East Ender Millionaire Becomes Evangelist
John Todd
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
The ‘East End’ of London – West Ham, Stepney, Millwall, Brixton, the Docklands, Whitechapel… just a few of the many well-known places there.
It is the home of EastEnders – a popular TV series since 1985 with over six-thousand daily episodes. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall featured on the Albert Square set in the 2nd of June 2022 episode of the Queen’s Diamond jubilee weekend. Call the Midwife, another popular BBC period-drama series from January 2012, is based on the lives of nurse-midwives in the East End from the late 1950s.
'Adoption is the highest privilege the gospel affords'
Rebecca Chapman speaks to Krish Kandiah.
Dr Kandiah (see photo) is a social entrepreneur with a vision to help solve some of society’s seemingly intractable problems through building partnerships across civil society, faith communities, government, and philanthropy.
AMiE ordains
AMiE
Date posted: 1 Dec 2022
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.
Jesus’ return and green issues today
Dave Gobbett
Date posted: 1 Dec 2022
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, widely known as COP27, has just been running in Egypt. In a timely new book* Dave Gobbett of Highfields Church Cardiff helps us think through a Biblical perspective on the environment. This extract explains how Jesus’ return might impact our thinking on this issue.
‘We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him … The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever’ (1 Thess. 4:14, 16).
news in brief
Iran: Christians released
Human-rights
advocates
are mystified
about why two Christians, imprisoned in
Iran for their church leadership roles, have
been freed a few days after a fire broke out
in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.
The
leaders
are Pastor Naser Navard
Goltapeh, who had spent two months
in
solitary confinement, and Fariba Dalir, who
was jailed for starting a house church. She had
spent 38 days in solitary confinement. Both
pardons were unexpected and had previously
been denied. One theory is that Evin Prison
is hosting Mahsa Amini protestors and is
quickly running out of space.
politics & policy
CARE enters fifth decade
James Mildred
Date posted: 1 Dec 2022
Why does CARE engage with politicians and bring a Biblical perspective to laws and legislation?
There is one reason among many that stands out to me. As the mission agency to UK politics, we believe that Biblical principles for human flourishing are good for all in society. Respecting the building blocks of society that God has created is the first step towards a fairer and more just society. And if we don’t bring these values into the corridors of power, how will politicians ever hear them?
Ukraine: gospel joy for refugee children
John Chamberlain
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
One of the devastating aspects of the war in Ukraine is the huge number of people – the UN estimate the figure at 12 million – who have fled their homes with little more than the clothes they were wearing.
Around seven million people are still thought to be displaced inside Ukraine itself, many in the western region of Rivne and Sarny where Christian charity Mission Without Borders (MWB) is operating.
Attempting to break… the ‘Circle of Silence’
David Easton
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
The Circle of Silence is made up of nine states in Mexico. It is an area where only 1% of people – or fewer – have heard the gospel, even though there are major universities and cities.
David and Maribel Easton and their two children, from Thornton Heath Evangelical Church, are planning to travel to the area as mission partners with SIM – an international, interdenominational evangelical Christian mission organisation. They prayerfully plan to plant churches that are faithful to God’s word. Here, they share their story with en.
Urgent call
on homeless
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.
Newfrontiers founder addresses FIEC leaders on identity
Joel Murray
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
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).
Mercy flight saves Chad medic’s wife
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
A 370-mile emergency flight saved the life of a medic’s wife in Chad, the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) reports.
Gary Clayton writes: In 2021, MAF flew 1,443 medevac passengers worldwide. Many of the patients flown were touched by the love of Christ and the care they received from MAF pilots. This year, thanks to MAF planes, many more life-saving medical emergency flights are taking place in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.
Welsh Bible roots call
Rob James
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
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.
£500,000,000 Christian giving marked
Jenny Taylor
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
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.
ACE appointments
en staff
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
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).
Missionaries – should we pay them more?
Gustav Pritchard
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
In Johannesburg, where I used to live, electricity supply was not always that predictable. Sadly, it was far worse in the poorer rural areas, where many (even today) have no access to the national power grid.
When I ministered in South Africa, I knew of a missionary who moved to work amongst such people. When he arrived, he immediately decided to live like the locals. He moved into a very poorly constructed house and lived without any electricity and water. At first, I thought this all sounded very noble. It certainly fitted with some of my stereotypes about ‘mission work’. But all the locals he worked amongst thought it was an extremely odd decision.
After 17 years away, the UK looks like this...
Josh Hooker
Date posted: 1 Aug 2022
It’s been 17 years since I last lived in the UK.
My wife and I have been serving as mission partners in Southern Africa, first in Lesotho and then in Namibia. Cathy and I left the UK in January 2005 with an eight-month-old son. We arrived back at the end of 2021 with three teenage children. I was in my 30s when we left – I’m now in my 50s. I left local church ministry here for theological education in Africa. When we set off, Tony Blair was the Prime Minister, our mobile phone (we only had one) looked like a small black brick and dial-up internet connection was all the rage. It was a pre-Brexit, pre-Covid-19 world. The UK has changed a lot whilst we’ve been away and so have we.
42kg of sausage and ex-mafia man boost mission
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.
Christ for all the nations
en staff
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
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.
Anglican evangelicals are deeply troubled
Church of England bishops will meet this month to continue their deliberations about human sexuality and gender identity.
In this meeting, and then in a subsequent meeting of the House of Bishops (diocesan bishops plus elected suffragans), they will draw together proposals to put to General Synod in February 2023. It is most likely that this synod will be used to seek opinion on the bishops’ proposals rather than to ratify a new measure, but then this will frame the agenda for the July synod.