Three Hope Labs on mission in and from Europe

Across Europe the ground beneath mission is shifting. Historic churches are shrinking while new, often migrant-led and Pentecostal congregations are rising. Christian faith — and evangelical faith especially — increasingly finds itself a minority among many, on a continent that is at once deeply secular and newly, visibly multi-religious. It is tempting to meet this moment either with anxiety about all that is being lost, or with easy optimism about all that is emerging.

Mission Paradigms invites us to do neither. Across three linked HopeLabs, leaders of networks, mission organisations and Evangelical Alliances will think together about mission in and from Europe — including the role of diaspora communities and the reality of a multi-religious continent — holding hope and honesty together. Using the Three Horizons framework, we will look clearly at the pattern of mission that is passing, discern the one that is emerging, and ask how we cross faithfully from the one to the other. Each horizon is, in a sense, one mission paradigm giving way to another — which is where the series takes its name.

The three HopeLabs

1  ·  The present — what is passing

An honest, unhurried look at today’s dominant pattern of mission in Europe: the long shadow of Christendom, the pressures of secularisation and funding, and the fear and the hope that migration and religious plurality stir. We name what is fading — without either defensiveness or despair.

2  ·  The emerging future — what is being born

Where is the church of the future already among us? We explore a polyphonic, many-voiced, everywhere-to-everywhere church — with diaspora and migrant-led congregations as signs of what is coming — and test that vision against its hardest question: what faithful witness looks like in a genuinely multi-religious Europe.

3  ·  The crossing — from here to there

The contested middle ground, where renewal is either real or merely the old system in new clothes. Together we weigh emerging initiatives against honest questions of power, participation and allegiance, and name concrete steps each of us can take now.

The thinking behind it

The HopeLabs draw on a rich range of missiological voices — among them Harvey Kwiyani on decolonised, polycentric mission; Jay Mātenga’s WEA Mission Commission forecast; Bernhard Reitsma’s work on vanishing and emerging churches; and the Polyphonic God project on intercultural, many-voiced ecclesiology.

Contributors

Convened by Jan Wessels (General Secretary, European Evangelical Alliance; International Director, Faith2Share), with live contributions from:

• Dr Ruth Wall — Chair, WEA Mission Commission Global Leadership Council
• Israel Oluwole Olofinjana — Director, One People Commission, UK Evangelical Alliance
• Usha Reifsnider — Co-Regional Director, Lausanne Europe
• Jiska Chin-a-Téh — MissieNederland; incoming EEMA representative to the WEA Mission Commission
• Anton Ponomarev — Associate International Director, Faith2Share

For leaders of networks, mission organisations and Evangelical Alliances  ·  Three linked 90-minute sessions