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Mission and music

February and March seem to be a big time of year for missions. Churches, University and School Christian Unions all over the country put on talks, events, dinners, and 'grill-a-Christians' to get their guests of wide-ranging tastes in earshot of the gospel.

Accompanying those events, or even integral to them, will be the use of music. Whether in the background during the event, or up front in a classical concert or jazz night, music can play a big part in breaking down cultural barriers so that the culturally uncomfortable message of the gospel can be heard. Many great evangelists have used music to great effect. Dwight Moody and Billy Graham are the two most famous examples.

‘Mission needs experienced people.’ ‘Churches should give to mission sacrificially, and that means sending their pastors.’

In the beginning…

uccf:thechristianunions has always held the cross at the centre of its ministry. It was in 1910 that the first Christian Union (Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union) disaffiliated from the dominant Christian student movement of the time (the SCM) because of the SCM’s liberal interpretation of key gospel doctrines — notably they did not hold as central the atoning blood of Jesus.

The Inter-Varsity Fellowship (now known as uccf:thechristianunions) was formed shortly after. ‘It was only a few months later that the realisation dawned on us that if a CICCU was a necessity in Cambridge, a union of the same kind was also a necessity in every university of the world’ (F. Donald Coggan, Christ and the colleges, p.71).

In the evangelical student world, theology can hardly be said to have a good name. ‘Ivory Tower’, ‘God in a box’ — such are the slogans used to describe and dismiss the rigorous thinking-through of biblical truth.

Added to this, the secular academy has had a long history of antagonism towards any place for personal belief within its theology and religious studies departments, providing a significant challenge for any evangelical students. So, Dr. Bruce Winter, Warden and Director of Tyndale House, writes:

How much do you know about the computer games that teenage boys will be asking for this Christmas?

If you were lucky enough to own a ZX80 games console in the late 70s then you were probably the envy of all your friends. Oh the excitement of the downhill skiing game! The joy of avoiding huge white square pixels with your cursor as they hurtled towards you at increasing speeds! Perhaps you even had a brilliant top score in the game of ‘pong’, the table tennis game with the rewarding ‘beep’ as the ball was successfully batted back over the electronic net. What satisfaction on a rainy afternoon!

September is an important time for students! It marks the end of summer and for many it’s the beginning of a new journey as they leave home — often for the first time.

It was also a key time for CU leaders across the UK as they gathered together for Forum 2005 — UCCF’s national CU leaders’ training conference. Over 400 CU leaders, 60 CU Staff Workers and 50 Relay volunteers attended this year’s event at the Quinta Conference Centre, Oswestry, from September 5 to 9. From Bangor to Bognor they were all united in heart and mind with a common purpose and vision — the evangelisation of our universities and colleges.

‘Jesus’s instruction for us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for the harvest tells us that the need of the day is to get as many young men and women as possible into full-time paid gospel ministry’ reflects a prevailing culture among ‘our kind of evangelicals’.

Our emphasis on getting ‘good people’ into our apprenticeships, ministry training schemes and equivalents, and in turn sending them to theological college and into ‘ministry’, speaks volumes about our priorities — for our churches and for the individuals concerned.

I am not a doctor, a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I have been a patient. What I share is simply one person’s journey with depression.

I do not pretend to be a medical expert or to understand the working of the mind. However, like every other individual, including medical workers themselves, I battle against human frailty of one sort or another. For some people that may mean the limitation of physical weakness, for others it can be emotional or mental hurdles that may seem insurmountable.

It’s 100 years since Korean revival prayer meetings began. Of all places, its roots are found deep inside North Korea. One of AsiaLink’s staff went inside this most persecuted of countries.

Sinuiju doesn’t have much to commend it. This once bubbly logging town turned industrial community now has few signs of life. Its buildings are colourless, its people exhausted. Our train crawled alongside rolling stock that looked like it had been bombed.

I’ve got about an hour before my husband returns from work and we can watch the next episode in the fourth series of the hit serial ‘24’.

The first three episodes have set in place a nail-biting hostage scenario that only the mighty Jack Bauer of the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit could cope with, and I’m desperate to know how it all plays out.

Dr. Helen Roseveare, now in her 80th year worked with the Heart of Africa Mission during the 1950s and 60s. Her autobiography Give me this Mountain is a Christian missionary classic. With the publication of her new book Digging Ditches, EN was able to get an interview with her.

EN: What part of Africa did you serve in as a missionary?

