News Editor Edward E. Plowman recently visited nine countries in Europe on special assignment and in connection with a forthcoming book. While there he covered significant outreach events, talked with pastors, and interviewed hundreds of young Christians and their leaders, including some whose lands he didn’t visit. He filed this report and analysis:
“I hear a rustling in the leaves. God is moving. Things no one expected to happen are happening. Large numbers of young people are coming to Christ.”
That is what Cambridge University grad Stuart McAlpine, 22, told me in recounting the events of the past year at his school. Hundreds now meet weekly in large and small Bible-study groups, and scores carry the Gospel regularly into the surrounding villages. This summer a contingent of them bought an old double-decker bus, painted it with Jesus slogans in various languages, and evangelized all the way to the Olympics at Munich. They had a field day there witnessing to Russians, Romanians, Bulgarians, and others (see September 29 issue, page 42).
McAlpine’s description applies elsewhere in Europe. Thousands of young people all over the continent have turned to Christ in the last year or two, and in several lands (Northern Ireland, Holland, and Finland) nationwide youth revival may already be under way.
Concurrently, renewal along charismatic lines is seeping into some state-church circles and bringing life to congregations that have been dead—to quote their pastors and members—for generations. And Catholics are showing a remarkable openness to evangelicals, especially in the realm of evangelism.
These observations are admittedly from a narrow perspective of visits to a limited number of cities and villages. But on the basis of many interviews representing a cross-section of the evangelical scene in Europe I am convinced I saw only the tip of the iceberg.
ENGLAND Tidings similar to McAlpine’s come from universities in Birmingham and Reading. Also in Birmingham, music student Alan Johnson’s House Fellowship group has been responsible for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of decisions for Christ since the first of the year, mostly in churches. A neighborhood evangelism project Johnson sparked in August has now spread through the entire city.
A charismatic eruption in the Basingstoke Baptist Church forty miles west of London has resulted in a fallout of thirty Jesus centers in the area, with more than 200 young people involved. (Pastor Barry Coombes is an ex-vice-squad officer.) And young people flock from miles around to services at Guild-ford Baptist Church south of London. (Its minister, Patrick Pawson, is one of the leaders of the English charismatic movement. The movement is now in a number of mainline churches—including many Anglican ones.)
The Jesus Liberation Front (JLF), a group led by young laymen, has sprung up in Hemel Hempstead north of London. Many of the JLF converts have come from the drug scene. They too bought a double-decker bus and drove it to the Olympics. (En route, West German border guards made them saw off the roof to meet height restrictions.) The JLFers in background and style resemble closely their spiritual brothers and sisters in the well-known Berkeley-based Christian World Liberation Front, but the members of the two groups have never met. Both use literature and art extensively in their outreach and tend to identify with the counterculture. Neither is tied to institutional churches, but each circulates rather freely among them.
It is still too early to evaluate the meaning of this year’s Festival of Jesus in London (see story, page 49). But that it was held at all and involved so many thousands of young people is of itself significant. Certain program absurdities aside, it tends to corroborate McAlpine’s “rustling leaves” comment.
In July I was among the 5,000 at the two-day outdoor Hallelujah Festival in northern London. (In evangelical circles in England it is said that if an event attracts more than 1,000 it is a smashing success.) The spectacle, a professionally executed multi-media portrayal of the biblical history of redemption, was staged by pop singer Cliff Richard and 120 young Christians from area churches. I spoke with a number of non-Christian teen-agers and young adults who made favorable remarks about the production. They were also quite willing—and in some cases, eager—to discuss Christ and his relevance to life. In succeeding weeks I found this same degree of openness about evangelical Christianity on streets all over Western Europe. It is a latter-day phenomenon, say pastors and youth workers.
Cliff Richard and actor Nigel Goodwin, both well known in the British entertainment scene, are active in evangelism through the arts. Richard, who has had weekly television audiences numbering in the millions, recently released a major-label single that is being spun by many British disc jockeys. Its title: “Jesus.” In it, Jesus is asked why he does not return. The lyrics suggest he is the only answer to mankind’s woes. “Reflection,” an earlier song by Richard to hit the secular market, expounds powerfully the substitutionary death of Christ.
