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Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Sep 2021

Covid-19 is an opportunity for European mission agencies to reflect deeply once again on the meaning of mission in today’s world.

One of the key questions it raises is whether it has made sense to have invested so heavily in huge buildings, since social distancing restrictions have forced many churches to think about how to make small gatherings work, not just big ones.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Sep 2021

Four years ago, the Bullock family left the familiarity and security of the UK to serve God cross-culturally in Zambia with Operation Mobilisation. Dan is Field Leader, responsible for all OM’s missionaries in Zambia, as well as its local workers. Ruth is a physiotherapist working to train people with disabilities.

Writer Ivy Chiu spoke to Dan and Ruth about why they took such a bold step.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Jul 2022

During the first 90 days of the war in Ukraine, over 6million refugees fled to other nations, A further 7million were displaced internally, making this the largest movement of people in Europe since World War II.

In response, 72 Christian leaders from 22 European countries recently gathered in Krakow, Poland, to focus on the war and refugee crisis. The five countries that have received the most refugees (Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia) admitted they are overwhelmed and can no longer handle the ongoing flow of highly-traumatised women and children.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Jul 2022

International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP), has announced its most ambitious evangelistic programme yet.

Its 2022 ‘In the Cities’ mission series will visit London, Paris, Amsterdam and Budapest, before heading further afield to Pittsburgh, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Sydney, with the potential to reach over 1million Jewish people living in ten major global cities.

letter from Japan

If you have ever read the Chronicles of Narnia you may remember reading the words ‘Aslan is on the move’.

As you did so, perhaps a chill went down your spine as the prospect of the coming victory over evil becomes a palpable reality. Well, as I write, a chill goes down my spine as it would seem that the Lord is on the move here in Japan.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Aug 2022

Even before the invasion of Ukraine, many of the poorest nations of the world were suffering the catastrophic impact of climate change.

Earlier this year the island of Madagascar, for example, experienced its ‘worst drought’ in 40 years. UNICEF says half a million under-fives will be ‘acutely malnourished’ this year; in the south, where 80% of the people depend on agriculture to survive, the UN World Food Programme estimates that half of the population now faces hunger. The drought has decimated crops and dried up water sources, resulting in little sustenance for communities and cattle. The pandemic, deforestation and Madagascar’s cyclone season have further exacerbated their woes. According to UNWFP, this could become ‘the first famine to be caused by climate change’.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Aug 2022

Seeking to encourage and equip emerging Christian film-makers from Egypt and the Middle East – and allowing them to focus on the issues that most concern them – were the goals of the first-ever Salam (‘Peace’) Film Festival, which has taken place in Alexandria.

The brainchild of Christian TV station SAT-7 and the Evangelical Church of Egypt, the Festival comprised 26 films which were shown and competed for a series of awards.

Facing its worst drought in 40 years, food and water in Madagascar are so costly at the moment that reports are coming in of communities eating locusts, leaves, clay and even shoe leather to survive, the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) says.

MAF writes: UNICEF says that half a million children under the age of five will be ‘acutely malnourished’ this year, with a further 110,000 facing ‘severe malnourishment’.

More than 600 church workers from 41 countries and four continents have attended the European Leadership Forum (ELF).

The mission of ELF, which was held in Wisla, Poland, is to ‘unite, equip and resource evangelical leaders to renew the Biblical church and evangelise Europe’. Their desire is for different evangelical groups to work together to achieve more than any single organisation can on their own.

More than 10,000 people have taken part in a national march for Jesus in Paris.

The majority of those taking part in the event, which resumed after a two-year break due to the pandemic, were reported to be between the ages of 25 and 35. The march was led by a team from YWAM (Youth With A Mission) accompanied by six musical bands.

The Lambeth Conference which is set to take place from 26 July to 6 August, last met with all Anglican bishops in attendance in 1998 – 24 years ago.

