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Greetings from here in Co. Mayo in the Wild West of Ireland!

In Acts 16 we read of the Apostle Paul and his entourage seeking to enter Bithynia but being forbidden by the Holy Spirit. Finally they reached Troas where Paul has a vision of a man pleading with him: ‘Come over to Macedonia to help us’. This call changed history by changing the direction of the gospel from moving north into Asia, to moving west into Europe.

The FREE gospel project was officially launched this September at UCCF’s national conference for Christian Union leaders, Forum. Almost 1,000 delegates, staff, volunteers were the first to hold copies of the 400,000 freshly designed copies of Mark’s Gospel set to be distributed to campuses in Great Britain in February 2009.

Since then it has been a fantastic privilege to observe the enthusiasm, commitment and excitement with which the project has been embraced by Christian Unions.

During the week November 3-7 2008, 48 Muslim and Catholic theologians met in Rome to discuss a document elaborated last year by 138 senior Muslim scholars.

The document, A Common Word Between Us and You, proclaims itself to be an attempt to find common ground between the two religions in order to bring peace to the world.

1957 saw three unknown young students take a step of faith that would have consequences beyond their wildest dreams.

50 years have passed since George Verwer, Dale Rhoton and Walter Borchard, then still in their teens, drove down Route 66 from Chicago towards Mexico City in a beat-up 1949 Dodge truck filled with Spanish gospels and tracts. This was the beginning of what was to become Operation Mobilisation (OM). An unlikely spiritual revolution had started.

As, this month, Joel Edwards stands down from his role as General Director of Evangelical Alliance, he gave an interview to EN.

EN: In what ways do you think evangelicalism has changed during your time at E?

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 Oct 2008

Alice Compain, the veteran OMF missionary to Cambodia and Laos, died at a nursing home in Pembury, Kent on September 4 2008 at the age of 74.

Alice was prepared by God to be a missionary to Laos and Cambodia. Born into a multilingual Christian family in London. English, French and German were the languages of the home. At the age of six she began to play the violin and that would prove the key to much of her subsequent service.

In the Autumn issue of Tear Times, the magazine of the relief charity Tearfund, the organisation advertised that they had asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at a conference supported by them on Saturday September 6 in London.

EN was contacted and had conversations with a few evangelicals who felt very uneasy about this and asked us to write and ask Tearfund some questions.

The Christian work and fellowship started by GAFCON in Jerusalem in June 2008 has only just begun.

We are well aware that it faces plenty of dangers and obstacles as it seeks to renew the Anglican Communion in the work of the gospel. We know that it has already been misunderstood in various quarters. This may lead some to hesitate about supporting it. That is why we want to respond to the particular misunderstandings and historical errors that are stated in the article by Iain Murray in the September 2008 issue of EN, although both of us have enormously appreciated books he has written over the years.

Back in January’s EN, Michael Reeves wrote about the imminent launch of UCCF’s online theological centre, Theology Network (http://www.theologynetwork.org). He promised all the thrill of an old-fashioned sweetie shop minus the sugar — and he explained the rationale for this website: ‘To unleash the best biblical teaching so that students and all users might come to know and love the Lord Jesus in deeper, life-changing, mission-igniting ways’.

Behind the launch of Theology Network was our hope that UCCF Christian Unions would be theologically driven — that is, illuminated, empowered, and consumed by God’s gracious revelation of himself in his Son. We launched with the conviction that when students are captivated by the great gospel of Jesus they would be propelled onward in evangelism and tooled-up for discipleship.

The 600 men who attended the fifth Cardiff Men’s Convention in 2008 are still telling us that it was ‘the best convention yet’. Once more the All Nations Centre in Cardiff was filled with men who brought a compassion to worship, a real hunger for truth in the teaching and, maybe most important of all, the encouragement of being with other Christian men.

The title of this year’s convention was ‘Leaving a Legacy’, the central idea being that Christian men have a significant responsibility to create a positive legacy in their churches, their family, their workplace and in the wider community. The teaching was designed to challenge and inspire, but also to equip men to take on that responsibility.

