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Iain Taylor

Date posted: 24 Oct 2024

More than 5,200 delegates from 202 countries shared bread and wine in a powerful display of evangelical unity at the end of the 2024 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation held in South Korea.

The informal Lord’s Supper was led by Korean and Japanese individuals as an example of how reconciliation in Christ brings different individuals and nations together.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 26 Oct 2024

‘We are sleep deprived and anxious,’ evangelicals at the centre of the Middle East conflict have told en, ‘but we keep faith in God.’

As the conflict involving Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran reached ever-higher temperatures, staff at Christian TV station SAT-7 reported how they are caught right in the heart of the terrifying situation.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Jul 2024

Over 3,000 people have heard the gospel in Tirana, Albania, at a major event organised by evangelicals in the country.

Before the mission, about 800 evangelicals met to focus on the church’s evangelistic imperative and to remember that ‘Jesus teaches us that we as a church should be lifted as a city up on the mountain top,’ Evangelical Focus reported.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 May 2024

Spiritual battles continue day and night across the globe, including in the heart of the remote rainforest. The following example was featured in The Washington Post recently.

Rupert Shelley, Director of Mission Partnerships at international mission agency Crosslinks, says it reminds us how ‘the gospel is indeed growing and bearing fruit in extraordinary ways across many parts of South America’.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 May 2024

Christians working in Mozambique are becoming increasingly concerned about the human cost of the wave of violence now sweeping south across the country.

The persecuted-church agency Open Doors reports that over 70,000 people, mostly women and children, have been displaced from their homes in northern Mozambique following a sharp rise in attacks by Islamist militants.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 May 2024

Thirty out of the estimated 1,000 Christians still left in Gaza have been killed, according to local church sources.

And as Gaza’s Christian population continues to shrink, down from about 3,500 before the war began, commentators fear that one of the oldest Christian communities in the world may be literally dying out.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Jan 2024

The Church Mission Society (CMS), which absorbed the South American Mission Society (SAMS) in 2009, has responded to the election of far-right populist outsider Javier Milei as the new President of Argentina.

Speaking exclusively to Evangelicals Now, CMS spokesperson Naomi Steinberg commented: ‘From a mission point of view, we can see that the political, economic and environmental situation in Argentina is precarious and needs much prayer. Our people in mission in the region are praying that the new President will be surrounded by a leadership team that is wise, compassionate and full of integrity’.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Mar 2024

An Orthodox Jewish writer Jonathan Feldstein is currently ‘praying for Gazans to get a little Jesus in 2024’.

Feldstein is president of the Genesis 123 Foundation, whose declared mission is to ‘build bridges between Jews and Christians with Israel in ways that are new, unique, and meaningful’. He made the call as he believes ‘the best and safest way to change the situation and bring peace [in Gaza] is for the masses of Gazans, and Palestinian Arabs in general, to convert to Christianity’.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Jan 2024

Even as it opened, the UN Climate Change Conference COP 28 was making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The BBC revealed claims that hosts, the United Arab Emirates, were planning to make oil and gas deals with 15 other countries at the event. Despite that, many Christian groups were represented there, some as part of the Christian Climate Observers Program, a non-denominational Christian presence advocating for God’s creation. All are, perhaps, encouraged by the fact that COP28 for the first time featured a ‘faith pavilion’. Evangelicals Now spoke to four leading Christian environmental organisations about their hopes and fears for the conference.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Sep 2023

UK mission agencies Crosslinks and European Mission Fellowship are hailing the astonishing growth of evangelical churches across Portugal over the last few years, driven mainly by highly intentional church planting.

Data recently published by the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance shows a remarkable increase in church plants by evangelical churches. Fully 44% of the evangelical churches in the country were started after 2001 and over 60% have ‘defined plans and locations to plant new churches in the next five years’. A large majority say their church is growing. These churches range in size from less than ten members to congregations of over 300.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Nov 2023

South Sudanese Christians caught up in the ongoing civil war have been sharing their few possessions with others – and seeing people give glory to God.

Tut Kony, director of a South Sudan-based umbrella mission organisation says:’ Our organisation is partnering [Bible translators] unfoldingWord [sic] in translating the Bible into Sudan’s unreached-people group languages. It also runs a school for believers from a Muslim background who are leading house church networks. Since the start of the war, we have also provided 562 families with food, and basic medical supplies.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Sep 2023

The summer heatwave across the northern hemisphere has seen almost uncontrollable forest fires break out from Canada to China, Algeria to Greece, as soaring, record temperatures hit the high-40°sC.

But as soon as the flames were doused, the question on many people’s minds was – to what extent are these record thermometer levels the result of human-made climate change?

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Oct 2023

Christians from around the world are on the ground bringing urgent relief in Morocco, following the huge earthquake there. The epicentre of the quake was in the Atlas Mountains, about 40 miles southwest of the busy tourist city of Marrakech. Thousands are dead and injured.

