Evangelical Free Church in Sweden

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The Evangelical Free Church in Sweden (Evangeliska Frikyrkan, in missionary work and other international relations also referred to as InterAct) is the largest of several Baptist bodies in Sweden.

The movement describes itself theologically as evangelical, missionary, baptist and charismatic.

Evangeliska Frikyrkan was founded in 1997 as a merge of the Örebro Mission (Örebromissionen, founded in 1892 as Örebro Missionary Society), the Free Baptist Union (Fribaptistsamfundet, founded in 1872) and the Sanctification Union (Helgelseförbundet, founded in 1887).

Today (2009) over 300 parishes are affiliated to the Evangelical Free Church in Sweden, consisting of more than 31000 members. Many parishes are also connected to other church communions.

Theological profile

Since the Evangelical Free Church (Evangeliska FriKyrkan = EFK) was formed, it has been described as an evangelical, mission-oriented, and charismatic Baptist church movement. These four key words together determine EFKs theological profile.

Evangelical

"Scripture alone" is a principle which belongs to the legacy of the Reformation. "As it is written?" was a central issue in the joint call of religious issues in the revival movements. Of historical reasons and referring to the Bible as the ultimate standard of faith and life in the Free Church tradition, been a skepticism about the new wording of belief. At the same time it is important for the EFC to affirm the common Christian faith as expressed in the Apostolic and the Nicene Creed, in the reformatory basic tenets and in the evangelical theology has its roots in the evangelical revival movement had a contemporary expression including Lausanne declaration.

This means briefly that they jointly:

• Commit ourselves to the One God, triune in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the world's creator and preserver, Savior and giver of life;
• Commit ourselves to Jesus Christ God's only Son, true God who became a true man, lived, was crucified and died for our salvation, rose from death and will return from Father's right hand to establish the kingdom of God in glory and judge the living and the dead;
• Think of Jesus Christ as the full revelation of God, the ultimate truth and the only way to God the Father;
• Believe that man was created in God's image but have turned away from God and, in its duality of good versus evil and mercy for himself, not the life-giving Community with God;
• Believe that man's salvation and restoration of her life real meaning and provision has its basis only in Jesus' atonement, offered to man by grace through God's initiative, made possible by the Spirit works and received and appropriated by faith, which is both trust and relationship, gift, and struggle;
• Believe that every human need is called to repentance and faith as expressed in a way of life together with the people of God in forgiveness, love, righteousness and a responsible serving of church and society;
• Have a Scripture which means that the Bible is God's Word through human words in history, one story of God's revelation and salvation history through which the Spirit speaks and guides the Assembly today, credible in everything it teaches, authority for our faith and our life, living and working to transform people's lives and relationships;
• Realize that no human interpretation of the Bible can be infallible, but as the Bible, interpreted in its historical context, in accordance with its purpose and in the Spirit, information, leads right on the path of life and to deepen the Assembly in its understanding through obedience to God's word. This is the core of EFKs evangelical identity and evangelical theology. This confession core content of faith lends itself to that faith also finds expression in worship and prayer, in love and action. It leads on to affirm that the call to evangelism and service a hallmark of the mainstream of the evangelical flow over the past centuries.

Mission focused

Mission is a natural outflow of confession to God the Father, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and transparency for the guidance of the Spirit. Its cause and basis in God the Father who is love and wish that all people should know him. Its center and design found in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is sent to the world for its salvation. The driving force is the Spirit of God who convinced sin, draws people to Christ and gives life. Mission is also a natural outflow of what church is. It is God's people gathered around Jesus Christ and thus involved in his mission in the world. "As the Father has sent me to the world, I send you to the world "(Jn 17:18, cf 20:21). The consignment or mission is thus, a fundamental biblical dimension of the local congregation and the entire life of the Church and mission. Church's mission is all that it is called to do in the world outside their own Community. This Mission has its prerequisite and basis of the Assembly's internal life. Its attractiveness may, therefore, an important missionary dimension. But the mission is more specifically by Mission's ultimate purpose is that God will be glorified and that the Lord Jesus shall be known and honored among people and nations as he is. It is not least by people released from the power of evil and establish a real sense of community, which is a witness to the kingdom and shows up at him coming. This "message of the kingdom shall preached throughout the world and become a witness to all nations "and only then" the end come "(Matt. 24:14). EFC stands for a pioneering approach that involves the readiness to join the Gospel to new areas or unreached peoples and ethnic groups. EFC is also a dynamic holistic approach includes evangelism, church development and social responsibility. Its mission focuses as well as to meet the individual human spiritual, social and material needs to operate to changes in society and the environment. This is to all people to live a dignified life. Efforts to combat poverty and promote human rights based in conviction that all people have equal value based on the will of God in creation and redemption. This mission always realized in and through relationships. Therefore, the dialogue at various levels with representatives of other religions and visions in order to establish mutual understanding, prevent conflicts between religious groups and promote good community development. But testimony and invitation to believe in Christ must remain central in Christian mission. The work of evangelism and church founder, leader and church development and Deaconess and community cooperation is sought where possible and reciprocity in relations and partnerships. EFC welcomes the principle of reciprocity missionaries from other parts of the world or other forms of cooperation in evangelism, Assembly of the establishment and Deaconess in Sweden. This may in other ways enrich EFKs development and enhance its work. Both in Sweden and in international missions focusing on the EFC to establish and strengthen churches, train leaders and serve the community. This is to realize the vision EFC "Growing congregations to take the whole gospel to the whole person across the world".

