By Rev David Meredith, Mission Director
A group of those involved in church planting within the Free Church of Scotland attended a Scottish Church Planting Network (SCPN) workshop in Edinburgh today (Thursday).
We were reminded that church planting is an effective means of evangelism.
We heard from Øivind Augland from Norway who reported that the number of churches planted in Norway has been constantly multiplying in recent years. Since 1994 more than 300 churches have been planted across Norway, and today a new church is planted, on average, every two weeks. Church planting has effectively stopped decline in church attendance in Norway.
We also heard that through the influence of the late Tim Keller and others that church attendance in New York City had moved from 1% in the mid 1980s to 8% in 2020.
News from our own Free Church plants suggest that there have been more adult baptisms in the last 2 years than in the previous 10 years in the entire denomination. Typical of this is the report of the baptism of ‘three men and a baby’ in Tornagrain in September.