DAWN Fridayfax 1995 #48

News from Croatia, Norway, Guinea, Worldwide

Croatia 2002

"Croatia 2002" is an initiative developed by the Croatian Evangelical Alliance UK under the leadership of Stanko Jambrek in co-operation with the long-term initiative "Hope for Europe".

The aim of "Croatia 2002" is to plant a living church in every Croatian town and village by the year 2002, with at least one church per 10,000 inhabitants in the cities. The initiative also plans to address social and ethical issues, develop material for religion lessons, support and encourage foreign missionaries through research and to start a mission-oriented prayer movement also reaching beyond Croatia's borders.

Source: Stanko Jambrek, Kosirnikova 76, 1000 Zagreb, Tel/fax (385) 1-707-958

Norway: Church planting in Europe's "most Christian" country

Up until now, Norway was always known as the country in Europe with the highest percentage of Evangelical Christians.

In the 1993 edition of "Operation World", the English mission researcher Patrick Johnstone mentioned that 9.8% of the population were Evangelicals. A newly published national empirical study conducted by DAWN Norge (title: "Folket i kirken - Kirken i folket" - "People and the church - Church and people") led by the Norwegian church-growth researcher Ommund Rolfsen (Oslo) shows the following situation: of Norway's population of 4.337 million, 3.884 million (93.3%) are members of the Lutheran state church, and another 200,818 are members of various free churches.

However, most Norwegians regularly avoid their churches: only 5% of the population, 210,000 people, visit their church each week; 294,000 visit one of Norway's 4,114 churches, chapels and fellowships one to three times per month. According to the study, only 119,248 (3.1%) are active members in the Lutheran church, whereas 86,608 of the 200,818 (43.1%) members of free churches are active.

What was previously unthinkable is slowly being accepted: that Norway is a mission field and that also here, new services and fellowships are urgently needed to evangelise the population. DAWN Norway conducted a seminar in co-operation with the Evangelical Alliance UK and the Lausanne Movement from 24-27 November 1995 in Oslo, which was also attended by 4 Lutheran bishops and Bob Hopkins and Brian Mills from England, at which the delegates affirmed a new national church-planting initiative.

In Stavanger, the Lutherans have recently planted 7 new churches, and 4 new free churches have been set up. The Lutheran regional bishop has already called a pastor to spend half his time on planting a new church and the other half on developing other new churches in the region. The bishop asked for evangelistic research in his diocese and has named 17 areas which need new churches.

Another Lutheran church is planned in Bergen and a number of church-planting projects have begun in the northern town of Narvik. The Lutheran church planted only around 270 new churches and chapels between 1945 and 1987. Between 1983 and 1993, 128 new free churches were planted, of which 81 are independent, 57 other.

The study is available from Ommund Rolfsen, DAWN Norge, Sveinung Vagen, Hausmannsgt. 22, N-0182 Oslo, Norway.

Source: Bob Hopkins, fax (+44) 1744-23433

Guinea: Mosques close after evangelisation

The Swiss missionary Jurg Pfister reports that in Guinea (West Africa), an increasing number of people are realising that "you don't have to be white to be a missionary." Indigenous missionaries have a number of advantages over the "Toubabous" (whites): they understand the culture much better; often speak several languages and hence do not lose so much time learning; they don't have to leave their country and so save flight and administrative costs, and simply cost less than white missionaries - around $160 per month.

In the Gueckedou region, dozens of Moslems converted to Christianity following evangelisation by an indigenous missionary. In one area, there are reports that a number of mosques were closed because so many people decided to become Christians.

Source: J. Pfister, Rep. de Guinee

Over 1 million churches pray for 100 unreached key cities

October 1995 saw what was probably the largest prayer initiative in church history.

The first experiences and results are now being collected, but according to Beverly Peagues of the Christian Information Network in Colorado Springs (USA), the following numbers are already known: at least 30 million people in over 166 countries and 1,010,632 churches took part in the prayer initiative, including 90,000 churches in Brazil alone. More than 405 prayer teams went on 644 trips in the so-called "100 key unreached cities".

The call to prayer is, according to Peagues, possibly the most-copied piece of paper in the world; it was distributed in English, Spanish, Chinese, Afrikaans, German, Korean, Indonesian, Greek and other languages.

Source: Beverly Peagues, Christian Information Network, 11025 Hwy. 83, Colorado Springs, CO 80921-3623, USA

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