Teesside outreach sees 1,400 respond
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 7 Jul 2024
Festival Teesside, featuring evangelist Andrew Palau, was ‘a massive success’ and the ‘fruition of 15 years of hard work,’ says mission organiser Stephen Sutton.
Sutton, who is pastor of Beacon Baptist Church, Middlesborough, also said that the gospel seed had been sown and that local churches were now deploying ‘the skills of the harvest field’ which the Palau team provided.
letter from Moldova
A ‘big God’ for a small and suffering land
Graeme Innes
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Until a couple of years ago, Moldova was a largely obscure backwater but, due to the war on its doorstep, Moldova now finds itself near the new dividing line between East and West.
Though great upheaval continues to dominate the region, Operation World statistics show that Moldova, and her neighbours Romania and Ukraine, are the three countries which have seen the greatest gospel growth within Europe in the last 35 years. After significant openness to Christ during the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is now a deepening hunger for faithful Bible preaching amongst numerous evangelical churches in Moldova.
New role for Tom Creedy
IVP
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Tom Creedy is taking up a new role as Publishing Director at IVP. Evangelical publisher IVP counts Amy Orr-Ewing, John Stott and Tim Chester among its authors, and says it is ‘committed to producing books that are faithful to the Bible, share the gospel with the world, and equip the church for mission and discipleship’.
IVP also produces books for an academic audience under its Apollos imprint, and has a global impact and reach through worldwide distribution licensing and partnerships.
Major consultation event addresses ‘recruitment crisis’
9:38
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Where is the next generation of church leaders coming from? Is there really a crisis in ministry recruitment? And if so, how can we work together to address it? This was the theme of a major consultation day held just recently.
The National Consultation Day organised by 9:38 – which serves local churches as they envision people in gospel ministry and raise up the next generation of gospel workers – was held at Yarnton Manor in Oxfordshire.
news in brief
USA: SBC not to ban women pastors
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has just failed to achieve the two-thirds majority vote needed to place a ban in its constitution on women being church pastors.
Issues impacting women are prominent at this year’s annual meeting of the SBC, taking place in Indianapolis. Church leaders also approved a resolution condemning in vitro fertilisation. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the US, with over 50,000 churches and over 14 million members, and is now a serious political force in the country.
‘Your money & your life’ – but he lived
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Although John thought they only wanted his goods, they also wanted to take his life.
Early one morning, John was walking back from the market to his home in Habai village, in Papua New Guinea’s isolated Highlands. He was carrying three bags of flour and eight litres of oil, which he was hoping to sell so he could pay for his sons’ school fees.
Tom Houston: Gifted leader with huge global influence
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Tom Houston was one of the most highly-gifted leaders of his generation. He led three movements of global reach, bringing a fine mind to analysis and strategy, and an unusual gift in preaching.
Tom grew up in Dumbarton, on the Clyde, and read Classics at Glasgow University. From teenage years he was a keen member of Glasgow Youth for Christ, and through YFC he met his future wife, Hazel Findlay. At the age of 23 he was appointed pastor of Johnstone Baptist Church, while completing a BD, and teaching Greek to undergraduates. From there he became Chaplain of Quarriers Homes in Bridge of Weir, ministering to 500 deprived children, as well as 150 epileptic patients, and 250 staff.
Ten Questions with: Reinhold Titus
1. How did you become a Christian?
I was born into and raised in a nominal Christian home. While attending university, I attended a camp organised by an interdenominational youth organisation. The Lord revealed Himself to me through His Word and Spirit. However, it took me a few days of pondering on the decision and implications of committing my life to Him. I did so one afternoon while in my room, being convicted of His love, sacrifice and my need to know and walk with Him.
2. What lessons have you learnt since that you would want to pass on to a younger Christian version of yourself?
I don’t know if I would do anything any differently. I made mistakes, but that was part of the growth process. I was privileged having people alongside me who took discipleship and mentoring seriously and did it with me when I came to faith. That included the awareness that faith was not only a personal matter but communal and expressed in acts of service.
everyday theology
Evangelicals? Humble?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
At the heart of being an evangelical is humility. That might seem a laughable claim amid all the empire-building and hubris that has blackened the name of evangelicalism.
