Although it is hard to believe for those of us in the editorial staff, it is a reality: Evangelical Focus is 10 years old today. It’s a whole decade publishing content daily from a Christian and European worldview, in a digital environment that is constantly changing.

When we publicly launched this website on 8 January 2015, we were aware that keeping a website updated on a daily basis with an evangelical perspective on happenings in Europe was going to be a challenge. But the efforts of many people who identify with the same vision of gospel and culture have been key to get to this point.

Today Evangelical Focus has more than 29,300 articles in its archives and all contents can be visited free of charge from anywhere in the world.

The beginning, in January 2015

Evangelical Focus was conceived in the context of Areópago Protestante (the communication group of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance) and was launched after 3 months of technical trials and an effort to inform evangelical leaders in Europe about the dream of building bridges between church and society through journalism.

Pedro Tarquis, who founded the first evangelical daily digital news site in Spain (Protestante Digital) more than 20 years ago, explained that “the aim is to build a medium from Europe and for Europe, while not forgetting the rest of the English speaking world”.

Behind the project was also Pablo Martínez, a psychiatrist and international speaker with extensive knowledge of Europe. “The Christian message is rooted in a worldview which gives meaning, purpose and hope to our lives”, he said in introducing Evangelical Focus, “and its vast reservoir of ethical values, to which Europe as a whole is deeply indebted, is just as valid today as it was 6 or 7 centuries ago”. Martínez hoped that many in Europe “will see and feel the Evangelical Focus project as something which belongs to them, something that resonates with them”.

Jaume Llenas, then general secretary of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, added his hopes that the new project would “offers a wealth of resources so that believers and, by extension, local churches, can analyse the society in which they live, and provide Biblical answers”.

Areópago has a third project, Evangélico Digital, born in 2018 with a focus on a Latin American readership.

Issues that need a Christian point of view

Incidentally, Evangelical Focus was born exactly the day after the Islamist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which caused a great debate on freedom of expression.

But it is not only radical Islam that has curtailed freedoms in Europe over the past decade, but also aggressive secularism and increasingly polarising ideologies that seek to corner minorities.

In this somewhat chaotic context, at Evangelical Focus we have sought over the years to give a distinctly evangelical perspective on hotly debated issues such as the refugee crises (from Syria to Ukraine), the ideas shaping the European Union, trends among the emerging Z and Alpha generations, the evolution of technology or the presence of Christians in areas such as politics or elite sport.

We wanted to know what authoritative Christian voices in science and the arts had to say, and did not shy away from theological and missionary debates in a changing context in which Christendom as a culture is giving way to new ways of approaching faith. A Europe in which, despite all, evangelical churches and a renewed interest in Christianity are on the rise.

Readership, contents, stats

In our first year, 2015, Evangelical Focus received a total of 199,000 visits. As the journalistic project was discovered by new people, the number of people subscribing to the newsletter also gradually increased, especially from the year of the pandemic, 2020, when the use of digital tools multiplied.

By the end of 2024, EF reached 617,000 visits per year. Readers who visited us in the last 12 months came from 221 different countries, with the USA, Norway, UK, Canada, Sweden, Australia, India, Canada and Germany leading the way.

“Celebrating a decade of existence in this rapidly moving context of the internet and in an environment where the economic sustainability of such projects is extremely difficult in Europe confirms to us the grace of God and the real need there is for open platforms that reflect the reality of our continent from a biblical worldview”, says Joel Forster, director of Evangelical Focus, who is based in Valencia, Spain.

The core team of writers (Belén Díaz, Daniel Hofkamp, Jonatán Soriano, Joel Forster and Pedro Tarquis) has been joined by more than 450 other authors from around 40 different countries.

Several of these contributors have become regular columnists, enriching the platform with 3,500 articles of analysis and opinion in these 10 years. They are refreshing voices coming from backgrounds such as national Evangelical Alliances, the Lausanne Movement, the European Leadership Forum, and other pan-European Evangelical organisations with strong roots in Europe.

The project as seen from Europe

“Evangelical Focus is always accurate and fair”, says Julia Doxat-Purser, socio-political representative of the European Evangelical Alliance, and a reader from day one. “It is one way of me tracking what Evangelicals are experiencing, doing and thinking across Europe. It gives wise analysis on socio-political matters, even as Europe’s politics becomes more contentious. Evangelical Focus is my preferred Evangelical news media source for Europe”.

