bread, and vases of chrysanthemums.  One lady commented cheerfully to me, ‘I’m glad we only have to do this once a year!’

The feast of Passover is in essence a similar event.  Although six months removed from the English harvest, Passover is a celebration of the barley harvest as well as of the Exodus.  Joyful pilgrims went up to Jerusalem from all over ancient Israel to celebrate together.  The third day after Passover is called the Feast of  First Fruits, when they took their tithe of barley to the temple.  One Sunday nearly two thousand years ago, such a band centred on a rabbi from Nazareth.  With his twelve lieutenants, assorted women who funded his work, and possibly dozens of hangers on, he would have found difficulty staying in the crowded city, so they all stayed at the home of some friends in Bethany.

Martha and Mary remind me of Marilla and Anne in the book Anne of Green Gables. I can imagine Martha fussed with the responsibility of catering for so many: ‘Well, Anne, we’ll need to wash all the best crockery, and get some of my pickles out of the larder, and for goodness’ sake let’s have none of your daydreaming today!’

‘Oh but Marilla, isn’t is SO exciting that Jesus is coming to our home!  I’m so happy that I could die perfectly contented even if the rest of my life were misery and squalor.’

It’s not surprising that Martha got stressed with the catering.  It would be a massive task hosting such a crowd.  Yet Jesus, who presumably ate the supper she cooked, said that Mary, distracted from her responsibilities by the joy of being with Jesus, had made the better choice.  It seems that Jesus is not looking for servants – he already has plenty of those.  Jesus is looking for kindred spirits.

Many of us active in ministry are so busy with the work we do for God, that we often don’t have the time to sit down and be with him.  We run around Marthaing away, and seldom sit and Mary.  In order to combat the stress and busyness in our lives, we need to make time listen to what Jesus has to say to us.  One friend of mine has it in his job description to spend one whole morning in prayer each week.  We may think that’s a luxury we cannot afford with so much responsibility to carry, but if we asked Jesus whether he’d prefer us to be busy, what do you think he would answer?

The legal situation of Christianity in the UK is something that has been slowly giving cause for concern over the past few years, and has become more serious in recent months.  Although our religious freedom is obvious to the many millions of Christians worldwide who can be oppressed, imprisoned, or even lynched with impunity because they lack any form of legal protection, an aggressive secularist agenda has been building up momentum, prompting well-known Christian apologist Michael Ramsden to observe recently that whenever Christian rights come into conflict with rights based on sexual preferences, they will be trumped.

Much of this situation has resulted from the Equality Act 2006, which (quite rightly) made it illegal to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of their religion or sexuality.   However this left an area of uncertainty over what happens when rights collide, resulting in a number of court cases as pressure groups (and their lawyers) endeavour to get more clarity.  We report on a number of cases so that you are informed about the issues.

Cross – For many years the wearing of a cross has been a issue which emerges occasionally in the popular press.  It is not unusual for employers to ban the wearing of jewellery in the workplace and wearing a cross is not deemed to be essential to Christianity (unlike a Sikh Kara bracelet).   A BA employee was banned from wearing a cross and in a high profile case BA was found not to have discriminated against her.  A Christian taxi driver was ordered by York City Council to remove a palm cross from his cab in case it caused offence to passengers, though the council subsequently relented.

Public witness – two Christians were warned by police that they were committing hate crime by handing out tracts in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.  A university CU was reported to police for handing out gospels to students.

Homosexuality – A Christian couple running a B&B in Cornwall refused to let a homosexual couple share a double bed.  They argued that they were not picking on homosexuals, but because of their beliefs only supply double rooms to heterosexual married couples.  The court found them guilty of breaking the law, but reduced the fine out of respect for their religious beliefs. This couple subsequently admitted that they knew they were breaking the law but felt they had a right to set their own standards for their own business.

Faith in the workplace – A Christian doctor with an unblemished record may be struck off after discussing his faith with an adult patient who agreed to the discussion.  A Christian nurse was suspended for offering to pray for a patient.  A Christian registrar lost her job for refusing to officiate at same-sex civil partnerships.  It is now illegal to advertise for a Christian to fill a job in a Christian organisation if when the job could be done just as well by a non-Christian.

Gay marriage – Earlier this year the Government announced plans to create same-sex marriages on the same basis as heterosexual ones.  At the moment homosexual partnerships are recognised on a different basis to a marriage and there is no requirement to carry them out in churches.  There are significant concerns that once gay marriages are legalised, it will be a discriminatory offence for a church minister to refuse to perform one.

