EUROPE: RESTORING HOPE
By Deborah Meroff
VTR Publications. 296 pages. £14.95
ISBN 978 3 941 750 067
The preface of this book states: ‘Europe is still perceived as a Christian continent by many outsiders, but growingly as post-Christian by its inhabitants’. The author, an American living in London, fills out this assertion with a wide range of facts and figures, interviews with Christian leaders across the continent, and testimonies of people who are attempting to minister for Christ in Europe.
A useful part of the book, which enables the reader to follow up any line of interest, are the hundreds of websites of Christian organisations and the dozens of books for recommended reading. However, despite my wholehearted agreement with the overall analysis of Europe today, I have five major reservations about the book.
Who is it written for? Most European Christians would probably be aware of the need for mission in Europe. As the French proverb puts it, the book is trying to break down an open door.
Is it possible to deal with the whole of Europe in such broad terms? There are considerable cultural differences between the constituent countries. Between north and south, between culturally Protestant and culturally Catholic countries, between the countries of the former Communist bloc and Western Europe, the legacy of history is not easily erased. We may all eat at McDonald’s, but the deeper levels of thought, belief and the perception of religion are hugely diverse. Each country needs to do its own homework to discover the bridges for the gospel.
There is some confusion between the fact that ‘Europe has gone through 100 years of the most devastating de-Christianisation in its history’, which no-body would dispute, and the growth of the evangelical movement in certain parts of Europe. For example, the book talks about ‘the current slow pace of church planting’, but in France, the country I know the best, the number of evangelical Christians has grown from 50,000 in 1950 to 460,000 today, and the number of evangelical churches has increased from 769 in 1970 to over 2,000 today.
Despite the talk of church planting, churches are rarely mentioned in the book. The emphasis is almost totally on parachurch ministries, some of which are extremely small and unrepresentative of what is truly happening on the ground. Among these ministries, the majority are English-language or UK-based organisations.
I hope nonetheless that this book will encourage evangelism, church planting and church growth across Europe, as long as it is in a culturally sensitive way in each country. I agree totally with one of the opening sentences of the book: ‘Europe is very likely a battleground for the future of global Christianity’.
David Brown,
General Secretary of GBU France (IFES student movement), and church planter with France-Mission in Paris
