The week's biggest story is a puzzle told in two numbers: Europe's Free Evangelical federations started 227 congregations over the past decade, and ended it with 64 fewer. Planting runs through the week's coverage — a Finnish couple reopening a congregation that had been shut for years, the Swedish-speaking Mission Church of Finland setting out to start three or four more, and four Estonian theological schools asking together how pastors should be trained. The news runs from Estonia to Ecuador, and from Nepal's flood-hit hills to Chiang Mai.
Europe — 227 congregations planted in a decade, and 64 fewer at the end of it
A comparative survey of 24 IFFEC Europe federations finds that planting is ordinary congregational life, and that the figures a fellowship keeps about itself are shakier than they look. The bodies that reported counts at both ends of the decade began with 2,205 congregations and finished with 2,141. The whole net decline of 64 sits in one federation: Sweden's Equmeniakyrkan, down from 697 congregations to 593. The other 22 gained forty between them. The report's sharpest finding is what the word “planted” counts — many reported starts never became constituted congregations. Equmeniakyrkan's roughly 32 produced three; of Switzerland FREE's ten, three are described as strong today. Asked what became of congregations that vanished, 20 federations listed 283 closures, mergers or departures in the decade, 137 of them in Equmeniakyrkan. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia nothing was lost: “we plant too carefully,” the Czech respondent said. Kenno Leier's study, published for the IFFEC Worldwide conference in Nairobi, proposes a short annual ledger of congregations planted, constituted, closed, merged, left and joined, and argues that in societies reshaped by secularisation, ageing and migration, planting needs a generation rather than a decade to be judged fairly. The Connexion's report sets out the full data.
Finland — the couple who sold up to reopen a closed church
Kari and Erja Ahlroth prayed in their forties to be out of business life by fifty, and put the proceeds of their company into a congregation that had been shut since 2017. A media group bought the firm he part-owned; he stayed three years, resigned, and found himself 49. Erja, who had left a senior IT post, was then diagnosed with breast cancer — years she says tested what their calling rested on. Neither had ties to Laukaa, a central Finnish town of under 19,000; they heard there that its Free Church had closed. About twenty people aged 30 to 80 began to meet. A landlord handed over keys within twenty minutes, and when space ran short the chair of a housing company, already praying about his empty commercial unit, offered it. The mother church gave no money and no staff, then covered the entire renovation after receiving a legacy. Ahlroth's principle: “fall in love with small”. Suomen Viikkolehti carried the account.
Finland — Mission Church enters a planting phase
The Swedish-speaking Mission Church of Finland has told its congregations it is entering a deliberate planting phase, its board judging that three or four new congregations could be established in coming years. After decades spent mainly sustaining ageing churches, the board speaks of a rekindled pioneer spirit and of widespread spiritual openness; some starts will be revivals of dwindling congregations rather than pioneer works, and both count as the same task. The autumn collection will fund planters and their initiatives. Missionskyrkan i Finland made the announcement.
Estonia — four theological schools join forces on pastoral training
Four Estonian theological institutions spent two days at Pühajärve in October on a joint scheme to improve how pastors and church workers are prepared. The KVARA higher-education programme funds it and requires at least two schools to cooperate; four signed up, and employers, students and alumni joined lecturers and leadership teams. At eight facilitated round tables they named the problems they would not accept: a church unable to speak to the society around it, overstretched and underfunded workers, and what one group called theological vagueness about what is actually taught. Delegations of three will travel to Belgium and the Netherlands to study how training is organised there. Writing for kogudused.ee, Einike Pilli judged the trust built between schools that had worked in parallel the greatest result of the two days. The Union of Free Evangelical and Baptist Churches of Estonia published her account.
Global — YWAM's leaders put holiness first
More than 1,200 YWAM leaders from 90 nations met in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in September — the movement's first global gathering since founder Loren Cunningham died after the 2023 meeting. It opened on holiness and integrity amid widespread grief over the character failures of prominent Christian leaders; a Middle Eastern leader told the assembly their character must match their call. The Founders' Circle has given way to a Global Eldership of 41 elders from 24 nations, charged with guarding YWAM's values and stepping in where local leadership cannot resolve a situation. Delegates closed in repentance, with senior leaders conceding that claims of poor leadership had sometimes gone unheeded, and pledging firmer safeguarding. YWAM reported.
