Monday 26 July 2010

Not a lot of evangelicals around Tours

I was just on the phone with a woman involved in evangelism in Tours, France. She said that although Tours has 200,000 people it has only 4 small (less than 100 people in each) evangelical churches.

That means that if you went to Tours and started meeting people, you would on average have to meet 500 people before you'd meet a single evangelical.

Then again, she said one of her three favourite things is evangelism. She sure has a lot of people in Tours to introduce to Jesus!

Thursday 22 July 2010

Only hundreds of evangelical Christians in Bosnia. Really?

In a week's time I will be meeting with a couple who have been doing church planting for decades in the Balkans. In anticipation of that I was looking at some statistics for that region and ran across this about Bosnia in OperationWorld <http://www.operationworld.org/country/bosn/owtext.html>

"The miniscule evangelical witness has grown since 1991. Then there were only 2 to 3 congregations, but this had grown to 29 in 2000 with 700 people attending services."

Wow! That's not many. Still, that is a ten fold multiplication in number of churches in under a decade.

Anyone have more recent stats? 

Photo used courtesy of graur razvan ionuthttp://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=987

Tuesday 20 July 2010

Are European Muslims "good" Muslims?



Given the increasing number and profile of Muslims in Europe (I am no longer surprised to see women in burkhas when I am out shopping) the Nova Research Centre's (www.novaresearch.eu) surprised me.  Its most recent newsletter presented the results of a number of surveys about attitudes of Muslims living in Europe.

And there are a lot of European Muslims, more than 38 million if you include those in Russia. So are they all "good Muslims". Do they pray, give, fast, deal with money, and live the rest of their lives as the Koran and Islamic tradition commands?

From  France, 2008:
- only 10% of Muslims consider religion very important in their lives
- 60% say they never pray

From Belgium, 2005:
-  only 10% of the Muslim population were 'practicing Muslims'

From a study of Islamic Imams in Sweden, 2004:
- as few as 15% of second-generation Muslims in Sweden could be considered 'religiously active'

From Russia:
- out of 20 million officially self-identified Muslims only 35-45% practice regularly

From the UK, 2007:
- 21% of Muslims had consumed alcohol, 65% were paying interest on a normal mortgage, 19% had gambled, whilst 9% admitted to having taken drugs

What can we conclude from this? At the very least that living a life based on one's cultural religious background is just as hard for "Muslims" as it is for "Christians". Maybe that gives us something in common!

Photo used by kind permission of Graeme Weatherston: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=330

Monday 19 July 2010

What do Ecuador, Israel and Germany have in common?

Yesterday I attended a Baptist church for the commissioning service of a couple preparing for church planting in Germany. During the service the pastor also prayed for a man going to Israel for the summer and pointed out a woman who was flying out to Ecuador that evening.

That would seem impressive enough, but when I was at the front praying for the couple going to Germany I noticed something else. The church was full of people of all ages (not that surprising) but also people who appeared to be from India, Africa, East Asia and beyond.

So here was a church that both welcomed people from anywhere who'd come to the UK, but was also concerned about those who didn't come and was supporting people going out to them. Not a bad example to follow!

Friday 16 July 2010

Hear about God moving in Italy!

Yesterday I was meeting with Martin Robinson of Together in Mission (togetherinmission.co.uk) and he told me about a church plant in Milan that has grown to 650 people and planted 7 new churches in the last year! Click on the link to hear its pastor talk about how she changed from being a Roman Catholic to now leading one of Italy's most influential churches. It involved fasting for a year, so I don't necessarily recommend trying this at home!


Untitled from Mary Publicover on Vimeo.

Thursday 15 July 2010

Is there an "ethnic" section in your church?


I was in Tescos yesterday shopping for rather mundane things like bread and orange juice. But as I went along the aisles I encountered the "ethnic food" section, which was stuffed full of all kinds of exciting sounding items, some of whose names I couldn't even read. In fact as I went around the store I also noticed a lot of shoppers speaking in languages I didn't understand.

