A new generation of church planting pioneers is taking the lead in the Netherlands. On 19 January 2008 Ronald van der Molen, Stefan Paas and others will facilitate a national day for church planters, pulling a wide spectrum of the Church together. The topic is 'reproduction in church planting'. In the meanwhile Martijn Vellekoop coordinates a research project to find out how many churches have been planted in the Netherlands over the past ten years.
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In this week's edition of Joel News International I focused on the question: how many people in Europe follow Jesus? Three different studies, using different definitions of 'committed Christian' and varying methodologies, came up with multiple indications: 1.1% (GEM), 3.5% (OW) and 4.2% (emRG). My colleague Andreas Wolf from Germany says he has most confidence in the higher percentage, and suggests that in God's Book of Life it might well be 10%. Wolfgang Simson disagrees with him and stresses that the issue is not about what people profess, but whether they really live surrendered lives and take their orders from Christ the King. He estimates the number of 'real Jesus followers' at just 0.1%. What is certainly clear though is that Europe is probably one of the most needy places in the world today.
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Caught up by skype with DAWN colleague Alexander Campbell, who just published a progress report on organic church planting in the UK, and returned from a trip to Denver. In his view the situation in Europe is quite similar to the States. Several years ago Mike Steele of 'Organic DAWN' looked to Europe "to discover where things would head in America," but now simple church is already becoming a grassroots movement over there, while Europe is still in the beginning stages.
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Lots of good connections and inspiration over the past few days. Wednesday afternoon we took a cable car up to Mürren, a car-less village built on a steep mountain overlooking the Jungfrau range (pictures here). In the evening Andrew Jones led us in an alternative 'worship by numbers' session, followed by an improvised Connect Europe team meeting in the local pub.
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The main contribution to the conference came yesterday night from Florian Bärtsch, an apostolic evangelist from the Luzern area. There are not many organic church networks that are apostolic in the sense that they incorporate three elements:
1. a supernatural dimension of signs and wonders, and Spirit-led risk-taking (like we read in the book of Acts); 2. strategic focus and planning; and 3. a relaxed team learning attitude. Florian is a zealous speaker, and really got our attention. Alexander Campbell was so good to list the key lessons learnt, and also Andreas and Gabi blogged their reflections.
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