English Bible Study in Aarhus

Pray for Denmark.com often receives requests from people in various countries asking for help in locating a church to attend while in Denmark for a brief or longer time. Just recently a foreign student at the University of Aarhus wrote asking if we knew of English services in Aarhus. Not having that information at hand, I tried to get the information for her though it took me some time to find it. Meanwhile, the student herself had found a weekly Bible study. When I had finally located the same Bible study group and emailed her she had already been attending for several weeks and was enjoying it immensely.

As it turns out, the laid-back, non-denominational Bible study is led by Theis Broegger, a good friend of Pray for Denmark.com since its inception. Folks from various countries and church backgrounds have found the group provides excellent and focused Bible study along with fulfilling Christian fellowship through worship, prayer, and social activities. While it is an independent group, it meets in facilities graciously opened to them by the Apostolic Church in Aarhus. The language used in the Bible study is English, a language in which Theis is as proficient as he is in his native Danish. Theis is a journalist by profession, as is Brad, my partner in the Pray for Denmark.com ministry.

The website for the new Bible study group can be found at http://www.aarhusbiblestudy.dk/. Information about location, some photos, and contact data are provided on the website as are downloads of past weekly Bible study content. Currently the study is in the Gospel of John. Sessions are held each Monday evening at 7:00 o’clock in the facilities of the Apostolic Church, Nørre Allé 23, 8000-Aarhus C. Already there are 20-25 people involved in the Bible study.

Theis tells Pray for Denmark.com that his vision for this Bible study is "as simple as it gets: feed the sheep." He adds, "God has told me not to worry or concern myself with the amount of people that might come, but to focus fully on preparing meaty spiritual meals each night for those that do show up. It has been a blessing to see how God has blessed it tremendously. His Word is powerful, so as long as we serve that faithfully, we all go home edified and inspired."

PRAISE God that international students and permanent residents for whom English is their first or preferred language now have a weekly opportunity for solid Bible study and warm Christian fellowship.

PRAY for the Spirit’s wisdom and direction as Theis (and Allison) work with the Aarhus Bible study group and for the weekly preparation of study materials.

PRAY for those who are attending the Bible study, that they will delve deeply into the Scriptures as did the Bereans in the Book of Acts 17:11: "They received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true" (NIV).

Tightening of Residence Requirements

The Danish government is tightening immigration laws and the conditions for issuing residence permits (visas) to foreign pastors, missionaries, and other religious workers. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has implied that in the past residence permits have been able to be obtained too easily.

Among other requirements, the government is now demanding that pastors, missionaries, and other religious workers desiring to establish legal residence in Denmark be appropriately educated, be financially self-sufficient, have more than passing familiarity with the Danish language and culture, and respect Denmark's position on human rights, in particular the right of an individual to change religions. Given world conditions at the present time, it is likely that national security concerns are in large part fueling the new residence requirements.

Muslim leaders believe the new requirements are discriminatory, designed to limit the activities of imams already in the country and prevent the entry of others. Christian leaders believe that the all-encompassing law may have a negative effect on the residence of international pastors and missionaries, including those called to ministry by local congregations. As we understand it, the law will require an applicant to be recommended by an existing, legally recognized Danish denomination.

At the present time there altogether nearly 700 foreign pastors, missionaries, or religious workers of all sorts in the country (including evangelical pastors and missionaries, Muslim imams, and Mormon missionaries). Some evangelicals have been waiting several years to obtain approval of their residence permit applications, among them Lee Hanson, Tony Acheampong, and Jonas Kouassi-Zessia. In a recent issue, the weekly newsletter of the Danish Baptist Union indicated that residence permits for the three pastors are at long last expected to be approved (www.baptistkirken.dk/nyheder/Nyhedsbreve/nyeste.htm).

PRAY that the new requirements for residence permits will not adversely affect the opportunities for ministry on the part of evangelical pastors and missionaries approved the various free church denominations.

PRAY for Pastor Lee Hanson's ministry through Bethel Baptist Church in Aalborg. Lee, originally from the USA, speaks fluent Danish and received his seminary education in Denmark. He has an significant work with international students at Aalborg University. (www.bethelkirken.dk)

PRAY for Pastor Tony Acheampong's ministry with the International City Baptist Church in Taastrup. This church is oriented to English-speaking Africans and other internationals residing in Denmark. (www.tvaerkulturelt-center.dk/)

PRAY for Pastor Jonas Kouassi-Zessia of Copenhagen's Eglise Protestante Baptiste. Pastor Jonas is a former Ivory Coast diplomat. The church is oriented toward French-speaking Africans now working or studying in Denmark. (www.tvaerkulturelt-center.dk/)

Pastoral Crisis in Danish Free Churches

Who will replace aging pastors in Danish free churches? In its June 2006 issue, Church News from Denmark, reported that several free church denominations in Denmark are experiencing difficulty finding candidates to replace retiring pastors. Too few free church young people seem to be drawn to the vocational ministry, tending rather to follow other career paths even while remaining a part of the church. One University of Copenhagen sociologist finds it puzzling that free church young people are not drawn to the ministry at a time when youth in general are more interested in religion than ever.

