When we were first investigating the possibility of long-term mission for our lives, we began by speaking to organisations that worked in Latin America. But as we properly got to learn about the current state of the church here in mainland Europe, in particular Portugal, God started to move our perspective.

At first, we only considered Europe as a sort of due-diligence — to make sure we were being thorough in our planning to ultimately go to Latin America. But God opened our eyes to the need in Portugal.

The evangelical church here is tiny and under-resourced (financially and also in terms of training, support, etc). One of the unique challenges the church in Portugal faces is a quickly rising average age of church leaders. We work in a local church, and we have the amazing privilege and opportunity to invest deeply in the young people. We get to see them grow and mature, particularly in their faith. We’ve introduced a one-to-one discipleship programme, something very common in our contexts in the UK but not as much here. We’ve been training and enabling other people to do this as well.

We believe that both the church in Portugal and Portugal as a nation need more of this, intentional Jesus-focused discipleship. Young adults with a mature faith, an understanding of how to discern the Holy Spirit’s prompting and with a vision to see revival come to Portugal.

Read Steve and Lydia Cockram’s story and more in our latest magazine here

Find out more about Steve and Lydia's ministry here

Did You Know? Only 3% of people in Portugal are evangelical Christians.