Hi everyone, these next few posts are probably more than most of you may be interested in reading, however, we thought we might let you in on a summary of some of our research and what we've discovered on our trips to visit the three opportunities we are currently considering as we prepare to launch out from London to a new ministry location with greater needs this summer: 1) Oslo, Norway, 2) Central Asia, and 3) Prague, Czech Republic.
In these posts you'll be able to learn about some things we've found interesting about each place, a bit of their history, how to pray for the people in each place (and us as we consider whether the Lord may be calling us there), and the details and needs that we are considering as we trust the Lord for this decision. We'll be posting our thoughts here chronologically, in the order which we have visited each location. First up is Oslo, Norway!
Oslo, Norway
Like nearly all of Europe, Christianity has been in decline in Norway for decades. If you enjoy stories and movies about “Vikings”, you might already know a little bit about Norway’s exciting and legendary history, which often blurs the lines between history and myth. Norway for centuries was a very small (Current population 5.45 million) and relatively poor Scandinavian seafaring nation at the far Northwestern edge of Europe with a cold climate and land that, while beautiful, wasn’t great for agriculture. Their pagan past of being the scourge of Europe as the Viking raiders of the medieval period (spurred on by the belief that a glorious death in battle gave you a free ticket to “Valhalla”) ended in the 11th Century as more and more of these “Norse adventurers” encountered Christianity in England, Ireland, France, Russia, and other nations and brought the Christian gospel and Christian captives back as slaves and wives to Scandinavia with them.
Norway became one of the last European nations to adopt Christianity. As the children of Viking raiders grew up hearing about Jesus from Christian mothers and household slaves, more and more Norse people became Christians from the Gospel witness of these unintended missionaries. As Christianity grew in Norway and King Olav Haraldsson converted to Christianity in the 11th century, Christian missionaries from the British Isles began to be openly welcomed to Norway to help spread the new faith among their mostly Norse pagan population.
Perhaps more than any other culture in history, Norway’s culture and worldview were radically transformed by the Christian Gospel during and after the Viking Age, but their thirst for exploration and adventure persisted as they became Christian and were transformed into one of the largest mission sending nations, taking the message of first catholic Christianity and later Protestant Lutheranism with them around the world as they explored, settled, and traded. To go from being a culture whose dominant religion taught that death in battle was a free ticket to paradise, to being the nation that awards the Nobel prize each year for the advancement of peace, physics, chemistry, literature, and medicine is a pretty radical change, which the world can thank Christianity for.
In the 1960’s, oil was discovered in Norway, creating a level of financial wealth and prosperity that Norway had never before experienced, instantly transforming their economy from one based on fishing, agriculture, and trade to one almost entirely based on the petroleum industry. Christianity has been in decline and secularism on the rise in Norway ever since. If you ask Norwegians today why most Norwegians no longer attend church after such a long history of Christianity, they will respond that “before we found oil, we needed God more to give us hope. We would go to church and pray for God to help us just be able to feed our families each day, but now we don’t really need him.”
Today, less than 10% of Norwegians attend church regularly, and less than 8% would hold views in line with biblical Christianity about the deity of Christ, the authority of the Bible as holy Scripture, justification by faith in Christ, the virgin birth, etc. Most churches of the dominant and constitutionally established state sponsored Church of Norway, while historically Lutheran, today hold theological views that would be completely unrecognisable to historical Lutheran theologians like Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and Martin Chemnitz, and have adopted views more in line with secular humanism, theological liberalism, and the LGBTQ+ movement, though a small minority of Church of Norway congregations continue to be faithful to the Gospel, mostly concentrated along Norway’s rural western coast. The current annual growth rate of Biblical Christianity in Norway is just 1%, which means that Christianity is shrinking among this population (an annual growth rate of 2.1% is considered to be replacement level, with greater than 2.2% being necessary for positive growth).
In 2022 63.7% of Norwegians were listed on the rolls of Church of Norway congregations, though the majority do not regularly attend or even realise that they are counted among a church’s members because churches in Norway receive taxpayer funding on the basis of their listed membership, rather than their actual attendance. If your church receives government funding for keeping a person on the rolls who you baptised as an infant 50 years ago and haven't seen since, you probably aren't going to be very motivated to remove them from your membership rolls, especially if they aren't asking you to.
Over the past two decades the port city of Oslo, Norway’s capital and largest city has experienced a of diverse influx of immigrant peoples from eastern, southern, Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa of many members of Unreached People Groups, as well as Europeans and North Americans working in the oil industry and other businesses. English is the most common second language for Norwegians and immigrants to Norway, and it is not difficult to find people in Oslo who are just as comfortable speaking English as Norwegian or their mother tongue.
With the steep decline of the state Church of Norway and Christianity in general in Norway in these past few decades of economic prosperity, there is a great need for a new era of mission sending to Norway to reach both secular Norwegians and the Unreached People Groups who have migrated to Norway, especially in Oslo and other major cities to plant new Gospel-centred churches and strengthen existing churches which remain committed to the Gospel. Oslo has seen a large influx of immigrants from the Muslim world since the beginning of the global refugee crisis, which began in 2014, including those from Iran, Somalia, Turkey, South and East Asia, and those from the Arab world.
The Oslo MTW/IPC Church planting team is currently two families who together are planting a Gospel centred international church in Oslo. They arrived in Norway in late 2022 and launched Grace International Church (https://gracechurchoslo.org) in central Oslo in the Spring of 2023, and have already grown to about 60-70 regular attenders made up of both native Norwegians and immigrants from around the world. The church currently meets in the fellowship hall of a Church of Norway congregation that has been friendly toward them and Grace has recently just completed their first membership class and hope to receive their first group of about 30 new members to the church in early May. The team and church plant are currently led by MTW missionaries Andrew Lupton and his wife Laura Kate who were classmates of ours at Covenant Seminary and previously pastored an international church in Bogota, Colombia, and native Norwegian Jonas Stava and his wife Pattie who we have enjoyed getting to know through our onboarding and Kingdom Foundations training with MTW.
