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Mildred Cable once observed: 'The year 1900 holds the same significance as does the Flood in Old Testament chronology. All China mission history dates before or after 1900.'

Missions in China had been going for six decades of the 19th century when the Boxer Rising took place. There were 85,000 Chinese Christians in some 60 Protestant societies, and church buildings and institutions were just beginning to reach a fraction of the population.

'With the near approach of the year one thousand,' Charles Williams wrote in The Descent of the Dove, 'Christendom everywhere expected the end. It did not come. The first millennium . . . closed and the second opened with no greater terror than the ordinary robberies, murders, rapes, burnings, wars, massacres and plagues, and the even less noticeable agonies of each man's ordinary life.'

In the year 1000, an important part of ordinary life in Europe was the Christian church. With the 'conversion' of Constantine in the early 4th century, the persecuted church had become the tolerated church and then, before long, the official religion of the Roman Empire. The invasions of the 'barbarians' from the north and east introduced chaos in the empire but extended Christianity through the conversion of the European tribes, and the 'centre' of the church shifted for the third time - from the Jewish Christian world of the eastern Mediterranean, to the Greco-Roman world of Rome, to the converted tribes of northern and central Europe.

The name of Dixon E. Hoste is not well-known today. But there are three reasons why he deserves to be better remembered.

The first is that he was the second General Director of the China Inland Mission, the chosen successor of Hudson Taylor.

Unlike the question of Jesus to Martha (John 11.26), I was never asked: 'What do you believe?' until I reached my early 30s.

It may seem an extraordinary story, but I am not extraordinary. If this leads to others moving forward in their faith, then God be praised.

It is with great sadness that we report that Dr. Roy Clements, who resigned some months ago as minister of Eden Chapel, Cambridge, is now separated from his wife.

He had told her that he had a celibate relationship with a younger man who has acted as a research assistant for him. A very few close friends had been aware for a little while that Roy had struggled with homosexual attraction over a number of years.

David Baker

Date posted: 1 Oct 1999

Is Vaughan Roberts a theological liberal? Certainly some may have been tempted to ask the question after he wrote an article in a theological magazine critical of the UCCF basis of faith. Then there is the fact that his views were slated by noted American evangelical Don Carson in his book The Gagging of God.

Just as well then, that Evangelicals Now sent me to interview the other Vaughan Roberts. For there are two people called the Rev. Vaughan Roberts, both clergymen, but with somewhat differing theology.

There are few more significant challenges facing the church and churches of our day than that of pursuing meaningful unity.

The fact that Jesus prays for a unity which can be witnessed by a watching world in such a way as to endorse the credibility of the gospel (John 17.20-23) and the fact that Paul uses a verb which can be translated 'spare no effort' to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4.3), both point to a Christian responsibility which too many Christians too easily shirk.

France is traditionally a Roman Catholic country. At the end of the 20th century, religion has been marginalised. People are turning away from Catholicism by the score, but what are they looking for?

In today's France, materialism is much in evidence. At all levels of society, people want to move up and have more. However, it has fostered frustration and emptiness and also guilt. The poor are left on the outside. So on the French TV news, the plight of the homeless always figures during the winter months. But apart from that, compassion is by proxy.

Scattered through the articles in The Times were nearly 20 web sites for those with computers and modems to find and download further information.

On television, a campaign is running to push the use of the web, and even my cereal packet boasts its own cryptic address of slashes and letters. The web is spreading so fast that - for once - the word 'explosion' is not hyperbole.

What are we waiting for?

Luis Palau, international evangelist from Argentina, was speaking at a series of mission meetings in north-west England in May. EN caught up with him, and heard some scorching comments on the lack of urgency in the British church.

EN: You have been visiting Britain since the 1970s and you are just starting another mission. What do you think of the state of the church?

Speaking at this year's Word Alive (Spring Harvest), at Weymouth, Roy Clements challenged the church to rethink its policy on choosing leaders.

In his address Roy said: 'God is looking for people who have learnt the crucial lesson of humility.' And he went on to warn those who seek leadership: 'Beware of selfish ambition.'

Mimi, a regular attender at our Good News Club, stood at the front holding the visual for the next song.

She asked if she could say something. 'When I first started coming to the club, I thought that every time I did something wrong, Jesus had to die again. Now I know that's not true.' Mimi, who was eight years old at the time, smiled at the group; she was beginning to understand the teaching that she heard each week. Before this, she had never heard the gospel explained to her and had never been to a Sunday School.

John Benton

Date posted: 1 May 1999

The first volume of the official biography of John Stott, by Timothy Dudley-Smith, is published by IVP. EN interviewed the subject and the author of the biography...

EN: John Stott, you came to Christ through the work of E.J.H. Nash (Bash) while you were at Rugby School in the 1930s. And the book gives the impression of you as quite an idealistic youth. What was it about the Lord Jesus Christ that led you to surrender your life to him?

Transylvania in northern Romania is associated in most people's minds with Count Dracula and evil deeds. But through his church, God is reaching out in love to the socially-marginalised of this area.

Zoli, a recovered alcoholic from Romania, made the following remark: 'Here in my region, there is an ancient tradition of keeping alcohol in every household and forcing visitors to accept it. In daily life, there is hardly any occasion where drinking is not evident.'

Hilary Jolly, winner of St.. Paul's Cathedral Millennium Hymn Competition, has been using her gift with words since she could put pen to paper.

'My mother used to recite poetry as she did the housework - in the way that other people sing,' and when Hilary was only four years old, she wrote her first poem. But following her conversion at the age of 35, Hilary recognised that her gift with words was a gift from God and resolved to use it for him. 'I became a Christian and knowing that I have this gift, I decided from that moment: that gift is for God; he gave it to me, he shall have it back.'

Nearly eight years ago Chertsey Street Baptist Church (CSBC) in Guildford set itself to re-establish a church which had closed in another area of Guildford.

This has now happened, and on April 17 a thanksgiving service will celebrate the independence of Guildford Park Church.

David Baker

Date posted: 1 Mar 1999

Ask yourself where the toughest mission fields of the 20th century have been, and you might well think of various distant foreign locations.

But while many of your guesses might be correct, you could easily overlook one of the hardest areas of gospel endeavour in Britain over the last 50 years - and you might be surprised by its location: the world of England's top public schoolboys.

Derek and Kathy Frost joined SIM in 1974 working in Nigeria, but they ended up in Canada with the mission's media team. However, God had another ministry in mind for Kathy . . .

I came to Canada to assist Derek in the office work here - at present, I log on to computer all the filming that he does, so that it can be catalogued and used at any time. It is very time-consuming and I knew it would be - so I prayed that the Lord would give me something else to do. I was thinking of perhaps women's work or children - but the Lord had other ideas.

The so-called 'global growth of fundamentalism' is in fact a global - albeit gradual - collapse of liberalism. This is an abridged version of the lecture given last November at the University of Minnesota by Vishal Mangalwadi.

The militancy of the terrorists, the discrimination and persecution of the religious or ethnic minorities, the corruption and oppression of the state, are together demolishing liberalism's assumption that a human being is good enough to govern himself decently without God.

Previous generations of believers have many lessons and truths to tell about God's dealing with their lives.

It is a great blessing to find that members of your family have kept a record of these so that we can enjoy them and learn from them.

John Wyatt has been arguing that even non-Christian doctors have been guided by a Hippocratic-Christian consensus. This extract from his new book, published by IVP, shows how this has been eroded.

It was not until around 1850 that the idea of Christian health professionals going from the West to care for the sick and dying in developing countries came to fruition.