Ana and Laura were shocked to learn that as Youth for Christ leaders they would be expected to raise their own support. “Portugese people just don’t do that,” they protested. Nevertheless, the young women reluctantly decided to attempt the impossible—to raise funds from their friends and churches in Portugal. “Little by little, people are starting to give more,” they said.
“The biggest obstacle facing young people considering missions in Europe today is finances,” said George Verwer, international director of Operation Mobilization, a largely European mission agency. “In the U.S., missions has a relative degree of acceptance as a proper career,” Verwer said. “In Europe, missions and missionaries generally are looked down upon.”
Nevertheless, missions interest among young Europeans is growing. “Operation Mobilization is growing so fast, we are at a breaking point,” Verwer said. “We now have 2,000 missionaries, with the biggest group from Europe. Half of them can’t find the proper support.”
Mission ’90
Helping missionaries find support was one of the main purposes of Mission ’90, a European missions-oriented congress that drew 9,300 young participants from 45 countries to Utrecht, Holland, from December 28 to January 2. It was the fifth such congress sponsored by the European Missionary Association (TEMA) since 1975. “In Europe, there is a great weakness on the level of the local church,” said Luc Verlinden, vice-chairman of TEMA. “We started conferences to encourage young people to be rooted in the Lord and to really start to live their message where they are—in their family and the local church.”
Conferees are also encouraged to consider full-time Christian service, including cross-cultural missions. This year 210 exhibitors, including Bible schools, Christian colleges, and mission agencies, actively recruited young people.
While the TEMA congresses usually produce a large number of volunteers for short-term missions, the challenge is to get youths to consider missions as a career option. “We have a lot of Danish people who come on short-term assignments,” Verwer said. “Few ever return as long-term missionaries.”
The same is true for most other European countries. “Young people in Sweden are very interested in missions,” said Rune Carlsson, youth secretary of Orebro Mission in Sweden. “But many want to give one year to the Lord, and then go back to normal life.”
Egil Grandhagen, general secretary of the Norwegian Lutheran Mission (NLM), also bemoans the tendency of young people to opt for short-term missions. Even so, NLM’s primarily long-term force has doubled in the last 15 years. The agency, the largest in Norway, now has 600 foreign missionaries. With 2,000 foreign missionaries, Norway (population 4.2 million) has the world’s highest ratio of foreign missionaries to general population, says Grandhagen.
In other countries with a weaker Protestant missionary-sending heritage, recruiting has been extremely difficult. Delores Lasse, a missionary with the Africa Inland Mission, is assigned with her husband to recruit missionaries from France for French-speaking Africa. Although progress is slow, about 700 French young people attended Mission ’90. Almost twice as many—some 1,300—came from West Germany, where mission recruiters Herbert and Lorelei Apel of the Evangelical Alliance Mission have found enthusiastic response, especially among Bible school students.
“Interest in missions is definitely growing among European young people,” Verwer said. He noted that last summer, 7,000 attended Love Europe, a youth conference and short-term missions outreach in Europe. “There is a lot more going on for God in Europe than anybody knows.”
By Sharon E. Mumper in Utrecht, Holland.