Greg Pritchard, president of the European Leadership Forum, another entity that joined in supporting the vision of Evangelical Focus from the beginning, believes it is “uniquely leveraged opportunity to explain the Christian worldview to the world (apologetics) and to explain the world to Christians (Christian world view analysis)”. It is important, he says, that the contents are understandable for anyone who wants to “learn from a thoughtful Christian analysis. Evangelical Focus is educating both evangelicals, and non- believers”.

Jim Memory, co-director of the Lausanne Movement Europe, adds: “Europe is partly post-Christian but partly pre-Christian as well. In terms of Acts 1:8, Europe is ‘at the ends of the earth’ again.  That is why reflection on topical and societal issues is so important. I see the team of Protestante Digital and Evangelical Focus as my collaborators”. Memory thinks Evangelical Focus “serves as a model for many other European countries”.

In an article published to mark the anniversary, Marcos Zapata, pastor and president of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, reflects on the need to “build bridges between the church and the world around us, giving a voice to Christian thought in Europe's increasingly complex media and social landscape. Maintaining a media project like this one is not only necessary, but essential”.

A desire to work alongside others

Hundreds of contents published during these 10 years by Evangelical Focus have been referenced in other media, in reports of missionary entities or in the footnotes of books published in paper.

From the beginning, the EF team has sought open and non-competitive collaboration with other media with a similar vision in local contexts or on a regional level. Our ‘Creative Commons’ licence allows anyone to republish our content simply by citing the source and authors. This is being used by many to disseminate content that appeared in Evangelical Focus through radio stations, prayer lists, or church newsletters.

In these years, some have also been interested in learning the ins and outs of our way of working to find out how to launch similar initiatives in their own context. A recent example of this is the dialogue that took place in Italy in September 2024.

Joel Forster explained details of the project’s making in a recent podcast episode of ‘God on the move’.

Dream for the future? A sustainable and growing team

At this stage ahead, one of the main goals at Evangelical Focus is to redesign our platform to reach more people of different generations with new content formats. Another dream is to expand the team of journalists with new reporters to cover more stories on the ground in underrepresented countries of Europe.

Sustainability also means getting new digital tools and networking with other projects that share this vision of society and gospel.

“We are very aware that without the vision and financial support of a group of people and churches who have financially supported Evangelical Focus this project would have been impossible”, the team acknowledges.

That is why we team launched a public campaign a few months ago to convert people who are committed users of this project into ‘patrons’. The aim is that more people who have expressed their love for the project will also become key actors in sustaining the work for the next decade.

The people behind Evangelical Focus

“God does not create projects, he calls people to do his will, people who put God’s goal and plans above their own, overcoming difficulties”, says Pedro Tarquis, general director of Areopago Protestante. “In these 10 years of EF we could talk about 10 years of Joel Forster, an exemplary journalist and at the same time a man of God who has said yes to the calling he heard one day. He has made possible what we see today, starting almost from scratch, fulfilling God’s mathematics”.

“Beyond the cold data, for me it has been exciting to talk in person with many Christians in different countries who told me that such a project was needed and who not only use Evangelical Focus regularly but recommend it to their friends and churches”, explains Joel Forster. “In these 10 years, we have sought to give a voice to evangelicals in places we don’t hear much from, and to contribute in our own capacities to what we believe God is doing in Europe”.

Belén Díaz, journalist and editor of Evangelical Focus, says: “Being able to see and tell what the Lord is doing in Europe and all over the world, and how Christians from many different backgrounds live their faith, as well as to learn from my workmates and all the authors that write in Evangelical Focus about current issues from a biblical perspective, is a great blessing and motivation for me”.

Finally, Daniel Hofkamp, director of Protestante Digital in Spain, added: “It is fascinating to have voices from different countries inspired by the same faith. This helps us to take a more complete perspective of what God continues to do in our old continent. In an age marked by misinformation, I believe it is important to continue to inform ourselves through a project like EF, where quality is more important than the empty impact of clickbait”.

The best way to follow our news are the daily or weekly newsletters, but you will also find Evangelical Focus on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, X, Youtube and Soundcloud.

This article is part of a series to celebrate 10 years of our media platform for Europe.