Ecuador — a growing church that lacks shared goals
The Covenant Church of Ecuador has some 16,000 members and, its general secretary says, no shared goals. David Lomas told the Swedish newspaper Sändaren that the church should set a ten-year direction — perhaps 20,000 members — while keeping the improvisation and adaptability he values in Ecuadorian church life. Born in Ecuador, he trained there and in Sweden and was ordained in 1998; after twenty years in Sweden he returned home a decade ago. He wants clearer structures that do not make a church rigid, and planning followed not 99 per cent of the time but at least 60. Sändaren published the interview.
Nepal — flood relief built on local partnerships
Floods and landslides in late August left many Nepalis without homes or a livelihood, and the country's small Christian community has suffered with everyone else. Reports to Finland's Evangelistmissionen describe congregations swept away and a pastor lost to the river; of four evangelists who set out for cut-off communities, three arrived. A visit planned long before the disaster became a relief trip working through local partners who already know the districts — one of them runs sewing factories and can make and distribute what is needed, which the mission says is the advantage of work built on years of relationships. Shelter, food, water and medical help come first, with reconstruction, livelihoods and counselling to follow. A girl whose heart surgery the mission had funded is recovering well, and a school for 300 children has opened in Jhapa. Missionskyrkan i Finland reported.
Czech Republic — pigeon manure, a pop song, and goats for Uganda
Children and teenagers from Nové Město nad Metují, linked to a Church of the Brethren congregation, sell bottled pigeon-dropping fertiliser at 30 crowns a half-litre, and this month the singer-songwriter Pokáč wrote a song about them. The proceeds buy goats through A Rocha Uganda for very poor children, most of them orphans; a goat's milk can cover school fees and a daily lunch, and its kid is passed on to another child. By the project's own count it has sent more than 120,000 crowns and helped around 100 children, including an operation for a boy whose broken leg threatened to leave him unable to walk. Pupils at a grammar school in Dobruška designed the labels, and the pigeons appear at youth events, released as a symbol of reconciliation. Brána, the Church of the Brethren's monthly magazine interviewed the team.
Estonia — 35 years of ‘Friend to Friend’
Sõbralt Sõbrale — “Friend to Friend” — marks 35 years of charitable work run by Estonia's Free Church congregations. It began in 1991 as an aid fund, Sõbra Käsi, set up when Swedish mission congregations started sending consignments to the newly independent country and no system existed to receive them; a nationwide network followed, moving goods to those who needed them at no cost. In its first full year nearly a thousand tonnes of food arrived, along with more than 170,000 kilogrammes of clothing, school desks, fridges, hospital supplies and even a tractor. A second-hand shop opened in Tallinn in 1995, and the model still holds: sales fund congregations' social projects, youth work and the counselling centre, and the shop network supported roughly 600 people with goods last year. Manager Kristiina Krabi-Klanberg frames the anniversary as an act of gratitude to everyone who has taken part. The Estonian Free Church published the account.
Estonia — families in crisis choose their own help
Sõbralt Sõbrale lets people in financial difficulty choose goods themselves, up to an agreed sum, in its Estonian charity shops — one of its quickest and most practical forms of help, it says, and one that large families have used most. Instead of a standard parcel, a family picks clothing, furniture or household items, because at a moment of crisis the need is specific and help has to arrive before things get worse. The charity recalls a mother who left a violent relationship with six children and, caring for a small baby, could not come in to choose; shop staff measured the children and put together clothing for them, delivering it to the door with the older children's help. The Estonian Free Evangelical Church Union described the scheme.
