2023-09-13 02:17:16
A conference of Christian leaders resulted in a commitment to train 100,000 new pastors to work in Europe over the next few years. The continent, which is one of the cradles of Christianity, is going through a period of distancing from the Gospel in recent decades.
The FINISH Europe Conference in Zurich, Switzerland, brought together nearly 400 ministry leaders and pastors last week to discuss the resumption of the Gospel on the continentand as a result a collective commitment to joining efforts to fulfill the Great Commission was established.
The conference, held from September 4th to 6th, was organized by the Global Church Network (GCN), an entity that has been working in collaboration with numerous organizations and more than 700,000 churches of all denominations around the world over the last few years. two decades.
In 2017, the organization launched FINISH 2030 at Martin Luther’s tomb in the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. At the time, more than 600 leaders from all Christian traditions and global regions committed to jointly completing the Great Commission.
The acronym FINISH, in English, stands for Find, Intercede, Network, Invest, Send and Harvest. At this year’s conference, GCN founder James O. Davis highlighted the importance of setting a deadline for realizing a vision: “One of the reasons the Great Commission has not yet been fulfilled is because we have never set a deadline,” he speculated.
“FINISH 2030 offers a new comprehensive strategy – one that is synergistic, global in scope and capable of getting the Church to the finish line sooner than we ever dreamed possible,” he added.
GCN has 159 global centers focused on relationship building, training and outreach. GCN plans to introduce 39 connection points in Europe by 2024. At the FINISH Europe Conference, Davis proposed a plan to expand European centers to 640 and train more than 100,000 pastors in less than nine years.
“European nations represent some of the most difficult places to plant churches, establish networks of leaders, and equip pastors. However, long-established models of training and preparation for full-time ministry cannot keep up with the unprecedented growth of the global Christian Church, resulting in a significant shortage of trained pastors and ministers,” said Davis.
Participants set a collective goal of directing and equipping 110,000 new ministers to be trained in person or through the Church’s Global School of Divinity distance learning platforms, according to information from the portal. The Christian Post.
During the event, writer and professor Leonard Sweet reminded attendees of their duty to proclaim the good news: “It seems that tens of thousands of churches have updated their mission statements because they did not like the mission statement that the Lord Jesus Christ gave them. We are called to go into the world and preach the Gospel.”
#churches #send #thousand #pastors