| It would certainly not be the first time that God changes the narrative of a continent. Only decades ago, Protestants described Latin America as a mission field. Today, it’s become a mission force, and the Brazilian church sends the second most missionaries in the world. In 1900, Africa was home to about nine million Christians. Who could ever have imagined that by the 2020s there would be half a billion Christians on the continent?
But the missional challenges for Christians in Europe are overwhelming. The old continent has a complex and unique history with the Christian faith. “No other continent has been exposed to Christianity for such a prolonged period and in such an extensive way,” wrote Jim Memory, the Lausanne Europe co-regional director, in the Europe 2021 Missiological Report. “Yet just as Europe was the first continent to be Christianised, it was also the first to be de-Christianised.”
Even so, in our day, an extraordinary re-evangelisation of Europe is taking place. Here are five ways we are seeing God move throughout the continent:
1. Diaspora churches
Latin-American migrants have planted thousands of churches in Spain, Portugal and beyond over the last thirty years. It is difficult to find a major European city that does not have a large Spanish speaking and/or Brazilian congregation. Similarly, Chinese churches can be found almost everywhere. African-initiated Pentecostal churches number in the thousands in Britain alone. |
