Russ Mitchell’s report on the progress of the gospel in Central and Eastern Europe.

UPDATE: Greater Europe Mission (GEM) is offering training in disciple making movements in Europe.

When Rob Bell came out in support of same-sex marriage he appropriately chose San Francisco’s Episcopal Cathedral to make the announcement.

The Episcopalian church was once the largest church in the American colonies. Since turning its back on historic Christianity it has been in relentless decline.

Let’s do a health check on today’s Episcopalian church.

Headquarters has spent $18 million suing disaffected local congregations. The annual convention has endorsed cross-dressing clergy and same-sex marriage. The denomination cannot afford the annual $8.5 million needed to maintain its New York City headquarters. From 1992-2002 the Episcopal church lost 2.3 million members (32%). The decline continues with a loss of 2.7% in 2012. Bishops, parishes and entire dioceses are exiting the denomination.

The Episcopal church isn’t declining, it’s decaying.

This is the story every time Christian progressives abandon the gospel for the sake of relevance. We have a century or more of evidence, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians and emergents. There are no exceptions.

UPDATE: The gospel of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

Melvin Bragg has produced a BBC documentary on the most dangerous man in Tudor England — William Tyndale.

William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. He loaded our language with more phrases than any other writer before or since, says Melvyn Bragg.

William Tyndale was effectively martyred after fighting against cruel and eventually overwhelming forces, which tried for more than a dozen years to prevent him from putting the Word of God into his native language. He succeeded but he was murdered before he could complete his self-set task of translating the whole of the Old Testament as he had translated the whole of the New Testament.

More than any other man he laid the foundation of our modern language which became by degrees a world language. “He was very frugal and spare of body”, according to a messenger of Thomas Cromwell, but with an unbreakable will. Tyndale, one of the greatest scholars of his age, had a gift for mastering languages, ancient and modern, and a genius for translation. His legacy matches that other pillar of our language – Shakespeare, whose genius was in imagination.

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Mark Durie reports on Martin Janssen’s prayer walk in Amman, held on May 21 2013 for the two abducted Syrian clergy, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim. These Archbishops have been captured by Syrian rebels.

After the prayer walk Janssen had the opportunity to meet with Syrian Christian refugees, who told him how they came to flee their homes and villages. Their village was occupied by rebel forces, who proceeded to announce that they were now under an Islamic emirate, and were subject to sharia law.

The Christian residents were offered four choices:

1. Renounce the ‘idolatry’ of Christianity and convert to Islam.
2. Pay a heavy tribute to the Muslims for the privilege of keeping their heads and their Christian faith.
3. Be killed.
4. Flee for their lives, leaving all their belongings behind.

Some Christians were killed, some fled, some tried to pay the jizya and found it too heavy a burden to bear after the rebels kept increasing the amount they had to pay, and some were unable to flee or pay, so they converted to Islam to save themselves.

The scenario reported by Syrian refugees is a re-enactment of the historic fate of Christians across the Middle East. The Muslim historian Al-Tabari reported that when the Caliph ‘Umar conquered Syria, he gave the following command to his armies:

Summon the [conquered] people to Allah; those who respond unto your call, accept it [their conversion to Islam] from them, but those who refuse must pay the jizya out of humiliation and lowliness. If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency.

Umar’s command referenced Sura (chapter) 9 verse 29 of the Koran:

Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the jizya readily, being brought low.

This policy of subjugating Christians under the yoke of jizya taxation was also based upon the teaching of Muhammad.

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I ran a Following and Fishing training last night.

Laura, the youngest in the room, reported in how she has shared her story with six friends. She has four Discovery Bible Studies on the go. She hopes to lead one of her friends to Christ today.

It’s a four hour round trip for me to drive to Ballarat. Over the course of the training I’ll rack up about 25 hours of driving. Laura’s story alone has made the trips worthwhile.

UPDATE: Laura led her friend to Christ and because of the training she knows how to disciple her friend and teach her to reach her friends and family.

Isn’t this what we all signed up to do?

This is the last in a series of podcasts recorded at a Community of Practice in Sydney, April 2013. Unfortunately we lost the last ten minutes of the recording.

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A new analysis of the 2011 UK census shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young.

It suggests that only a minority of people will describe themselves as Christians within the next decade, for first time.

Meanwhile almost one in 10 under 25s in Britain is now a Muslim.

The proportion of young people who describe themselves as even nominal Christians has dropped below half for the first time.

Initial results from the 2011 census published last year showed that the total number of people in England and Wales who described themselves as Christian fell by 4.1 million – a decline of 10 per cent.

But new analysis from the Office for National Statistics shows that that figure was bolstered by 1.2 million foreign-born Christians, including Polish Catholics and evangelicals from countries such as Nigeria.

They disclosed that there were in fact 5.3 million fewer British-born people describing themselves as Christians, a decline of 15 per cent in just a decade.

At the same time the number of Muslims in England and Wales surged by 75 per cent – boosted by almost 600,000 more foreign born followers of the Islamic faith.

While almost half of British Muslims are under the age of 25, almost a quarter of Christians are over 65.
The average age of a British Muslim is just 25, not far off half that of a British Christian.

Younger people also drove a shift away from religion altogether, with 6.4 million more people describing themselves as having no faith than 10 years earlier.

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RELATED: CofE annual statistics 2011 – good news and bad

This is number 5 in a series of six podcasts recorded at a Community of Practice with Jeff Sundell in April 2013.

Jeff talks about leaders who multiply movements. Jeff refers to the handout: Effective SC Core Competencies. The term “Strategy Co-ordinator” refers to a movement leader.

My favourite hymn, In Christ Alone, has been struck from the Presbyterian Hymnal (PCUSA).

The hymnal committee was not comfortable with a line in the song. It reads, “till on that cross as Jesus died / the wrath of God was satisfied.” In that it made God appear to be angry at sin rather than lovingly indulgent, the committee petitioned the copyright holders to authorize an alteration to their original text: “Till on that cross as Jesus died / the love of God was magnified.” The request was denied and the committee consequently voted to exclude it.

So we’ve banned the wrath of God from the hymnal. The committee is now working on how they can ban the wrath of God from Scripture.

I’ve been training in the historic and beautiful city of Ballarat for the last few weeks at one2one.

One of the group (we’ll call her Jess) sat down with a young woman (we’ll call her Suzie) who wanted to know more about following Jesus. So Jess shared her story with the use of a symbol timeline of her spiritual journey.

Then she asked her Suzie to do the same. Three things happened: (1) the relationship immediately went to a new level; (2) Suzie heard Jess’ story of coming to know Christ; (3) Jess was able to discern where Suzie was with Christ.

After that had both shared Jess asked Suzie if she would like to know how to follow Jesus. She shared God’s story with her and led her to Christ. Next step discipleship using the 7 Commands of Christ.

Who could your share your story with this week?

Want to learn more? Download Following and Fishing: Getting Started for an outline of God’s Story and the 7 Commands of Christ.