Lausanne Movement

What a joy to see 70 women from about 20 different European countries gather at the beautiful coast of Crikvenica in Croatia. Women of different languages, age, culture and church-background met to celebrate the hope they have in Jesus Christ: the hope to change Europe. The bible teachers at the conference were Noor van Haaften, NL and Reona Joly-Peterson, GB. Emily Voorhies from Women of Global action and Elke Werner, Senior Associate for Women in Evangelism in Lausanne both spoke at plenary sessions and held seminars. The highlight of the conference was to listen to the country-reports. As this was the 6th European Women’s conference, we could look back and see, that God has used these meetings to plant interdenominational national movements among women. So we rejoiced to see that in Germany, France, Moldowia and many other countries, women work together to reach their people for Christ. We heard again how influential Christians had been in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. And we saw our sisters from Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegowina and Croatia standing together for unity and reconciliation, that only Jesus can bring.

We also shared the prayer requests of our countries and we were able to identify problems that we all have, east or west, such as: high divorce rate, alcoholism, single moms, moral issues, post-modern thinking, trauma from the recent wars in the Balkans. As some of us knew personally one of the men who were killed in Turkey recently we spent a lot of time in prayer for the persecuted church in Turkey and Irak.

The last day of these conferences is always being used to invite women from the area for an evangelistic outreach to women. This time the Logog II was in the harbour at Rijeka and was used to host this women’s day. About 250 Croatian Ladies came and about 30 responded to become Christians. What a joy for all of us at the conference and what an encouragement for the women in Croatia, who had never before invited to such a day.

Hope for Europe was founded as an initiative to join forces of the European Evangelical Alliance, Lausanne and back then AD 2000. It has continued in working groups and at annual European Roundtable meetings. The meeting of the women’s track takes place every two years.