Pastor Wesley Zinn shares a report from the prayer and worship gathering, United Prayer Rising (UPRising) Europe, held July 8 through 11^th at Ashburnham Place in the UK.

From the United Prayer Rising webpage:

In July 2016 in Ilsan, South Korea, we witnessed a spiritual “UPRISING (United Prayer Rising)” where generations from across nations converged to fast, to pray, and to believe God for a reversal of the trends of attacks happening globally among the youth today, and to see the birthing of new, youth-led prayer and mission movements. On its last day, at the Nuri Peace Park, DMZ (the border between North and South Korea), the youth contended for a reunification of Korea, and we continue to witness today the hope of it becoming so alive!

After the UPRISING in Korea, young people have owned the vision, and have taken the zeal for united prayer to their respective regions and nations. The “waves” have rolled out.

There have now been UPRisings around the world in nine difference nations and locations. The most recent was UPRising Europe, help in a field in the south of England, but representing the whole European continent.

Each UPRising event is planned, organized, and led by local young adults, with guidance and shepherding from a multigenerational team. All of this is very informal and unofficial, but the presence of the Holy Spirit’s leading and power is stirring a movement that is gaining momentum and growing from event to event. Already plans are underway for at least two more events in Mexico and Australia.

I was invited to attend the UPRising event this past January in Jakarta, Indonesia as part of the multigenerational shepherding team [Editor’s note: See Pastor Zinn’s report of UPRising Jakarta 2019]. There I was introduced to the UPRising Europe leaders and again served a pastoral/shepherding role during the organizing stages, and during the event itself.

The UPRising Europe event was a 72 hour worship and intercession gathering. The call was For Worship, For Prayer, For a Continent. Around 250 attended, but the significant number is 26. 26 nations were represented, nearly all from Europe. It was powerful to join in to fervent prayer for each country represented in the tent. And it was revival stirring aroma to be led in worship by teams from all over Europe. Women from Iceland teamed with a Latino drummer from the United States and a guitar player from Malta. A family who runs a House of Prayer in Albania drove the 36 hours to lead worship for two hours and then I found them serving in the lunch line. A worship team from Russia was followed by Ukrainians. Unity that may not happen in politics and earthly government was occurring in worship and in the family-of-God oneness in the prayer tent.

The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message

Part Four: The Reconversion of Europe

How did monasteries, hospitality, and persecution lead to the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Part of The Gospel in History series.

The Re-conversion of Europe

At this juncture, I turn my attention back to Egypt and the heritage of the Coptic Church. Coptic Christianity began in Egypt and spread South into the Sudan and into Ethiopia. Through the influence of its institutions, it affected the Christian missions to Ireland and Scotland, of all places, and ultimately, the reconversion of Europe under Irish, Scottish, and British monastics, transforming European Christian life.

John Cassian has already been spoken of [Editor’s note: see also “The Resurgence of the Gospel, Part Two: Recharting the Christian World Mission” and “Spreading from the Frontiers: Another Look at the Gospel in the Medieval Church”] as having visited the monasteries which Pachomius had initiated in the desert lands of Egypt. These monasteries transformed new Christians into missionaries, missionaries who were not only knowledgeable in the Christian Scriptures but were also able artisans and craftsmen who knew how to relate to the common man. Cassian took what he saw and introduced the same concept into Western Europe and even Wales and Ireland. One man who was strongly influenced by Egyptian monasticism was the person we know today as St. Patrick.

A page from The Book of Armagh.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Born in Wales, Patrick was captured by Irish pirates at the age of 16 and enslaved to look after the sheep of his captors. According to his Confessions, he remained in Eire (Ireland) for six years before making his escape and returning to the southern coast of Britain. Soon after returning home, he continued his education at a monastery and entered the monastic life. At some point in his life, as recorded in his Confessions, he traveled to Rome where he gained commission as a missionary to Ireland. He elected to make northern Ireland his field of work. For more than thirty years, he traveled throughout northern Ireland. He also established a Pachomian style of monasticism which encouraged literary education, the arts, the crafts, and intense biblical study. As he had walked the breadth of Ireland with the gospel, he encouraged his students to go by foot as they ministered the Word of God.

Christian historians have referred to this band of foot soldiers for Christ, the perigrini [“pilgrims”], and for the next decades these Irish perigrini traveled the footpaths of Ireland and northern and central and Europe and as far south as southern Italy and into Scotland. The central monastic center was Armagh in northern Ireland.

Contrary to genuine concerns, Islam surpassing Christianity is improbable. For one thing, Protestant growth from 1960-2000 was three times global population changes and twice that of Islam.[2] Furthermore, Muslim fertility rates[3] are leveling out. Pew Research points out:

The gap in fertility between the Christian and Muslim-dominated nations fell from 67% in 1990 to 17% in 2010. If the trend continues, the Muslim and Christian fertility rates will converge in around 2050.[4]

Countering the inevitability of Islam’s dominance, Rodney Stark recently noted:

As recently as April 2015, the Pew Research Center declared that Muslims would soon overtake Christians by way of superior fertility. They will not … Islam generates very little growth through conversions, while Christianity enjoys a substantial conversion rate, especially in nations located in … the ‘global south’ – Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. And these conversions do not include the millions of converts being gained in China. Thus, current growth trends project an increasingly Christian world.[5]

In the darkest corners of the world, astonishing numbers of people are turning to Christ. Latin America, Africa, and Asia are experiencing extraordinary growth.

