Foreign Protestant Churches in Europe Increases as Reverse Mission is Seen

As huge numbers of refugees from Africa and Asia have immigrated to Europe, the number of immigrant Protestant Churches has also risen in Europe.

A phenomenon of a reverse mission is taking place, as Christians from traditional African and Asian mission fields are coming to Europe, evangelising and setting up churches, especially in the Protestant and Pentecostal churches.

According to Assist News Service (ASN), there are at least 1,100 foreign language Protestant churches with more than 80,000 members in Germany, as Rev. Claudia Waehrisch-Oblau of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland reported.

Rev. Claudia Waehrisch-Oblau is coordinating the program between German and Immigrant churches of the United Evangelical Mission (UEM).

The UEM is an international missionary communion which currently consists of 34 member churches in Africa, Asia and Germany. The objective is the communion in mission and reciprocal assistance in implementing missionary tasks.

According to Rev Waehrisch-Oblau's estimation, the average foreign Protestant churches have 50-70 members, however, some of them can have several hundreds. It is expected that the population of the Orthodox and Catholic immigrant church will soon exceed 1.5 million.

UEM lists 407 Protestant migrant congregations in Germany. 86 percent of the 200 African churches practice a Charismatic or Pentecostal style of worship. 38 percent of the 114 Asian churches fall into this category.

Rev. Waehrisch-Oblau expressed for the Zeitschrift fuer Mission (Mission Journal) the main reason of the huge growth of immigrant protestant churches is the immigration of large numbers of refugees from Sri Lanka, West and Central Africa in 80s and 90s. Already existing churches are not able to recognise the potential of immigrant churches and Rev.

Speaking at the Round Table for Evangelism in Berlin, on 13th-14th June 2005 she expressed her conviction that German churches would profit while including the immigrants to leadership of German churches and para-church agencies.