After centuries of Christendom in Britain, Christianity is now actively being relegated to an obscure private viewpoint which is not allowed to have any impact on how Christians behave or speak in public.  Christians are not actively persecuted yet, but it is clear that attempts are being made to disempower Christians so that they have no legal defence for traditional Christian activities and opinions.

While each of the above cases is worrying in itself for Christians, it is clear that the purpose of the law is good: that Christians can no longer discriminate against others because of their beliefs.  The result however is bad: that others can discriminate against Christians because of their beliefs.  Lions: 1 – Christians: 0

For further information visit The Christian Institute‘s website.

This week adult TCK (Third Culture Kid) Gill Gouthwaite reflects on what it meant to come ‘home’ to England as a missionary kid.

To me, England was a land of aniseed balls and liquorice, sticks of rock and gobstoppers, dolly mixtures and wine gums.  It was a land of daisies and dandelions, cowslip and hawthorn, where the most dangerous nature got was the occasional bramble or rose-thorn, or on a particularly bad day, a nettle sting.   Food was sausage rolls and quiche, scalding hot tea or instant coffee in church cups (never with sugar, which rots your teeth in England, though presumably not in Brazil), smoky barbeques in spring showers, aspartame-flavoured orange squash and overdone lamb.  Hillwalking in cagoules, wet feet, the excitement of clambering over a stile, of reaching the summit and being lifted to stand proudly atop the trig point, eating soggy sandwiches, and sipping a well-deserved taste of mint liqueur at the local pub after a long day’s walking.  The Beano and the Dandy, stamps printed with pretty pictures, the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  This was England.

Naturally I knew when we returned that I didn’t know what the English were like.  Logically I knew this, but in my heart they were a simple, sweet people who saw my parents – and me by association – as heroes, willing to leave Everything to do the Will of God.

But to people at school this was not who I was.  I was the Brazilian girl who, disappointingly, turned out not have luxurious Latin locks or olive skin…  I was the American who had never lived north of Mexico.  I was the English girl who wasn’t even born here.  I had the right to whichever countries they chose, when they chose.  England, it seemed, was a land of Eurovision politics and sarcasm, of ‘health and safety’, of the infernal ‘Spice Girls’ and of  ‘Steps’, where one could dislike any and all of these things, but one must absolutely know who they were and why one disliked them.  England was also a place of profound ignorance and apathy about international suffering, which, when it impinged on one’s consciousness, could be assuaged by putting £2 in Oxfam’s collection bucket.

This was how I felt for years.  Things have changed now, both in me and in this, one of my countries.  But the changes did not come easily, or quickly.  I wish now that someone had taken me under their wing and taught me why it is that we don’t like Eurovision, but still we watch it; who ‘Posh Spice’ was, and to pity her; and to laugh aloud at the absurdity of a ‘wet floor’ sign in a shower room.  I could not laugh then, but now I do, by the grace of God.

Gill still likes to stand proudly atop trig points, but no longer needs to be lifted. . .

This month’s guest blogger is Raymond Pfister, Director of Ichthus21, the European Institue for Re/conciliation Studies, a Christian organisation devoted to the development of Europe.

It is in John 3:16, possibly the most known Scripture of all, that we are constantly reminded that “God so loved the world…”.  Except Europe maybe, I have been wondering, when listening to the reasoning and attitude some evangelical Christians have adopted towards the old continent?

There is really no doubt possible, is there?  God actually loves Europe… not because it is such a nice place to visit during our next vacation, but because the people who live in Europe have been created in the image of God and are all in need of redemption.  There can be no doubt either that European (just as much as national) institutions are God’s servants (cf. Romans 13), yet we know that they are far from being immune against failure, corruption and power abuse.  God’s ultimate sovereignty will certainly prevail.

If the life and mission of the Christian Church is about following the example of Jesus, one does not become light of the world (not even in Europe) by way of isolationism or salt of the earth (not even in Europe) by way of avoiding the risk of contamination.  Jesus came to a world of sinners and identified with them.  He knew that this was the only way he could really make a difference.  In order to reach out to people it takes the will to embrace and the resolution not to turn your back.  Jesus never hesitated in the name of love to be part of us, even though he could have been tempted to think that he would be better off without us – is he not so different after all?

On the one hand, the European puzzle is made up of a great variety of people with cultures, languages and traditions of their own.  On the other hand, there has probably never been a greater movement of people within Europe than in our own time.  From the Scandinavian North to the Iberian Peninsula, from the British Isles to the Baltic States, people are coming together and experiencing diversity and difference as never before.

