A conference focused on church planting--or ways of establishing new churches--may represent a significant turning point for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Germany, say participants and organizers of the three-day event.
A conference focused on church planting—or ways of establishing new churches—may represent a significant turning point for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Germany, say participants and organizers of the three-day event.
“Euro-Seeds,” which ran September 16 to 19, attracted some 400 participants and was broadcast via satellite around Europe by the Voice of Prophecy television network in a number of languages, including German, English, Romanian, Portuguese, French, Bulgarian, and Polish.
The church cannot go on as it has before, said Dr. Edgar Machel, a professor at Friedensau Theological University. Machel pointed to statistics showing that growth of the Adventist Church in Germany had stagnated.
Speaker Ron Gladden, a church-planting coordinator from North America, challenged participants to be realistic about assessing what will and will not work within specific cultures, and to adapt methods to suit. Bettina Wiik described Copenhagen’s “café-church,” which aims to share Christianity in a creative way within a culture that is unreceptive to traditional forms of worship.
Other presenters at the conference included Peter Roenfeldt, coordinator for the Adventist Church’s Global Mission in the Trans-European region, and Dr. Russell Burill, director of the Adventist Institute of Evangelization in North America.