There may be reasons why many young believers from the free churches are seemingly deaf to the call of God and are bypassing pastoral ministry as a career. Some of the free church denominations and the local churches are themselves aging and have perhaps lost some of the spontaneity, ardor and freshness of their origins. Even free churches can over time develop their own rigid traditions. Whether in Denmark or elsewhere, subsequent generations tend to cool off, lack the commitment of their forebears, and look for new religious experience or affiliations. Young people often find older church members to be inflexible and uncomfortable with change even when the times warrant it. As one young American believer put it, "It's lonely being a Christian my age in my church."

There tends to be considerable divergence in the views of older and younger church members on what the church should look like and on how to go about doing church. As the article in Church News from Denmark suggests, "For the young generation the most important thing is the social network in the congregation, and they do not understand the traditional ways followed by the older generation." Rather than fight the system, many leave. In addition, many of the free churches in Denmark are quite small and struggling to support their pastors, some having only part-time pastors who must supplement their income from other sources. For young people considering career opportunities, such uncertain modeling detracts from the attractiveness of the vocational ministry. Not a few young people are forsaking the traditional free churches to find a home in the new church plants as, for instance, Copenhagen's lively youth-oriented and thoroughly evangelical Vineyard Church and other similar churches in the urban areas.

Meanwhile, the problem of free church pastoral vacancies persists and begs a solution. Dare we say it--were genuine spiritual revival and a new wave of the Spirit to occur in Denmark, it would go a long way toward remediating what is now a challenging situation threatening the future and possibly even the continued existence of some local churches.

Happily, there are several fine training institutions in Denmark where young people who do respond to God's call to vocational ministry can receive sound theological education and pastoral training. Among these are the Danish Pentecostal Bible College at Mariager (www.pvhcollege.dk/danish/english.asp?ID=1); the International Apostolic Bible College at Kolding (www.biblecollege.dk); the Skandinavisk Akademi for Lederskab og Teologi (SALT) in Copenhagen (www.salt-akademi.dk/SALT_english_version.pdf); and the Dansk Bible Institut/Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology (www.dbi.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=168).

PRAY for young believers in the Danish free churches, who are idealistic and committed and wanting to serve Christ in ministry, but who find it lonely and frustrating being a part of a church more oriented to the needs and perspectives of its older members.

PRAY that older believers in the free churches will become less concerned about maintaining church and denominational traditions and more understanding of and receptive to the passions and perspectives of younger believers.

PRAY for an increase in the number of students preparing for pastoral ministry in the Danish Bible colleges and evangelical theological faculties noted above.

Evangelical Alliance Prayer Week (Bedeuge)

In concert with its continent-wide counterpart, the European Evangelical Alliance, the Evangelisk Alliance i Danmark sponsors a week of prayer each year in the first full week of January. The Alliance's 2007 Bedeuge begins tomorrow, January 7 and continues through Sunday, January 14. There will be scores of prayer groups meeting all over the country and it is hoped that more than 30,000 Danes will be participating. While much of the announced focus is on prayer for evangelical work in Eastern Europe, and rightly so, we believe this week also gives Danish believers a significant opportunity to agree in prayer for revival and renewal throughout the nation's parishes and congregations.

Pastor Rick Warren said at the December 27-31, 2006 Urbana Conference that, "God's timing is perfect. I see a spiritual hunger, I see a spiritual readiness, the willingness to commit, and a willingness to sacrifice; and all of these things coming in together ... has created a 'kairos' moment--the right time for a reformation to take place." As one pastor has reiterated, prayer and worship go hand in hand. He writes: "I believe the pathway for the Church's moving into its full destiny in God's counsels, while retaining a practical sanity and spiritual balance on earth's surfrace, lies in our ability to perceive the true purpose and spiritual dynamic in worship. What has been defined for too long as an hour's exercise on Sunday, packaged by enculturated tradition and preserved in doctrinaire posturing is being redefined, unwrapped, and unsealed today. Worship is being redefined in terms of its form and focus. It isn't that valid traditions must be scorned or discarded but that newness must refill them with meaning." (Jack W. Hayford, Worship His Majesty, Gospel Light Productions, 2000).

That is what happens when revival and renewal occur. Wouldn't it be wonderful were such revival and a new Reformation, bathed in prayer and worship, to break out all over Europe in 2007 and for it to begin in Denmark this coming week! The website for the Evangelisk Alliance i Danmark is http://evangeliskalliance.dk/.

