New Generation Spreads the Gospel Among Young Europeans

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"We started by openly bringing our Bibles to school." -- Eli, Norwegian New Generation member

One key New Generation distinctive: students are the Holy Spirit-fired "motor."  New Generation adult leaders provide general guidance, a framework for school evangelism, information sharing, and conferences -- but not control and direction.

At least in Sweden, Christian school youth groups have tended to be mostly about fellowship and survival, one youth pastor said.  New Generation is different: it is all about schoolmates who are not yet saved.  There are two legs on which it stands: prayer and evangelism.

A thoroughly interdenominational concept, New Generation has members from nearly every Scandinavian denomination and church movement. Local churches are mainly responsible for equipping the students who then take responsibility for bringing the Gospel to their classmates. 

Eli, a Norwegian, now a student at a Christian university, was a New Generation member in her hometown south of Bergen.

"Our youth pastor encouraged us to take responsibility for our school," she recalls. "We started by openly bringing our Bibles to school."

"We also prayed daily before school for classmates, our teachers, and our mission at the school. God really got our attention when He saved one our main antagonists among the teachers.....one that we had really been praying for. That teacher is now a Christian missionary."
In Sweden, 16 year-old Sara came from a family that had not yet accepted Christ. Along with three others, she started a New Generation group shortly after her rebirth as a Christian. But within months, she was diagnosed with cancer. She told a New Generation leader: “Ok, the Bible says God can heal me. But even if I die, I’ll take as many with me to Heaven as possible.”

Sara, New Generation school leader: "the Bible says God can heal me. But even if I die, I’ll take as many with me to Heaven as possible."

Her group became one of the most radical in the country, reaching individual students 10 times as often as the national goal of once annually. Through music, drama, personal one-on-one evangelism and prayer, their group exploded from 4 members to 35 within the year. They even saw a black-leather, heavily pierced Satanist in the school saved. The reason: Sara’s lifestyle of joy even through the cancer. Today, Sara is a county coordinator for New Generation in Sweden – and totally healed of cancer.

New Generation students work hard to find creative ways of evangelizing in their schools. Swedish leader Joakim Lundqvist said that one New Generation team in his country raised more than $12,000 in just three weeks-- enough money to purchase Bibles as Christmas gift for every one of their classmates. A donor matched their hard work and sacrifice, and as a result hundreds of students received a Bible. Not content to just hand out Bibles, the group individually wrapped each Bible and included a personal Christmas greeting. Lundqvist says this gift continues to bear fruit as students begin to read God’s Word – many for the first time.

Lundqvist says the concept of giving Bibles to classmates has become so popular that an astonished publisher told him that 40% of all Bibles sold or distributed in Sweden in 2002 were given away by New Generation groups.

The New Generation concept started at Oslo University in 1996. Norwegian New Generation leaders quickly realized that the concept was relevant not only on their campus, but among teenagers and young adult students throughout their country. Today, more than 7,000 student members of New Generation in 200+ schools are actively spreading the Gospel among young Norwegians.

Next door to Norway, New Generation started in Sweden, at a youth conference in 2001. With the encouragement of New Generation leaders from Norway, the Swedes ran quickly with the concept, growing in under two years to 3,400 members from every denomination in 230 groups in 19 of 21 Swedish counties, and more than 10% of all schools. Lundqvist says the growth continues.  Across Scandinavia there are now more than 13,000 members in just Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

“Our goal in Sweden is to take present Jesus to every student, every year.” he says. “School is where everyone is. The whole coming society is there.  New Generation is just now in one out of every ten schools.  Our goal is to see New Generation in every school."

The end of the school day is the end of the day for New Generation groups as well, because school is the only mission field for New Generation groups, Lundqvist says.  "We ask individual New Generation members to be seriously committed to their home churches because they are the key to preparing the students for effective missions work.  New Generation is a tool for churches to evangelize the schools in their community."

"We have a basic statement of faith, but we do not take a stand on denominational and church movement distinctives," he says.  This approach has helped New Generation to enjoy huge acceptance among Scandinavian church organizations.

Sweden held its first national New Generation conference in mid-September, 2003.  Lundqvist said that 1,700 students from every Swedish denomination came -- most in response to simple postcards sent to member clubs.

"Often at youth conferences, the front rows are filled with on-fire young people, and many of the rest are just coasting," he said.  "At this conference, every row was full of on-fire young people...some as young as 13 years old."

Seeing the effectiveness of the concept among Norwegians and Swedes, young people and youth leaders elsewhere in Europe have become interested.  New Generation national programs have recently started or will soon start in Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, Finland, Germany, Iceland, France, Spain, Estonia, Italy, the United Kingdom, Hungary, the Ukraine, Russia, and Portugal.

Lundqvist says New Generation in Sweden receives many requests for assistance in starting youth work in countries around the world, including some surprising places that cannot be named on the web.  He says they work on two tracks: first, providing advice and inspiration for those who are working to develop effective youth ministry, and second, helping national networks launch official New Generation programs in their country.

"We have been to several countries to help launch official New Generation programs," he said.  "In Russia, for example, we took 17 of our student leaders to a huge Christian youth conference in Moscow in November 2002.  Every one of them preached or taught at the sessions and workshops.  Today there are New Generation groups starting up all over the former Soviet Union."

He said that young Christians in Great Britain have caught the vision.  They are planning an official New Generation launch in February 2004 with major denominational and church network backing.

The Swedish New Generation office in Uppsala can be contacted by telephone at +46 18 13 4110.  Sweden is on Central European Time, which is six hours ahead of USA East Coast time.  Their email address is info@nygeneration.com  Inquiries may be made in English, in addition to Swedish.

New Generation Testimonies

Johan was saved in late summer 2001.  At the time, he was attending a high school specializing in training mechanics.  It was a difficult mission field -- all guys and most of them tough guys.  The question on his mind was pretty obvious: how in the world to reach these men with the gospel. He decided to put up a poster.  He went to a photographer and had a poster of himself made with this headline: "I'm a Christian.  Ask me why." It worked.  40 of his school mates asked him.  Several of those were saved.  His next idea was that if the roughest, toughest guy in the school were to be saved, others would surely follow.  There was one Muslim in the school with an especially bad reputation. "Hassan" (not his real name) beat other students without provocation.  Johan prayed for him morning and night.  Then the day came when Johan was alone with Hassan after class.  With heart in his throat Johan approached Hassan and briefly shared the Gospel with him.  Expecting to be beat, Johan was shocked to find that Hassan was ready and had been searching for answers.  Before they left the room Hassan was a fellow Christian.  This led to an awakening among other Muslims in the school. Another poster appeared the next year on the school walls.  On it were Johann, Hassan, and 28 others.  The headline?  "We're Christians.  Ask us why."

Rahel is a student in a school where well over half of the students are Muslims, and no few are radical Muslims.  It was, in one leader's words, "an anti-Jesus, pro-Muhammad school."  With only a little encouragement from New Generation leaders, Rahel and her one Christian friend decided to use the UN Day of Peace as a mechanism to reach fellow students.  They wrapped 1,600 lollipops with a message in each, "Peace on the outside will come with peace on the inside."  As a result of that simple message and a lot of prayer, the New Generation group at Rahel's school grew in six months from just two to 35....some of them former Muslims!