Greater Europe Mission

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MinistryWatch.com’s Take
October 2004
By Dan Wray

Till the Whole World Knows
Bob Evans came home from the World War II battlefields of southern France with life-threatening injuries to his body and a life-altering burden for the mission fields of Europe. Evans returned to France with Youth for Christ after the war and eventually founded Greater Europe Mission to spread the Gospel throughout the continent.

Three Facets of Ministry
Greater Europe Mission’s (GEM) ministry has developed around three emphases: Biblical education, church planting, and outreach evangelism in an effort to establish evangelical churches in more than 250,000 towns and villages of Europe with no Gospel witness. Current methods emerged from combining time-tested missionary practices with imagination and new ideas for sharing Christ in everyday life. This produced an admixture of traditional and more contemporary methods, involving short-term teams dedicated to building repair and construction as well as traveling evangelistic teams using music, puppetry, drama and street theater, sports, and music in conjunction with local Christians to reach local communities with the Gospel. Specialized short term and intern programs continue to proliferate, as well as career missionary commitments.

Europe for Europeans
GEM founder Evans’ influence is apparent today in the mission’s purpose statement:

“The purpose of Greater Europe Mission is to assist the peoples of Europe in building up the Body of Christ so that every person in Europe is within reach of a witnessing fellowship.”

Evans held firmly to the bedrock 20th century missiological influence of indigenization, maintaining that Europe would not be effectively evangelized through missionary efforts alone, but by comprehensive, cooperative involvement of a vigorous European church. This is still an imperative with mission leadership, expressed in GEM’s current motto, “Helping build the Church in Europe,” and explains GEM’s continued emphasis upon partnership effort in the work of evangelism. Wide-ranging service opportunities in over 30 European countries are detailed on the ministry website, with cultural synopses and historical sketches of each country highlighting population groups, capital cities, languages, currency and religious demographics. History of GEM’s work in the individual countries as well the distinct needs of each are included, along with current and emerging evangelistic opportunities. More detailed encyclopedic information is available through an interactive MSN Encarta weblink. Ministry opportunities vary from country to country and range widely from church-related administrative, technical and support ministries to youth work and camp ministries, a relatively new outreach burgeoning throughout Europe.

Paying the Bills
GEM’s longstanding historical association with mission founder Bob Evans’ alma mater, Wheaton College in Illinois, has undoubtedly produced recruitment and other benefits from the college’s student enrollment and broad constituency, and also serves to legitimize the mission among evangelicals. Quietly avoiding denominational distinctions, GEM affiliates with relief and development associations such as the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations (AERDO), and its leadership is well represented among such global church growth organizations as The Alliance for Saturation Church Planting, headquartered in Monument, Colo. GEM’s ministry website is attractive and richly informative, and lists mailing addresses in the state of Colorado as well as Ontario, Canada. Donor support is encouraged on the website and financial counseling referral is offered to assist in responsible, informed giving. Financial donor support is facilitated in various forms through secure server sites. GEM ministry applications, annual reports and the GEM Policy Book are also available for download from the Internet, providing specific answers to a broad range of questions from interested parties.

Bits and Pieces
GEM founder and long-time first director Bob Evans was solidly identified with the groundswell of evangelical missionary effort fueled in part by two world wars and America’s exposure to the ever more broadly defined community of nations and people. Biblically sound churches and Christian schools in America, responding to the miasma of theological liberalism and its dark influence upon academia, produced a whole generation of young Christians zealous for evangelism, revival and foreign missions. Wheaton College was prominent in this movement. Billy Graham, a young Wheaton alumnus and eventual lifelong friend of Evans, quickly gained stature as an evangelist and years later, when Graham figured prominently in sponsorship of the International Congress of World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland, Evans’ mission gave loyal cooperation. While this fact alone needn’t necessarily signal widespread caution, some conservatives have undoubtedly used it as a basis for non-support of GEM, unwilling to be identified in any way with some of the less separatist groups represented by the Lausanne Committee. Today, GEM affiliates easily with groups whose doctrinal statements, policies and practices reflect involvement in and support of the 1974 Lausanne Covenant and the committee’s ongoing work.

GEM’s own doctrinal statement, published on the ministry website, does place the mission solidly within the pale of theologically conservative evangelicalism. Though the statement itself may seem somewhat inclusive in such areas as the activity and present work of the Holy Spirit and the return of Christ, the mission’s Policy and Procedures manual explicitly states that, in the interest of harmony within the mission, applicants must ascribe to believer security and the premillennial return of Christ. GEM’s current president, Ted Noble, has extensive background with such agencies and organizations as Food for the Hungry and Campus Crusade for Christ, bringing administrative, financial management and leadership skills to an evangelistic effort battle-tested and approved, as well as supplying cum laude theological insight for the complex and comprehensive work of modern day church ministry. Historical Christianity impacted Europe centuries before world history gives any record of the Americas. Now, in the 21st century, faithful Christians from the West have fresh opportunity to reintroduce Christianity to a continent which, though still rich with religious artifacts, knows precious little of the Good News of One who came “that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.”