PRAY that the the Spirit of God will move graciously and powerfully among the many prayer groups meeting in Denmark next week with Christ-exalting worship and fervent, believing prayer. Thirty thousand people so engaged could turn Denmark and the whole of Europe upside-down in a mighty demonstration of God's power and blessing.

PRAY for the hundreds of parishes and pastors of the Danish State Church (Folkekirke), as well as the scores of free evangelical pastors and congregations, that they will experience a life-changing spiritual encounter with Jesus Christ through this coming week of prayer throughout Denmark. (For a list of participating prayer locales, see the following website: http://evangeliskalliance.dk/index.php?mainid=6&subid=39.

PRAY that there will be a rebirth of aggressive but culturally relevant and sensitive evangelism throughout Denmark and the Faroe Islands.

PRAY that God will reverse the downslide of Christianity in Europe as believers are stirred to their depths with the urgency of evangelism and revival.

Christmas Greetings

GLÆDELIG JUL OG GODT NYTÅR

We wish all of the faithful prayer partners of Pray for Denmark.com a Blessed Christmas and a Happy and Spiritually Prosperous New Year.

Let's continue to pray that the Spirit of God will sweep over Denmark in grace and power in 2007 to bring revival and renewal in all of the churches and that many will come to faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

In His love and grace,

Bill and Brad

Denmark and Missional Churches

The evangelical community is not immune from the coining of new buzz words. Two of the newest of them are "emergent church" and "missional church." These are strange to the ears of some of us who have been involved with missionary service from some years back.

A big word in my era of the 1950s and 1960s was "indigenous church," a term not often heard today. I, for one, am rather conservative on the coining of new words and always wonder what brings on the need for them and whether the new term may in some way be a subtle insult to biblical theology. So it is with "missional church," a term that I am beginning to hear frequently even in the church we attend. Apparently the idea is catching on.

I am truly aware that the world has changed in the past fifty or more years and certain mission methods, strategies and structures that were once prominent no longer work as they used to. The message certainly hasn't changed, but the means and manner of propagating the message have had to change in a changing world. A detailed and useful definition of the term"missional" was offered at the 2004 Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization. Click on : www.urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=993 for the full article.

Briefly stated, "missional" "is not the same as 'mission-minded,' though they are both important and related. The term 'missional' is simply the noun 'missionary' adapted into an adjective. For example, an 'adversary' is your enemy. Someone who is 'adversarial' is acting like your enemy. Thus, a 'missionary' is someone who acts like a missionary (for example, understands a culture, proclaims the faithful Gospel in a way that people in culture can understand, and uses parts of that culture to glorify God). A 'missional church' is a church that acts like a missionary in its community" (see www.christianindex.org/1657.article).

One of the foremost thinkers these days about the missional church is Australian missiologist Alan Hirsch whose writings include The Shaping of Things to Come and The Forgotten Ways--Reactivating the Missional Church. A major perspective from his writings suggests that the older formulas for growth in the Body of Christ no longer work. His vision for the future includes growth of the church of Jesus Christ in the powerful ways that occurred in the outreach of the early church and its growth from perhaps only 25,000 believers in A.D. 100 to an estimated 20 million in A.D. 310.

The thrust of Hirsch's message is that the dormant potential of the church in our time can again be aroused to early church-like passion, prayer, and incarnational service. If that is what "missional" entails, let's use the term!

Through the sponsorship of SALT (the Skandinavisk Academi for Lederskab og Teologi), the Evangelical Alliance, and Emerging.DK, Dr. Alan Hirsch is coming to Denmark for a one-day session on the theme of the missional church. The conference takes place on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at a locale at Drejervej 15-17 in Copenhagen.

Conferences come and go with greater or lesser impact, but perhaps the input from this brief conference will help foster a new attitude and approach by Danish churches to revival, renewal, evangelism and church planting, or just acting like missionaries in their own communities.

PRAY that Alan Hirsch will be guided by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in what he has to say to Danish pastors and Christian leaders about theory and practice for missional churches.

PRAY that this brief conference with Alan Hirsch will help ignite a greater understanding and vision in Danish believers of what the church was meant to be and do, using culture but not engulfed by it.

PRAY that conferences with overseas leaders such as this one with Alan Hirsch will not "talk down" to Danish pastors and Christian leaders or come across as having all the answers for Denmark, but rather will cause participants to listen for the Spirit's direction to make specific insights gained from the conference work effectively in the Danish cultural context.