God has been at work in the South East of England. Over the last two years the Chinese Christian Fellowship in the town of Guildford has seen around 40 people come to Christ. One of the leaders tells their story …

God has a purpose for the Chinese people. We have a dream, that one day the land of China will not only be filled with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also be a place of mission to the whole world.

Evangelist Roger Carswell sees many churches in his work. Here he tells of a recent mission and some of its lessons.

One of the changes in evangelistic approach over recent years is the development of event-based, and targeted evangelistic meetings.

So much of the book of Acts is so encouraging that it comes as quite a shock to see Luke including the closing verses of chapter 15, where we read of a heated dispute between Paul and Barnabas.

Yet we need a realistic appreciation of how easy it is for the closest of friends in the leadership of a local church not only to disagree and fall out, but to divide with bitterness and go their own separate ways. And the Holy Spirit does so much more than show us the dangers of such division. He shows us the underlying attitudes that can cause divisions to arise over such practical issues as the suitability of a young man like John Mark for responsibility in an outreach venture.

100 years ago this month, the great missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, went to be with the Lord . . .

On June 3 1905, 30 guests from six missionary societies attended a reception at the mission house of the China Inland Mission in Changsha.

?I wish I?d known it would be like this; I would have brought a bus load!? This was just one comment from a student after attending the recent missions conference for university students at New Tribes Mission, North Cotes.

Students gathered from universities all over the UK and indeed Europe, to be part of it. Until they arrived they were not quite sure what they were letting themselves in for, as it was the first conference of its kind ? but a pleasant surprise for waiting ? it was a super weekend.

Have you ever had the experience of feeling that God has guided you only for everything to seemingly go wrong? If you have been, this article from the pen of a missionary of the 1930s, Mildred Cable, might help.

‘It was well that it was in thine heart’.

‘We have carefully considered your case and have very regretfully reached the conclusion that we cannot accept you for foreign service.’

The radio was still on when I opened my bleary eyes. I must have dropped off to sleep the night before without turning it off. The last few weeks of term had been hard work. I rolled over, giving myself ten more minutes under the duvet. Then it hit me ? ten more minutes wasn?t an option.

Steve Price has been performing tricks and illusions since he was a boy. In July this year he left his post as Head of Design in an independent secondary school to use his mix of comedy and magic tricks to reach people for Christ. Here’s what he has to say about it all …

I guess it all started when my parents gave me a book called Ali Bongo’s Book of Magic for my ninth birthday. I played around with a few simple tricks and I’ve been hooked ever since.

A common complaint among churches is the dearth of candidates for the pastoral ministry.

A recent article contrasted two approaches: selecting men and challenging them to consider this calling, and praying, preaching and leaving it to men to hear God’s call. Actually there need be no conflict between these two approaches; both have been effective. In times of spiritual awakening, under powerful ministry, many more men hear the call than in less fruitful times.

Roger Carswell has been an itinerant evangelist for over 20 years, faithfully preaching the gospel at church and university Christian Union missions across the UK.

At the last count he had been the main missioner at over 70 university missions. This year he spoke at Bristol, Durham, Newcastle, Stockton, Sheffield and Exeter. He just loves university missions! EN?s The Third Degree caught up with Roger to find out why.

If you are part of a small church you have a choice. You can choose to see the small size of the congregation as a reason to be discouraged and downhearted. Or you can choose to see the church’s smallness as a reason why you might be just the church God can use.

Where am I coming from with that last statement? Is it just foolish optimism? I don’t think it is. Here is my reasoning.

Elmer Albright was a fellow-carpenter, born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, whose father was a coal miner. He and his wife, Evie, had come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour at the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Shamokin about five years earlier under the ministry of a Scotsman named George Atcheson.

As he worked with Ernie, Elmer began to speak to him of the Lord Jesus Christ, someone he invariably referred to as his Saviour. He told Ernie of God the Creator who made and sustained the universe, whose Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, had been sent into the world to deal with our greatest need, the guilt of our wayward living: ‘We deserve eternal death, because we are sinners, but the Lord Jesus, because he loved us, died for us.’ While Elmer explained the good news to him and urged him to read the Bible, he invited Ernie to come to the Sunday School which the government allowed a small group of Christians to hold in a recreational building on the base.

‘The finest missionary speaker, I ever heard’, Martyn Lloyd-Jones was reported to have said, by one of the six speakers at the memorial service held in Hereford Baptist Church on February 19.