The good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about adopting that kingdom mentality which allows us to see the broader (European) picture as opposed to a narrow-minded, monocultural reality.  The Christian faith empowers us to engage the other (European) with compassion instead of fear.  This Gospel of hope is about building bridges, not walls of separation (we have had enough of them in Europe!).  The Kingdom of God cannot be understood without a strong concept of group solidarity replacing the search of our own particular interest.  Kingdom mentality confesses that we are stronger together and that it is possible to live together regardless of gender, ethnicity, economic circumstances or even political preference.

Why are evangelical Christians living in Europe more fascinated by missionary journeys to fields afar, while missing the chance to really change our European societies?  Can we afford not to have our mentalities changed by the power of the Holy Spirit?  Resisting the Spirit leads to despair; walking in the Spirit leads to hope.  I believe that those who follow Jesus are a people of hope.  It is precisely hope Europe needs, as we have been reminded by the recent HOPE FOR EUROPE Congress in Budapest (9-13 May 2011).  Help is however first needed for the helpers themselves – local churches in Europe need to be equipped in order to have a real European agenda, in word and deed, for the 21^st century.

Raymond is passionate about Europe.  He is available to talk at churches, conferences and Bible colleges on the subject.  He can be contacted through his website or at contact@ichthus21.eu.

Building the church?

Last month (see ‘Researching Mission in Europe’) we told you about the Report on Missional Church Planting in Europe which Syzygy is producing for Eurochurch.net, and today Syzygy is  proud to release the Interim report.

Nearly 400 people involved in church planting, leading mission agencies, churches and  networks, and working academically in universities and bible colleges have participated in our research.  They work in 35 European countries and represent all the major churches, and are ministering in a wide variety of contexts both within their home cultures and as cross-cultural mission workers.  It is believed that this is the largest study of its type carried out in Europe, and we hope it will be highly influential in linking together and supporting church planting individuals and networks.  One notable academic commented that we have succeeded in identifying and involving all the key church planting individuals in his country.

The report contains overviews of the missional environment in each country covered by our research, and a directory of the 318 participating individuals working in those countries who did not ask us to keep their details confidential for reasons of confidentiality and security.  It brings together practical church planters and academic missiologists and will hopefully stimulate discussion and help people working in different roles to network together more effectively and further develop church planting activity throughout the continent.

The overall impression gained is of an immense variety of activities being carried out by a large number of denominations and networks, who do not always seem to be linking together and networking effectively.  One story that emerged in the process of gathering information concerned some church planters who felt called to go to a particular city to prayer walk, and did it for a month before bumping into people from a different organisation doing exactly the same thing.  We hope that our work will be able to reduce such instances of duplication and promote co-operation.

97 of the respondents to our survey are working in the UK, which is understandable since the existing networks we used to start our research are primarily based here, and we hope in future to be able to increase the number of participants in the several countries where we have few contacts.  The other countries where we had a good response are Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland.

Following the formal release of the Interim Report at the Hope II conference in Budapest this week, Eurochurch.net will be organising consultations in various European countries to promote co-operation between church planters and to investigate the potential for future networking.  The final report will be delivered following these consultations.

The final report will be released by October this year so it’s still not too late to be included.  People involved in Missional Church Planting in Europe can participate in our research by completing a short survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/eurochurch or by contacting info@syzygy.org.uk.

Syzygy produced this report in partnership with Nova Research Centre and Springdale College: Together in Mission, and the research is being sponsored by the McLellan Foundation.

Despite the prevalent perception that Europe considers God is dead, and that churches are in terminal decline, there is much going on in Europe for us to be excited about.  Many postmodern young Europeans have a willingness to explore their spirituality and engage with God in a way that would puzzle the preceding two generations, who have mainly felt that Christianity is increasingly irrelevant and discredited.  A new generation however, being largely unchurched, has no such reservations and is often interested in the Christian faith while being untouched by the cynicism of their predecessors.

The upshot of this is that there is a great deal of evangelism, mission and church-planting going on right across Europe.  Much of this is carried out by small mission organisations, simple churches, independent mission workers and informal networks.  Often focussed tightly at specific groups – young people, bikers, Moslem-background believers, ethnic minorities – these many, diverse operations add up to an evangelistic explosion across the continent.  While established denominations and sending agencies also see significant growth, diversity and informality have been particularly effective.  More evangelistic activity is taking place now than at any time over the last 50 years.

The result is that the picture of evangelism in Europe has become so localised and complex that no single person or organization has an overall picture of all the developments, initiatives, networks or new organizations even in an individual country, still less across Europe as a whole.   For this reason Syzygy is pleased to be co-operating with Eurochurch.net, Nova Research Centre and Springdale College: Together in Mission to undertake research that will identify the significant missional organisations and networks functioning within the nations and across the continent of Europe, and determine in what ways they can be more effective either by being part of an existing network or by tacit co-operation with other networks.