A representative of the Bible Society in Morocco said: ‘Your prayers and concern mean a lot to us here in Morocco … I am in the affected area, working alongside teams from different churches. We are delivering food supplies to believers and their families, and we are also assessing the needs for the near future.’

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Oct 2023

Evangelical group Torrents de Vie has attracted the hostility of the media and the government in France after a journalist covertly recorded images and conversations at one of the organisation’s summer camps.

Torrents de Vie means ‘Streams Of Life’. Part of a larger international inter-denominational Christian ministry, it is active in ten French cities offering seminars, pastoral counselling and conferences. Its website says it ‘offers spiritual support, combining teaching, listening and prayer, to Christians of all denominations seeking help for their personal difficulties. Our values are based on Biblical love and grace’.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Oct 2023

A Christian nurse who was kidnapped in Haiti has been released, saying she ‘holds no grudges’ against her abductors and forgives them.

She added: ‘My clinic doors are always open to you or anyone in need when you’re sick or wounded, without any problem.’

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Jul 2023

An innovative gospel outreach in Jerusalem has sparked great interest among hundreds of Jewish people wanting to know more about the claims of Jesus.

The brainchild of the International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP), the five-day initiative was specifically designed for those who had lived through the Holocaust. It comprised four tours of Biblical sites in Galilee, ending with a concert featuring performances by local musicians (all Jewish believers in Jesus), and a gospel presentation by IMJP missionary, Aviel Sela. It formed part of a strategic plan, developed over a number of years, to reach Jewish people with the good news about Jesus. More than 200 people joined the site tours, to places such as the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, and 185 Jewish people attended the concert, 156 of whom gave their contact details and took away Christian literature.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Sep 2022

An international humanitarian organisation whose director was previously imprisoned in a freezing cold metal container by the Taliban has become the first Christian group permitted to return to Afghanistan.

Shelter Now International (SNI) has been invited to return by the hardline Islamic regime to help with relief efforts in the country. And it has already provided humanitarian aid in the provinces of Khost and Paktika after severe earthquakes struck there recently.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Jul 2023

Around 6,500 teenagers and young people from churches across France gathered in Zénith d’Auvergne at a large triennial congress – Echo 2023 – that seeks to encourage young members of evangelical churches to discover God’s calling. The theme of Echo 2023 was ‘See, I Am Doing Something New’ (Isa. 43:9).

The programme was based on three areas: ‘Me and God; Us and God; You and Me’. It included preaching, worship, workshops, concerts and special programmes for Ados (12–17 years old) and Jeunes (18 and over). Christian youth workers also offered training and connections. Seminars addressed issues such as Bible reading, Christian ethics, science and faith, and sexuality.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Mar 2023

Igal Vender was born in Ukraine but emigrated to Israel with his family in 1988. He began using drugs as a child and later switched to heroin and cocaine.

Igal writes: ‘I was an addict and in and out of prison, but empty inside. I came to faith after meeting an old friend who had become a Christian. Now I am a missionary with IMJP (the International Mission to Jewish People) telling Jewish people about Jesus.’ Igal Vender tells his story to Iain Taylor for en.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Apr 2023

The new Miss Germany, Kira Geiss, is a committed Christian. She has won a title that, according to the organisers, is no longer about beauty alone, but also about social engagement and the ability to empower other people.

‘I think it is time to not only take care of the healthy maintenance of our planet, but also to actively engage in allowing people to heal and grow internally’, she says on the Miss Germany website, where she is described as a ‘theology student, aspiring religious and community educator, and visual merchandiser’.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Apr 2023

An evangelical missionary in Mozambique says storms and rain were ‘incessant’ and poorly-constructed houses around her were ‘flooding and collapsing’ as a tropical storm battered the country.

Cyclone Freddy, the longest-ever recorded tropical cyclone, which has returned several times, ripped through the country and neighbouring Malawi with over 600 dead and countless people missing, injured or made homeless.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Mar 2023

Persecution scores have almost doubled over the last 30 years, the latest 'World Watch List' from Open Doors reveals.

2023 marks the 30th year that the gruesome chart has been compiled. To mark the occasion, Evangelicals Now obtained exclusive interviews with Jim Shannon MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Freedom of Religion or Belief (APPG FoRB), and Timothy Cho, Open Doors UK spokesperson for North Korea.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Aug 2022

The GoodWORD Partnership, based in Minneapolis, USA, has facilitated evangelistic and training initiatives in largely Moslem parts of Guinea, West Africa, and Malawi, southern Africa.

In Guinea, where only 7% of the population is Christian, experienced church leaders from five African countries and the United States undertook three weeks of joint ministry. It included outreach to seven prisons where a total of 3,600 inmates were fed, both physically and spiritually; equipping a Christian medical clinic in a Moslem community; a three-day conference on evangelism attended by 225 church leaders and encouraging the local churches to cooperate in sharing the gospel. One evangelical denominational leader in Conakry, a city of 2 million people, said: ‘We are now ready and committed to cooperate in sharing the gospel in our city.’