A deadly flood in Nepal, a fiftieth birthday for Finnish media mission, and a church plant that came of age frame this week's free evangelical news, spanning Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. The most urgent development is in Nepal's Rasuwa District, where floods and landslides have devastated Christian communities near the Tibetan border.
Nepal — floods devastate churches in Rasuwa District
The World Evangelical Alliance is channelling relief after floods and landslides struck Rasuwa District in Nepal's mountainous north. Two of six churches in Timure were swept away, more than 125 believers are among the dead, and over 8,000 people have been affected. Response teams from Kathmandu are travelling in on mountain bikes because more than 40 per cent of roads have been destroyed, with aid offered to all in need regardless of faith.
Ukraine — WEA prays at the National Prayer Breakfast
In Kyiv, World Evangelical Alliance Secretary General Botrus Mansour offered a prayer in Arabic at Ukraine's third National Prayer Breakfast, attended by more than 1,500 participants from 17 countries. Mansour travelled with a ten-person evangelical delegation that visited Lviv, Irpin and Bucha, at one point sheltering in a metro station during air-raid sirens. The visit underlined the global evangelical community's solidarity with a church now 1,642 days into full-scale war.
India — Himalayan Free Church grows to 121 congregations
The Finnish-rooted Himalayan Free Church, reported by Suomen Vapaakirkko, has grown to 121 congregations and between 7,000 and 8,000 members — up from four congregations and around 300 members in 1972. The growth has continued even after India's 2019 revocation of its foreign-funding licence forced the church to become financially self-sustaining. It has now set a goal of sending 10 to 15 new full-time missionaries by the end of the decade.
United States — Covenant churches open relief after Spokane wildfire
Evangelical Covenant Church congregations in Spokane, Washington, have opened a relief fund after the most destructive wildfire in state history forced roughly 67,000 people from their homes. Immanuel Covenant Church raised $7,000 within days and has since grown the fund to nearly $12,000. Strikingly, fewer than one percent of evacuees ended up in Red Cross shelters — most were absorbed by churches, family and friends.
Kenya — Finnish Free Church sends first missionaries to the coast
Suomen Vapaakirkko has sent Jani and Raisa Jalo as its first missionaries to unreached communities on Kenya's east coast, where Christians make up less than one percent in some areas. Eleven congregations are supporting the couple, drawn from both Free Church and Pentecostal circles. The Jalos will join evangelism with work among people with disabilities — a calling shaped by their own son Samuel, who has Down syndrome.
Finland — IRR-TV marks 50 years of Russian-language broadcasting
Suomen Vapaakirkko reports that IRR-TV, the Finnish media ministry that began in 1976 from an apartment bedroom, is celebrating 50 years of Christian broadcasting in Russian. From its Cold War origins it has grown into a multimedia outreach that last year produced around a thousand programmes in Arabic, Farsi and Tajik across 16 satellite channels. A 2025 digital campaign in Egypt drew more than 44 million views.
Senegal — ministry equips fishermen with boats and business training
The Christian and Missionary Alliance reports a new ministry among coastal Senegalese fishermen that pairs boats and business training with the hope of the gospel. The outreach aims to help around 15 fishermen build stable livelihoods, combining biblical financial management with shared investment. At its heart is a fisherman named Babacar, who has long dreamed of owning his own boat.
Sweden — church plant Mötesplats Ystad becomes a congregation
In Sweden, Equmeniakyrkan reports that Mötesplats Ystad has become a full congregation after seven years of church planting. The initiative grew out of a joint Equmeniakyrkan–EFK congregation 35 kilometres away and now holds its own congregational order and dual affiliation. Worship attendance has grown to between twenty and thirty people, and its conversation course has spread to congregations across Sweden.
Global — creation care framed as Christian hope
The World Evangelical Alliance is calling churches to care for creation ahead of the Season of Creation, framing environmental concern as hope rather than fear. This year carries added weight as the Feast of Creation is formally included in the Revised Common Lectionary for the first time, celebrated on 6 September. The 2026 theme, "Living Water," draws on Ezekiel 47.
Voices — what makes a church a church
Premier Christianity carries a British pastor's account of what happened when his church stopped running nearly all its programmes. Derek Hughes writes that the church "had built a machine that ran on volunteers and produced tiredness," and that he discovered he had believed church was activity rather than people. The piece leaves open the long-standing question of what makes a church a church.
These stories converge on formation: a church in India that lost foreign funding and found its own missionary vision, a church plant in Sweden stepping into congregational maturity, and a Finnish free church sending its first missionaries to Kenya's unreached coast. That movement — from dependence to sending, from plant to congregation — is precisely the work Worldwide Evangelical Seminary supports through its African Free Evangelical Church Formation initiative and its free church formation courses, equipping leaders to form churches that themselves become senders.
The Connexion is provided by Worldwide Evangelical Seminary — forming free church leaders for faithful ministry worldwide.
