helping children find faith
How to respond to a crisis
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Sep 2020
During lockdown I was told that there are usually three stages to a crisis. I see these responses in the lives of the families I know, including my own.
1. Emergency response. The first weeks of lockdown. Hard work. Getting by. Running on adrenaline. Late nights. Early mornings. The crisis feels very real. Is our family safe? Is there food on the table? Eventually, we realise that lockdown isn’t ending anytime soon.
helping children find faith
Identity with Christ and in Christ
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 May 2020
An eight-year-old boy walks through his front door in tears. His Christian mum walks in behind him. They are just back from the school run.
He runs off to his room shouting: ‘I’m never going to school again.’ He says he has no friends. He says he always plays alone. Every night he cries, begging his mum to let him stay at home, ‘just for tomorrow’.
helping children find faith
Parenting as God’s children in lockdown
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Jul 2020
I’m finding these days bruising. Between us, my wife and I have eight days of work to squeeze into five days each week. We are sharing the time with our children, so that one of us works in (peaceful) isolation, while the other is a combination of referee, teacher and bringer of light relief to the children.
My particular struggle is disproportionate disappointment when the children demonstrate that they are – children. That is, they are prone to accidents, likely to discourage each other and sometimes lost in bouts of frustration. In short, my children need me to parent them!
helping children find faith
Families opening up the Bible
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Mar 2020
There was a public debate between Professor Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist biologist and Professor John Lennox, the Christian mathematician.
Dawkins started by summarising his greatest problem with Christianity (with a tone of total disdain): ‘[Lennox] believes that the creator of the universe, the God who devised the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics … billions of light years of space, billions of years of time … couldn’t think of a better way to rid the world of sin than to come to this little speck of cosmic dust to have himself tortured and executed … That’s the God that John Lennox believes in.’
helping children find faith
I don’t wanna go back to school
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Sep 2019
Sand is still in their shoes, postcards are on their way to grandparents, and suntans have not yet faded; but nerves and worry about the new school year have already started.
I know a girl; let’s call her Ella. She gets very anxious about school. Friendships are hard to navigate. She’s up in the night. She’s sometimes sick in the morning. Her Mum feels exhausted, knowing that she will peel her daughter off her leg at the school gate. Everyone feels like a failure.
helping children find faith
Do I have to go to camp?
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 Jul 2019
I remember being asked by a mother what more she could do to encourage her 14-year-old son to stay close to Christ. Her family was already an active part of their church. She was already doing a great job opening the Bible when she could and taking him to Christ in conversations.
My first step was to encourage her. Her son was safe in God’s hands. She could rely on her Heavenly Father to show her son all love, patience and mercy. Her regular prayers for her son’s heart to always belong to the Lord were being heard. Her desire to surround him with great teaching, great role models and a great church family was bearing fruit in his life. I wanted her to know that his salvation was not a burden that she had to carry.
helping children find faith
Halloween: ‘Why can’t we be just like everyone else?’
Ed Drew and Amy Smith
Date posted: 1 Nov 2019
It’s nearly Halloween – the annual ‘celebration’ of all things dark and sinister, cobweby and pumpkiny, spooky and scary.
For many parents, nothing is scarier than the question children ask about Halloween: Not ‘Why are those people wearing scary clothes?’ Or ‘Why are my favourite sweets suddenly orange?’ But ‘Why can’t we do Halloween like my friends do?’
helping children find faith
Cartwheels, Bricks, Marbles
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 May 2019
Amanda vividly remembers the moment
when she cried at her kitchen table in front
of her three children.
At the time, her 14-year-old daughter was
lying on the floor, her 12-year-old son had
his head in his hands and her six-year-old
girl was doing cartwheels around the room.
Why the tears? Well, all this was happening
in the middle of her family Bible time.
What to do with Walliams?
Ed Drew
Date posted: 1 May 2018
Youth minister, Ed Drew, reviews David Walliams’ bestseller
It was the second-bestselling book of 2017 – only Jamie Oliver beat him!
Mission - quo vadis?
Thorsten Prill
Date posted: 1 Sep 2012
Where are evangelical missionary organisations heading in the long run?
So far we have seen that unbiblical positions, such as Open Theism, held within evangelical mission organisations may be the result of either theological ignorance or the work of false teachers. However, there are other factors which foster problematic theological views and mission strategies.
The evolution of Darwinism
Nigel Faithfull
Date posted: 1 Nov 2008
February 12 2009 marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and April the 150th anniversary of the completion of his manuscript entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (hereafter referred to as Origin). Few books have had such an influence on people, education and parliamentary laws during the past 150 years. The sanctity of the life of the unborn child has been eroded, together with loss of the importance of traditional family structure and sexual morality.
Darwin was essentially a deist, believing in an impersonal God who created the earth, giving a spark of life to some primitive life form, and then left everything to evolve without any divine aid or direction. His ideas were not truly original, but were a system inherited from the classical Greek and Roman philosophers, as outlined below.
Are we fundamentalists?
Barry Seagren
Date posted: 1 Mar 2008
Barry Seagren finds that the parallels between Islamic extremists and evangelical Christians are too close for comfort.
The term fundamentalist has always had negative connotations, and especially so since 9/11.
When enough is enough
Dave Bookless
Date posted: 1 May 2007
Towards a theology of sustainability
‘Sustainability’ is a concept in search of a home. Many have an idea of what it means, but scratch beneath the surface and the ideas are diverse at best, contradictory at worst.
Today sustainability has become a great rallying cry, adopted by politicians, economists, multinational corporations, scientists, environmentalists, town planners and faith leaders . . . but they use it to mean what they want it to mean.