The singer also appears in gospel concerts across the continent, sometimes holding late-night witness parties for performers. (I met a Scandinavian singer who found Christ at one of these parties.) Goodwin meanwhile is trying to put together a giant Jesus music festival that will feature internationally known personalities.
If the masses are soon to be reached with the Gospel, it will probably be through the style and efforts of people like Richard, Goodwin, Alan Johnson, the Festival of Jesus organizers, the Cambridge Christians, and the JLFers. Only a tiny fraction of England’s population attends church these days.
NORTHERN IRELAND Amid the terror, hostility, and suffering of the past year, hundreds of young people have been converted, and additional hundreds of Christians have become more deeply committed, say workers in the movement there. Several leaders of the notorious Tartan gangs have reportedly professed Christ and are evangelizing their peers. Young people are crowding to Bible studies in dorms, coffeehouses, and homes. It all began, says turned-on student Eddie Totten, 21, with the visit of American street evangelist Arthur Blessitt. “He showed Christian kids what they ought to be doing,” said Totten. “He radicalized us.”
Such influence by American evangelists and Jesus people has been a factor in the spread of the Jesus revolution (many new converts call it that) to other sectors of Europe. Their major contribution has been to arouse or “radicalize” nationals, to get them involved in outreach. Also, wide coverage of the American Jesus movement in the press and on television has created a twofold effect: closer attention is paid to local evangelical developments, and there is now in the marketplace of ideas an openness to Christianity that did not exist before. (A by-product: some touring Christians are creating a “Beautiful American” image.)
On the other hand, I visited locales where strong Jesus-centered youth ministries date from 1967, the same year the so-called Jesus movement in America began and four years before the international press surfaced it. They developed along lines similar to the American movement in style and content but without exposure to people or ideas imported from the United States. (In one French village I was the only American Christian the young believers there had ever met. In their devotion to Jesus, their emphasis on Bible study, their loving spirit of community, and their intense involvement in evangelism, they were remarkably similar to kids I have met all over America.)
At any rate, regardless of influence, revival tides are flowing among young people in Northern Ireland, and there is plenty of living proof around that hatred has been expunged from many hearts. So far the movement has been restricted largely to Protestants. Whether it can grow sufficiently to bring peace to the nation remains to be seen. “It must,” says Totten. “It’s our only hope.”
BELGIUM This little country has a population of about ten million, almost entirely Catholic. There are 20,000 Protestants, mostly older adults who meet in run-down buildings, according to Kees Rosies, 33, director of Operation Mobilization (OM) in the Benelux countries.
OM, a worldwide evangelistic organization based in England and headed by American George Verwer, 34, trained nearly 2,000 youths from dozens of nations in Belgium this summer. The bulk of them participated in a three-month-long visitation project dubbed “Operation Impossible,” depositing evangelistic literature at virtually every residence in the land.
Street and door-to-door witness encounters resulted in scores of reported decisions. A Dutch television team made a documentary of the campaign. One day I traveled with the TV crew to the village of Heist to cover teams working there. At one point the cameraman-director—himself a convert two years ago from the playboy and porno film-making scenes—paused to speak with a group of Belgian teen-agers. Minutes later one of them, a 17-year-old boy, prayed to receive Christ. He said he had been wondering a lot about God lately. I saw that kind of spiritual readiness everywhere in my travels, including the Olympics at Munich, where youths bowed in prayer receiving Christ were a fairly common sight.
Few Americans were among the 800 I met during the August segment of the campaign. (Trainees were staggered over three months; the Americans had come and gone earlier. Most were working in southern Europe.) That there were 250 Germans and 140 French among the committed is further proof that significant spiritual activity is taking place. Sizable contingents came from Northern Ireland, Holland, and Finland. Many were converts of two years or less. Despite language and cultural differences they exhibited a oneness of spirit and expression that marks Jesus revolutionaries everywhere.
