Friday, June 29, 2012

Brussels - Friday

Very rough notes from a vision team I am participating on to research possible partnerships in Europe for my church.

1.1M people
.2 to .5% evangelical
center of Europe

Dan - EFCA, Global Reach, Serve the Church, pastors an Armenian church.
avg size of a church here 30-50 people.
The Church has let them down or they hate the church.
tons of ethnic churches in Brussels.
200 people in a French speaking Belgian church - that is a megachurch here.
lots of Buddhism, mysticism, fortune tellers.
Pockets of neighborhoods here:
Morrocon
Turkish
Polish
Itailians are everywhere

downtown - mostly business, govt offices
new business - out by airport, near new NATO offices
no God consciousness
Belgians love flowers - flower carpet in the grand square every other year.

Scott - EFCA, Global Reach, pastors a Flemish church.
Flanders area of Brussels is #1 in suicide rate in Western Europe.
There are church bells going off all the time but they are just museum pieces.

Olivier - church planter, 60 people.
his church hosted Willow's leadership summit the last 3 years.
Some people have started using 'CC' - code for Christian community, instead of the word church
'Gospel' is a nonthreatening word here. They only know it as Gospel music.
Volunteerism is not a big value in Europe.
2 Christian bookstores here in Brussels - combined the size of a small restaurant. Avg cost of a book is 30E.

Better practice our team is thinking through - every city we send a team to has an Advance Vision team go - scout, meet with people, prayer walk.

Some pictures here.

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