12 May 2025| Bracknell, UK [tedNEWS]
During the Trans-European Division (TED) Mission150 Conference, held at Newbold College of Higher Education from 24 to 27 April 2025, more than 160 administrators, pastors, scholars, and dedicated laypeople gathered to help shape this statement. It aims to encourage local churches, conferences, and unions to place greater emphasis on mission among secular and post-Christian communities.
Statement on Mission in Secular and Post-Christian Societies across the Trans-European Division
“Mission is God’s movement toward the restoration of a broken world; He invites us into whole-life participation in His compassionate mission. For more than 95 years, the TED has been part of a greater story that God Himself is writing. From the very beginning, a self-sacrificial commitment to carrying the Adventist message to the millions across its territory has shaped its identity and purpose. That story unfolded through nearly one thousand missionaries who went overseas from the Division’s territory, taking and translating the message far beyond Europe’s borders. Over the decades, the Division embraced large mission fields in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, and from 1996 to 2011, stretched across 41 countries and autonomous regions in West Asia, North Africa, and Northern and East-Central Europe. In 2012, the Division entered a new chapter, becoming a solely European field of 22 countries. Throughout every season, the passion for mission has burned like a fire, sending out men and women from Europe to other continents—their God-shaped legacies continue to inspire.
Today, however, we find ourselves in a very different chapter of the story. From missional blaze to flickering embers, the intentional move away from the Christian story in contemporary European societies compels us to reaffirm and honour our eschatological identity by contextualising the distinctive Adventist message of wholeness, hope, and justice within local communities. In response to the God of the Bible, whose redemptive mission is fuelled by a self-sacrificing passion to embrace us—all of us, in all our humanity, we join His story by giving our time and resources. We do this to connect with others in a God-honouring community as the antidote to today’s secular, consumer culture. We confidently look to God to author missional breakthroughs in 21st-century Europe.
We boldly and prayerfully step forward, believing that the greatest days in God’s redemptive story in Europe are yet to come. As reignited fire illuminates dark spaces, we see light breaking out across the TED. Embracing different modes of service and other generations, ministering in tandem with pastors, we engage all members and develop new leaders. We engage in Spirit-led, holistic, community-based outreach with the method of Jesus, planting a movement of multiplying churches, utilising church properties for missional effectiveness, and aligning human and financial resources for maximum missional impact. With the crucial importance of narrative and storytelling supporting a culture of mission, our conferences, unions, and division guide new routes into uncharted territories.
Eagerly anticipating Christ’s second coming and the restoration of humanity and all creation, may God’s mission be set ablaze in unexpected and glorious ways across the TED.”
To ensure that actions speak louder than words, and to help make this statement live and breathe as the TED moves forward, the writing committee was empowered to create an ‘Ideas Appendix‘—a collection of suggestions for church planting and disciple-making, education and resources, raising awareness of the call to witness, and sharing both innovative and proven approaches.
Featured image: Daniel Duda delivers final comments as the statement is presented and the conference concludes. [Photos: Vanesa Pizzuto, Adventist Media Exchange, CC BY 4.0]
