A view of the 2004 Olympics in Athens (Photo: ANA/ATHOC/G. Kontos)
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A massive evangelistic effort of Youth with A Mission (YWAM) during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece, Aug.13-29, has been planned. Hundreds of YWAM representatives and thousands of Christians from around the world will gather in Athens this Friday to greet each other in good faith of God and to evangelize Greece, a spiritually needy country.
Athens will be soaked in an atmosphere of spiritual awakening as thousands of Christians anticipate proclaiming the gospel of God to the birthplace of the Olympic Games in Greece, where some twenty centuries earlier the famous apostle Paul made his historic mission trips to the ancient cities Thessalonica and Corinth.
Out of 10.5 million people in Greece, about 15,000 people or merely 0.16 percent of the population are Protestants. The rest belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church.
Evangelism plans at the 2004 Olympics have become important issues within the Christian community. Christian evangelists plans to saturate Greece with eternal gospel and they also aim to introduce Christ’s teachings to the Muslims population in the vicinity of Athens.
Evangelism strategies have been carefully planned in order to breech through the spiritual wall in Greece which is largely responsible for Greeks’ skeptic views about Christ.
Some of these strategies are reaching out to the poor, the prostitutes and the immigrants. Distributing free Bibles and making friends are considered to be most important.
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An observer told the “Charisma” magazine “If you make a friend, you will be invited to his or her family. Once you are in a family, you are at the heart of Greek life.”
"The key to revival in Greece is parea, which means ‘circle of close friends. The parea is the center of Greek life. The way to reach the many seekers out there is to invite them home," Randal Weidenaar, a Chicago believer, explained.
There have been speculations that church leaders and missionaries will encounter anti-proselytism; however, with prayers and absolute faith in God, evangelistic teams believe that God’s true gospel will be planted Athens.
