Plenary Sessions
The European Leadership Forum programme includes plenary sessions for all participants to attend each morning and evening. These sessions consist of worship, prayer, and teaching. The speakers for this year's plenaries are listed below. For information about last year's plenary sessions, please see 2022 ELF Plenaries.
Morning Plenaries
Conrad Mbewe has served as pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia since 1987. He is a graduate of the University of Zambia, the Cape Town Baptist Seminary, and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Missions. He is the founding Chancellor of the African Christian University. He is a blogger and an author. His latest book is God’s Design for the Church (Crossway, 2020). He is also the editor of the Reformation Zambia magazine. He is married to Felistas and they have 6 adult children and 6 grandchildren.
Malachi was the last voice of God to the people of Israel before the heavens went silent for about 400 years. With Israel’s “glory days” in the past and uncertainty and peril ahead, what was this final message to God’s people before the coming of Christ? What do believers today need to learn from it as we face our own challenges and uncertainty? In this session, we will examine Malachi 1:1-14 and be challenged to grasp God’s eternal love and infinite glory afresh.
Why is it that leaders can cause so much hurt and destruction when they go astray? Malachi 2 unveils the unfaithfulness of Israel’s leaders and warns of coming consequences. What mistakes did they make? What can leaders today learn from their bad example? In this session, we will examine Malachi 2:1-16 and be reminded of how essential it is to lead our churches and families in ways to honour God.
In a world full of evil, it can be easy to hold the justice of God in suspicion, especially when that evil is done against us. How do these suspicions affect our walk with the Lord and our ability to serve? In this session, we will examine Malachi 2:17–3:15 and see how doubting God’s character keeps us from impacting the world for Christ.
God's promises are not always quickly fulfilled. Instead, we are often called to walk in faithfulness when we cannot see the path in front of us. In what ways does God ignite our service to Him in the midst of uncertain times? In this session, we will examine Malachi 3:16–4:6 and be encouraged as we are reminded that God will reward faithful obedience and trust.
Evening Plenaries
Michael Reeves is President and Professor of Theology at Union School of Theology in the UK. He is a Senior Fellow of Newton House, Oxford, and speaks and teaches regularly worldwide. Previously he has been Head of Theology for UCCF and an associate minister at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London. He is the author of several books, including Delighting in the Trinity; Rejoice and Tremble; The Unquenchable Flame; and Gospel People. He holds a doctorate in systematic theology from King’s College, London. He is married to Bethan, and together they have two daughters, Lucy and Mia.
Today, many rightly bemoan the faithlessness, tribalism and spiritual hollowness they see spread all too widely across the church. This session will look at the gospel of Christ as our only hope if we are to see the renewal and reformation of the church in our day.
Julia Garschagen is a theologian and serves as the director of the Pontes Institute for Science, Culture and Faith in the German-speaking region. She speaks at universities and in business contexts across Europe and loves to be in dialogue about a faith that is both intellectually credible and existentially satisfying. Julia co-leads the biggest evangelistic youth outreach in the German-speaking world and teaches apologetics at a theological seminary. She is also co-founder of the charity Dios te ve, which helps young people in Peru to get a higher education. Julia lives in Cologne, Germany and loves the mountains.
Christians are called live and share the Gospel in a way that is liberating, transformative, and life-giving. Yet, the good news about Jesus is increasingly perceived by the world as emotionally irrelevant, intellectually challenged, and morally questionable. In this talk, we will unpack how the good news of Jesus has become bad news to so many and what it looks like to show the power, truth, and beauty of the Gospel.
Luke Greenwood is British by birth, grew up in Brazil, and now lives in Wroclaw, Poland, with his wife Ania and their two children. He serves as the European Director for Steiger, a mission dedicated to reaching the Global Youth Culture for Jesus. Together with the Steiger Europe team, Luke has helped develop an evangelistic and discipleship movement in over 30 cities across Europe in the past 5 years, and prays for dynamic missionary teams reaching secular culture in every major European city. Luke wrote a book called Global Youth Culture: The Spiritual Hunger of the Largest Unreached Culture Today, which came out in 2019.
Millions of Millennials and Gen-Zs in Europe and around the world will not step foot into a church. Despite an epidemic of loneliness and sexual brokenness, this is a generation that does not look to the Church for answers but believes it to be irrelevant to their lives. Yet at the same time, there is an incredible spiritual hunger among people. What does it look like to communicate the Gospel effectively to Europe’s secularized youth?
Lindsay Brown is a native of Wales. He studied European history at Oxford (MA) and theology at the Free Faculty of Theology at Vaux-sur-Seine, near Paris, under Henri Blocher. Lindsay served as the International Director of the Lausanne Movement from 2008-2016. He has worked with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) for the past 45 years in a variety of roles, including serving as International Director. More recently, he has been leading the Fellowship of Evangelists in the Universities of Europe (FEUER). FEUER’s main goal is the development of a Europe-wide network of public university evangelists who work in partnership with indigenous student ministries throughout every country in Europe. He is the author of Shining Like Stars – The Power of the Gospel in the World’s Universities (IVP) and Into All the world – The Missionary Vision of Calvin and Luther (Christian Focus), which was written after a presentation at the European Leadership Forum several years ago.
Christian witness in Europe today is difficult. We live in a continent which is increasingly either indifferent or hostile to biblical truth. But are the challenges we are facing today new? As we seek to be faithful in bearing witness to Christ in our contemporary situation, what lessons can we learn from those who have gone before us? In this session, we will examine the character and witness of the early church (A.D. 90–313) and consider how we can learn from its example as we face similar challenges today.