And there is something about evangelicalism that can make it a fertile soil for pride. Evangelicals are people of the word, and so learning is in the blood. Yet learning so commonly fosters arrogance.
disability & accessibility
Mission to one of the largest unreached groups in the world
Kay Morgan-Gurr
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
When we want to reach a people group with the gospel, there are many things we want to be trained in first. We learn the language and the culture. We immerse ourselves in the way of life in order to learn how we can respectfully reach out to them.
Sometimes we take the time to make friends with people from that culture and learn more from them, including the idioms and nuances of their language - you know, the things a classroom lesson won’t teach you and can leave you a little embarrassed and red faced when you say the wrong thing.
A life of dedicated, humble service changing many lives
Jeremy Weightman
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Celebrating the life of Margaret Hill (1941–2024).
Veteran missionary and Bible translator Margaret Hill has died aged 82 after almost 60 years in service with Wycliffe Bible Translators.
Warm-hearted and influential pastor dies
en staff
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
The former pastor of one of the largest evangelical churches on the south coast of England has died.
Tony Sargent, who helped Worthing Tabernacle Church flourish into an even more thriving church, died aged 83. He had an extensive ministry across UK evangelicalism and was previously a director of Evangelicals Now.
Albania: 3,000 people hear the gospel
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Over 3,000 people have heard the gospel in Tirana, Albania, at a major event organised by evangelicals in the country.
Before the mission, about 800 evangelicals met to focus on the church’s evangelistic imperative and to remember that ‘Jesus teaches us that we as a church should be lifted as a city up on the mountain top,’ Evangelical Focus reported.
A Nationalist election view: God’s workmanship
John Mason
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
In Ephesians 2:10, the apostle Paul tells us: ‘For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’ That is both encouraging and challenging!
Encouraging – because each of us has a specific task to do that is unique for us. Challenging – because we need to find what that task is and then follow it through. For me that has previously meant being an accountant with Operation Mobilisation in London; and later, with Interserve/United Mission to Nepal (UMN).
everyday evangelism
What about the Crusades and the Inquisition?
Glen Scrivener
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
There are any number of ways the subject might crop up, but crop up it will: ‘Religion causes all wars… ’; ‘Christians are hypocrites… ’; What about the Crusades / the Inquisition / conquistadors… ?’; ‘Those Christians really hurt me… ’.
These are different kinds of statements and, as we’ll see, they should be addressed differently – especially that last one. But there’s one thing they all accomplish: they tempt the Christian to dissociate from church.
You’re the only Christian: what next?
UCCF
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Imagine you arrived at university to discover that you are the only Christian on campus: what would you do?
This is the reality for student Emily who studies at the Northern School of Art in Hartlepool, an institution of around 500 students.
news in brief
The Goodness of God
The songs Goodness of God, 10,000 Reasons and In Christ Alone have topped a new list of favourite contemporary worship songs.
CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International), has published a roundup of the latest favourites among UK churches who are licensed with the organisation. The top ten also includes How Great Is Our God (4), What a Beautiful Name (5), O Praise The Name (Anástasis) (6), Here I Am To Worship (7) and Cornerstone (8). Other favourites making the list include How Deep The Father’s Love For Us at number 20, Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) (22), The Servant King (37), There Is A Redeemer (46), Come People Of the Risen King (50) and The Power Of The Cross (94). The list does not include classic Christian hymns as they are already in the public domain and not within CCLI’s remit.
Olympics then and now: What can Eric Liddell teach us today?
Luke Randall
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
The Olympic Games are almost upon us. They start in Paris on 26 July and countless storylines will inevitably surround what is arguably the world’s biggest sporting event.
Can Novak Djokovic finally claim the gold medal, the one accolade which has eluded him during his glittering career, in what is surely his last realistic chance to win it? Can Tom Daley win a fifth Olympic medal? Can Simone Biles become the most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history? These are just some of the headlines which will fill papers around the globe as the games draw near.
‘What strengths do the younger generation have?’
‘What strengths do the younger generation have?’ The youngest person in the group asked this question in a meeting of church leaders, exasperated at the negative tone of the conversation. It was an appropriate rebuke in the middle of a discussion about the apparent reduction of younger people seeking to serve full-time in gospel ministry.
It is easy to feel despair at our times. Anyone who has read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation or Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy will be aware of the increase in diagnosed mental health issues among young people. Both books raise valuable matters we need to consider – issues around smartphone technology, outsourcing childhood to experts and counsellors, creating a climate of fear and anxiety among parents in the ‘real’ world, and yet ignoring exposure to harm in the ‘online’ world.