The State of the Great Commission in Europe: Major Challenges and Opportunities

Re-evangelizing Europe

At the end of the 14th Century, Lithuania, the last pagan nation in Europe, finally adopted Christianity. Given that this report seeks to ‘capture the current state and trajectory of the Great Commission’, Europe stands as an important reminder that our current state and trajectory does not establish with any certainty the future of the church. Europe was the first continent to be completely Christianized, but it was also the first continent to be substantially de-Christianized.

The authors of this article have reviewed the key global topics from the report and have identified five of those which have particular relevance for Europe today:

The meaning of trust/truth
The place of community
The challenges and opportunities of the digital world
Creation care and climate justice
Unprecedented demographic change.

To those five global topics, we have added one of our own:

A shift in morality affecting how the ‘good news’ of the gospel is interpreted by many Europeans.

As we seek to re-evangelize Europe, pastors, church planters, and Christian leaders in the workplace must not ignore these six issues that are shaping our European present and future. They are constituent parts of the soil into which we are sowing the gospel. In each section, we explore how these issues are affecting society and the church, but also suggest some ways in which the church could respond and, in some cases, already is. And, since many of these issues are also important in other regions of the world, we offer up our reflections as a contribution to the global conversation on the state of the Great Commission.

Restoring Truth

The radical change in the European mindset over a relatively short time period is one of the greatest challenges for communicating the gospel on our continent. Personal experience has become key to validating truth, rendering objective all-encompassing truth claims as unethical claims to power.

Consequently, trust in the bigger overarching stories of, for example, religious institutions has declined. In European societies, this has contributed to a massive rise in individualism. As each person lives on their individual ‘truth island’¹ and the distinction between the person and their opinion is set aside, discussion and critique of position becomes a threat which endangers democratic discourse.

In a time of social media, the postmodern project that aimed to bring down the power of authorities and institutions has in fact only passed on the power to those who voice their views the loudest and most polemically. Many people find themselves in a vulnerable and fragile position needing to constantly construct their own identity. This might well be one of the factors that plays into the rapid rise of mental disorders and gender confusion, especially among young people.²

Like all humans, Europeans are craving for orientation and meaning in life and spiritual practices are appreciated in different segments of the culture. However, few seem to look for help in the church. For many Europeans, the good news has become bad news: it is morally corrupt, intellectually naïve, and emotionally irrelevant. The leading question ahead of the church must therefore be: How can we live and speak of the power, beauty, and truth of the gospel so that Europeans perceive it as good news?

We will emphasize a few ideas here:

The sending of the church implies that it is called to be in the public arena, including the digital universe. The church must empower believers to be witnesses for Christ in all spheres of society, for example, in the universities, as businesspeople, and as professionals. We are called to help believers develop a Christian mindset that overcomes the split between the sacred and the secular.
We therefore need to bring our Christian faith into fresh dialogue with the burning questions of society, culture, politics, science, and technology. Churches need to humbly leave room for critical questions, doubt, and conversation. In apologetics we will encourage debate not only on complicated intellectual issues but also delve into more existential questions touching upon the lives of ordinary people.
The church must map the needs of people in their local communities in order to reach out with diaconal ministry. The church should be known for doing mercy and standing up for justice when people suffer. Mission includes both proclamation and social action, but the right to speak truth must be earned by living out discipleship in ways that build trust.
The Christian home has an enormous capacity as a place for building warm relations and inviting people in. These are basic communities that can take the role of being ‘church around a table’ both for believers and non-believers in an atmosphere of trust.

‘We are called to help believers develop a Christian mindset that overcomes the split between the sacred and the secular. . . . therefore our Christian faith needs to be brought into fresh dialogue with the burning questions of society, culture, politics, science, and technology.

The church in Europe needs a fully biblical understanding of truth, one that is both broad and deep—genuinely rational and deeply relational. The rationality of truth stems from the belief in a God who created in a rational and ordered way. The relational aspect flows from the revelation of Jesus as truth personified, who showed himself to be truthful by being trustworthy. So biblical truth is also about whom to trust.

This broader and deeper understanding of truth transcends both the narrow rationalism of the Enlightenment, often called modernism, and the opposition to objective truth that is at the heart of postmodernism.

Reshaping Morality

The huge epistemological change in how truth is perceived in Europe has already been described above. Among the many consequences, the shift in morality is perhaps one of the most significant with very particular impacts on the challenges for the European church.

