The statistics of secularization in Europe

I resently saw a TV show that again proved why we must plant new churches in Europe. Europe is the most secular part of the world! In the TV show some interesting numbers where presented. There is several ways of seeing how secular a nation is. In a global research on peoples values they asked a question to people in basically every nation in the world. The question was: "How important is religion in your life?". If you look at how many people ticked of the poption which said "Religion is Very important in my life" the number is stunning.

In many countries in Africa 97% said it was very important. In Brazil 74% said it was very important. In USA it was 57%. But when you come over to Europe the numbers drop fast! In Poland 30% said that religion was very important. England and Germany had 20%. And in the very bottom we find Sweden with only 8% of the population that says that religion is very important in their life!

In Europe who is extremely secular Sweden is the worst of them all! The challenge is huge. The challenge may look overwhelming. But it is not impossible! We need to bring Jesus back to Europe. It was Swedish missionaries who started the revival in Brazil. Today it looks like Brazil needs to send missionaries to Sweden!

There is never a perfect time to plant churches

Is it ever convenient to plant a new church? Is there a need of new churches? Church history says that the best evangelisation tool ever is church planting. Europe needs new churches like never before. So do we see the need? Yes we all talk about it. Do we plant churches? No! Why? Because it's not easy, convenient or cheap. We have so much problem in our own churches so why get a new problem.
One of my site pastors, Daniel, preached this Sunday about the heart of David. In his text he used a portion of scripture that hit me.

When David ran from Saul a bunch of misfits followed David.
1 Samuel 22:2
"And everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So he became captain over them. And there were about four hundred men with him."

The guys who David had to train, equip and raise up to be leaders was not the dream leadership material. David's circumstances was really hard. He had a group of people with lots of problems. He was on the run and had to hide both from Saul and from the Philistines. And with the kind of people David had around him everyones advice would have been; get things in order in your own camp before you start to think that you are going to save the rest of the world.
But then David hears about a city called Keilah. He hears about the problems that city has and he gets compassion for them. As a man of God he goes to God and asks him if he should do something about it. And God answers and says "go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah."

1 Samuel 23:3-5
3 But David's men said to him, “Look, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?”
4 Then David inquired of the Lord once again.
And the Lord answered him and said, “Arise, go down to Keilah. For I will deliver the Philistines into your hand.”
5 And David and his men went to Keilah and fought with the Philistines, struck them with a mighty blow, and took away their livestock. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

This text really spoke to me. It was not a perfect time for David to go on a new venture to a new city. For me the city Keilah represents all those city's where we need to plant new churches to se people get saved, healed and restored. I can also relate to David in that sense that it may not be the most best timing. We have so many challenges in our own church etc... But when I go to God because of the burden I carry for city's in Sweden and Europe I only hear one thing; "Arise, go down to Keilah For I will deliver the Philistines into your hand. I will do it if you trust me even though all circumstances may not be perfect!"

Sometimes the biggest problem with church planting is that we ether think it's easy and when adversity comes we quit, or we just look at our own little problems without counting in God in the equation.

There may never come a perfect time to plant churches. It's hard. It costs lots of money. It's not glamorous. It's hard, hard work... But Europe is in dire needs of men and women with compassion for a generation who will get lost if we don't act now! So let's ask God what he wants us to do... let's take Keliah!!


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All Access Conference 2011

I am sooo looking forward to this years All Access Conference which will be held at Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Last year was phenomenal! The week before the conference I will be with pastor Matt Fry and C3 Church, Clayton North Carolina. We will spend some time planning our upcoming church plant in Gothenburg, Sweden. More on that later.

All Acces Conference with the ARC lead team has a pretty good line up of speakers. Some of the best communicators you can find. It will also be intressting to listen to Steven Furtick who has seen a tremendous growth in his church in Charlotte North Carolina. Another great speaker is Mark Batterson who leads National Community church in Washington DC. He leads a multi site church with campuses at movies close to the metro stations.

