Good EMF day at Welwyn

Andrew Birch

It was good to be at the meetings today organised in Welwyn, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of EMF, the European Mission Fellowship. Steven Bowers chaired to kick us off with a little history from Omri Jenkins' book Five minutes to midnight. Andrew Birch from Malaga then spoke helpfully and stimulatingly on the changing European scene. This was followed by a session featuring Jan Habl from the Czech Republic on video, Leonidas Kollaros from Greece and Vitalii Mariash from Ukraine on skype and there in Welwyn, Xavi Patino and Matt Hill from Spain and Sandor Kelemen from Transylvania.

We were then provided with a simple lunch and in the afternoon we had three seminars - one from Hungarian speakers Isztvan and Tunde Salanki, based in London, with Sandor from Romania; one from the three Spain based brothers and a final one from a couple working in the north of England among Muslims.

The final session was introduced with a piece from Daniel Webber's address on Europe for the Evangelical Library in 1991 Robert Strivens preaching from Hebrews 13 on the things that do not change. A great day. Lovely to meet old friends and one or two new ones. The EMF is a mission well worth supporting.

GBA 2011 06

At 2.30 pm this afternoon we had a short and happy business meeting where 55 messengers from 34 different churches. Then at 5 pm we had an excellent news session.

Brian Ellis showed a slide presentation on the work in the Philippines. Crawford Gribbin said a little bit about the church he belongs to in Port Laois.

David Butler from EMF spoke about the encouraging work of Andrew and Vivian Birch in Majorca. The only discouraging factor here is the lack of conversions among the indigenous people. Daniel Webber retires soon to be succeeded by martin Leech. Iorg Muller will be coming from Germany to carry on Martin's work.

Walter Johnston is a regular at the Assembly and it was encouraging and challenging to hear him talk about the prison work that he and others from the church are involved in.

Adam Laughton reminded us of his imminent move south to be involved in the London Gateway church planting project which will now begin in West Gravesend.

Martin Grubb flagged up a forthcoming conference with Jim Renihan Roots that refresh.

Finally, a London pastor spoke of the beginning of opportunities in the local mosque in East London.