Ninety European evangelical leaders from 16 different countries joined in Madrid to share and explore better ways to develop church planting in Europe.

Augland is a church planter in Norway and trains others through the M4 network. “Calling needs to be confirmed from both inside and outside.”

This strategy does not seek out either receptive target groups, or the reproduction of a given church model or denomination; it does not try to impose a common methodology on the churches who adopt it.

Church planters must resist the temptation of assuming that growing churches provide generalizable models for growth elsewhere, and that the absence of ap­parent success in the present is a sign that God is not working. 

Do we demonstrate in our thinking, our words, and our actions that the formation of new communities of Jesus fol­lowers is God’s business in which we are privileged to participate, rather than something that we do on his behalf?

Too often church planters focus on the things that they can count easily, even when it blinds them to the more important transformative measures that correlate more closely with the biblical concepts of repentance and discipleship.

In Germany, SKB bank finances Free Church building projects. ‘Building churches together’ is the motto of the institution, which has supported more than 100 projects.

The EKD continues to dwindle in 2013 and 2014 while free evangelical churches experience slight gains in church attendance.

Starting a church in “the land of $3,000 apartments, transient tech workers and rationalist tendencies,” is a challenge that church planters are facing. Reaching young professionals seem to be the key, according to a The Guardian report.

Almost 1,600 communities have been planted since 1970. Already 2/3 of all practicing Protestants in France are Evangelicals.