In the past, people might have thought Christian ethics to be too high of a moral standard to even try to attain. Today Christianity is perceived, especially by the well-educated, the cultural influencers, and the younger generation, to embody negative values that are adverse to human flourishing. Contrary to what many Christians perceive as a degradation of values in Europe, most contemporaries regard this morality shift as positive progress that takes society beyond Christianity.

The challenges for the church and the advancement of the Greater Commission are huge: Mission is seen as immoral because it imposes one’s truth on others, which, by default, is a claim to power and a violation of the other person’s rights. This has contributed to a further privatization of faith. Believers are reluctant to share their personal faith; Christian humanitarian organizations communicate little about their Christian motivation.

Especially for the younger European generation, values like authenticity, justice, and care of the environment are of primary importance. But they do not see the church represent those values. Hence, a significant number of young Christians deconstruct and leave the faith they were brought up in, even in evangelical churches.³

To add, many cases of sexual abuse and abuse of power across the denominations have come to light in the past decades. Often a non-victim-centred way of handling these cases have rendered the church as hypocritical and has strongly weakened its witness.

More than maybe ever before, the church in Europe must follow the call to humility and laying down of all earthly power.

The church needs to fully recognize and apologize for the mistakes made in both the past and present; we need to demonstrate in word and deed that we care more about people than about protecting our systems of influence and power.
To this end, the church should ask: ‘What can we learn from society´s criticism? Might God be speaking through voices in society as a prophetic wake-up call for the European church to seek repentance and integrity? Might it be that, for example, the passion for justice especially among the young generation actually mirrors something of Jesus´ passion for justice that we may have overlooked? If so, how can we partner in this endeavour, praising the good, where we see it, while at the same time humbly telling and living out the beauty and the truth of the gospel?’
The church needs to be a welcoming, safe space for people from different minorities, walks of life, and backgrounds. In a pluralistic society with many different ways of living, we need to take seriously that Jesus didn’t ask people to change before accepting his love but that it was his love that—often gradually—changed people. Loving, patient discipleship that is prepared to go the extra mile will play a key role.

Secular thinkers are beginning to realize how deeply European values are, in fact, rooted within the Christian framework⁴ and how human rights and dignity presuppose an objective moral ground that cannot be found in secular relativism. A new conversation about moral orientation has started.⁵ We need to enter this dialogue with wisdom and humility, showing why the Jesus we follow actually tells ‘the better story’⁶ and how the gospel is deeply good for the flourishing of the individual and society as a whole. Rather than just stating Christian truth, we need to show the plausibility structures of our faith.

Rebuilding Community

Europe is both one of the primary destinations for migration of all kinds and one of the most urbanized populations in the world, with 74.9 percent of Europeans now living in cities. The resulting diverse urban centres are strongly marked by a secular worldview, with its shifting views on truth and morality, and an increasingly digitalized lifestyle.

As all regions try to understand where some of the current global trends can lead, there is opportunity in observing the European context that has already been experiencing the effects of globalism, secularism, materialism and digitalization in a deep way for decades. European cities are marked by a community that has never been so close and yet so far apart from each other. In our search for freedom and autonomy, we have become our own enemies, in many ways bringing about the destruction of family values and real community.

More often than not, the gospel is not available in a way that is understandable or relatable to the fast moving, secular-minded European urbanite. Our culture does not look to the church for answers, as it is often seen as a dead and empty tradition of the past. In addition, life in European cities has become so busy and distracted by the draw of a materialistic lifestyle that the majority don’t take the time to truly consider spiritual questions, much less the gospel message.

But maybe the biggest challenge to the European community is the paradox of disconnectedness in a digitally connected age, loneliness in the crowd of the dense and affluent urban centres. The first ever EU-wide survey on loneliness, EU-LS 2022 finds that on average, 13 percent of respondents report feeling lonely most or all of the time, while 35 percent report being lonely at least some of the time.⁷ A similar UK-based research found that one in four adults in the UK say they experience loneliness regularly and that levels are higher in young people.⁸

In fact, when it comes to future generations, Millennials and Gen Z are significantly marked by two clear heartfelt needs: lack of meaning and loneliness.⁹ Many come to Europe in search of the materially affluent lifestyle it seemingly promises, only to find that having it all isn’t enough. Europe’s young may not be physically hungry, but they are certainly spiritually hungry. As one London-based YouTuber puts it, ‘No one is able to offer a meaningful connection. I feel unable to participate . . . wanting to be alone out of comfort and habit, but feeling desperately lonely. Feeling left behind.’¹⁰

The issue urgently needing the attention of the church looking ahead is the reality of a growing urban population around the world, well exemplified in Europe, that becomes increasingly disconnected, distracted, and void of meaningful community. The church is there, but the majority of the population is unaware. Europeans are growing old alone, in desperate need of the living community that the church of Jesus represents, but unable to find it or relate to it.