OM, which operates on a shoestring budget, had trouble locating a summer operations base and conference center in Belgium. After visits by Rosies and other OM leaders, Leo Josef Cardinal Suenens lent them an unused seminary in Mechelen, where he lives. He also endorsed the OMers in letters to his priests. As a result, a number of priests invited OMers to give testimonies during masses. Impressed, some priests organized large rallies of Catholic youth and asked the OMers to speak. Parish members were urged to open their homes to the young evangelicals. A Catholic lay group at Ghent requested a team to tell about the Jesus movement. OMers were kept busy in Catholic schools just before classes closed for the summer holiday. Nuns at several convents fed OM teams sumptuous meals and engaged them in protracted discussions of spiritual matters. (Most itinerant OMers, however, lived more on the likes of peanut butter sandwiches and roughed it in such spartan quarters as parks, parsonage attics, and church kitchen floors.)
For his part, Suenens seemed pleased. (In U. S. addresses, he has spoken glowingly of OM.) He said he had been calling on his people to be more biblically minded and more witness oriented. The OMers had helped drive home his point by showing them how.
It is increasingly clear that if predominantly Catholic nations like Belgium, France, Spain, and Austria are to be reached for Christ, the effort must involve the Catholic Church. European leaders of OM, Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth With a Mission (YWAM), and other groups talk privately about the need to develop a strategy for working in and through the Catholic Church, but fears of financial repercussions from American backers who may not understand prevent them from acting. Both Crusade and YWAM have been approached by Catholic officials wanting evangelistic training for their people.
One gets the feeling the Catholic Church may be up for grabs in the next decade or two. Within it is a spectrum of belief—and unbelief. Its 25,000-student university at Leuven, Belgium, is reputedly the largest Catholic educational institution in the world. During a visit I saw and heard snatches of the atheistic radicalism that has earned for Leuven a reputation as the Church’s Red schoolhouse. At the other end of the spectrum are the Catholic Pentecostals. Their numbers are steadily growing, especially in France and Ireland, though not as explosively as in North America.
Meanwhile, the times seem ripe for evangelical exploration—and exploitation. The Catholic Church offers a vast manpower potential for national awakening. It possesses a residue of doctrinal orthodoxy. There is wide interest in Bible study, evangelism, and personal spirituality. And countless thousands of Catholic young people are open just now to the winds of the Spirit.
AUSTRIA Faced with a last-minute hassle over a meeting site for its European summer training conference, Campus Crusade called on Franz Cardinal Koenig of Vienna for help. Koenig ordered Catholics at the university in Linz, Austria’s second largest city (population: 210,000), to lend a hand—and premises.
As Crusade prepared to move in with 600 European trainees and leaders, the offended head priest at the university church decided it was time for a holiday. His assistant preached against Crusade in a sermon and warned parishioners to avoid contact. But he and other clerics and nuns nevertheless attended the conference sessions. Two Sundays later he endorsed Crusade from the pulpit and publicly asked the young evangelicals to forgive his earlier antagonism.
“I hope and pray your movement will be a blessing to our Church,” he said.
He asked Crusade’s folk music group, the Forerunners, to sing in two masses, and arranged for radio and television coverage of their appearance.
An elderly nun, tears streaming down her cheeks, expressed her love for the young people. “Please pray that the Holy Spirit will touch our Church,” she implored. “We need him.”
Crusade leaders were preparing to leave when the pastor returned from vacation. He later commented that he could sense the Holy Spirit’s presence when he stepped inside the church.
The conferees spent much of their time in classes. Topics ranged from salvation basics and Christian sex life to apologetics and personal evangelism.
A Saturday afternoon witness march downtown and a Jesus music festival on the banks of the Danube found the Christians talking and singing mostly to themselves. It was holiday time, and the streets were nearly deserted. Yet I did note a few professions of faith, including a long-haired motorcyclist wearing dark glasses who came roaring in to find out what was happening.
One of Crusade’s fervent backers is sales manager Edward Osterman of Bost Steel in Linz, Austria’s largest factory. He was converted a few years ago on an American airliner after reading books about evangelist Billy Graham. At the European Congress on Evangelism he met Campus Crusade leaders for the first time. Using Crusade’s methods he began evangelizing and organizing home Bible-study groups around Linz. In the past three years the evangelical community has grown from a handful to hundreds meeting weekly in homes throughout the area.
