Poland: European Leadership Forum

Back in May, at the same time that UK voters were expressing their increasing Euroscepticism in the European elections, I was privileged to attend the European Leadership Forum in Poland.

This is an annual ‘by invitation’ conference that seeks to serve and equip national Christian leaders to renew the biblical church and re-evangelise Europe. There were over 750 delegates.

Do not capitulate

A vast array of different ‘networks’ were incorporated into the conference, including theologians, apologists, scientists, youth leaders and media communicators. John Lennox preached powerfully from the life of Abraham in Genesis. Wayne Grudem was also speaking and Greg Koukl was excellent on combatting the delusions of naturalism.

Peter Akinola, the former Archbishop of Nigeria, preached powerfully on the final night, drawing from the experiences of the persecuted church in Nigeria to urge European evangelicals not to capitulate to the pressures of secularism and Islam. A huge range of resources from the conference are freely available on the web at www.foclonline.org

I joined the network for Leaders of Christian Organisations. The great benefit of the conference for me was the opportunity to meet men and women who are seeking to minister the gospel across the continent, from young church planters working in highly secularised Sweden to a lady running a crisis pregnancy centre in predominantly Muslim Bosnia. It was thrilling and inspiring.

The conference leadership is predominantly European, but the conference is superbly organised by an American team, supported by a large number of volunteers from US churches, especially Arizona.

These are the main things I learned:

The great need of Europe

According to Operation World the population of Europe is 737million people, of whom only 18million or so (that’s around 2.5%) are evangelical believers. The current growth rate for evangelicals is 1.1% a year. Compare that to China, where 75million people are estimated to be evangelical believers (5.7% of the population) and where the growth rate is 2.9% per year.

It was evident speaking to many of those from Eastern Europe that the great openness to the gospel that followed the end of Communism is over, and that these countries have become just as secularised as the rest of Europe. In many countries there are tiny numbers of evangelicals and almost no growth. In Greece, for example, there are just 0.4% evangelicals, and in Italy a mere 1.1%. The traditionally Protestant countries of Northern Europe are experiencing the same challenges as the UK, with state churches in rapid decline and abandoning biblical faithfulness in favour of the gay agenda. Persecution is beginning to increase in some places.

The great opportunity of Europe

At the same time there are tremendous opportunities for the gospel. Europe continues to exercise very considerable cultural influence around the world. Large numbers of international students come to study. There were some tremendous encouragements during the conference. The evangelical church in France is experiencing strong growth (2.4% per year), with a new church being planted every ten days.

The Reformed and Pentecostal churches in France have started to work together for the evangelisation of the nation, and the number of believers has doubled over the last decade. They are also seeing conversions amongst the Muslim population, which is the largest in Europe, and the Jewish population, which is the largest outside of Israel.

It was also very clear that English has now become the common language of the Continent. This may be the largely result of the rise of the internet and the global influence of American culture, but it does mean that we enjoy unprecedented opportunities to serve the cause of the gospel even if our language skills are weak.

Our great responsibility to Europe

While we inevitably feel under pressure as evangelicals in the UK, I was struck by how much stronger we are than the evangelical church in other European countries. We have a relatively large number of evangelicals in the UK (5% or so), with great resources and training readily available to us.

We have a wonderful missionary heritage, but our natural focus has perhaps been on the former countries of the Empire and China. We have not seen Europe as a continent in need of mission, perhaps because we saw it as Christian already, and other European countries joined us in the missionary enterprise.

However, many of the countries to which we send missionaries are now far more thoroughly evangelised than Europe. Perhaps it is time to turn our focus to the massive mission field on our doorstep.

We need to see the large numbers of Eastern European migrant workers coming to the UK as a great opportunity for the gospel, rather than as a threat and a problem. If UK churches could reach out to our Polish, Bulgarian, Lithuania or Romanian communities with the gospel, that could have a long-lasting impact on the work of the gospel in those needy countries.

Love Europe

At the same time that the British population is becoming more sceptical about Europe, British Christians need perhaps to become more concerned for the cause of the gospel in Europe. Acts 16 records how the gospel first crossed into Europe when Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia begging for help. Perhaps it is time for the British church to make helping Europe one of our top priorities.