That got me thinking. If our stores are full of people from places like Poland and Pakistan, how come our churches aren't? The stores bring them in by providing the things they need to live -- basmati rice, palm oil, polish sausage, malta drinks... How many of our churches are offering people something that they look at "on the shelf" and will say "Yes, I will have some of that!"?

If you want to do this for Poles, I've recently run across a good resource. It's called Pole to Pole and you can read  about it at http://www.globalconnections.co.uk/missionintheuk/poletopole
I'm sure I will have more to do with it later. So I'll add more then.

Oh and on ethnic food, last weekend I met a woman who'd been working in China where she ate fried scorpions WITH their stingers still on! Mmmmm...

Wednesday 14 July 2010

Who is reaching who?

A couple of nights ago I was at a goodbye party for the man finishing up as British Director of European Christian Mission (if Jenny reads this, the food was great!). While I talked my way around the nearly 30 people attending I realised it was quite an international bunch.

There was one couple where the husband is British and the wife is German who are preparing to go help with a church plant in Germany. There was a Lithuanian woman who is planning to work in England reaching out to other Eastern Europeans. There was a Nigerian man married to an English woman who plan to work with an English church plant. There was an English man working here in the UK doing European research but who pops across to Spain to offer consulting on Spanish church planting...

It was a good reminder that today is a unique time in the history of God's expanding kingdom. Increasingly He is using people from everywhere to go everywhere to reach everyone.

I can't wait to see the fruit of all this new activity. Go God!

Friday 9 July 2010

How do you run a church where almost no one works?

Funding a church will be a struggle in any situation. But what do you do when almost no one in the church has a job?

I was meeting yesterday with a couple name Terry and Christine who are church planting in a rural part of Spain. Average unemployment in Spain is around 20% (about twice the average in the euro zone). But in their area it is even worse. There are only one or two people in their entire church of 30 or more people who even have full-time employment!

I don't have an answer to this one. Do you?

Friday 2 July 2010

Amazing drug rehabilitation success involving olive oil?

The success rate at El Buen Samaritano Christian drug rehabilitation centre near Pozoblanco, Spain, is twice the national average.

Their combination of prayer, therapy and olive oil (more on that in a moment) means that 24% of those who pass through its doors will never even smoke a cigarette again, while more than 7 in 10 will never revert to drug taking!

Luciano Cabrera, mayor of the nearby city of Alcaracejos, admits that "Spain has got a geographical position that lends itself to the trafficking of drugs and people." The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction lists Spain as the key country in the trafficking of both cannabis and cocaine.

El Buen Samaritano owns a 150-year-old olive grove which stretches over 12 hectares of steep hillsides. The harvesting is done by those involved in the rehabilitation program using the same techniques used by farmers for hundreds of years. And the oil produced here has been rated as some of the best in the country.

The key to success, according to psychotherapist and centre director Raul Garcia, is to give the men a sense of purpose. "They need to learn to love a job. They know that bringing the harvest in will buy food for them and for other people... I have seen lives changed."

European Christian Mission helps to sponsor this project through a unique adopt-a-tree scheme. One thousand of the trees are up for adoption for £40 each, and the sponsor will receive a 3-litre container of extra virgin olive oil direct to their door. Find out more at www.buensam.org.uk

(adapted from an article by Hazel Southam published in Idea Magazine)

Thursday 1 July 2010

11 churches catering for ethnic minorities in Wolverhampton alone!


...Last weekend a conference dedicated to issues facing south Asian Christians in the UK challenged mainstream churches to "recognise south Asian followers as a significant community and to respond appropriately".
...There are 11 small churches catering for ethnic minorities in Wolverhampton alone, including one where the service is in Punjabi and traditional Indian instruments, such as the dhol, accompany prayers.
...A spokesman for the Church of England said it was doing more to engage with ethnic minority worshippers, citing as an example a vicar in Walthamstow, east London, who was trying to integrate his Urdu-speaking congregation into the everyday life of the larger flock....
...The Rev Clive Gregory, bishop of Wolverhampton, said: "A large part of the role is to encourage the next generation of ethnic minority priests. We've discovered there is a lot of self-confidence which is lacking, particularly amongst minority ethnic Christians, in terms of really believing that God is calling them to be a vicar in the Church."