Yorkshire: training trainers
Peter Wood
Bible Training Yorkshire, a partnership between Yorkshire Gospel Partnership and Christ Church Fulwood, opens its doors for the first time in September.
The need for the gospel in the UK, and especially in Yorkshire, is desperate. Ben Cooper, Minister for Training at Christ Church Fulwood, said: ‘We need men and women speaking of Jesus, preaching and teaching the Bible, and we need lots of them. God’s strategy for equipping the church to meet this need is through effective Bible training, Bible training to multiply ministry and reform churches. With Bible Training Yorkshire this is exactly what we are seeking to do. Our aim is to train trainers to train God’s people to train one another, building the body of Christ in truth and love.’
Yorkshire plants
Peter Wood
The Gospel Yorkshire conference on 5 October, ‘Making It Happen’, kicked off with Hugo Charteris of Heaton, Newcastle addressing the question ‘Why we plant: biblical foundations’.
He identified four kinds of churches: where people trade on heritage and the Bible is not taught; where the Bible is taught, but is detached from the culture around it; where the Bible is taught but people don’t live it out; and lastly, where there is devotion to the Scriptures, to one another, to hospitality, to prayers and engaging with others (Acts2.42).
Gospel people, hard times
Peter Wood
As gospel people, how should we live confi-dently in dark times? was the challenging question, addressed by Os Guinness at the November event in York run by the Yorkshire Gospel Partnership.
Os provided a rich feast of cultural analysis and challenge, rooted in in-depth biblical understanding. He noted that civilisation in the West was grounded on clear Christian values. Yet the church in the West has now capitulated to the modern and post-modern world. Needing to face up to its lethal distortion of faith, modernity tends to push us from integration to fragmentation.