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New Breed Of Swedish Church
15 July 2006
Sweden has long been known as the home of ABBA and some great tennis stars, plus the inspiration for the Muppet Chef!
But there's more going on in Sweden than that.
A new breed of Christian church is starting to emerge; a church led by creative GenXers who have a passion not just to build churches but to impact the cultures of cities.
Over the past ten years, Mal Fletcher and various members of the Next Wave International team, have been involved in helping to stimulate that fresh approach to leadership.
Today that work is paying off, as Mal discovered during his recent visit to a summer conference in Umea, the largest city in the north of the nation.
The conference was led by Pastor Mats Holmgren and a team of other pastors from the region. It featured two main speakers: Mal and Pastor Ulf Ekman, who pioneered the renowned Living Word (Livets Ord) church in Uppsala, Sweden.
The sessions were packed with people who were hungry to learn and receive, despite the fact that the world cup was taking place over the weekend (with Sweden heavily involved).
After the conference, Mal said: 'I was impressed with the leaders of this conference. It isn't a big event in size (yet!), but it is definitely influential, as are the churches that combine to put it on.'
'These church leaders are serious about re-shaping their cities and are already involved in speaking into the political and cultural life of those cities.'
'Pray that Sweden sees much more of this kind of thing -- and Scandinavia generally. Not just conferences (there's plenty of those) but places where people are trained for real influence in the mainstream of society.'
During the weekend, Mal taught on the Church of 2020, which is the subject of his latest book of the same name. For more on this, click here or visit our webshop.
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