Another Crusade enthusiast is pastor Josef Holzmann of the Catholic church in nearby Leonding. He attended every conference session and says he intends to share the teaching with his people. He also hopes to get them interested in personal evangelism.
Adolf Hitler attended the Leonding church when he was a teen-ager. His boyhood home is next door to the church, and his parents are buried in the churchyard. “Hitler was one of the boys our church failed to reach,” Holzmann said quietly as we stood by the grave.
FRANCE I met an interesting assortment of new Christians at the Logos, a riverfront coffeehouse sponsored by Teen Challenge on the Left Bank of the Seine. They came from homosexual, hippie, and criminal backgrounds. There were former anarchists and existentialists. Staffer Suzanne Frank, 27, a caseworker with unwed mothers in Paris before joining Teen Challenge, spoke excitedly about the many recent conversions. The work was slow a year ago, she said, “but now it’s snowballing out of control.”
Paul Henri, 31, told me he was a homosexual until God changed him a few months ago. He is a one-man mission to hitch-hikers, often bringing them to the Logos. Many of them, including other homosexuals, have found Christ there. (Homosexuality is a growing problem in Europe. There are vocal advocates of it in the large cities. In June, militant homosexuals helped to break up a David Wilkerson rally in Paris. But there are glimmers of hope. I met several whose lives—like Henri’s—had been transformed by Christ. A Dutch youth I met witnessing in Austria stated, “God has helped me to become the man I never was.”)
Retired educator Jean-Marie Simeon, 62, was introduced to Christ less than six months ago by a charismatic priest working among gypsies in western France. (Thousands of gypsies in France and Spain are caught up in the charismatic movement.) He said he was shaken into tearful outbursts as Christ loosed him from bondage to the occult. He now belongs to a prayer cell of thirty Catholics and Protestants who meet weekly. Similar cells are springing up elsewhere in the Paris environs. “We have looked for this kind of unity for years,” said Simeon.
Suzanne and her Teen Challenge colleagues have given testimonies at several Catholic churches. At one, a priest confided afterward, “This is the kind of revival we need in the Church. I hope it comes.”
The Resurrection Group, a band of young Catholics, earlier this year sponsored a packed-out meeting at Paris’s Mutualite Hall, featuring lay evangelist Carl Parks and Jesus people from Spokane, Washington. Few Protestants were there, reported Campus Crusade worker Jim Mulkey. But during discussion, the crowd accorded a French Pentecostal youth an ovation “for one of the most beautiful presentations of the Gospel I have ever heard,” said Mulkey.
Further south, it seems that university students at Orleans are not as responsive. Nevertheless, Crusade staffers have been meeting in weekly rap sessions with groups of non-Christians. “We’re not ready to believe,” a girl told a Crusade leader. “But don’t leave us yet.”
In eastern France I met evangelist Joseph Wenger, 30, a graduate of the Bible institute at Lamorlaye who is now associated with the Billy Graham organization. This summer revival broke out at a youth camp where Wenger was speaking. For hours, young people prayed, confessed sins, and testified. They tearfully sought forgiveness from others whom they had wronged. A band of them later assisted Wenger in film crusades in villages near the Swiss border, then returned to their churches fired with zeal. A boy named Gilbert stood up in a service at the Methodist church he attends in Strasbourg and pleaded with members to “come alive.” The youths frequently phone Wenger for advice on how to counsel young people they’ve been leading to Christ.
Wenger introduced me to Nicolas Kessely, 30, in the tiny Alsace village of Alteckendorf. He heads one of the strongest youth movements in France. Raised in a Christian home in Zurich and educated in a Bible school operated by the Chrischona society of Switzerland, Kessely was assigned to do evangelistic work in rural Alsace as a student. He has been there ever since. Hundreds of young people have accepted Christ and are involved in thorough discipleship and outreach programs. There are Jesus centers in eight villages; each center is responsible for evangelizing other villages (Kessely’s Alteckendorf group is responsible for fifty-four villages). Five full-timers who “live on faith” assist Kessely. Their goal is to establish centers in every village in Alsace, Vosges, and Lorraine.
Two weekend conferences each month are devoted to study of personal holiness and evangelization. Internationally known Christian personalities often lead the studies. The remaining weekends are spent in outreach projects.
