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Of all the privileges God has given me, none has been greater than that of being a missionary.

I cannot remember a time when I did not hope that God would give me the opportunity to be a missionary.

Mission field: Clapham

Courland Grove is a Grace Baptist Church in a run-down part of inner London. Our congregation is mainly some of the poorest members of society: single parents, the mentally disadvantaged and unemployed.

Among these needy folk are some with extreme problems: alcoholics, schizophrenics, drug addicts and the psychologically disturbed. Many members lack either a paid job or a normal family background. Many are damaged by broken relationship situations.

Let's say you are a novice missionary in a foreign country, working among a previously unreached group in the back-of-beyond. What would you do?

This may be slightly presumptuous of me, but I imagine that one thing you wouldn't do was simply what you did back in England: for example, construct a special hut with pews and a pulpit, and meet twice on a Sunday at 10.30 and 6.30.

Dr. Chris Wright, Principal of All Nations Bible College, gave the first of this year's two Keswick lectures entitled 'The Old Testament - Antiques Roadshow or Tomorrow's World?'. Into which of these two categories does the Old Testament fit? Both of them, according to Chris Wright.

'The Antiques Roadshow' looks at old furniture and decides whether or not it is old junk. 'Tomorrow's World' looks ahead to the future and asks: 'What will happen?'. The Old Testament has both the value of an antique and also points us to the present and the future.

Chris Sinkinson

Date posted: 1 Sep 1998

Pluralism and the Religions:
the theological and political dimensions
Edited by John D'Arcy May. Cassell. 99 pages
ISBN 0 304 70259 5

This short book is a collection of papers given at a significant gathering of theological scholars from Asia, Europe and America.

It was the night of her baptism. Just 17, she had recently been converted under the preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel, but . . . .

When she arrived at her grandfather's house, where her family were staying while their own house was undergoing repairs, Janice Wiseman was denied entry by the butler.

The story of Farzin, as heard by an Elam mission team, is very moving ...

Farzin was returning home in Shiraz, on his motorbike, perhaps a little fast, when a young boy of about 11 suddenly appeared in front of him. Knocking the boy over, he fell off his bike and was grazed. The boy, though, was unconscious.

The Evangelical Movement of Wales came into being through an exceptional manifestation of God's saving grace and his overruling providence.

The Spirit of God moved powerfully in the University College of North Wales, Bangor, between 1947 and 1949. One of the men converted was J. Elwyn Davies, a theological student and a zealous Student Christian Movement (SCM) worker. He became the leader of the converted students at Bangor. Another student, Herbert Evans, had been converted in 1941, and the basis of a lifelong friendship was formed between the two during these years in Bangor.

Trevor and Thalia Blundell now work full-time encouraging and equipping people to teach the Bible to children, through leading training days and writing Sunday School materials.

EN: Did you go to Sunday School as youngsters?

Trevor: Yes, but very irregularly.

Thalia: No. I grew up in a pagan home.

Trevor: I went because some of my friends did and it was a great rumble. After some years, I joined the confirmation class/youth group (around 12 years old) and proceeded to run amok. Sunday School was boring and terrifying, especially when the end of term written examination was held and I had forgotten it was coming up.

Can there be a biblical spirituality for the financial marketplace? The Centre for Marketplace Theology shows how.

The Centre for Marketplace Theology is a new teaching resource, think-tank and fellowship/advocacy group established last year to support Christians working in the City of London financial marketplace.

Have you ever heard an exciting story from the lips of some fairly new convert and wished you could tell a lurid story yourself e.g. 'How wicked you were before your conversion'?

Well, I am one of those people with no lurid story to tell. But it doesn't worry me at all now, because it takes just as much of the grace of God to keep a person from falling into vile sin as it does to pull them out!

This conference held on May 13-15 1998 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Chicago, aimed to encourage and equip pastors and other Christian workers in the task of evangelism in an age where post-modern thinking is increasingly prevalent.

It was organised by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, with sponsorship from the Bannock-born Institute (a centre for contemporary Christian thought, based at Trinity), The Navigators, Inter-Varsity and Campus Crusade for Christ.