This calls for a major shift in our evangelistic strategy. For decades we have depended too much on the ‘come to us’ model, believing that if our churches are entertaining enough, or our events loud enough, people will come. And yet Europeans are no longer coming to us. We need to go to them, with a revived courage and conviction of Jesus’ calling: ‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ (John 20:21, NIVUK).

Europe’s young may not be physically hungry, but they are certainly spiritually hungry.

That calling is echoing in the ears of a new generation of missionaries, with exciting stories appearing around the continent of the gospel proclaimed on European streets and central squares again. The mission Steiger¹¹ reaches secular young people in their own environment, like clubs or music festivals, starting long-term teams in cities. Last year alone they engaged in evangelistic actions in 45 cities, sharing the gospel with over 40,000 young people and starting Bible studies for skeptics in homes, cafes, and universities. The FEUER network¹² runs mission weeks in universities in almost every European country, and movements like Revive,¹³ The Send,¹⁴ and Circuit Riders are mobilizing and sending out thousands of young Europeans to reach their generation for Jesus.

Now is the time for the European church to step outside its comfort zone and go to a community that may seem too busy, or isolated, but that is deeply spiritually hungry.

Reconnecting Digitally

Today, we are living through a paradigm shift as we are stepping out of a primarily literary culture into a digital one, and as the church, we need to adapt our theological, missiological, and ecclesiastical thinking to this new reality. With Europe as one of the key continents leading the way in web-use globally, the European church has a responsibility to show the way.

As with any new technology, new opportunities, challenges, and even dangers arise. The church has a responsibility to identify these and wrestle with them practically and theologically. Ultimately, technology affects people, and as these dangers manifest, the church needs to shepherd people through the new domain.

One of the biggest opportunities within the Web3.0¹⁵ space is that of collaboration. As the church is trying to reach out to young people and engage workplace Christians, Web3.0 provides the perfect connection point.

For young people today, building community online is instinctive and a natural extension of their physical community. In 2023, 47 percent of 8–25 year-olds in the UK played community games online. Of those, 87 percent played at least three times a week.¹⁶ Young people today spend hours online playing games and making friends from around the world. In 2011, 11-year-old Daniel decided he wanted to share Christ with his new online friends and so started his own church in Roblox, an online gaming environment. Within seven years Daniel had a church of 15,000 young people from fifty different countries. Today it has over 54,000 members.¹⁷

A pre-teen built a church with thousands of young people. This illustrates that many young people are not disinterested in Christ, but may be disinterested in traditional church models. Just as Paul used the medium of his day to mentor, teach, and even discipline from a distance, we believe that there is a place for new church expressions within the Web3.0 space. Without walking away from traditional church models, could we encourage hybrid church models where some meet virtually and others meet in real life?

Similarly, innovation is possible when Christian leaders collaborate with those in the workplace. In an attempt to use recent technology and make theological training more easily accessible, Union School of Theology in the UK is currently building the first Christian metacampus where students will gather in their learning communities within virtual reality. This is to help students that wouldn’t otherwise have easy access to a theological education geographically or financially. This new initiative is going to require contractors, UI/UX designers, among other experts in the field and is a great example of how to leverage new technology to solve old problems, such as the need for more widespread and easily accessible theological education.¹⁸

Decentralization is a key ideology within Web3.0. This decentralization means that churches could operate with less governmental oversight, especially in contexts of persecution. This might not seem important today, however in 2018, the Bulgarian government tried to impose a new Religious Denominations Act, that would have severely restricted minority faith groups such as the evangelical church, limiting its foreign funding and theological education.¹⁹ The law wasn’t passed, however it did set a concerning precedent.

We need good theologies centred around the intersection of faith and technology to create frameworks within which the church can operate, but equally to help developers think through the theological implications of the new technology they create. Digital technology is still a niche topic and one that is struggling to gain a foothold within traditional theological training institutions.²⁰ However, this is a topic that needs to become more established as digital technology becomes a more permeating presence within our lives and churches.