It is our conviction that this information is crucial to academics, church leaders, networks and agencies for forging strategic alliances which will facilitate the work of mission throughout the continent.  The objective is to produce a comprehensive directory of all churches, agencies and individuals involved in church planting in Europe.  That knowledge will be used to form a map of activity which will then be made widely available to denominations, churches, organisations and individuals who would find it helpful to know what it happening.

The preliminary results of our research will be presented at a seminar at Hope II in Budapest in May and there will continue to be follow-up consultations in a variety of European locations to determine with other participants how better to foster cooperation between the various agencies, individuals and groupings involved in this massive task of taking the good news back to the least reached continent.

If you are involved in any way in European missions and are willing to spend just five minutes completing an online form to help with our research, please contact me on tim@syzygy.org.uk.

A youth event considering the appeal of pornography in society

ICF is an exciting and innovative way of doing church which is growing quickly throughout Europe.

Since the first church was started in Zurich in 1996, the movement has spread rapidly and now has 40 churches in 8 different European countries, mostly in Switzerland, with plans to start up in several other countries.   With a lively worship style, youthful leadership and up to date use of technology, they are attracting a large number of young people wherever they set up.

ICF’s youngest church leader is Christian Gfeller, who started a new church in Schaffhausen just two years ago, which has already grown to some 200 people worshipping  God in three separate Sunday services.  When Syzygy met Christian at a conference recently, he explained that their vision is to bring people back to church by letting them see that church can be dynamic, relevant and contemporary.  This, he believes, is what attracts people who are not accustomed to thinking of church as anything other than old-fashioned, irrelevant and boring.

Christian Gfeller

ICF has a strong ‘corporate identity’ (to use their own words!)which clearly cascades right through the movement.  Quality and fun manage to walk hand in hand.  In their desire to be relevant, they are willing to change things, be experimental, and take risks.  They’re also committed to planting new churches.  By the time a church grows to 350 members, they’re already thinking about moving to multi-site meetings to enable the growth to continue.  This has attracted attention in the Swiss press, which can’t quite get its head around the fact that church can be fun and Christians can have an infectious zest for life.

Surprisingly, the bulk of the church growth has not come from disaffected Christians leaving other churches and joining ICF.  Christian says that only about 10% of the members of his church in Schaffhausen joined from other churches.  Half the members had been churchgoers as children but had long since ceased attending, and the remainder were mainly unchurched.

Asked about the sort of social work that the church does, Christian  explained, The biggest social work we do is offer community. This may well be the key to why ICF is bucking the trend among young people, who research shows are increasingly disinterested in church while becoming more open to exploring their spirituality.  In an age when many young people have to cope with social dislocation and fractured families, offering them a loving and committed Christian community may just be the way to reach a generation for Christ.

You can find out more about ICF at http://www.icf-movement.org/

This week’s guest blogger is Rev Dr Martin Robinson, Principal of Springdale College: Together in Mission.  This article first appeared on www.eurochurch.net in September 2010.

Tom Wright, the recently-retired Bishop of Durham and leading New Testament scholar, marked his retirement bygiving a significant interview to the BBC in which he reflected on the situation of the Church of England.  During that wide ranging interview he picked on the theme that we are not becoming more secular, in fact if anything we are becoming more religious.

What he described applies to Europe more widely.  In a world of ‘posts’ – post-empire, post-modern, and post-Christian – we can now add post-secular.  A number of European commentators have picked up on this theme.  Europe is increasingly post-secular.

How do we make sense of such a situation?  How can we have lost touch with the founding roots of Europe and become post-Christian and yet now be rejecting the root of that criticism, secularism itself?

The clue lies in the contrast between being ‘religious people’ and ‘spiritual people’.  The people of Europe don’t think of themselves as ‘religious’, by which they mean to identify with a particular religious organization or institution but they can think of themselves as ‘spiritual’ by which they mean interested in God, in prayer, in a sense of wonder and mystery about life.

No more empty church buildings?

The root of this rejection of religion lies partly in the ancient European worry about religion as embodying conflict combined with a more recent rejection of institutions of all kinds  - whether they be political, social, or even educational.  We are now radically individualistic with all the angst that such a choice produces.  More worryingly there is also a gradual severing of the relationship between the idea of spirituality and the idea of morality.  You can be a ‘spiritual’ person without having to think too deeply about a particular moral code beyond the requirement to do no harm.

