From a kibbutz and New Age to the New Covenant and Christ
Charles Gardner
Date posted: 1 Jan 2023
A Messianic Jewish pastor is greatly indebted to Christians with a special love for the people of Israel. For without them his family would not have discovered Jesus as their Messiah.
Now helping to lead a congregation in Haifa, Jonathan Arnold describes his faith journey as being ‘from New Age to the New Covenant’.
Have we lost sight of the central message of salvation?
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 1 Jan 2023
Converted aged 20, I’ve been a Christian for 34 years and an ordained minister for 24. Add to that the fact that I was brought up in an evangelical family and you’ve got over half a century of life lived in and around the evangelical world.
Recently, I’ve found myself spending quite a bit of time ruminating on how evangelistic preaching has changed over that time period and how- much to my concern- it now tends to focus almost entirely on the benefits of the gospel at the expense of the substance of the gospel.
Evangelical Futures: Deconstruction, an ‘oppressive’ Bible – and what to do
Karen Soole
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
Vast swathes of our country do not know the gospel – we know that. The Bible Society report ‘Pass It On’ in 2014 showed that 54% of parents thought the Hunger Games plot could be in the Bible , and there is no reason to think things have improved.
Many share the atheism of public figures such as Ricky Gervais, who proclaims loudly – there is no God. His message is clear – you can be religious, live as you like, but none of it is real – there are no spiritual realities. These situations are not new. Ignorance and unbelief have existed from generation to generation. However, we are facing new expressions of unbelief as the culture wars impact the church.
Brazilian on a mission to Chard
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 1937 – 2022
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
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.
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.
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?
'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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
Trying to make the crooked straight? You will fail
Two corgis who belonged to the Queen, Sandy and Muick, watched her funeral procession and reduced our dog-loving nation to tears.
Since the Queen’s death, sales of corgis have gone up. The Kennel Club reports a 30-year high for the registration of the breed. I expect a few more breeders will seek to cash in on the craze, as puppies can sell for around £6,000. So if you want a puppy for Christmas, perhaps another breed might be better. Remembering the seasonal refrain, a dog is for life and not just for Christmas. Corgis are still not as popular as the UK’s favourite breed, which is, of course, a Labrador. I admit it – I am a besotted Labrador owner.