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'But we sang that last week!' Do you know who chooses your church's hymns? Is more than one person involved? Prayerfully? Is it you? Are they chosen on the spot, or the day, week, or month before?

Most musicians, especially the non-expert, appreciate the early choosers. The church where the hymns were announced 12 months ahead, is an extreme case! However you answer my questions, the selectors affect us all.

Much of modern Western evangelicalism can be likened to a defective cookery book in which the methods are specified, but the ingredients are not or, at best, are very weakly defined.

The preparation details, oven temperature, technique etc., are given an inordinate amount of attention but the ingredients are overlooked. This article explores the concepts of style and content-relevance and truth, and urges us not to make truth a secondary matter.

Fangcheng County in southern central Henan, China is an agricultural district with 926,000 inhabitants. 60 years ago, Henry Guinness, David Adeney and other missionaries of the China Inland Mission travelled by bicycle with Chinese colleagues throughout the villages, and small churches were planted.

Today, there are so many Christians that hostile cadres have labelled the area a 'Jesus Nest'.