Respecting Creation

‘God saw that it was good’ is a frequently repeated saying in the first Genesis story. Our calling as humans to dominion over creation must not be misused in any exploitive way. Rather, we are called to keep the garden, grow the earth, and cultivate the world on behalf of its Creator and rightful owner. The first issue in creation care in recent years is to take climate change seriously enough.

One previous chapter in this report has defined sustainability in creation care as a key topic for the evangelical body to highlight.²¹ The request for sustainability connects many societal issues. The alarmingly high public debt in the great majority of European countries and the signs of climate change that we experience on our continent, have the ideology of consumerism as common background. The entire societal system is based on the idea of constant growth in consumption and welfare. The faith in ‘sustainable’ growth in all nations, a leading idea in the UN since the late 1980s, has been overly optimistic on behalf of the environment and at the expense of the Majority World. However, this dogma has been hard to challenge. We need to reintroduce the critical question about what sustainability is, and how Majority World voices might help us to understand it in the context of climate justice.

So far, the migration to Europe strictly because of climate change has been limited, but some of it is masked by other societal conflicts. Underneath much political instability and war, climate change is a push factor. Even though the European Union is leading the world on initiatives against global warming, Western consumption is also the main factor behind the global disaster. Thus, our nations have a higher moral obligation to act against the crisis. There is no sustainable way other than restricting our demands on common goods.

How does the church respond to the big issues of threat to sustainability demonstrated by climate change? In a biblical worldview these are not only political issues. Consumerism fosters greed and discloses our relation to the power that Jesus calls ‘mammon’. Thus, the issues connected are spiritual by nature. Whom or what do we worship? A missional church needs to ask herself how this affects the formation of faith and discipleship in Europe.

One example of good stewardship is the Free Lutheran Church in Fredrikstad, Norway. Investing in solar cells combined with re-insulation and smart regulation of heating and light reduced electricity costs to one third of the price annually. This church won the prize for the most energy saving company in Norway in 2023. Eleven thousand Euros in only one local church indicates a big potential for the many churches in Europe.

Fostering alternative living as disciples of Jesus Christ has been part of our movement from the beginning. The Lausanne Covenant underscores the necessity that ‘[t]hose of us who live in affluent circumstances accept our duty to develop a simple lifestyle in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism’.²² In The Cape Town Commitment this is further developed into a missional calling. As it claims that persons, societies, and creation ‘are broken and suffering because of sin’, it continues to proclaim that ‘all three are included in the redeeming love and mission of God’ and thus ‘must be part of the comprehensive mission of God’.²³

Just like health care for generations has been a priority in Christian mission, caring for the health of creation is now pivotal to our priorities. About this analogy, see also the important study following Lausanne’s Jamaica Consultation.²⁴ The Christian call to stewardship kills two birds with one stone. A simple lifestyle marked by giving reduces toxic emissions and empowers the church to take its mission to bring the gospel to Jews and Gentiles seriously.

While the church’s mandate for political action is limited, each follower of Jesus still has a mandate to take political action. Our calling is to remind governments and people about our responsibility for God’s creation. The church must foster Christians in Europe to work for necessary political change. Together with the churches in the Majority World, we need to develop biblical theologies about creation, nature, and stewardship that challenge the Enlightenment paradigm of human dominance and exploitation, and foster mindsets and lifestyles that seek a redefined sustainability in balance with nature. The lack of theologies that integrate creation care and climate justice are barriers for the gospel for the younger generation.

Regarding Demography

Europe is undergoing unprecedented demographic change as a result of three interrelated dynamics: falling birthrates, an ageing population, and sustained migration from the Majority World. Together these dynamics are transforming the societies of Europe and, with them, the context for mission in Europe from now to 2050.

Birth-rates across Europe have been below replacement level for many years. Some Mediterranean countries now have birth rates that are among the lowest in the world (Total Fertility Rates 2022: Malta 1.08, Spain 1.16, Albania 1.21, Italy 1.24, Poland 1.29).²⁵ The impact of this change has been ameliorated somewhat by migration into Southern and Western European countries, but in much of Eastern Europe populations are expected to decline by more than 20 percent by 2050.²⁶

There have been other periods of European history with low birth-rates, but this is now combined with a second reality: a larger older generation to sustain. Europe’s Old Age Dependency Ratio, the number of people aged 65 plus per 100 people of working age, is expected to rise from around 30 in 2015 to between 50 and 60. And in the case of Italy and Spain, it will rise to between 70 and 80 by 2050. This demographic imbalance is unprecedented. It will be pervasive in its extent, profound in its implications, enduring in its impact, and there is no going back.²⁷

