At the recent annual meeting for Evangelicals Now I shared a little bit about the vision that lies behind this newspaper and website. It was suggested it might be helpful to share it more widely, and so I am pleased to do that now.
I started off by giving a bit of a glimpse behind the scenes at en. You might imagine a busy, buzzing newsroom with a dozen or so reporters just waiting to dash off to the latest event, conference or newsworthy happening. But in fact en is produced by a very small but wonderful, tight-knit, dedicated and hard-working group The fact en even appears each month is itself a minor miracle to be celebrated and a testimony to much hard work and the grace of God.
In terms of ‘feel,’ I was delighted when someone said to me not so long ago, ‘en is the closest thing to the Gospel Coalition we’ve got in Britain…’ That is indeed very much the sort of thing we have in mind – that and the Keswick Convention; in other words, places where evangelicals from otherwise separate tribes can gather together, exchange news and thoughts, and learn to work together. We want to foster communication and co-operation between different tribes of evangelicals for the sake of the gospel. Where else other than in en are members of the Evangelical Movement of Wales likely to read about Anglican evangelicals, for example? Ditto FIEC members and Presbyterians? Etc, etc ...
