The recent news about the tragic deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, has deeply affected me.
Arakawa died from hantavirus, probably one week before Hackman, whose Alzheimer's meant he probably didn't even realise his wife had passed away. The thought of this elderly couple spending their final days alone, unknown, undiscovered deeply troubled me - echoing my own experiences of grief. Last year, my father passed away, and I wasn't able to be there with him at the end. Since then, I've wondered many times what those final moments were like for him. Did he feel alone? Was he afraid? Did he know how much he was loved? It's a pain that never really leaves you — the questions, the regrets, and the longing to have done things differently.
A leading evangelical in Rome, Leonardo De Chirico, offers his personal reflections on the direction of the Roman Catholic Church globally under Francis over the last 12 years.
Over the years, I have become more and more convinced that, from a human perspective at least, the most important factor in determining the growth and fruitfulness of the local church is leadership.
I have studied and analysed a large number of churches that have split, closed or gone into maintenance mode, and almost without exception the problem can be traced back to a leadership issue – either a lack of leadership, the wrong people in leadership, the wrong exercising of leadership or the wrong attitude towards leaders on the part of the congregation as a whole.
For evangelicals in the Church of England, and especially those in full-time ministry, “contending for the faith” has become a wearying subtext to church life and ministry. When we read Jude 3-4, we can see that it applies to the various crises we are facing in our denomination.
“Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 3-4 NIV).
There has lately been a big push back in youth and children's ministry against leaving the job of discipling young people just to the "professional", the church youth and children's worker.
Instead there has been more of a return to the Biblical idea that God has given the responsibility of bringing children up to love the Lord primarily to their parents. This shift has encouraged churches to work with families and help them to do this discipling work, rather than just employing a youth and children's worker to do it instead.
Every movement has a moment when momentum becomes unstoppable. It doesn’t happen overnight — it’s a gradual process that eventually shifts everything. At Prison Fellowship International, that moment is unfolding right now within prisons around the world.
These pivotal shifts are what we call tipping points. A tipping point is a moment when the power of a few reaches a critical mass, when a small percentage of individuals within a system are so deeply transformed that they catalyse broader change. In prison systems, that means when just 20% of prisoners experience a true transformation, the other 80% are affected, ultimately leading to culture and behaviour shifts.
On 24 February 2025, thousands of Ukrainians and their families and friends crowded into London’s Trafalgar Square for an evening of prayers and protest, speeches and music, marking three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Particular excitement was caused by the appearance of the 'Iron General', the popular former commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhnyi, who took up a new post as ambassador to the United Kingdom last year. But the mood was inescapably sober, and reflected a new sentiment absent from previous gatherings: betrayal.
What are the ‘primary issues’, the essentials of the faith around which we unite as Christians; and what issues are ‘secondary’, or ‘adiaphora’? What do we do when sharp disagreements over these matters which, in theory, are seen as ‘indifferent’ compared to salvation, spill over into personal animosity and division?
Five years ago, colleagues and I began the project of forming a new church movement, Anglican in heritage, church order and global affiliation, but intentionally confessional and not aligned to Canterbury. At an initial meeting people from different backgrounds met to talk about the way forward. All were committed to the same understanding of the Bible’s authority and the same gospel; all had shown courage – in standing against revisionism in the official denomination; and in pioneering enterprise by church planting outside it. But it soon became clear that major divisions existed. Some agreed in theory that issues such as ordination of women, charismatic gifts, worship styles and administrative authority structures are ‘secondary’ or even ‘adiaphora’, but in practice they couldn’t see themselves part of the same church grouping as those who held different views.
This month’s General Synod will receive an update from the Living in Love and Faith Programme Board, but there will be no formal motion or debate this time.
This could wrongly be interpreted as ‘no progress’ for the LLF cause, and CEEC will be calling on orthodox members of General Synod to exercise a number of cautions.
The UK isolation crisis: what can we do?
The recent news about the tragic deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, has deeply affected me.
Arakawa died from hantavirus, probably one week before Hackman, whose Alzheimer's meant he probably didn't even realise his wife had passed away. The thought of this elderly couple spending their final days alone, unknown, undiscovered deeply troubled me - echoing my own experiences of grief. Last year, my father passed away, and I wasn't able to be there with him at the end. Since then, I've wondered many times what those final moments were like for him. Did he feel alone? Was he afraid? Did he know how much he was loved? It's a pain that never really leaves you — the questions, the regrets, and the longing to have done things differently.