Doing her best Billy Graham impersonation—hand raised, mouth open as if in mid-proclamation of the gospel—a 20-something woman posed at an Instagram-ready podium tucked away in a side vestibule at the European Congress on Evangelism. Her friend snapped photos that made it look as if she were addressing the massive crowd at one of Graham’s historic meetings.
But Ophélie Prisca-Diane, who is currently serving with Youth With A Mission in Paris, told Christianity Today she doesn’t think evangelism is just a thing of the past. In fact, she sees it as a thing of the future. She expects Christians her age to do big, big things.
“There is a fire among us,” Prisca-Diane said. “Our generation is very open to the gospel, more than generations before.”
She wasn’t the only one at the gathering of evangelical leaders with great expectations for Gen Z, the group of people currently between the ages of 13 and 28. Amid talk of secularization and potential persecution, Christian leaders repeatedly expressed confidence that young people would usher in the re-Christianization of the continent.
Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said equipping young people was one of the prime motivations for the congress. He said he and others have been encouraged to see people in their teens and 20s “taking hold of the gospel” and he hopes the congress will empower them to go further.
“There is a younger generation,” Graham said at the opening of the congress, “taking the challenge of preaching to the continent and the ends of the earth.”
Some data suggests a generational renewal of Christian faith has already begun. A recent report from the Bible Society shows that young people, particularly men, are attending church in increasing numbers in England and Wales. And a 2023 survey from Ipsos indicated growing interest in prayer and church attendance among Gen Z in Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Hungary.
But while there may be a relative uptick of religious interest, that doesn’t really change the overall picture of demographic decline. Roughly one in ten young people in Europe appear to attend church on a weekly basis—a stark contrast to older generations. There has been a steady, if not strictly linear, decline in religious practice for decades.
Today, significant numbers of Europeans between the ages of 16 and 29 are not affiliated with any religion: 90 percent in the Czech Republic, 75 percent in Sweden, 70 percent in the UK, and 64 percent in France.
In Estonia, so few people attend Sunday school that the number is less than the margin of error, according to Estonian theologian Gunnar Mägi, who now serves as president of Tyndale Theological Seminary in the Netherlands.
Nonetheless, Mägi, like other evangelicals in Europe, is hopeful.
“Europe is not post-Christian,” he told CT. “It is pre-revival.”
This isn’t just “evidence of things not seen” either (Heb. 11:1, KJV). The Tyndale president said he can’t help but be encouraged when he looks at young people across the continent and observes “worship and hunger like I’ve never seen before.”
Three of those young people were witnessing on the streets of Berlin during the evangelism congress. Inga Morozov, Stefan Carl Seppel, and Markus Martin, all from Estonia, say they have a heart for evangelism and an eagerness to tell people about Jesus. They took breaks from the congress to head out to Potsdamer Platz, stand in front of the famous Brandenburg Gate, and ask people if they have a personal relationship with Jesus or whether they know God’s love.
Martin, who hails from an island in the Baltic Sea, said he grew up in a Christian household but didn’t start evangelizing until a couple years ago. He attended a Christ for all Nations FireCamp in 2023 and learned how to share his faith. He came back inspired.
“I really felt, well, on fire afterward,” he said. “I sensed the potential for a revival in my generation, a movement of the Holy Spirit.”
He feels the Holy Spirit leading him personally, too, and he steps out in faith. He told CT he had a dream of a young boy and his family and it felt to him that the dream was from God. Then he saw the boy and family from his dream near the Brandenburg Gate.
“We shared the gospel with them,” he said. Though nothing came of the interaction, Martin was undeterred in his enthusiasm to share Jesus with as many people as possible in Berlin and back home.
In some ways, the Estonians looked like other young tourists in the cosmopolitan German capital. Seppel said the three of them enjoyed zooming around on rented scooters. But they also stopped the scooters to ask people if they wanted to be prayed for.
That enthusiasm for sharing their faith is exciting for older leaders at the congress. But as experienced evangelists they know that early eagerness can fade and missionary zeal can wane. Graham said channeling that fervor and fostering a long-term commitment to evangelism begins with training and teaching young people the Bible.
“There’s so much confusion,” Graham said. “Young people don’t know the Word of God. We need to take the headlines they’re reading on the iPhone and see what the Bible has to say about the issue and teach them the Word of God.”
Evangelical perspectives on sexuality may prove to be a stumbling block for many young people in Europe. Surveys show wide acceptance of homosexuality and support for same-sex marriage, as well as transgender rights. In Ireland, for example, three-quarters of adults express support for transgender sexual identities. In Norway, support increased 15 percentage points in 10 years. In Switzerland, a majority now favor allowing nonbinary gender identities on national identifications, and in Serbia, 64 percent want people to have access to medical procedures altering sexual characteristics.
Graham challenged the European evangelists gathered in Berlin to address sexual ethics and not to shy away from cultural conflicts. He believes young people in particular will respond. Youth rise to a provocation, Graham said. So provoke them.
Pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie echoed this argument. He said at the congress that he believes in confidently confronting young people with Christian beliefs and calling them to surrender their lives to Jesus.
Speaking at the European congress, Laurie recounted his own encounter with a challenging young evangelist named Lonnie Frisbee in 1970. The story was turned into the movie Jesus Revolution a few years ago, showing how Frisbee became a powerful witness for Christ and helped Laurie as a young man find his way to faith.
Frisbee’s sexual identity and ethics have been the subject of ongoing controversy since his death in 1993, and Laurie has been clear about his own position, saying he believes homosexuality “is outside of God’s order, and no amount of emotional arguments or political spin can change that precept of Scripture.”
Laurie didn’t get into the messy details of Frisbee’s life but referred to the “wayward youth” of the Jesus movement and spoke about how he was a passionate evangelist. He urged young people today to do the same and said he senses another Jesus movement coming in Europe.
“We’re going to evangelize, or we’re going to fossilize,” he said. “Preach more on the Cross and the blood of Christ, because that’s where the power is.”
Mägi told CT that events like the congress stir up waves of evangelism across the continent. Young people attend the gathering or camps put on by Christ for all Nations—or spend a year with Youth With A Mission—and then go back to places like Estonia, ready to stir up a revival in Europe.
It’s a biblical model, he said. Mägi points to the early church: “Who were the workers in Acts? They were new, fresh, young believers who were quickly trained.”
There are moments in history, the seminary president said, when God opens a door. Sometimes older Christians don’t recognize the opportunity in front of them, but young believers do.
“It’s possible to miss the moment,” he said. “These young people won’t let that happen.”
