letter from Portugal
Meeting Ukrainian Christians in exile
John Woods
One of the spin offs from my links with the Latvian Biblical Centre is receiving invitations to lead preaching seminars with Russian-speaking congregations in Western Europe. At the end of June this brought me to Lisbon for a weekend of basic preaching training in Lisbon. 15-20 people gathered over the weekend to reflect on what we can learn about preaching from the Sermon on the Mount.
I shared the training with Victor Petrenko, the Director of the Latvian Biblical Centre, whose wife is Portuguese, and comes from Lisbon originally. We gave particular attention to how to begin and end a sermon; listeners are particularly keen for preachers to learn how to do the latter effectively and promptly!
Portugal: rapid evangelical growth
Iain Taylor
UK mission agencies Crosslinks and European Mission Fellowship are hailing the astonishing growth of evangelical churches across Portugal over the last few years, driven mainly by highly intentional church planting.
Data recently published by the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance shows a remarkable increase in church plants by evangelical churches. Fully 44% of the evangelical churches in the country were started after 2001 and over 60% have ‘defined plans and locations to plant new churches in the next five years’. A large majority say their church is growing. These churches range in size from less than ten members to congregations of over 300.