Tasmania isn’t literally the end of the earth, but you can see it from here, and, like island communities everywhere, Tasmanians are fiercely independent and proud of where they live.

Jenny Cullen defines an island as ‘A place where people are usually nice to each other, nobody’s in a hurry, people stop and talk to each other on the street even in nasty weather, there are no secrets, and life just pretty much works the way it should most of the time. It’s not too complicated’. That’s what it’s like most of the time.

It’s Sunday morning. Not much has changed. You throw on some clothes and grab a coffee on your way out the door. Destination — church.

It’s just what you’ve been brought up doing. No rhyme or reason — just habit. There’s a handshake at the door, then you head for the back pew.

Lambeth 2008 ended on a high. As the final service ended in Canterbury Cathedral, the names of nine members of an Anglican Mission Order in Melanesia martyred in 2003 were placed in the chapel of Martyrs of our Time.

Their colleagues processed with their names, from the nave up the many steps to the quire screen, singing the most haunting refrain. They passed from sight through the quire screen. But they continued singing. The refrain echoed round the cathedral. It was as though we had seen the martyrs themselves pass into the nearer presence of God, yet their beautiful singing could still he heard. Strong men wept.

In Sheffield in September 2007, a new training programme began called Porterbrook Training, part of the Porterbrook Network. Michael Jensen interviews its director, Steve Timmis, for EN, to find out what it is all about.

MJ: Before we talk about Porterbrook Training specifically, can you tell us how the Porterbrook Network came into being?

The Clerkenwell Symposium was a gathering of UK evangelists with Tim Keller earlier this year to discuss how to unlock the mind of the unbeliever.

The group sought to develop ways of evangelism which:

The radio work of Grace Baptist Mission (GBM) began in India 50 years ago. It was a cause for deep gratitude that the recommendation from Conference in India to the Mission Council in London asking permission to establish a radio ministry was unanimously accepted in the 1950s.

Not all Strict Baptists of that generation were happy about radio. Even in 1963, when in the UK on furlough, a missionary was told by one pastor that, ‘Radio is the devil’s instrument’.

Margaret Clarkson, whose rarely-used first name is Edith, was born in 1915 into, as Margaret herself described, ‘a loveless and unhappy marriage’, which broke up when she was 12.

C. Stacey Woods (‘a name not widely known’) was well celebrated by Julia Cameron in November’s EN. Another of his hidden achievements came in Toronto in 1946. He asked Margaret Clarkson to write a hymn.

A small team of solicitors, sent by BMS World Mission to work with the Uganda Christian Lawyers’ Fraternity (UCLF), is engaged in a major project in Kampala, striking at the root of one of Uganda’s greatest needs.

Following in the footsteps of Christian educationalists and healthcare professionals, who have done such pioneering work in Uganda over the past 120 years, these lawyers are laying foundations for justice both now and for the future.

This article is mainly a summary and review of the biography of Caroline Cox, subtitled A Voice for the Voiceless, by Andrew Boyd.

I would like to start with an extract from the foreword to the biography, written by Lord Tonypandy: ‘I regard Baroness Cox as one of the grLion Bookseat women of our generation — a 20th-century prophet. She has awakened the conscience of the House of Lords to the terrible challenges that face Christians in other lands.’

When Marian Evans’s novel Adam Bede came out in 1859 it made the name ‘George Eliot’ justly famous.

Her novels soon took their place among the finest in the English language. To discerning readers, however, Marian’s scepticism indicated a growing problem about Christianity and the church.

’What does it mean to love our universities?’

For many UCCF Christian Unions (CUs) around the country, February means missions.

David Hall describes how one small Anglican church in rural Sussex mobilised for mission.

After a fitful night’s sleep, the soldiers emerge from their dug-in positions, stretch and check their weapons one last time. They have all written their final letters, now they scan the horizon apprehensively, grateful for air support, special forces already in position, artillery back-up, the naval blockade and, above all, their colleagues in the regiment.

One day last summer I lost my church. Or rather, it lost me.

I’d been out of the country a couple weeks, and, therefore, hadn’t been to church in a while. My first Sunday back, I showed up at the usual time and place ready to reconnect with friends through a communal experience of faith.