And then there is Mathew Barnett from Dream Center LA that needs no introduction. On top of that our own ARC guys like Dino Rizzo, Chris Hodges, Stovall Weems, Greg Surratt etc... Wow.. It will be awesome!!

If you are a leader, pastor or a church planter... be there... do everything you can to join us in Baton Rouge 5th-7th of april

http://www.allaccessconference.com/

Tribute to Billy

ARC is celebrating 10 years while Billy Hornsby, the daddy of ARC is fighting cancer. Se this amazing video from Church of the Highlands when they give the backround of ARC and giving tribute to a real man of God. We love you Billy, and pray for you!

http://www.churchofthehighlands.com/media/message/tribute-to-billy

40 years :-)

Just had my 40th birthday. Had a great surprise party with loads of friends. It was amazing. Thanx to my precious wife who arranged everything. It was an amazing evening with video greetings from all around the world. thanx you all!

We coming to 40 is a great opportunity on looking back on your life an see what you have accomplished. I have now been in the ministry for exactly 20 years. I have preached in more than 20 nations around the world. Lived in Africa and seen revival in Mombasa with a church grwoing into 25000 members. Seen revival among the Maasai people. Planted churches in east and central Africa. Made a lot of mistakes along the way too;) nine years I worked with Ulf Ekman at Word of Life in Uppsala Sweden and saw one of the most amazing mission works in the world with thousands of churches being planted in former Soviet Union and the east European states.
We have had an amazing first 20 years in ministry and it still feels like we are only in the beginning. I fell so excited about the coming years and what God will do.

Our strongest focus is on church planting. I dream of seeing one thousand new life-giving churches emerge in Europe. Europe is beginning to become the biggest spiritual void on earth. Islam is growing like crazy and the churches is loosing it's influence fast! We need a new revival in Europe and I believe it's going to happen through new churches with a new kind of DNA. Same old message, same power but communicated in a way that the 21st century European understand.

I believe we are going to see amazing things in the years ahead.

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New Blogg

Welcome to my new blogg. I have been blogging in swedish on our church website before (and will continue that of corse. But I have feelt the need to start a blogg where I also can communicate more in english. Especially since we focus on church planting in Europe!

Some blogs will be in swedish. So I will switch between english and swedish:)

2011 has started and an exciting new year is ahead. When I look back on 2010 I will especially remember the year we really connected with the ARC family in US. We had a number of Church planters round table in Europe with Rob Ketterling, Matt Fry and Greg Suratt. I missed the CPR with Greg though. But we feel that ARC has become our family now! The church here has embrased it even though it may be harder for them than it is for me who also has been over to ARC churches in US and and especially the All Access conference last year.

This year has started great. We have already had baptism, prayed with a number of people to salvation and welcomed eight people in as new members in the church. our focus this year is five areas; First the Main event ever sunday. We want to work even more to make it attractive and welcoming to new visitors especially those that has never set their foot in a church before. And we have a lot of them in Sweden today!

The second area of focus is our Life groups that we are putting a lot of energy in developing and growing it into its full potential.

The third area of focus is servolution. Last year we had tremedous results in our servolution projects. it resulted in two large articles in the local newspaper and a lot of open doors. We gave out a whole lorry full of clothes to refugees and then took them with busses to church every sunday. We had teams going out cleaning the streets, giving out coffee and buns and helping with changing into winter tires etc... This year we will go further and work with the servolution projects in the church to get it into the DNA of the church! Showing Gods love through simple act of kindness!

The forth focus area is church planting. We are continuing with our church plant in Lilla Edet and our sight pastor Daniel is doing an awesome job in connecting with the non-christian young guys who come to our services there every other week.

We will also focus on our new exciting project in planting a new church in Gothenburg (Göteborg). Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden. Its a vibrant city with big universities and lots of young people. We are working in building the launch team and hope to be able to launch in november this year!

The last focus is our new sanctuary that we are about to build. It will be a top modern media center that will better facilitate everything that is going on in church. we still need to raise around 400 000USD but it does getting closer to an actual building start!