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Nicola Laver

Date posted: 1 Jan 2023

A partnership between two independent churches – one in a middle-class southern area and the other on a Yorkshire council estate – is bridging the north-south divide and advancing the gospel.

Banstead Community Church lies 13 miles outside central London in leafy Surrey which, along with Sussex, is the wealthiest part of England according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). ‘Average wealth’ is said to be £263,000 by the ONS.

The new flying bishop for conservative evangelicals in the Church of England, Rob Munro, takes on his role at a critical time.

Dr Munro, who has been Rector of St Mary’s Cheadle, will be a crucial voice in future votes and discussions on sexuality which are at a critical stage. The former Maths and PE teacher, will have a special national ministry to parishes of a complementarian evangelical theology across England.

An ‘Evangelism Health Check’ is now live online.

The check is a survey tool set up by the Evangelical Alliance which church leaders can use to gauge how their church feels about sharing the gospel and their evangelism habits. The survey can be run live in services with the results updating in real time so leaders can get an up-to-date and accurate picture of where their church is at in terms of evangelism and mission.

Andrew Symes is to stand down as Executive Secretary of Anglican Mainstream on 1 January 2023 after nearly ten years in post.

Symes, 56, who had earlier served with Crosslinks in South Africa, joined Anglican Mainstream in 2013 to further its work amongst orthodox Anglicans in the UK.

Well-known evangelist Rico Tice will be working for Christianity Explored Ministries (CEM) full time from next September, it has been announced.

For the past 21 years Rico (56) has worked for both CEM and as Senior Minister for Evangelism at All Souls Langham Place.

Nicola Laver

Date posted: 1 Aug 2021

A Brazilian missionary is working among young people in Chard, Somerset, mentoring and giving mental-health support with the help of local ministries.

Raquel Lima (see photo), who is also serving the local Portuguese community, has been placed by Latin Link (in partnership with South West Youth Ministries) to mentor and support young people alongside Forefront Church, an independent evangelical fellowship.

Frank Entwistle will best be remembered for his leadership of Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) for 25 years, retiring in 2002.

Set up in 1936 as the Publishing House of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship (later UCCF), IVP was the strongest and most widely-known independent evangelical publisher of its day. Frank Roland Entwistle grew up in Lancashire, imbibing a love of books and of reading from his father. Following his conversion aged 14, he set his heart on ordination, and later studied theology at St John’s College, Durham, choosing a special option on Luther and Calvin. He was prepared for ordination at Cranmer Hall. The fairly conservative faculty, and the strong inter-collegiate Christian Union (DICCU), gave Frank a thorough Biblical grounding. While at Durham he met his wife, Beryl, and they married during his curacy at St John’s Harborne in Birmingham. In 1965 Frank joined the home staff of what is now Crosslinks, editing the Society’s magazine and books.

Dr Osita Orafu, originally from Nigeria, has been ordained in the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE) at Trinity Church, Scarborough.

AMiE is a network of Anglican evangelical churches outside of and independent of the Church of England.

Nicola Laver

Date posted: 1 Oct 2022

A warning from charity Crisis UK that hundreds of thousands of UK households could become homeless this winter, has prompted London City Mission (LCM) to issue an urgent call for help.

Figures show that, up to now, good progress had been made with 2,689 fewer people sleeping rough in the year to April 2022 compared to the previous year. An LCM spokesperson said the warning of the impending rise in homelessness is a ‘heartbreaking projection’ threatening the work already done.

The current cost of living crisis could prove an opportune moment for Baptists to rediscover their Biblical roots, a Welsh leader says.

Writing in a recent newsletter, Baptist Union of Wales’ Mission Director Simeon Baker acknowledged the challenge of maintaining large buildings and the pressures that brings, not least on church finances and this is likely to get even harder over winter.

The founder of the Newfrontiers network of charismatic evangelical churches, Terry Virgo, has addressed 100 FIEC church leaders.

He was speaking at the London Leaders’ Gathering of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC).

When builder and Brethren member Sir John Laing was motivated by his deep faith to give away money for the gospel he could little have dreamt that almost £500 million would be given to Christian causes.

Now the trustees of the J.W. Laing Trust are celebrating the centenary of the initial gift that got it going. After Sir John Laing, who died in 1978 aged 98, took over the management of his family’s small building business, he built it into a global construction and civil engineering group, employing over 10,000 people, and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Bishop Andy Lines, of the Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE) is to be assisted by two new assistant bishops.

Stuart Bell (photo left) who led St Michael’s Aberystwyth, the largest Anglican church in Wales, and Ian Ferguson (right), a minister from Westhill Aberdeen, will serve in the Anglican Convocation in Europe (ACE).

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 May 2022

Passion for Life – the movement which has been seeking to see the gospel of Christ preached across the British Isles this recent Easter and which is supported by over 750 churches – is celebrating some of the creative ways it has been used by churches to tell their families and communities about Jesus.

Dundonald Church in Wimbledon, part of Co-mission, held a South Africa-themed ‘Around the Braai with the Bodyguard’. It took 42kg of South African sausage to feed the nearly 300 people who attended the event. They heard some amazing stories from Rory Steyn, about his time as chief bodyguard to Nelson Mandela, and learned how the person of Jesus had an even bigger impact on his life.

Along with the rest of the UK and Ireland, churches across London are preparing for a month of mission in Easter 2022 as part of the initiative A Passion for Life (APFL).

The prayer of those in the London Gospel Partnership is that there might be clusters of churches equipped and actively on mission in each of the 32 boroughs across the city – that many across London might be reached for Christ.

As many parts of the world came to Birmingham for the Commonwealth Games, so the gospel in turn was brought to them.

A variety of missions groups including Birmingham City Mission, Great Lakes Outreach (GLO) and Youth With A Mission (YWAM) brought teams to the area to work alongside local churches.

‘Never in a million years would you have seen me knocking on someone’s door. That’s someone else’s ministry, I would have told you.’

These were the words of Maria, a member of Forestdale Church in Croydon, South London.

One of the fruits of the ongoing Life22 mission initiative of A Passion for Life has been the initiation of some promising conversations around Scotland about the possibility of the establishment or in some cases re-establishment of Regional Gospel Partnerships (RGPs).

Nick McQuaker, the development officer for the partnerships, has been on a tour around Scotland meeting key church leaders in Edinburgh, Fife, Aberdeen, Moray, and Ayrshire.