Reaction to Kessely’s work has generally been favorable among priests in the predominantly Catholic region. The most bitter opposition has come from Protestant ministers who are theologically liberal, says Kessely. It’s not so much that the kids are leaving the churches—most have not attended for years—but that they are going elsewhere, he explains. Under terms of a concordat these Protestants get their salary from the government. It is difficult for them to explain to authorities why their churches are nearly empty in the presence of a growing Christian movement among the young.
This striking contrast exists throughout Europe. One of the most common remarks I heard from young people in every land I visited was, “My church is dead.” It is a complaint of Baptist kids in Yugoslavia and Poland as well as state-church youth in West Germany and Calvinists in Holland. Unless large-scale renewal comes soon to the churches, an unlikely prospect, the contrast—and tension—will become more pronounced.
HOLLAND I canceled trips to Spain and Morocco in order to spend extra days in Holland, checking out what is happening among large numbers of Dutch young people. The Christian movement there approximates developments in the American youth scene of the past few years. Campus Crusade, Youth for Christ, the Navigators, and other institutional groups are heavily involved.
The Navigators, in Holland since 1960, experienced an upsurge of interest and activity that began in 1967 and continues today. Nearly 1,000 university students are involved in Bible-study groups on five campuses. About one-tenth of these students are Catholics. There were 300 reported professions of faith in Christ last year, reports director Ger Doornebal, 36. He says the Navigators will now spend more time working among youth in the churches. (The 13 million Hollanders are divided almost evenly between the Catholic church and the various branches of the Reformed Church.)
Also in 1967, Youth for Christ (YFC) came out of the doldrums as a new breed of young leaders emerged. Coffeebars were set up in tents. Christian street musicians strolled through towns in pied-piper fashion, ushering hordes of young people into the coffeebars. Instead of preaching, there was discussion. “We need to answer the questions kids have today,” explained Hans Eschbach, 24, bearded YFC staffer who edits Aktie (translation: Action), a popular Jesus tabloid.
Last year a summer coffeebar tent in Naaldwijk attracted up to 200 every night, and many made decisions for Christ. Impressed, the burgomaster (mayor) provided a large house that became a sort of revival center as kids poured in from miles around for counsel and fellowship.
In Womerveer, a perplexed Reformed Church pastor and board asked YFC to help with their faltering youth program. Their youth center, located on a farm, had degenerated into a pub. Eschbach conducted evangelistic training sessions for the congregation (many church members accepted Christ), then moved into the youth center with a music team. Crowds doubled every night until 300 were jammed in at a time. “So many wanted Christ that our counselors were swamped,” said Eschbach. YFC continues to work with the church youth, and the church has asked Campus Crusade to train older members in the ways of evangelism.
This summer YFC operated thirty-five coffeebars, including one in a windmill and one on a canal barge.
Eschbach is critical of Americans who have come through Holland on evangelistic tours. “They shun political, scientific, and social issues,” he complains. “You can’t do that in Holland. You need to deal intellectually with the problems that trouble Dutch kids.”
Later, however, I spoke with young people who disputed his contention. “The trouble is that we’ve been hearing about social and political issues for years in our churches, but we haven’t been hearing about Jesus,” commented a youth in a Campus Crusade action group.
I met Wim Butte, 20, in Haarlem, where he is leader in a YFC coffeebar and live-in center. He had just returned from a forty-three-day road trip in Holland and West Germany with Credo, a music group of Dutch, Germans, and Americans. “We saw kids come to Christ every night,” he exclaimed. “I’ve traveled with teams for four years, but this year it’s different. So many things have changed. Kids are so open, so direct now. If they want to know about Christ, they want to know all about him.”
In Nieuw Vennep, a village west of Amsterdam, more than 100 young Christians gathered in a church recreation room on a Tuesday night. Leo Habets, a Campus Crusade staffer who works with them, asked for testimonies.