The 1998 conference was due to receive the report of the Decade of Evangelism from its secretary, Cyril Okorocha of Nigeria. This was shelved and Canon Okorocha stood down in favour of pressure from some bishops to discuss the issue of homosexual unions. The outcome of the 1998 conference was a resolution, Lambeth 1.10, which ‘while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals’.

Andrew Birch, Mission Director for the European Mission Fellowship (EMF), talks the organisation’s growing to en about vision for the continent of Europe.

Andrew, what’s the vision you’re developing?

Wings of Love, the newest plane to join Mission Aviation Fellowship’s life-saving fleet, has touched down in Africa.

The aircraft, a Cessna Caravan, had departed from Winnipeg, southern Canada, to begin its 6,000-mile, transatlantic journey to Angola.

letter from the

So it begins. A new life as missionaries, 7,000 miles from home, in the far east country of the Philippines – in particular, a densely populated municipality named Santa Maria, about 15 miles north of the capital city.

This is a work that my wife and I have been preparing for and praying over for almost a decade. The two of us met as teenage freshers at Aberystwyth University, and from then until now, every day, from that very first meeting, we have had the call for gospel witness in this needy nation heavy upon our hearts. And now, at last, we’ve made it!

A petrol tanker which crashed, overturned and exploded – unleashing a fireball killing 90 – is the latest in a series of tragedies for Haiti, after which Christian agency MAF has helped bring disaster relief.

The Mission Aviation Fellowship has been at the forefront of assisting in the wake of this most recent traumatic event – only a short while after starting to wind up its humanitarian response to an earthquake which had claimed 2,200 lives a few months earlier. When the devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti’s western peninsula on 14 August 2021, causing major damage and destroying tens of thousands of homes, MAF personnel responded immediately.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Apr 2022

The Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) is a supporter of the Grace Shelter, an orphanage run by Grace Church (Baptist) in Odessa, a port on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, since 2004.

Fifty-three children, aged from about three to 18, and their ‘orphan parents’ lived there. The site also hosted a ‘transition house’, which provided a number of small apartments for young adults for a couple of years whilst learning to become independent.

Children for Christ Ministry (CFCM) has trained over 800 Sunday School teachers over the last two years in Malawi.

This remarkable achievement has taken place during four successive waves of Covid-19, where restrictions on gathering were commonplace. Furthermore, whilst many organisations focused on the cities, CFCM deliberately targeted teachers throughout the length and breadth of the country, which is roughly the size of England.

Christian missions from across the world, which are based in Hong Kong, may be forced out, it is feared.

There is an increasing ‘climate of fear’ in the former colony, according to a missionary speaking under a pseudonym to Evangelicals Now.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Mar 2022

International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP) is organising evangelistic coach tours in order to reach Jewish Holocaust survivors with the gospel.

An increased openness among Jewish people to hear about Jesus as Messiah means that hundreds of Jewish people are now regularly joining IMJP’s Bible tours, where they visit sites in the Holy Land which have a particular significance in the story, life, and claims of Jesus.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Mar 2022

As this edition of Evangelicals Now went to press, the trials of Finnish Christians Päivi Räsänen MP and Bishop Juhana Pohjola, of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, had started.

Both are accused of agitation against an ethnic group, specifically Räsänen’s ‘insulting’ of homosexuals on a radio programme and in a booklet published in 2004 by Pohjola.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Mar 2022

Evangelicals Now is regularly privileged to come across much faithful gospel witness by often small and (humanly-speaking) under-resourced evangelical ministries in sometimes far-flung areas of the world. The GoodWORD Partnership (GWP), founded by Blair Carlson in Minneapolis in 2005, is one of those.

Blair coaches national church leaders in local evangelism, guiding them with their outreach, including preparation and follow-up within local churches. He has just returned from Russia and Poland, where GWP helped lead a major evangelism training conference, the Forum for Evangelism in Russia, which is now in its fifth year. Blair spoke to Evangelicals Now afterwards: