750 churches show passion!
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
More than 750 churches across the UK and Ireland have signed up to A Passion for Life – a pioneering, month-long, evangelistic mission this Easter.
The mission is providing the tools to enable individual churches to ‘plan, build and promote’ their evangelism in the lead-up to Easter. They range from online support resources to training videos, which the organisers said are being well-received by churches.
Michael Griffiths: a life
Reuben Grace
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Dr Michael Griffiths, renowned author,
speaker and former General Director of
OMF International, died at the age of 93
on 9 January.
Michael was born
in Cardiff
in 1928,
and came to faith in Christ in 1942 at a
Christ’s Hospital School Christian Union
meeting, under the preaching of an exiled
German pastor. Studying Natural Sciences
at Peterhouse College, Cambridge,
he
served on the Executive Committee of the
Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union
in several positions, including as President.
He graduated
in 1952, but stayed on at
Ridley Hall to train for Anglican ministry.
At this time Michael met his wife Valerie, at
a conference on English Puritans at Martyn
Lloyd Jones’ Westminster Chapel.
Should we own property?
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Dear Editor,
I was fascinated by the article ‘Should we own property?’ by Michael Haykin (en December) about Benedict’s rule regarding private ownership. I am busy re-reading the wonderful biography William Carey: The Father of Modern Missions, by S. Pearce Carey, and am interested to add to the discussion the fact that he and originally four others agreed a covenanted community of fellowship in Serampore, based: ‘on equality of each, pre-eminence of none; rule by majority, allocation of function by collective vote; superintendence by each in monthly rotation; … the mutual forbidding of trading or of labour for personal gain, together with the pooling of all earnings, the apportionment of frugal pay to each family according to its needs, and the consecration of the whole surplus to the Mission’s expansion’ (pp. 183/4).
‘Steward power well’ – call
Jo Bull
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
The Anglican Mission in England (AMiE) has met for the first time as a Convocation since the pandemic.
AMiE – a network of Anglican churches outside the Church of England, and linked to GAFCON – had as its conference theme ‘Thrive.’
London hears message of post-Covid hope
Matt Laube
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
The Annual Conference of
the London
Gospel Partnership has taken place at East
London Tabernacle, hosted by their pastor
Ray Brown.
Given the effort and necessity of pastors
and churches across London
to
respond
faithfully to the challenges of the pandemic,
the conference’s theme was gospel hope in a
post-Covid landscape.
Grief and growth in Basildon
Jim Sayers
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
With news of how God brings blessing and
new life out of the darkest of situations in
His church, Jim Sayers of the Association of
Grace Baptist Churches writes:
What happens when your church building
gets destroyed in an air raid? That happened
to the church in Chatham Road, Wandsworth
Common on 15 October 1940. After World
War 2, large numbers of Londoners moved
out to the new towns. A number of Grace
Baptist churches were planted in these new
towns in the 50s and 60s, a time of real
social change. So Fryerns Baptist Church was
planted in Basildon, Essex in 1954 to replace
the church in Wandsworth.
800 Sunday School teachers trained
Mike Beresford & Ruth MacBean
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
Children for Christ Ministry (CFCM) has trained over 800 Sunday School teachers over the last two years in Malawi.
This remarkable achievement has taken place during four successive waves of Covid-19, where restrictions on gathering were commonplace. Furthermore, whilst many organisations focused on the cities, CFCM deliberately targeted teachers throughout the length and breadth of the country, which is roughly the size of England.
A new call for evangelical integrity
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
The New Testament has a good deal to say about the importance of being gospel people.
Paul’s letter to the Romans, for example, is a New Testament book all about the gospel and about being gospel people. In the first 11 chapters, Paul lays out the ‘gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures’ (1:1–2). It is good news ‘concerning his Son’ (1:3), the Last Adam (5:12–21), our only hope. And it is good news concerning ‘the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood’ (3:24–25). In Romans, we read that: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;’ (3:10–12).
Ukraine orphans: ‘A dramatic and terrifying escape’
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
The Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) is a supporter of the Grace Shelter, an orphanage run by Grace Church (Baptist) in Odessa, a port on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, since 2004.
Fifty-three children, aged from about three to 18, and their ‘orphan parents’ lived there. The site also hosted a ‘transition house’, which provided a number of small apartments for young adults for a couple of years whilst learning to become independent.
Understanding Ramadan
Alan Hallmart
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
The UK has become much more multicultural in past 60 years. In 1961, Muslims made up approximately 0.1% of the UK population, today it stands at approximately 5.2% or around 3.4 million, increasing the likelihood that they will become our friends, neighbours and colleagues.
Ramadan is a time of increased focus on growing spiritually closer to Allah and as such is a great opportunity to start a faith conversation with our Muslim friends.
Don’t hide! Do women need to talk about theology more?
Martha-Margaret Cotten
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
In my day-to-day interactions, it is rare to find women discussing theology, ecclesiology, the state of the current evangelical church, missions, or really anything vital to the well-being of the church.
