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Mission weeks are the focal point of a CU’s evangelistic campaign. These weeks are where CU members can invite their friends to hear the gospel being preached in a way that is persuasive, attractive and relevant.

Pod Bhogal, UCCF’s Head of Communications talks to Michael Ots (Associate Christian Union Staff Worker, itinerant evangelist and mission speaker) about his involvement with CU mission weeks this year.

Horizons

Principle: The gospel enlarges my horizons, giving me a concern for God’s world.

Consider this

Barry had been on a foreign holiday once or twice, but he’d basically gone for the sun. Though he loved to eat curry, he’d always been suspicious of immigrants. And he’d never paid much interest to foreign news unless our troops were involved. What had any of it got to do with him?

Leonardo De Chirico

Date posted: 1 Dec 2010

Setting up a new Pontifical Council is not something that happens often in the Vatican, given the conservative nature of the institution.

Yet Pope Benedict XVI has just released the motu proprio document entitled Ubicumque et semper (‘Everywhere and always’) that establishes the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation.

Lindsay Brown, International Director of The Lausanne Movement, gave the closing address at the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation.

The first hope of Congress leaders was, he said, for ‘a ringing affirmation of the uniqueness of Christ, and the truth of the biblical gospel; and a clear statement on evangelism and the mission of the Church — all rooted in Scripture’. The Congress drew 4,000 evangelical leaders and influencers from 198 nations. In addition, the event extended its reach to 650 GlobaLink sites in 91 countries.

It became known that a group of foreign extremists — ‘terrorists’ to most people — had re-grouped in London after being imprisoned and tortured in their own country. A City Missionary who spoke their language was anxious to find them, so he quietly sounded out some of his contacts, and after several unsuccessful attempts, met with them in an area that had become almost totally populated by ethnic minorities. He told them that he had come on behalf of the Christians of London to offer advice and sympathy. He spoke of God’s love and of his justice. Most of the group were antagonistic, intent on violence, but the City Missionary went back repeatedly to talk with them.

In one of London’s poorest areas a City Missionary walked through an overgrown garden to knock at a door. A man opened the door, but would not let him in. He was suspicious and troubled. After a short conversation, the missionary offered to return and tidy the garden. The work was done — and the missionary was invited indoors. A friendship developed, and the man began attending the local mission hall to play pool, and joined a Bible study. He began attending Sunday services at a local church, whose members regularly helped with his garden.

UCCF loves it when students hear, engage with and respond to the love of God expressed in Jesus Christ. We want students to ‘live life to the full’ — that is, to know that Jesus loves them and see that life with him is the best way to live.

Here are some testimonies from students, UCCF Staff Workers and Relay volunteers from this last year for you to enjoy.

Missionaries on home assignment have many responsibilities. They talk to their mission, report to churches, reconnect with their home church, contact supporters, deal with health issues, see family and maybe get some holiday. This article is not addressed to them!

All over the UK today, supermarket chains, shops and restaurants are selling halal meat.

We may find it on the menu at our children’s school or the local hospital, or be offered it when we go to a sporting event. If we go for a meal with Muslim friends, any meat we are served will probably be halal. It can be hard to avoid eating this meat, especially as it is often not labelled and little information is available to the consumer.

Being a child of missionary parents is not easy. Heidi Sand-Hart has written a book on the subject and spoke to EN about it.

EN: Tell us about your background. Were your parents missionaries?

Does God have a plan for London? People from all kinds of ethnic and cultural backgrounds from across the globe pass through or have become part of Britain’s capital city.

The world is in London. This means that, even apart from what might happen as people come for the Olympic Games in 2012, London has enormous potential in God’s purposes for worldwide mission and it seems that many Christians have begun to understand this.

One of the big surprises of the 20th century was the dramatic growth of the churches in the non-Western world.

A bigger surprise was that, as Philip Jenkins asserts, those churches growing fastest are all strongly supernaturally oriented. ‘In this thought world, prophecy is an everyday reality, while faith-healing, exorcism, and dream-visions are all basic components of religious sensibility.’

A fresh influx of old ladies converted to lively Christian faith in their 80s is now sorely needed to revitalise small local churches.

An influx of old gentlemen of that generation would also be wonderful but an old lady born in 1930 brings the following benefits to a local church that is in urgent need of major spiritual surgery:

I was born blind, without eyes. This came as a great shock to my parents, but, despite this, and their questions as to why God had allowed this to happen, they were determined to treat me as normally as possible. I was included in all family activities, and I went through mainstream education all the way from playschool to sixth form. It was a challenge, but, with help from God and friends, family and staff, I got through it.

I was raised in a Christian family and attended church and Sunday school regularly at Potton Baptist Church. I can’t say what date I became a Christian, but I remember always asking God to help and forgive me, right from a very young age. He is my best friend. I was 12 when I knew for sure I was a Christian and wanted to make my faith public by being baptised.

The summer holiday is definitely one of the perks of student life; months without coursework deadlines or exams, but does student ministry take a break too? With many students going home, travelling or working, it may appear that there isn’t much opportunity to reach the student world with the good news about Jesus. But things aren’t always what they seem...