Estonia — parenting support for families in the west
A Baptist congregation in western Estonia has finished a six-month project supporting parents, paid for out of the country's Sõbralt Sõbrale charity shops. “Kooskasvamine” — Growing Together — ran from November to April at Ridala in Läänemaa, on the observation that families rushing between work, kindergarten and the shops need somewhere to meet people at the same stage of life. More than 100 came to an Advent family day, where children made candle holders beside their parents, and two evening sessions followed with childcare provided so both parents could attend. The leaders distinguished deliberate defiance, which needs clear limits, from an overwhelmed child, who needs comfort and a calm adult: in any conflict, they said, the adult calms down first. The Estonian Free Church reported.
Estonia — mental health month opens with a webinar on burnout
Estonia's Free Evangelical Church Union is marking October as mental health month, opening with a free Zoom webinar on Monday 12 October, 19:00 to 20:00 Estonian time, by advance registration. Eleri Viinalass, a psychologist at the church-run Sõbralt Sõbrale counselling centre, will ask what leaves so many people permanently drained, and why a break does not necessarily restore them. The union treats mental health as a practical part of its mission rather than a specialist concern, and the seminar turns on the difference between resting and actually recovering: the answer, it suggests, may not be more energy but less load. The union asked congregations to pass the notice on.
Global — can software judge a worship song’s theology?
A Houston worship leader has built a tool that scores a song's lyrics out of 35 across seven categories, from scriptural grounding to pastoral durability, to help younger leaders judge what belongs in a service. Tyler Anson Newberry wrote the criteria; Claude carries out the analysis. Brandon Lake's “Gratitude” scores 20, flagged for emotion without theological grounding. A second tool, Asaph, proposes setlists and tracks a congregation's theological balance over time. Both founders insist discernment stays human. A British researcher who studies congregational music tested Asaph and found it could put a coherent set together, but warns that such tools carry the assumptions of the people who build them, and that songs hold histories of interpretation a text alone does not capture. Christianity Today reported.
Global — reading the church's past without losing Scripture's primacy
Evangelical readers are returning to the Fathers, the medievals, the Reformers and the post-Reformation scholastics, and R. Lucas Stamps argues in The Gospel Coalition that the recovery needs rules if it is to stay Protestant. First, a hierarchy of doctrine: matters are not equally weighty, and the further a conclusion is derived the less certain it becomes — better a Nicene Trinitarian than a Presbyterian or a congregationalist, a pointed sentence for free-church readers. Second, acknowledge diversity within the tradition. Third, do not enlist the past to serve conclusions already reached. Fourth, keep Scripture in pride of place as the sole, inspired and inerrant Word of God. The Gospel Coalition published the argument.
Britain — two-thirds of evangelicals call people ‘good by nature’
Nearly two-thirds of UK evangelicals agree that “everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature”, the State of Theology survey by Ligonier Ministries finds. Samuel Tunnicliffe, writing in Premier Christianity, says the British church should pause: Scripture affirms that God's image survives the fall, but the fall is real, and sin is what we are rather than only what we do. Our view of sin shapes our view of salvation — if people are fundamentally good, what was Christ accomplishing on the cross? The drift is measurable: in 2018, 61 per cent agreed that even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation; by 2026, 49 per cent did. Premier Christianity carried his article.
Switzerland — theologians podcast the questions of the day
The theological commission of French-speaking Swiss Free Evangelical churches publishes round-table discussions on questions of the day as podcasts, with recent editions covering war, nationalism, ecology and money. The FREE federation's advisory body keeps its subjects in step with what congregations are already asking; titles in the current run include “Spiritual blinkers”, “Vegetarianism”, “The Kingdom of God — now or later?” and “Christian nationalism”. The edition on war works through the commandment against killing and the just-war tradition. Episodes can be downloaded as MP3s so that study groups can use them rather than hear them once. LaFree presented the series.
Finland — twenty years of Netivah's work among Israeli youth
Several hundred guests gathered at Baptist Village near Tel Aviv on 24 September to mark twenty years since Netivah, which works among Israeli children and young people, was registered. Its roots are in Forssa, south-western Finland, where members of a small Free Church — above all Eila Murtolahti — became convinced an Israeli couple should carry the ministry, and a traveller's tip led them to Joel Goldberg, then in graphic print production, who had prayed for provision to begin working full-time. Netivah now runs courses and conferences, and by the account given at the celebration around 4,000 young people passed through its programmes last year; it also equips those entering military service, often the only believers in their unit. Suomen Viikkolehti published it.
