Failing the Gospel in Europe

I’m listening to some of the discussion in City-to-City’s Evangelism Project. Specifically, their honest inquiry into why it’s so hard to share the gospel in Europe, and if there are any lesson from the European experience? There is a perception that evangelism is difficult in Europe, both to do, and to get any results, in terms of conversions. 

That this dilemma is described by incomers from other continents, at least when they start to do mission beyond their own diaspora communities, suggests that it is not just sour grapes on the part of disillusioned indigenous clergy. So I want to reflect on some of these explanations, in order to perhaps discern a way forward missiologically.

One of the reasons is quite simply that Christianity in Europe is old, old-fashioned, passé, out-of-date. It belongs to the past, to history: its historical moment has passed on. This is a fact of the present, whoever we might try to explain it.

I was struck by this, when I was on a mission team in Turkey, and we visited the ruins of an ancient Byzantine church, whose foundations were displayed as an archaeological tourist site. With Muslims, women in headscarves, walking around the ruins, it was clear this was of interest as a museum piece, of no possible relevance to today’s Turkey, divided between Muslim and Secular ideologies.

In the West, we are on our way to the same phenomenon: Christianity as nostalgia, as heritage industry, as the past. For Europe, Christianity is, no longer regarded as something new. It has been tried, and found wanting. Whenever the Christian message is presented, therefore, it is received and perceived, through this lens.

Some Christians still assert, that in times of crisis, personal or societal, people will turn to God. This may have been true, when there was still a strong folk memory of the church. But today it is no longer an option. Why would anybody think to go today to a church, for help? They’d go to a psychologist or therapist, for personal trauma, or to political movements and activists, for social problems.

Our response, therefore, must be to cast the church, and therefore the gospel, as a locus of help. Our strategy, then, must be per-intellectual, subliminal; to re=introduce Christianity into the consciousness of European populations, as a viable option. In Peter Berger’s terms, to restore its “plausibility”. The church must be re-inserted into the social fabric, at local and national level

For Christians, especially Protestants, this is translated into publishing books or, with the Bible Society, supporting artists to re-interpret the Christian story. Using contemporary means, whether musicals, painting, or video installations. But the market, and interest level, for these, is very low. Rather than the hi-brow, we need a lo-brow cultural offensive.

We need visible, practical and social, expressions of faith. But, although supporting individuals in their occupations is important, to raise the salience of faith. Something more is needed, if it is not to be a merely privatised, personalised, pietistic practice. It need the collective, and institutional, as well. This could operate at four levels:

·         Living Alternatives: e.g. families and marriages that work (sadly, at the moment, divorce rates are identical for Christians and non-Christians).

·         Social Projects: e.g. community centres, which connect with local neighbourhoods, but retain an explicit faith commitment.  

·         Recovery Programmes: e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous, which still demands faith in a “higher power”, a step towards saving faith.

·         Authentic Community: acceptance and inclusion in the faith community (talking about “church” is so offputting).