Flagging birthrates and ageing populations inevitably lead to smaller workforces, and this has had the effect of pulling millions of migrants into Europe over the last fifty years. The number of international migrants residing in Europe has risen from 64 million in 2005 to 87 million in 2020 overtaking Asia, and making it the largest destination for international migrants globally.²⁸

Many European countries have tried to resist declining birth rates by offering prospective parents financial incentives, but these efforts have proven largely futile. What encourages parents to have children is not financial compensation but a society that truly values parenthood. Europe desperately needs a renewed and healthy vision for marriage, parenthood, and the family. This is an opportunity for the church. It must go beyond merely defending the traditional nuclear family, but rather reflecting deeply on how the local church might be a family to all.

‘What encourages parents to have children is not financial compensation but a society that truly values parenthood. Europe desperately needs a renewed and healthy vision for marriage, parenthood, and the family- this is an opportunity for the church.’

Europe’s ageing population is already posing challenges for many European societies. As Old Age Dependency Ratios rise, the cost of sustaining pensions and healthcare for the elderly will become ever more problematic. Social care is already in crisis in many countries. Will churches seize the opportunity to be good news to Europe’s senior citizens by reaching out to the lonely, giving care to those who need it, and contextualizing the gospel for third-age Europeans so they can preach hope, even in death, to those who have never heard it? And as intergenerational tensions rise—with younger generations being asked to shoulder the burden of the burgeoning generation of pensioners—will the church provide a model of a truly intergenerational community, where mutual support and mentoring between the generations is an example to the world of God’s new society?

Yet perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity for the church is migration. Migration into Europe, particularly of Muslims, has fuelled populist nationalism in many countries and sadly some Christian leaders have sided with the far-right in their rhetoric of ‘defending Christian Europe’. Yet, out of the spotlight, many Muslims in Europe are turning to Christ. Moreover, millions of Majority World Christians now live, work, worship, and witness in Europe. African, Asian, and Latin American churches can be found in every corner of the continent. The challenge is to encourage them beyond merely gathering Christians from their own nations and ethnicities to reaching out to Europeans interculturally.

Sadly, post-colonial and nationalist thinking still influences ministry to and from the migrant communities. This is especially significant as financial and linguistic resources (an over-reliance on use of the English language throughout Europe) limits cultural and intellectual resources. Migrants and believers from host nations must learn to serve side-by-side as equals. The revival of the church in Europe will depend on how European and Majority World churches work together.

Conclusion

There was a time when Europe was seen as the heartland of Christianity. It was from Europe that missionaries were sent to the rest of the world to share the good news of Jesus. Today that flow has reversed, and millions of Majority World missionaries have been mobilized by the Holy Spirit to re-evangelize Europe. Yet they too must wrestle with the six issues we have highlighted in this article.

Today, Europe appears to have been thoroughly secularized. Yet, out of the spotlight, an extraordinary re-evangelization of Europe is underway.²⁹ The context is challenging, as this article illustrates, but God has ploughed these fields before. Our task, in fulfilment of the Great Commission, is to consider the soil, to sow liberally, and not to give up.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
(Galatians 6:9, NIVUK)