Finland — missionary doctor who served four continents has died
Taisto Valta has died. A Finnish missionary doctor who later trained as a Free Church pastor, he worked at a TB hospital in western India and afterwards in Somalia, Nepal, Iraq and Indonesian Papua. The son of a Free Church family, born in 1941, he came to faith at a youth ski day in Seinäjoki and said a vision during a prayer meeting left him certain God was calling him to India. He married Pirjo, spent two years at a Bible school in Switzerland, and reached Nandurbari in 1974, where a third child was born; later moves followed when visas ran out. Ordained only on 5 September 2020, completing studies his father had been forced to abandon when war broke out, he was blind for his last years and had multiple myeloma, yet kept his joy to the end. Suomen Viikkolehti published the tribute.
Sweden — Sven Lindström, who led Baptist mission work, dies at 88
Sven Lindström, who led the Swedish Baptist Union's mission work from 1995 to 2002 and served the free-church movement as pastor, union secretary and district leader, has died aged 88. Ordained in 1963, he spent his working life in church service, and his years as mission director covered the union's 150th anniversary in 1998. The tribute, signed by Equmeniakyrkan leaders P-O Byrskog and Karin Wiborn and by former union chair Sören Carlsvärd, credits him with helping to found the union's committee for public opinion and human rights. Migration and human rights lay close to his heart, as did the ecumenical accompaniment programme in Israel and Palestine, whose applicants he went on interviewing long after he retired. Sändaren published it.
Sweden — an evangelist honoured for bridging church and climate
Lena Bergström, a Swedish evangelist, has won the environmental prize of the Christian organisation God Jord for her work on the climate crisis and for bridging the church and the wider environmental movement. The 5,000 kronor goes to a climate cause. She told Sändaren the award surprised and encouraged her, and that the citation's mention of bridge-building meant most to her. Central to Equmeniakyrkan's climate emergency work, she lectures on the responsibility of caring for creation and joins demonstrations, and says the support of others is what sustains her. Sändaren reported.
Sweden — ‘Building Hope’ asks what the church gives its neighbourhood
Congregations from southern Sweden met in Helsingborg for “Bygga hopp” — Building Hope — a conference organised by Equmeniakyrkan Region Syd to ask what the church really gives the society it sits in. A service open to all began the weekend on the Friday evening, and about 130 registered for Saturday's talks, seminars, café and worship. The idea came from last year's national church conference, where members asked for a clearer focus on the church's part in building a good society. Regional church leader Lasse Svensson says congregations need no ready-made answers — simply making yourself available is a first step — and sees less religious touch-phobia in society than before. Because Region Syd has many small congregations, the programme highlights what works without large resources, among them the brunches at Betlehemskyrkan in Gothenburg. Sändaren reported.
Canada — from a Winnipeg living room to thirty-one churches
The Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada began in 1874, when two Swedish immigrants, Monsby Peterson and Reader Johnson, arrived in a Winnipeg of barely 1,500 people looking for community. Their prayer and Bible gatherings came to matter so much that Peterson left his railway job to stay near the group, and in 1885 he bought a house for the young movement. Today the denomination counts thirty-one churches and four camps, and is at once one of eleven Covenant conferences and its own body under Canadian law. Rob Peterson, elected president and superintendent in 2025, speaks of stewarding the relational capital the conference has. Planting has turned eastward since 2012, toward greater Toronto, after a century of following the rail lines west. The Covenant Companion carried the feature.
Switzerland — a worship night in an instrument shop
A free evangelical congregation on Lake Geneva will hold its worship night in Morges, at the concert hall of Boullard Musique — Switzerland's biggest musical instrument shop. The Église (FREE) Gospel Center La Côte meets there on 23 October at 8pm, in partnership with the television channel DieuTV, and one of the congregation's own drummers is among the store's managers. The congregation's pastor, Christophe Reichenbach, said the aim was to gather widely around Jesus, across churches and sensibilities. Echo Genève and the GCLC Worship Band play, with the Québécois pastor and songwriter Luc Dumont bringing a spiritual impulse on worship. Entry is free and no booking is required. La FREE announced the event.
