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 PrintableVersion Europe: going for it!A review of the 2008 European Leadership Forum It was once said that Africa was the ‘Dark Continent’. As I would say to my Ugandan students, Europe is now the ‘Dark Continent’ — the gospel cause appears to be at a very low ebb here. Increasingly restrictive legislation and a pervasive hardening of cultural attitudes are all too familiar to anyone ministering here. Parochialism and pietismA common reaction has been to get on with the work in our own (dwindling?) patch and blithely hope for the best. This has often been coupled with a pietism that failed to integrate all of life into a gospel-shaped worldview. It could be argued that it was precisely this combination of parochialism and pietism that brought about the European state of affairs in the first place. Change will only come when God’s people renew our confidence in the gospel itself. We need to trust that, under God, the gospel can and will change lives and generate authentically Christian communities, even in Europe. This confidence should then get us off the back foot and equip us to stand in the public square. That will inevitably provoke opposition. But how can we keep quiet while in possession of such a great treasure? Mugging up or opting outThe problem is that when we have publicly addressed contemporary issues, the opposition generated has not been entirely unjustified. Christians have sounded ill informed, inarticulate and shortsighted. This has been the case even when they have positive contributions to make to a political debate. We seem to fall into two traps. We either ‘mug up’ on an issue and fight hard, but lack the ability to articulate why it matters; we get tripped up by even simple questions about how to defend our beliefs persuasively. Alternatively, because contemporary issues seem to bear only tangential relevance to the ‘gospel core’, we presume they are irrelevant for gospel ministry. Our concern is not necessarily the questions the world is asking (because the world invariably asks the ‘wrong’ questions!) but the questions God in Christ has for us. Consequently, when we do answer sceptics, our responses have been ludicrously irrelevant, na•ve or superficial. Apologetics: just the startThe European Leadership Forum was started in 2001 by a group of leaders to tackle the situation (drawn from L’Abri, IFES — International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Ravi Zacharias Trust and the European Evangelical Alliance). It is now led by a steering group of leaders from Poland, UK, Norway, Germany, Czech Republic, Sweden and Spain. The common denominator was a commitment as apologists to bolster European gospel confidence. Three goals were central from the start. Having identified European Christian leaders, the forum would seek to build a ‘bridge between local leaders and God’s global resources’: * To equip them with excellent teaching Since 2001, the conference has grown, with this year’s numbers breaking 400 for the first time. Drawn from 30 countries, our cultural and ministerial diversity was clearly apparent, since delegates join one of 11 ‘networks’. These ranged from Apologists, Scientists, Theologians, to Politicians, Bible Teachers, Artists and Counsellors. The conference format (spread over four days, May 25-29) was intense. There are not many places where you can study scriptural authority with Wayne Grudem or Pete Williams (Tyndale House warden), the New Atheism (with John Lennox), or Dostoyevsky, Harry Potter, jazz, understanding Islam, leadership (etc.), and then close the day with French poetry and jazz! Facing growing scepticismThe thrill for me was to see the huge numbers of those from former Communist countries (with the obvious flip side being the relatively low number from the West, apart from Brits). The advantage of holding the conference in Hungary, apart from the geographical benefits, is its cultural familiarity for Eastern Europeans. I was involved in running the Bible Teachers’ Network (as a facilitator for Langham Preaching and because of previous work with Proclamation Trust). In our group, we had 20, 17 of whom were Eastern — most were pastors or student campus workers. All were united by a desire both to teach the Bible more faithfully and to understand the tectonic shifts in European culture over the last century. It is almost 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell. The Eastern bloc looks to Brussels more than Moscow now, and the influence of American popular culture appears unabated. Couple that with profound scepticism about authority and truth, we Western Europeans find ourselves sharing, with our Eastern cousins, the challenges of a pan-European postmodern culture (despite, or even because of, our wide diversity). We will increasingly need one another. The ELF is, therefore, a hugely strategic meeting place. Mark Meynell,
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