EEA Newsletter October 2013 - General Assembly
- NEWSLETTERS
- October 18, 2013
Lent is the season of life. In the northern hemisphere where we live it is also the time of spring. After the long, dark and cold wintertime nature begins to revive: the grass starts to grow, the snowdrops disappear and make room for hyacinths and daffodils to bloom, the trees turn green again, birds build their nests, and the first ducklings are already swimming around in the ponds. Migratory birds are returning from warmer areas, the days are getting longer again, and temperatures are rising.
READ MOREWe spoke to Manuel Rainho, General Secretary of the Portuguese IFES movement, about the sermon, one of our main mediums of listening to Jesus’ words, and a focal point in our churches, communities and individual lives.
READ MOREWe spoke to Mike MacDonald at the Bible Project, about how to read “these words” – this mega book that is the Bible, how important context is and literary genre – we can’t read poetry the same way we read prophecy! And when Jesus says “hear these words of mine” he is not only talking about words on a page, but about a unified narrative that points to him.
READ MOREWe spoke to Usha Reifsnider, a Missions specialist, about listening to others: how difficult this is in general, and even how as Christians we are pretty rubbish at listening because we are the ones who want to be speaking. But we become better listeners when we have been listened to.
READ MOREOur theme for the first half of 2023 is “House on the Rock”, and we asked Georg Schuster, Managing Director of Uplink Academy, to comment on this in the context of media and communication.
In Jesus’ parable, we must both hear and put into practice, to be able to build on the Rock. Georg pointed out that listening was an elemental principle in good communication: we must hear what people are thinking and saying before rushing in to share the Gospel, answering questions people are not even asking. And words are not the only thing that counts: people want to see us live out our faith.
Another principle in communication is to face outside perceptions, and here we accept that outside opinions about Christians are not positive. The Church is no longer seen as something relevant to society. It has largely forgotten how to listen and talk to the world. This led Georg and Mirjam to establish Uplink Academy, a media centre created to help Christians communicate better, be a space of encounter, and train those who see themselves as media missionaries.
EEA’s overarching communications theme for the first six months of 2023 is extremely relevant in many ways. One of these areas, which ties directly to Jesus’ image of the “storms of life,” is the increasingly out-of-control phenomenon of global climate change. This is literally bringing us an increasing number of “storms” or as meteorologists would say: erratic weather events.
READ MOREThe Evangelical Alliance was originally created in London in 1846. A number of founding members were representing European countries. The European Evangelical Alliance (EEA) was founded in 1951. The EEA exists to foster unity and evangelical identity and provide a voice and platform to 23 million European evangelical Christians. The mission of the EEA is to CONNECT for com-mon purpose, EQUIP for integral mission and REPRESENT with a united voice. It is a grassroots movement from all Protestant traditions present in 36 European countries. The Brussels office of the EEA promotes active citizenship of its constituency and represents it to the European Institutions. The EEA is part of the World Evangelical Alliance (www.worldea.org)
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