Declension in the West

While God’s glory is on display around the world, not all nations are experiencing the same degree of impact. Christianity is undoubtedly outpacing population growth internationally. However, it is stagnant in the West.[9]

Christianity is on the decline in America, not just among younger generations or in certain regions of the country but across race, gender, education and geographic barriers. The percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years to about 71 percent.[12]

Some would question these findings. Yet, no matter how one interprets the data, problems are apparent. While Christianity is expanding around the world, it remains stagnant in North America.

A special report from the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission.

Academics are calling it Europe’s “migrant” crisis, and some sympathetic media are terming it as the continent’s “refugee” crisis, both focusing on the “problem” faced by Europe. Lost in these analyses is the suffering of nearly 600,000 people, some of them Christian, who, fleeing war, persecution and oppression, have crossed the dangerous Mediterranean Sea to reach a region that is unwilling to give them asylum.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that at least 3,100 people have lost their lives in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year, due to bad weather conditions and overcrowded vessels of smugglers and human traffickers they used to cross the sea. And many of the tens of thousands, including women and children, who have made it to Europe are being detained without food or water. Others are being abused or exploited, as they remain without shelter or hope.

The governments of the frontline states of Greece and Italy as well as the European Union are faced with an unusual situation, not knowing what to do with the people who are arriving not only from Syria, but also from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and Iraq.

More than 450,000 people have arrived by sea to Greece, of which at least 277,899 are from Syria, 76,620 from Afghanistan, 21,552 from Iraq, and 14,323 from Pakistan. In Italy, the number of arrivals is at least 137,313, of which 35,938 are from Eritrea, 17,886 from Nigeria, 10,050 from Somalia, 8,370 from Sudan, and 7,072 from Syria.

How they are treated depends on how we see them. In international law, which provides for assistance and protection for those fleeing persecution or conflict, an asylum seeker is someone whose claims are yet to be proven, after which they can be called refugee. An economic migrant, on the other hand, is someone who arrives in a foreign land for economic gain.

Given the nationalities of these people, they all appear to be legitimate asylum seekers, and must be treated accordingly.

Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is mindlessly killing civilians in Syria amid a bloody civil war against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and has captured large territories in Iraq. The targeted killings and persecution of Christians in Syria and Iraq are nothing less than genocide. More than 700,000 of Syria’s Christian population of 1.1 million have been displaced due to attacks by ISIS. And in Iraq, at least 125,000 Christians have fled their homes in the Nineveh Plains to the autonomous Kurdistan region.

Afghans are fleeing attacks in the wake of insurgencies by the Taliban and Islamic State’s local affiliate. Eritreans are running away from forced lifelong military conscripts by their authoritarian government.

Last Wednesday, just after I had received a copy from the publisher, I spent most of the day in prayer of thanksgiving over the completion of this work. During this last year I had encountered numerous blocks and unexpected obstacles to its completion, as in the inexplicable loss of files, and even the entire text, and lastly, the index had to be redone completely. My Facebook friends prayed me through every obstacle.

Like most authors, I asked the Lord to grant this book much success, not only in this country, but overseas. I recalled to the Lord that very dear saint, and great prayer warrior, while praying for me, spontaneously prayed for the success of this book overseas. As I prayed I kept getting the word and image of Germany. This was strange as I had not had the least thought of a German audience as I was writing this work. I merely wanted to tell the story of Mrs. Agnes Sanford, and the people around her, and how she in particular was a theological innovator (in the best sense of the word). For instance, she developed the ministry of inner healing, and went on to write the first theology of nature miracles – as in stilling storms, etc. Nature miracles have been well recorded throughout the literature of the saints and heroes of the Church, but Agnes was the first person ever to write a book on how to pray effectively for this.[1]

Back to the Germany connection. I wondered if the impression I was getting was from the Lord or from a subconscious wish. I messaged a German Facebook friend who is also a distinguished German Pentecostal pastor and scholar. He knew about the book, and messaged me back agreeing that there was indeed an anointing on the book to do a work in Germany. Hallelujah!

I then began to consider, why would this work, about the wife of an Episcopal priest and rector, who was born in China, and who spent all of her adult live in the United States, be of special interest to German Christians?

Rudolf Bultmann (1884 – 1976) was an influential liberal theologian.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.

First, it is necessary to consider that the spiritual life and vitality of the German Churches is at a very low point, as in the rest of Europe. Germany is the birthplace of the Reformation, but also the birthplace of so called higher-criticism which denied the supernatural in the Bible and made the miracles to be pious myths (Rudolf Bultmann, and his followers, etc.). That form of hermeneutical disaster and apostasy is still very influential in Europe and Germany. Not surprising, Sunday church attendance in Europe is between 15 and 5 percent of the population.

Back in 1908 the Protestant pastors in Germany met to decide what to do about the craziness coming from America and the Azusa St. revival – Pentecostalism. They decided they wanted nothing to do with it and denounced the whole movement as a delusion and heresy. As a result, any form of Pentecostal and charismatic expression has been very limited in Germany until very recent decades.[2] There is some Holy Spirit movement now, as Europeans, including Germans, are getting increasingly nervous about the Muslim penetration of Europe and are open to anything that will counter it.

With this in mind, there are certain aspects of Agnes Sanford and Her Companions that may be particularly attractive to German Christians. First, among her “companions” was Prof. Glen Clark, who founded the Camps Furthest Out (CFO). This was an anti-cessationist parachurch ministry dating from the 1930 – yes, there were such things back then.[3] Several of the major works of Prof. Clark were translated into German and widely circulated in the 1950s and 1960s. Thus, my coverage of his achievements in effective prayer and healing will resonate with some older Germans, and his translated works could be easily reprinted.