The depth of this shift of sentiment helps to illustrate the painful lesson that the church has learnt these last 20 years: the answer to the question of the decline of the church does not lie in a particular programme or model of the church.   Instead we have to learn how to do mission – in our cultural context – deeply contextualized and profoundly local.

In a recent interview with a church leader in Wales, I learnt that most of the historic churches in Wales are still declining but that a few  congregations in their midst were seeing good growth.  One or two of the smaller historic denominations are beginning to turn the corner and that some of the newer and independent churches are seeing remarkable growth.  The single factor that connects these very different expressions of church is the willingness to connect with and to serve at a deep level the communities in which they are located.

One of my students who is exploring the growth of some ‘traditional’ congregations in Scotland is making the same kind of discoveries in that very different context.  The exploration of this kind of mission is precisely what Eurochurch.net as a network of practitioners and thinkers is committed to locate and debate.

Martin Robinson

This story came to me from Agape and is too good to waste!

Several months ago, some Christian groups in Bologna (Italy) gave out 10,000 flyers and invited people to a Christian concert.  Not one seeker came at all.  Only a few insiders.  Yet at the end of October, Apollo XVI astronaut Charlie Duke was invited to speak, and crowds of several hundred students came.  Jesse Marco from Bologna reports: ‘We have no words to describe what just happened these last days here in Bologna.  One church planter commented,  Charlie, we have been here 23 years, and never have we seen these kinds of crowds, and never have we seen doors open like this.’

Charlie spoke at the scientific high school where nothing Christian is ever let in the door.  The previous week a 15 year old student had shot himself.  Charlie was able to share his testimony in detail, and part of  his testimony is that his wife was suicidal before she gave her life to Jesus.  He shared that and the students were listening to his every word.  After he had finished with his testimony and closed, the headmaster came up and thanked Charlie for coming and reviewed the main points he shared in his testimony.  Jesse said, ‘WOW!!  Never in our wildest dreams in a school where atheism is their god could we have imagined this would happen.’

In the Astronomy Department of the University of Bologna over 120 students turned up to hear Charlie.  Some had to stand outside the hall listening.  This event was set up by the university and specifically by a man who asked that God shouldn’t even be mentioned.  After speaking, there was a time for questions and answers and the man who said no God asked Charlie to share about the challenges of life after reaching the pinnacle of your career at age 36.  Then that night at dinner, he told Charlie again to make sure he talked about his personal life.

Jesse writes:  ’On Tuesday evening we met for dinner with all the university officials who were responsible for the evening.  As we walked into the room which seats 300, it was standing room only again.  Charlie walked into the hall I was behind him and had not seen the crowd yet.  We then heard a very loud applause and were overwhelmed as were the school officials.  He opened his talk by thanking Agape Italia for bringing him to Bologna.  This was in a room with many students.  We are so thankful for all God did and again the doors this opened for all of us here in Bologna.’

Please pray that Agape team in Italy and associated churches in Bologna would be able to follow up their many contacts from this event.

Pray for the many students who have head a Christian testimony for the first time.

Pray for the ministry of Charlie as he shares his testimony around the world.  You can read more about him at www.charlieduke.net

This cute little boy is Igor.  He wasn’t always so cheerful.  During the Serbian war, Igor and his family had to flee their home, and ended up with hundreds of others sleeping rough in a half-complete school building which became an ad hoc refugee camp.  Traumatised by the event, he withdrew, and became known throughout the camp as the child who never smiled.

Some while later, some Christians from Belgrade Bible School began a regular ministry to the refugees.  They built up relationships and helped whoever they could.  One day they asked Igor’s parents if they could take him on a children’s camp they were organising, along with his brothers and sisters and other children from the refugee camp.  His parents agreed.

When the children came back, people didn’t recognise Igor.  They thought he looked familiar, but they didn’t know him.  Only after a few days did somebody work out what the difference was – his cheeky grin!  When they asked him why he smiled so much, he told them that he’d met Jesus.

Belgrade Bible School has hundreds of similar stories of what God has done in the lives of Serbian people.  Since its beginning in 1996 amid the death throes of Yugoslavia, it has sent out church planters and evangelists all over Serbia.  They have endured much hardship and struggle, but the gospel is prevailing.  Please pray for them.  Supported by Oak Hall, the well-known organiser of Christian expeditions, the bible college is under Serbian leadership and continues to grow and develop.

Read more about Belgrade Bible College: http://www.oakhall.org.uk/

Visit the Bible College with Oak Hall: http://www.oakhall.co.uk/pages/summer10serbiaatom.asp