Tamara Helwig, 19, a beaming blonde coed who had been led to Christ four weeks earlier by friends in the group, was first. “Yesterday was our first day of class, and the teacher asked us to tell about the most exciting thing that happened to us this summer,” she said, evoking laughter from the group. “So I told them about Jesus and the new life he’s given me. Until then, some of my friends knew I had changed, but they didn’t know why. Today the teacher told me she has arranged a meeting with the faculty where I am to say the same thing. And next week she wants me to take a class period and discuss the Jesus revolution.” The group erupted in applause and joyous shouts.
There were other stirring testimonies, songs, conversational prayers, a talk, small-group sharing of what had been learned in Bible study the preceding week, and refreshments. A dozen young people gathered around; I asked questions, they took turns answering.
“Are the churches in Holland alive?”
“They will be. There is a revolution on, you know.”
“Didn’t they tell you about Jesus?”
“They mentioned his name, yes, but they didn’t tell us how to have a personal relationship with him.”
The group originated with the conversion of a teen-age boy a year ago. In a Day of Outreach campaign recently, 180 hit the streets with the Gospel and came back with forty converts. A team gave testimonies in three masses at a Catholic church (nuns often visit the Nieuw Vennep meetings). I met members earlier who were helping Operation Mobilization to evangelize Belgium. Others I found witnessing in Austria. Later, I met still others participating in the cooperative outreach at the Olympics. It brought to mind something George Verwer had said: evangelistic involvement is good follow-up for new converts. Apparently so. I saw it drive new Christians deeper into prayer and into the Bible. It also deepened their concern for humanity.
What is happening in Holland is too vast to describe adequately here. It involves many other people and places. The cameraman-director mentioned earlier leads 250 young believers in Rotterdam. The American ambassador and his wife became Christians this year; the Bible-study group they host in The Hague was featured on Dutch television. TV audiences have seen close-ups of Jesus music concerts, the Olympics outreach, and other evangelical doings. On request from a revival prayer fellowship in the Arnhem area, a team came from western Canada this summer to tell about the revival there; their visit may have ignited a movement in eastern Holland.
This year Ron Munstra, 26, quit his job as a government printer in The Hague to work full time with kids, mostly social dropouts in the dope scene. He had been spending his spare time for four years witnessing in streets and parks, but a spiritual population explosion this year and the need to give special follow up to ex-dopers convinced him and his wife Therese to make their move. Their home has been a rehabilitation center, an intensive care unit (round-the-clock attention during withdrawal from heroin), and a discipleship training facility for scores.
Munstra’s group is known throughout Holland as the Jesus people. They resemble the American version but have been little influenced from abroad. Charismatics, they emphasize the need for Holy Spirit baptism. Their aim is to establish a Jesus center in every large city in the Benelux countries. Munstra tries to spot potential leaders, then pours himself into them.
Jaap VanderOord, 19, a Christian for less than a year, was sent to establish a center in Antwerp, Belgium, this summer. He reports that in the first five weeks there were sixty-four teen-agers and young adults who received Christ. A few months earlier, Pieter Donkers, 19, a former speed freak, opened a center in Dordrecht in southern Holland. More than 100 have turned on to Jesus, he says. Sixty-five participated in a mass baptism in August, with hundreds—including parents—looking on.
Converts in the rehabilitation program are required to work at least half a day (“Christ makes you drop in,” says Munstra), engage in outreach on afternoons and weekends, and show up for nightly Bible-study and rap sessions.
Asked how he and others can rise to responsible leadership positions so quickly, VanderOord replied: “Jesus is in a hurry to reach the world. Therefore we must be in a hurry too.”
SCANDINAVIA The biggest event in Denmark’s contemporary church history occurred a couple of months ago when more than 5,000 young Danish Christians plus contingents of Swedes staged a Saturday night witness march through Copenhagen’s famous “walking street.” They carried Jesus placards, sang, and shouted slogans. It was part of The Long Day Jesus festival that ended officially with a huge rally in front of the town hall. Actually, it ended later that night when hundreds of Jesus demonstrators closed down a sex club and two porno shops. The outraged proprietors of the Porno Supermarked drenched them with seven buckets of water before giving up.
“An awakening is under way in our land,” declared leader Johny Noer, 36. Indeed, several young people told me that the most impressive part of The Long Day was the sheer discovery that so many other turned-on Christians exist.
