Worship leader IAN TRAYNAR visited various countries in Europe. What he found there deeply encouraged and challenged him. For he began to see that God is causing a "river of praise to flood across Europe."

SWITZERLAND
I travelled through the beautiful scenery of the vineyards near Lyon and up into the mountains across the border and eventually to the city of Lausanne, situated on the shore of beautiful Lake Geneva. I met with Linda Panci-McGowan, who for years has been heading up translation work for YWAM there. The Lausanne YWAM base is the oldest in Europe, and as I stayed there overnight I reflected on the significant input that this organisation has had into Europe and on all that has emanated from the base. In Lausanne, YWAM has won considerable respect among the local churches and it holds a monthly celebration, which is very well attended, led by Rolf Schneider its head of music ministries. Incidentally, it was Rolf who led the worship at the Paris prayer meeting. I also met with Guy Barblan, a very talented musician, who has set up an exciting music-in-worship course called 'Psalmodia'. This will develop the already strong worship scene in Switzerland still further. I told him he should move to Britain and share his work with us!

WEST GERMANY
Finally I moved to West Germany, where I made two stops. The first was in Bavaria, in the lovely city of Munich. It had a clean and wholesome feel and, true to the caricature, my lasting impression was of buxom women slopping huge glasses of beer down onto tables in the market place! I stayed with Thomas Van Dooren, a German pastor with a strong burden to see worship released. He often travels with his whole family to lead worship seminars. Their favourite subject is "worship in the family." My second contact was a short meeting in Frankfurt with Marion Warrington of YWAM. She has been faithfully translating songs for many years, and through music cassettes has been doing a significant work of releasing worship across West Germany. God had told YWAM in Germany to use praise to plough up the hard ground, and they are now beginning to see the fruit of this labour. There seems to be a great deal going on as far as worship is concerned, including joint celebrations, worship seminars, a book on worship written by Michael Chance. A strong impact has also been made with the torch-run initiative - there is considerable excitement about moving onto the streets with praise to declare the Lordship of Christ. In fact they are looking for songs that say "Let's stand up and be counted", that renew self-confidence in who we are in Christ, and that proclaim Christ's power and Lordship. They are singing fewer songs translated from English and many more German songs. Marion, too, is regularly asked to lead worship seminars throughout West Germany, and she communicated very clearly to me the desire there was among Germans for solid teaching on issues such as spiritual warfare, what happens when people praise, and the use of worship in evangelism. Her overriding desire in support of the conference was that we hear God's voice for the whole of Europe, and begin to function with more unity.

HOLLAND
In January of this year, I travelled to Holland for our second steering committee meeting but afterwards spent a week visiting pastors encouraging and stirring a vision for the conference. In this nation they have been holding praise marches and worship conferences for several years. All were enthusiastic about co-operation on an international venture.

One Sunday evening I attended a YWAM meeting where they introduced some East Germans. This was their first trip into the West and they had come to evangelise. As I listened I tried to take in the significance of the fact that perhaps only a month before they could never have contemplated doing such a trip with such ease. "Since we have been here in the West we have realised that contrary to all we have heard of the supposed freedom there is no freedom in the West. There is only freedom in Jesus," said one of them.

At the end of February I travelled to West Germany to a visit the Anska church. They have a large church (up to a 1000 strong) in Hamburg and a desire to plant out many churches. The significance of this visit was that I had been invited to speak at a weekend conference on the subject of "Worship is a lifestyle". They were due to plant a church in May of this year in Frankfurt' and because they saw worship being a major foundation upon which to build a church, wanted me to address this issue. To me this was an amazing vision - there are very few churches in the UK that place such a high priority on worship lifestyle being such an important foundation. On the Monday evening I had the exciting privilege of being involved in a meeting at which they were planning a worship conference for Germany. I was able to contribute some guidance and wisdom based upon our experiences and it was so thrilling to be a part of this.

Over the next couple of days I went back to visit Thomas in Munich where there is a strong fellowship and then on to Nurnburg where they are having regular monthly meetings of at least 2000 people where worship' is the key element of this gathering. I met John McFarlane, one of the leaders responsible for this, who told me that for t last few months he has been preaching on Ezekiel 47 and particularly confirmed that this river, as it says in Ezekiel, is flowing out to the East. This was a fresh confirmation of the vision we had been given for Worship International, and stirred my faith that we had made a right decision to sponsor a number of key people from the East for the conference.

At the end of March, I was invited to the first national worship conference in Switzerland, called Louange '90.I was speaking along with Dave and Dale Garrett from New Zealand and Rick Ridings from Belgium. Over the period of the '70s the Garretts had had a major input into the worship scene in Europe, and it was good that they came back to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. We had a tremendous time in our worship times; much creative praise, spontaneous song, dance and mime took place. We also had a clear prophetic word for Switzerland - just as the ground was hard and frozen and there was no real sign of life in nature because it was winter, there was little life showing in the church. But now was the beginning of Spring for the nation, and life would begin to show. The fruit of sowing and seed taking root was now coming to fruition and they should expect a great expression of life to come forth. It was as if this conference was the first fruits of this.

I'm greatly challenged by what God is clearly doing across the rest of Western Europe. I am also greatly humbled by it. We have much to give into other European nations but we also have a great deal to learn, and must guard against any pride over what we have to offer. It is easy to think, with all that God has been doing here in Britain, that we are the centre of the universe. I would urge us all to pray that God would give us a wider vision than just our parish, town, or even country, that we see from God's perspective how big the family is. Also how important worship is going to be in the coming months and years in uniting the nations.

PRAISING IN TONGUES

A French association set up for the translation of praise songs has proven valuable in making worship material available to French-speakers. Known by the catchy name of "Association Chretienne pour le Development de la Lounge la Composition et la Traduction de Chants," or LTC for the less ably tongued, it was formed with government recognition in 1988 with the aim of co-ordinating all translation work on worship songs not originally in French and also to ensure the highest quality.

LTC was intended to encourage composition, to publish and distribute worship material and to promote worship training seminars but was originally set up when a problem was seen to exist with different translations of the same songs. There were many fine translations but a lack of uniformity caused problems when diverse groups of Christians gathered to worship.

By drawing from a wide group of translations, LTC is gradually overcoming the problem. The foundation has its roots in an apostolic teaching school founded by an American in Europe, one Rick Ridings. His translation work grew in 1986 when he met Yves Cornaz who had a similar vocation. In 1987 Yves invited a gifted Dane, Johan Sode, and his equally gifted French wife, Maryse, onto the team and the project really began to take off.