Baptist

The local churches are communities of people who personally confessed their faith, which Anniversary gudstjänst10 and living the faith life together as a local manifestation of Christ body. This is central to the Baptist tradition that belongs to the EFC, as well as the close the relationship between faith and baptism. EFC learn and practice a Baptist dopsyn which means that persons who profess their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, are baptized in the Triune God's name, even in Christ. It is normal that in the early church, by immersion in water. It is a form that shows what happens: a transition from death to life. Baptism is a gift from God and human response to God's call to forgiveness, repentance and new life. Baptism of Christ is a baptism into the body of Christ. The baptism itself leaves the individual to Christ- Community of the Church and its life of Christ discipleship. Church's witness outwardly in word and deed the love of God, God's salvation and the kingdom of God, one testimony that can be both seen and heard among all people. This mission is shared by all Christians, but separating church and sends some of specific transnational tasks for which they have personal equipment and calling. The assignment can be realized both in the local environment and in a completely different cultural environments, "next In congregations that only the EFC-related only baptism practiced at his own confession of faith. But many congregations are, for the sake of the historical development of the Christian church at large and the ecumenical situation, open to members who receive Christians from churches of other traditions than the Baptist, but they are baptized as believer. Parishes that are also connected to other communities presupposes respect EFKs proprietary nature of the Baptist denomination. The conscious baptism presupposes free will. Faith is a personal belief. It is an important Baptist principle that faith is a free response to God's word, a personal assignment to Jesus Christ as Lord. It is therefore necessary for freedom in religious matters, while congregation and faith community in Bible study and conversation deepen their common faith. This principle of freedom and free will justify the extension of the conscience and religious freedom for all in every society, Baptists who fought for throughout history. With the pattern of Jesus (Mark 10:13-16) parts Assembly over a parent's joy newborn children and offers children a blessing. This expresses our faith that God has a head start in each child's life and represents a prayer for God's blessing and the child later to receive a personal belief and self ask to be baptized and a member of the church. Children's Blessing has a natural follow-up in the spiritual guidance provided by Assembly's children and youth. All believers have the same status in Christ and is called for in different ways to be God kingdom of witnesses and servants. The Baptist assembly view vein, there is equality in the Assembly life and community. Social differences and other divisions cease to be valid parish life. The reconciled Community is a sign to the world and a radical force that create commitment to change in the surrounding community. An important manifestation of this is the mutual help and Community around the table where the Lord's Supper being celebrated in order to determine the concerns of the Assembly invited all members to call in and prayerfully the guidance of the Spirit together seek God's will (Acts 15:28, cf v 22). This fundamental equality is justified by the conviction that the spiritual gifts that Assembly required for the service given by the Spirit "so that the self-will" (1 Corinthians 12:11). Among these rewards are also different forms of spiritual leadership (Eph 4:7-13). Assembly members, gathered at the Assembly meeting, trying in prayer before God and call people call to serve in such data. In the case of the congregation often church leaders; such as pastors, elders and deacons. They are responsible to God and Assembly.

Charismatic

It is the Spirit of God that brings together the believers of the "one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13), to a church that is Christ's body. According to the New Testament is the Spirit active in the believer's life Community and in many ways. "Without the Holy Spirit, God is distant, stops Christ in the past, the Gospel becomes a dead letter, the Assembly is only one organization, mission Charismatic renewal and revival that affected large parts of Christendom from the mid-1960s and forward. Propaganda, worship, group therapy and a Christian life a slave morality. "17 It is the Spirit that makes difference by communicating the grace of salvation and life. A congregation is, as we understand there, in New Testament light charismatic Spirit is the one who gives the Christian Assembly by its life history and over the world and helps us become what we in Christ already is. By belonging to Christ, all believers, young and old, men and women, received the Spirit as a gift and encouraged in Scripture to allow themselves to be honored by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), characterized the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and to receive and serve with the gifts the Spirit gives (Romans 12;1 Corinthians 12). Spirituality, nature, and gifts go together. In our spiritual tradition, with the participation of the holiness movement and the Pentecostal revival, there is a challenge to complete the transfer to the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17). Personal experience Spirit provides, inter alia, an increasingly Christlike in character, new joy, new strength in the service, boldness in prayer and worship, the temptations of power and openness of the manifestations of God's healing and liberating grace. Our faith is both a firm belief and a deliberate transfer of The kingdom of God as presented in the New Testament where the Gospel of the kingdom conveyed in words, action, love and power. Spirit leads both the individual and the Christian church into the truth of the faith and out of Kingdom of God service. Guidance of the Spirit is always in harmony with the mind of Christ and God's Word but can still sometimes be surprising, as it was for Paul when he was hampered in its plans and was led into the current European (Acts 16). For the charismatic dimension also includes the prophetic service. It conveys no God's revelation in the authoritative way that the prophets in the Old Testament or apostles in the New Testament did. But by the Spirit of God made people with prophetic gift of the New Testament still convey a divine spoken to people in different situations. In the Assembly, the aim is to edify, exhort and comfort but as Paul Education is the most prophetic to be assessed and tested (1 Corinthians 14:3-4, 29, 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21). It shows that the gift of prophecy and preaching may have some points in common. A charismatic church life leaves room for this service in our own day. With designs from the Old Testament prophet-Semitism and on the basis of God's kingdom theology in New Testament, the Spirit can also result in individual Christians and congregations to a prophecy social criticism with a view to expose evil and call for righteousness and justice in human relations and in any exercise of power. There is a useful variation of the charismatic dimension in any expression individual parish and between different parishes. They should contribute to the common edification. Therefore, the diversity of expression of the Spirit works included in worship, testimony and Deaconess. The pattern of a church where the Spirit is the drive appears in the diversity and diversity in unity. Thus the Spirit gives the congregation a taste of God's kingdom in its future fullness. EFKs charismatic identity means that we want to see the Spirit's life, fruit of the Spirit and the Spirit rewards active in the church in a healthy atmosphere of love, care and God.

External links

• Evangeliska Frikyrkan, official website