Over the last 50 years the European Missionary Fellowship [EMF] has been investing in training Christians for the work of gospel ministry in Europe and subsequently many other parts of the world too.
The anniversary was marked at the Open Day of EMF’s School of Biblical Studies on May 10 at Welwyn Evangelical Church, Hertfordshire. Around 150 attended specially arranged meetings.
The Revd Paul Bassett (Melbourne Hall, Leicester) spoke in the morning from Hebrews 13.7-8, explaining that spiritual leaders need to have divine authority and to be imitators of Jesus Christ. In the afternoon the Revd Andrew Davies (Cwmbran) pointed to Jesus Christ from the opening verses of Hebrews 12. He exhorted those present to ‘fix our eyes on Jesus’ as we battle with sin and discouragement in our Christian lives.
How it started
The work began in Watford in 1964 when the then EMF director, Omri Jenkins, started a school to train UK and other European nationals. The vision was certainly ahead of its time. There was no London Theological Seminary or WEST then. Most students came either from the UK or other Western European countries. The first student, Evangelos Tzelis from Greece, went on to plant a church in Volos. The school had the full support of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Most of those trained went on to work with EMF.
Then, with the move of the Mission’s headquarters to Welwyn in 1981, and the collapse of Communism in 1989, churches from Central and Eastern Europe were also seeking places at the school for pastors and would-be missionaries. Indeed, students from countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia and the Ukraine often formed classroom majorities. The school’s reputation for nurturing a well-grounded head-and-heart Christianity drew trainees from Africa, America and Asia too.
Many students have readily spoken of the life-changing consequences of having done the course. One is Jan Hábl from the Czech Republic, who studied at the school in 1997-98 and now combines a pastoral role in Usti nad Labem with a professorship in the Philosophy of Education at the local university. He writes: ‘The EMF biblical course virtually changed my life and saved my faith. As a young Christian I had a number of questions and no solid answers. The course helped me to work with the Bible and to think biblically’.
Several hundred students have thus far been through the school and many have gone on to serve the Lord in Europe and other parts of the world, with almost half of the current 85 missionaries supported by EMF in 16 European countries.