Are Christian holidays to biblical sites more than just 'sun, sea, sand and Scriptures'? Paul White and Philippa Jones went on a tour of the Seven Churches of Asia to find out.

The wind took Christ's words and whipped them away. We were standing on castle battlements surrounded by the sprawling Turkish city of Izmir. It was the second stop on our whistle-stop tour of the Seven Churches of Asia. The Revelation letter from Christ to his church was being read aloud at Smyrna.

My 'journey' began many years ago when I moved from London to Newquay, Dyfed, Wales.

In my 30s, I was a very lost person, trying to make sense of life which to me was not worth living. My favourite place for thinking and sorting my life out was the beach. Although I cannot swim, the sea always draws me and gives me peace. Every day during the summer holiday, I would totter down to the beach - and so would the UBM! Lying on my own, I would listen to the songs and stories. I would listen to God's message through the UBM team. 'What a lot of twaddle,' I thought. I would move further away - but not too far - so that I would not be associated with them. I certainly didn't want my friends to see me with this weird bunch. Me become a Christian? Never.

Andy Hawthorne is 37 years old. He's married to Michelle, and has two children aged seven and four. They all live in Manchester and Andy supports Manchester United FC. He's a member of St. Mary's, a thriving Anglican evangelical church in Cheadle.

All of which is fairly routine. Commonplace. Even mundane. However, there can't be many middle-aged Christians who 'front' a dance band whose albums are distributed by a major recording company, featured on Radio 1, been subject to Joan Bakewell's attention on Everyman, and includes someone who was once the UK Breakdancing champion, and a DJ at Manchester's leading nightclub.

After speaking at the Christian Union meeting, I strolled through the town to the student flat where I was to spend the night. Later that evening, with the CU president, I helped as a post graduate student from China become a Christian. Students and others in both English universities where he had studied had befriended him and shared the gospel. I just happened to be there, like a midwife, at the time when he was ready to be born again.

Before we broke up, I suggested the CU president lead us in prayer, which he did ... in fluent Chinese! Not a miracle, just a lot of hard work. Chinese is his degree subject: we had met before in China where part of his course was spent in a university in Beijing! I hope that he will soon be working in China, and living for Jesus there.

During the recent Cambridge Mission, Ravi Zacharias spoke on 'What happened after God's funeral?' We print here a brief extract which touches on the problem of moral relativism, which follows atheism.

I think it was Paul Tillich who said that religion is the essence of any culture and culture is the dress of religion. I believe he was right in this statement. The West has yet to answer the question: 'What is the essential belief in its culture'. With pluralism growing dramatically, it is a question that Western culture needs to answer.

Known to his friends as 'Jack' (he didn't like 'Clive Staples'), C.S. Lewis was born on the outskirts of Belfast on November 29 1898, and died in his Oxford home, The Kilns, almost 65 years later on November 22 1963.

He was equally a scholar and a storyteller, for years an Oxford don, and then Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge.

Stephen Gaukroger is giving the main Bible readings at Word Alive 1998.

Stephen is leader of the pastoral team at Gold Hill Baptist Church in Buckinghamshire. The author of over a dozen books, he is also the Chairman of the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association in Europe, a member of the Spring Harvest Executive and of the Word Alive Committee.

Alexander Mackay was a pioneer missionary to Uganda. He was born in 1849 in Rhyme, a village not far from Aberdeen. His father was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, so it is no surprise to learn that the Bible and the Westminster Catechism were the two most important books in the house.

Until he was 14 he was home-schooled and during that time he came to love and trust Christ.

I am told that Fanny Crosby is in the Guinness Book of Records for writing the largest number of hymns - nearly 9,000.

This remarkable lady was born in New England in 1820 and lived to one month short of her 95th birthday in 1915. When she was six weeks old, the doctor was called to attend to an eye infection. He arranged for hot poultices to be put on both eyes. These burnt the corneas, scar tissue formed, and as a result, she was blinded. Yet at no point in her life did she ever complain or hold a grudge. In fact, she saw it as the means God used to make her life's work possible.