This year six UCCF-led teams of students are going overseas, to Lithuania, Bulgaria, a country in the Former Yugoslav Republic, Russia, Paris and an East European country. Each team is made up of students from Christian Unions across the UK and led by Christian Union Staff Workers.

Principle: Eternal glory offers more than this life.

Consider this

Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, Lucy flicks through House & Garden magazine. She loves the photo shoots of beautifully restored homes. She dreams of a country cottage. But she and her husband have decided to serve God in the city. Looking at the antique furniture and cottage garden of some rural idyll in the country, she begins to wonder whether it’s worth it.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Aug 2010

Let me talk about an important book bearing on the American scene.

Sebastian Junger’s War (New York, 2010) is a specifically non-religious book, but with great relevance to assessments of the effects and experience of war in Afghanistan for American troops. Junger ‘embedded’ himself with the ultimate front line troops in a far flung outpost of Afghanistan to experience daily life in combat.

Sometimes spiritual triumph arises out of natural disaster. Few had ever heard of the volcanic tongue-twister that is Eyjajallajokull before April 14; now we know that its ash crippled European airlines for a week, costing the aviation industry over £2bn, stranding 300,000 passengers and its effects have been ongoing.

One of its more remarkable spiritual consequences, however, was that the eruption deprived Medias, Romania, of a team of American evangelists who were to run a major outreach under the auspices of the Luis Palau Association's (LPA’s) Next Generation Alliance programme. In so doing, it propelled local churches into taking full responsibility for the mission and forced local pastors to bring the gospel themselves to their friends and neighbours. The result of being made to step out in faith, in these apparently unpromising circumstances, was a rich harvest of souls for Christ.

‘Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet’ (Acts 4.36-37).

In May 2008 there was a Number 1 song: ‘They call me Stacey, they call me her, they call me Jane, that’s not my name’. Barnabas could also have said, ‘That’s not my name’. His real name was Joseph, but the apostles called him Barnabas, and that is how he was always known.

‘This is the story of how a powerful and extraordinary God uses ordinary people to accomplish his purposes.’ This is how Sam Doherty summarised the work of Child Evangelism Fellowship in Ireland during the past 60 years. He should know for he was there at the beginning!

In November 1949, Sam Doherty was a recently qualified teacher and a brand new convert to Christ, with no gospel background whatsoever. He took the words of his spiritual father, Fred Orr, seriously: ‘God always saves people for them to do something; you’d better ask God what he wants you to do’. Sam and his wife Sadie began to pray for God’s direction.

A Passion for Life, the UK-wide mission which culminated at Easter, has been hailed a resounding success with another possible mission planned for 2014.

Hundreds of events saw unchurched people hearing the gospel for the first time, with many churches reporting professions of faiths. Churches of differing denominations came together and, working in groups, helped reach their local communities with the message of Easter.

On a precarious slope, Etienne digs into the dusty soil with a small hoe, planting beans in hope of the rains. In recent years these rains have become unpredictable. Miles away, his wife is returning from the forest, a bundle of firewood on her head. She was up before dawn carrying water from the spring, her only source of water, nearly an hour’s walk away. The young baby on her back is sick with intestinal parasites from drinking this water she has worked so hard to provide.

The global context may be lost on this family, but they live out its consequences on a daily basis. In the United States, frequent headlines warn of what is happening to the earth and its ecosystems, but because the impact on Western life is minimal, the predictions are largely ignored.

Ray Porter’s recent article on Missionary Funding (EN, November 2009) raises important issues.

But it leaves the reader with more questions than answers. How then should long-term, international cross-cultural gospel work be funded? What is the responsibility of those who set their hearts on doing this kind of work? What is the proper role and function of a mission society, and how ought such organisations to be funded today? What is the biblical model for the relationship between churches and would-be mission partners? Ray’s concerns arise out of his long and distinguished personal experience of global mission and his undoubted passion to see proper provision made. However, a statement like ‘there is no biblical justification for burdening missionaries with fundraising’ frames the argument in a way that does not help any of the parties to grasp the biblical model of gospel partnership, which is an essential piece of the biblical picture.

In 50 years as missionaries, my wife and I have become familiar with immigration laws and offices in the countries where we served: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the United States and now Spain. As recently as 2007, in Valencia, we were standing in line for hours, filling forms and asking God for patience to cope with bureaucratic slowness. In those queues you hear amazing stories of joys, tragedies, dramatic expectations and disappointments for migrant people.

Churches in Spain have had to face the challenge of a massive wave of migrants from Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. It is a missionary challenge, forcing churches to go to the roots of their faith.

The Psalmist writes, ‘How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?’ (Psalm 137.4).

This is a beautiful question springing from the heart of a poet struggling to live out in a strange land (Babylon) what he knows to be true in a more familiar context (Jerusalem). This question has stimulated missional communities of grassroots leaders in Latin America under the banner of the Center for Transforming Mission (CTM).