The European Leadership Forum has suspended registration for its 2027 annual meeting and is asking supporters to help identify a new venue, after learning that the Polish hotel that has hosted the gathering since 2013 will be closed for renovation work.
Greg Pritchard, director of the evangelical training network, said in a letter to the ELF community that his team was told a few days ago that the hotel in Wisła, in southern Poland, will undergo major renovations in May 2027. The schedule conflicts with the dates set for the meeting, which had been planned for May 22-27.
"This news has come as a complete surprise to us," Pritchard wrote, adding that staff were working on an alternative plan. He asked for suggestions or contacts for venues able to host the event on those dates.
Registration has been closed temporarily because applicants need to know where the meeting will take place, according to the letter. Pritchard said he expected a solution soon and that he remained confident the gathering would go ahead as scheduled.
The Forum draws about 800 participants from more than 60 countries, according to the ELF website, making it one of the larger annual gatherings of evangelical leaders on the continent. A Christian leader described it as a "goldmine" in a recent report about this year's event. Participants are grouped into some 25 networks covering fields ranging from apologetics and theology to media, politics and science.
Pritchard framed the venue problem in terms of the account in Acts 16 of Paul being prevented from preaching in Asia before a vision directed him toward Macedonia. He wrote that the ELF now "stands before a closed door" and asked readers to pray that another would open. He also pointed to the network's history through the Gulf War, the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and said the organization was this year "only missing a place to meet."
The ELF held its first annual meeting in Sopron, Hungary, in 2003, with more than 200 participants from 25 countries taking part in five networks, the organization says. It moved to Eger, Hungary, in 2006 and to Wisła in 2013, in both cases because it had outgrown the available conference facilities.
The network describes its mission as uniting, equipping and resourcing evangelical leaders to renew the church in Europe and spread the gospel. It also runs year-round initiatives, including an online training platform launched in 2010 for leaders outside Europe, and says participants organize an estimated 800 events, strategies and partnerships in their own countries each year as a result of the annual meeting.