Noer, formerly a youth minister in the Apostolic Church, and Johannes Facius, 36, a former telephone company employee, lead a group known as the Young Christians. They were given the name by the press after 110 church youth coordinated by Noer pasted “Love Not Lust” and Jesus slogans on the windows of 140 porno shops throughout the land in the wee hours of January 4, 1969. A live-in center for the Young Christians in Copenhagen is supervised by Jorgen Olesen, 28, and his wife Tone. There is heavy emphasis on teaching and outreach. Those who live there have backgrounds similar to those who live at Ron Munstra’s place in The Hague—or at almost any California Jesus center.
Youth With a Mission operates a coffeebar and training facility in Copenhagen. YWAM director Jim Rogers says that probably 95 per cent of the Scandinavians “belong” to state churches. “But I have met thousands of kids whose parents don’t really know the Lord,” he affirms. “These kids are second-generation unbelievers.”
“The Church is not dead, but it does look old and very tired,” said state-church (Lutheran) pastor Paul Exner of Albertslund, Denmark, one of the speakers at The Long Day festival. Young people in his church are pushing for more involvement in evangelical activities, and Exner is moving with them. “I may lose half my congregation over this, but we will gain a better half,” he said.
YWAM also sponsors a center at Christiana, a run-down former army base in Copenhagen that is one of the worst hell holes on earth. More than 1,000 hippies, junkies, pushers, sex freaks, witches, Satan worshipers, and mental cases from all over the world live there in assorted communal arrangements—amid disease and absence of the law. There are overdose deaths nearly every month. Couples are seen copulating on the grass. Drunken brawls occur frequently. Despite the depravity, some have come to Christ. “God is scooping up the scum of the earth and making something beautiful out of it,” reflected an alumnus of Christiana.
(The Children of God sect also operates a house at Christiana. Hundreds of the Children are working in Europe. Founder David “Moses” Berg recently ordered the Children out of America because, said he, calamity will soon strike the nation. An updated news story on the Children will appear in a later issue of the magazine.)
There are stirrings in the churches. Pastor Alfred Lorenzen of Elim (Pentecostal) Church in Copenhagen says his church is experiencing its greatest upsurge in more than twenty years. Many other ministers say the same thing is happening in their churches, he reports. “Some of the Lutheran leaders who wrote anti-charismatic books ten years ago are now part of the Pentecostal movement,” he adds with a smile.
Christians in Denmark and Sweden are worried about the spread of pornography and its impact upon young people. “It has had a terrible effect on the way they think, act, and speak,” says Jytte Mansen, 16, of Helsingor, Denmark. “My friends think it’s all right to go to bed before marriage.” A spiritual revolution is the only answer, she affirms, and she sees The Long Day as “a breakthrough—kids are more open than before, and Christians are really living the life.”
School teacher Margareta Kammcusjo, 23, of Göteborg, Sweden, says she does not want to raise a family in Sweden unless revival turns the tide in national morals. She and other young people at the Smyrna (Pentecostal) Church in Göteborg are doing their part. They have been able to sing their way into night clubs where they then witness. Three Christian coffeehouses are operating in the city.
Miss Kammcusjo meanwhile has just returned from an African tour with a YWAM team and—despite the hardships and even terror fresh in her memory—is thinking seriously about full-time missionary work. (Short-term service with YWAM, OM, and other organizations has led many young people to sign on full time.)
“There has been a real outpouring of the Spirit among young people everywhere—inside and outside the churches,” says 25-year-old midwife Inger Enquist of Göteborg, reflecting on her travels through Scandinavia.
Many high schoolers in Stockholm have reportedly professed Christ in assemblies conducted by Navigators. Believers apparently abound at the university in Lund, where there are now several Christian dorms.
Eivind Froen, 29, YWAM’s director in Norway (his father is a leading state-church minister and head of the Norwegian chapter of the European Evangelical Alliance) tells how 200 recently came to Christ in a week of meetings at Mosell, a village in northern Norway. A team of four youths working this summer in Lappland led seventeen to Christ—the first known decisions there in a century. Follow-up teams are on the way.