The Lord's Work in the Faroe Islands

Back in the 1950s, I was in Copenhagen with my family on our way back from our first term in the former Belgian Congo. While visiting relatives in Copenhagen, I had occasion to attend an assembly of the Christian Brethren, sometimes referred to as Plymouth Brethren. At the meeting, a young man who at the time was studying medicine at the University of Copenhagen gave an unforgettably impassioned and joyful testimony of how he had come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Two things especially impressed me about this young man. One was that he was overcome with emotion when trying to express the depth of his commitment to Christ, filled with praise for having found Him as Savior and Lord. The other was that he wasn't a Dane at all, but rather had come to the University from the Faroe Islands to study medicine. It was undoubtedly the first time I had ever heard of the Faroe Islands. All through these many years since, I have often thought of that impassioned testimony and wondered whatever had become of him, even though I did not even remember his name. I also have warm memories at this assembly of meeting a fine Christian brother, Mr. Paisley, owner of a language school in Copenhagen, and a Christian Brethren missionary and his wife from Scotland, Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Adams. The Adamses invited me and my family to have "kaffee" with them at their apartment in Copenhagen and what a gracious time of fellowship that was. Mr. Adams, a wonderful man of God, was a great encouragement to us and our work in the Congo. Mr. Adams ministered in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and spoke his own brand of "Scandinavian" that he said allowed him to be understood in all three countries.

As the old hymn declares, "God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform." When I was in Denmark this past spring, I attended a Sunday service at the Baptist church in Viborg. There was a visitor there that morning, Heri Jacobsen, who was from the Faroe Islands. After the service I chatted with him and told him of my experience hearing the testimony of the young Faroese medical student so many years before in Copenhagen. I asked Heri if there was any chance that he might know the man of whom I spoke. Heri reflected a moment and then said, "I think I know the man you're talking about." Heri gave me an address for a Dr. Rodmundur i Lida in Torshavn, Faroe Islands. I later followed up with a letter to Dr. Lida in which I recounted that memorable meeting in Copenhagen.

What a joyful surprise it was shortly after to receive a wonderful letter from the now retired Dr. Lida, who, it turns out, had returned to the Faroe Islands after completing his medical studies and a brief residency in the United States, ultimately becoming the little country's chief surgeon.

The Faroes are a group of islands (among them Kalsoy, Kunoy, Vodoy, Eysturoy, Stremoy, Bordoy, Svinoy, Fugloy, Sandoy, and Suduroy) situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Iceland and Norway. The many bays, fjords, and mountains are a feature of the islands' rugged and treeless typography. The land does not support extensive agriculture, though there is a good bit of sheepherding because of the grasslands. A most important aspect of the economy is fishing. Access between the various islands in the past was limited to crossing open water, though now there is a well-developed infrastructure with connecting bridges and tunnels, some of them miles in length.

The Faroe Islands have had a long history with Denmark, but became an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1948. The Faroese manage their own affairs, except for national defense and foreign affairs which are still represented by Denmark. The islands' population is less than 50,000 and the native islanders speak Faroese, a language akin to the Scandinavian languages. The Faroese have a culture all their own, though it has many commonalities with the cultures of Norway, Iceland, and Denmark. A majority of the inhabitants are Lutheran and part of the Danish Lutheran Folkekirke. Ten percent of the population gather with the assemblies of the Christian Brethren (known as Brødrasamkoman), reflecting a strong evangelistic missionary endeavor since the 1860s. There are two Bible translations available in the Faroese language. Many Faroese are involved in commercial fishing. Through the faithful witness of believers connected with the Brethren assemblies, many fishermen have over the years come to trust Christ as Savior and Lord.

Lutheran revival movement efforts are found in the islands. Indre Mission (Inner Mission) has a number of gathering places throughout the country called "mission houses" (www.mission.fo/index.asp?pg=41). There is a Pinse (Pentecostal) church in Torshavn (Filadelfia.net.dynamicweb.dk/). Christian broadcasting is represented by Radio Lindin (www.lindin.fo/index.php?id=283). I expect to include further information about the Lord's work in the Faroe Islands as I become better informed.


PRAY for the people of the Faroe Islands and the continued spread of the gospel of Christ among them through the efforts of the various evangelical churches and organizations.

PRAY for the leaders and activities of the Lutheran revival movement organization, Inner Mission (Indre Mission), centered in its network of mission houses throughout the islands.

PRAY for the elders and congregants of the assemblies of Christian Brethren, the largest of which appears to be Ebenezer Sankoman in Torshavn (www.ebenezer.fo), and for continued growth through aggressive evangelistic and Bible teaching ministries.

PRAY especially for the now retired Dr. Rodmundur i Lida who continues to minister the Word of God in the Faroes and in Denmark (he ministered last spring at Brønshøj Forsamling in Copenhagen -- www.bkrf.dk/).

PRAY for the leadership and ministries of Filadelfia Sankoman (Pentecostal church) in Torshavn.

PRAY for the the workers and extensive outreach of Radio Lindin, the non-denominational Christian radio station for the Faroe Islands, broadcasting the gospel from its studios in Torshavn.