Endnotes

See Heinz-Peter Hempelmann, ‘Faktisch, postfaktisch, postmodern? Kommunikation von Wahrheitsansprüchen in pluralistischen Gesellschaften als Problem und Herausforderung (Factual, post-factual, postmodern? Communication of truth claims in pluralistic societies as a problem and challenge), In: Theologische Beiträge, 48 (Jahrgang: February 2017), 6–23.
Recent studies on the rise of mental disorders among teenagers are numerous, related to diverse issues like impact of COVID-19, correlation with use of social media, the phenomenon which in Scandinavia is called ‘generation achievement’, and in gender identity issues. One recent Danish study concludes that ‘fears of not being able to comply with these demands were associated with anxiety, particularly among girls. Furthermore, these explanations were often framed in relation to being solely responsible for their own destiny, and the negative effects of these ideals often related to self-critique and critical introspection’; . Søren Christian Krogh and Ole Jacob Madsen (2024), “Dissecting the achievement generation: how different groups of early adolescents experience and navigate contemporary achievement demands”, in Journal of Youth Studies, vol 27(5), p.718. . As for issues about gender identity, studies show an obvious correlation between rapid onset of gender dysphoria, increase in use of social media and internet, and levels of mental disorders; see for example Lisa Littman’s open access study “Correction: Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria”, in PLoS One 14(3) (March 19, 2019)
See Oliver Rüegger,, ‘Ich bin weg. Eine empirische Untersuchung, warum Jugendliche in der Schweiz ihre Freikirche verlassen’, IGW (2017) , www.igw.edu/ch/ressourcen/downloads/abschlussarbeiten/Ich-bin-weg_Oliver-Ruegger_2017.php, accessed 16 February 2024.
See Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (London: Little, Brown, 2019).
See Justin Brierley, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again (Tyndale Elevate, 2023).
The idea of ‘telling the better story’ is taken from, Glynn Harrison, A Better Story: God, Sex and Human Flourishing (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2016).
‘The EU Loneliness Survey, 2022’ https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/scientific-activities-z/loneliness/loneliness-prevalence-eu_en, Accessed 2 March 2024
Mental Health Foundation, 2020, https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk, Accessed 2 March 2024
Luke Greenwood, Global Youth Culture: The Spiritual Hunger of the Largest Unreached Culture Today (Steiger International, 2019).
Kat Napiorkowska, The Loneliness Epidemic (Short Film), December 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EadD-ybQ1ds, Accessed 14 March 2024
https://steiger.org/campaign-europe
https://feuer.network/
https://reviveeurope.org/
https://thesend.org/
‘Web 1.0, also called the Syntactic Web, is the first version of the internet and lasted from approximately 1990–2000. It was content and information-based with a prevalence of static websites. Web 2.0, also called the Social Web, is the second version of the internet and emerged around the year 2000. This version is still the paradigm that we operate under, and is about community, social media, and sharing. Examples of Web 2.0 websites are Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Web 3.0, also called the Semantic Web, started emerging around 2010. Technologies included here are machine learning that enable tailored content for internet users, artificial intelligences such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, as well as experiences such as VR.’ J. Sewell, ‘Church and Mission Within Virtual Reality: An Exploration’ (2023), https://www.academia.edu/116146078/Church_and_Mission_Within_Virtual_Reality_An_Exploration accessed 10 April 2024.
T. Baynton, Data deep-dive: The impact of video gaming on the wellbeing of young people, Digital Youth Index (2023),: https://digitalyouthindex.uk/the-impact-of-video-gaming-on-young-people/ accessed 31 January 2024.
BEME News, ‘Is Virtual Religion the New VR?’ (2018), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0IImB0gItI (Accessed: 14 November 2022); TRCOnlineChurch, The Robloxian Christians, Roblox (2024), https://www.roblox.com/groups/477219/The-Robloxian-Christians, accessed 10 April 2024.
Union Foundation, Metaverse: The Future of Ministry Training, Union Theology (2024), https://uniontheology.org/metaverse-theological-education, accessed 10 April 2024.
Evangelical Focus, ‘Bulgarian Evangelicals Alarm About Religion Law ‘Threatening Rights and Freedoms of Churches’’, Evangelical Focus (2018), https://evangelicalfocus.com/europe/3983/bulgarian-evangelicals-alarm-about-religion-law-threatening-rights-and-freedoms-of-churches, accessed 10 April 2024.
J. Kurlberg, ‘Challenges Facing Digital Theology Today’, Medium (2022),https://medium.com/@jonas.kurlberg/challenges-facing-digital-theology-today-dd93d27e238, accessed 10 April 2024.
‘What Is Sustainable?’, State of the Great Commission Report, 92–93.
LC, IX.
CTC, I-7a.
Colin Bell and Robert S. White (eds), Creation Care and the Gospel. Reconsidering the Mission of the Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2016), 48–50.
Eurostat, ‘How many children were born in the Eu in 2022?’ (2024), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240307, accessed 4 May 2024.
Eurostat, ‘Population projected to decline in two-thirds of EU regions’ (2021), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210430-2, accessed 4 May 2024.
United Nations , ‘EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of World Population Ageing 1950-2050’ (2002), https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2021/Nov/undesa_pd_2002_wpa_1950-2050_web.pdf, accessed 4 May 2024.
IOM , World Migration Report 2022 (2021), 24, https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/WMR-2022.pdf, accessed 4 May 2024.
Memory, Europe 2021: A Missiological Report (2021), https://vistajournal.online/latest-articles/europe2021, accessed 4 May 2024.