Switzerland — a lantern festival for the night of Halloween
A village in western Switzerland will keep the last night of October with lanterns, pumpkin soup and a Bible story instead of ghosts and sweets. Rachel Muhlethaler, of a FREE congregation in Crissier, organises the Fête de la Lumière in Froideville — now in its fourth year there — because Christian families who wanted no part in celebrating fear and death had few alternatives, and she wanted a gentle, visible witness instead. Volunteers from several confessions cook from 18:00, with outdoor games for children; at 19:00 the evening moves to the ecumenical centre for a Bible story, told in past years with a kamishibai paper theatre, followed by small keepsakes and a display of Japanese lanterns. About 200 people came last year, many of them not Christians. La FREE described the event.
Switzerland — a slam poet in search of words ‘beautiful, just and true’
Cédric Chanson, who performs as Cézig, belongs to Switzerland's French-speaking free churches and uses slam poetry to speak about the world in language that is both accessible and careful. Profiled by La FREE in a piece republished from the broadcaster Radio R, he says hearing the work of the late slam artist Lady Slamenco felt close to a revelation: everyday words arranged so that poetry becomes reachable. His piece “La langue” sets out a contract with language — it may say whatever it likes on condition that it be beautiful, just and true — a rule he admits he does not always keep. Years spent in Africa with his family, he says, loosened a very Swiss idea of a God placed at the service of personal comfort. La FREE published the profile.
Czech Republic — youth weekends take ‘The Hero Within’ as their theme
Four regional weekends for children and young leaders run across the Czech Republic between 16 and 25 October, organised by Dorostová unie, the youth union of the Church of the Brethren. The Megasharewoody gatherings pair two regions at a time and welcome children aged eight to fifteen with their counsellors, junior groups and scout troops, from church backgrounds and from outside them. They alternate on a two-year cycle with the nationwide MegaSjezd, and this year's programme takes its theme from a project called “Hrdina v nás” — The Hero Within. Smaller regional events, the movement notes, keep travel distances short and let young people from neighbouring areas build friendships with one another. Dorostová unie has the details.
Czech Republic — a detective story that teaches children to spot a con
The Czech Church of the Brethren has a new project to help children recognise manipulation and resist temptation: “Mistrovský podfuk” — The Masterful Con — a detective story published by the association Hisland with the church's Children's Department. It answers the daily flood of advertising and social-media enticement, and the difficulty of telling what is genuinely good from what merely attracts attention. Aimed at readers from about eight years old, it weaves suspense with symbolism drawn from the gospel as the characters uncover lures that are not as innocent as they first appear. The story was staged experientially at the United festival in August 2026, and is expanding into a workbook, discussion questions, a day-camp concept and an audiobook. The Church of the Brethren announced it.
Czech Republic — ‘Prayer for Home’ opens its twentieth year
For the twentieth autumn running, the Ecumenical Council of Churches in the Czech Republic has invited congregations to join “Prayer for Home”, holding before God the families, neighbours and communities they belong to. The campaign brings a children's art competition, a shared service and a broadcast on 28 October; this year's theme is “God with us”, and Sunday 25 October is suggested for local observances. General secretary Marián Čop said home means more than four walls: somewhere people hope to find acceptance, safety and love. He asked congregations to pray for children and the elderly, for the lonely and for those with no home at all, and to seek peace in relationships. The Ecumenical Council of Churches published the invitation.
This week's planting reports and Estonia's four theological schools describe one need from two directions: congregations are started, and kept, by leaders who have been formed. Worldwide Evangelical Seminary exists for that work — distance theological education for free church leaders who stay where they serve, and partnership with initiatives such as AFECF in Africa.
The Connexion is provided by Worldwide Evangelical Seminary — forming free church leaders for faithful ministry worldwide.