Froen agrees with Miss Enquist on the extent of spiritual activity and openness. Simultaneously, as elsewhere, there is growth of the charismatic movement within the state churches. At a June meeting of seventy-five ministers, says Froen, fifteen received the baptism of the Spirit.
A student movement has grown into the hundreds at the university in Bergen. Leaders have asked Campus Crusade to send help. Randi Lund, 21, says that thirty in her class of eighty study the Bible together. During a national celebration in May, more than 1,000 Christians staged a witness march in the city.
Theology student Olli Valtonen, 22, of Helsinki, says of Finland: “There is a great awakening going on, the greatest of my generation.” Thousands have been jamming into Jesus concerts and meetings, with sometimes hundreds at a time making decisions for Christ in meetings, he says. He believes it may lead to an open confrontation with the Communists in his land. “The Christians on campus are the biggest threat to them; the Christians are organized, they hold meetings, and they have an ideology for life.”
EASTERN EUROPE The Jesus revolution is spreading to young people in the Communist-ruled nations. A handful of students from Yugoslavia attended Campus Crusade’s conference at Linz, and they went home determined to spread the word. A student of Zagreb, converted four years ago at a youth meeting, wants to be known only as a Christian (“our churches are dead”). She hopes the movement among the young—there are a number of new converts at the university in Zagreb and among youth in Belgrade—will bring change and life to congregations. “We want Bible study, real fellowship, and freedom to share our experiences at church, but we can’t find it there,” she says.
Finns who drove to Linz spoke of meeting en route with youth groups in Poland and Hungary, sometimes in forests. In some countries they found hand-copied editions of Christian books being circulated.
I interviewed a university professor who teaches in an Iron Curtain country. He had been led to Christ by one of his students, and he in turn has led some of his students to Christ. They gather regularly to study the Bible and discuss apologetics. “Many students are surprised to learn that Christianity is rational,” he explained.
A YWAM worker of Russian descent who works extensively behind the Iron Curtain has met hundreds of young Jesus revolutionaries in Poland and Russia. He tells of a Russian youth group holding a “picnic” atop a high hill. When night came, they lit a fire. Scores of young people from nearby villages climbed up to investigate. The outing went on all night, and by the time dawn arrived there were fifty new converts.
Another YWAM leader smuggled seventy-two Bibles into Moscow on a Communist holiday. He met a group of Russian young people strumming guitars and singing about Jesus on Red Square. (A number of Jesus people from the West, knowing they risk arrest, intend to blitz a Russian city next year. Plans were discussed at a meeting in Denmark this summer.)
Several Swedish workers who have traveled throughout Siberia have brought back reports of outright revival in some communities. (Bible smuggler Brother Andrew estimates there were 10,000 decisions for Christ in Siberia last year. He tells of one forest meeting where fifty were baptized.)
Ivo Kreig, 23, a worker with young Christians in West Berlin, says he has met a large group of East German Jesus people who trace their movement to a tract found along an autobahn.
YWAM European director Don Stephens predicts a showdown. “The Communists fear the Jesus revolution. For years they’ve been saying religion is only for old people who don’t know any better. They can’t use that line any more,” he pointed out. “And the very existence of the movement is a challenge to their official dogma of atheism.”
But Communists too accept Christ. As a Communist, Siegfried Schmid, 21, of West Germany was driven by hatred. That gave rise to feelings of guilt and a sense of emptiness. “I, who wanted to change society, needed to be changed,” he said. Some Christians befriended him. He was impressed by their “very alive spirit of love and joy,” he recalls. After airing his intellectual problems, he decided to give God a chance. “I still believe in revolution—a revolution of love,” he says. And he is certain it will work in society because it has worked in his life. He recently served a few months with a YWAM team in India and is committed to full-time Christian work. The change is still going on: he spends hours daily getting input from the Bible, Christian books, and tapes.
Other persons, places, and events could be cited, all amplifying the sound of those rustling leaves. There are questions and issues that will keep theologians and historians busy for the foreseeable future. Like, what does it all mean?
I was pondering that question aboard the flight back to America when my seatmate, a 20-year-old collegian from New Jersey, struck up conversation. One thing led to another, and presently he asked, “Would you mind telling me a few things about Jesus?”