Our conversations revolve mainly around two subjects: our children – how we will educate them, what they are eating, if they are sleeping, and our husbands and their jobs. If we are in a close and healthy group, we may intermittently discuss our walk with Christ, spiritual growth, or struggles. But, at least in my experience, those are few – and even in them, true theological discussions are highly uncommon.
HK: mission fear
Peter Morrison
Date posted: 1 Nov 2020
Christian missions from across the world, which are based in Hong Kong, may be forced out, it is feared.
There is an increasing ‘climate of fear’ in the former colony, according to a missionary speaking under a pseudonym to Evangelicals Now.
news in brief
Evangelical Presbyterians thankful for Oxford growth
It has been standing room only at times for Oxford Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) as it returned to in-person Sunday morning services after 83 weeks online.
The church, which has held its 5pm services in person through most of the pandemic, has given thanks for the many new people, including couples, students and families, it has seen. Last November, the church held its first ever Thanksgiving celebration since its initial planting four years ago.
Jewish openness prompts new outreach
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
International Mission
to
Jewish People
(IMJP) is to step up its efforts to reach and
share the gospel with Jewish people living
in London, the result of a discernible new
openness among some to hear and receive
the good news.
One
such person was Simon, a young
Jewish punk rock singer. Befriended by an
IMJP missionary, he revealed how tough he
was finding lockdown. The missionary talked
about the hope he had in Jesus, Simon accepted
a copy of John’s Gospel and the two are now
having regular one-to-one Bible studies.
New hope in Hull
Hull 2030 Steering Group
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Around 50 members of more
than
ten
different churches have met at
Jubilee
Church Hull to celebrate all that God has
been doing since October 2018.
The vision of Hull 2030, which began
then, is to pray and work together to see 20
healthy gospel-centred churches planted in
Hull by 2030; as well as to encourage church
revitalisation and gospel co-operation.
Jerusalem: Jewish people told of Jesus
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP) is organising evangelistic coach tours in order to reach Jewish Holocaust survivors with the gospel.
An increased openness among Jewish people to hear about Jesus as Messiah means that hundreds of Jewish people are now regularly joining IMJP’s Bible tours, where they visit sites in the Holy Land which have a particular significance in the story, life, and claims of Jesus.
Marking 160 years of Christian service in an Arab city
Mireia Prats Llivina
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
The Nazareth Trust is one of the largest Scottish Christian organisations, the third-largest employer in Nazareth and one of the largest Christian organisations in Israel.
We are a diverse organisation with individuals from different backgrounds working together. Our story traces its roots back to 1861 when Dr Vartan, a freshly graduated Armenian doctor and devoted Christian, opened the first clinic in Ottoman Galilee.
‘I fear Christendom has given much effort to hiding and ignoring iniquities we have known about…’
Diane Langberg
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
In recent years, we who call ourselves Christians have been speaking and writing about topics like ‘abuse in the church’, ‘cruelty in the sanctuary’ and the dangers that can be found in ‘God’s house’. It seems that the place God designed to be a refuge for His people has instead, at times, become a den of thieves.
These descriptions are what we call an oxymoron – statements that are a combination of contradictory words and incongruous elements. Think about this now common phrase: ‘abuse in Christian organisations’. These words should take our breath away and cause up to weep. Sadly, they often result in scrambling for ways to hide or ignore the abuse so that the ‘Christian’ organisation can proceed undisturbed. We have forgotten God’s word to the young boy Samuel. When called by God, Samuel responded: ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’ God told him that he was about to bring judgment on Eli’s house forever for the iniquity he knew … and did not rebuke’ (1 Sam. 3:13).
Target may be exceeded
Davy Ellison
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
April 2022 marks the half-way point of a
Ten Year Vision for the Irish Baptist College
(IBC).
As of this year, IBC has been in existence
for 130 years. Originating in Dublin in 1892,
it moved to Belfast in 1963 and since 2003
has been
located
in
the
lush countryside
near Moira. The College’s primary focus has
always been to serve the Irish church context;
even so, graduates have served on all the
inhabited continents of the globe.
Meeting Frank Schaeffer – atheist son of Francis
Luke Barrs
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Frank Schaeffer (not to be confused with his father Francis) titled his memoir Crazy for God with the helpful subtitle How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.
His writing is engaging and thought-provoking, especially for myself as a Christian father and pastor. His father, Francis Schaeffer, was a much-beloved Christian thinker who utilised contemporary music, art history, and philosophy to answer the questions of his day. He was truly countercultural in the way he wrote and lived.
Russia: a new spiritual awakening
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Evangelicals Now is regularly privileged to come across much faithful gospel witness by often small and (humanly-speaking) under-resourced evangelical ministries in sometimes far-flung areas of the world. The GoodWORD Partnership (GWP), founded by Blair Carlson in Minneapolis in 2005, is one of those.
Blair coaches national church leaders in local evangelism, guiding them with their outreach, including preparation and follow-up within local churches. He has just returned from Russia and Poland, where GWP helped lead a major evangelism training conference, the Forum for Evangelism in Russia, which is now in its fifth year. Blair spoke to Evangelicals Now afterwards:
Beware of gospel-ending conversations
Jimmy Carr’s comedy is certainly not to everyone’s taste: he has built his career on telling risky one-liners.
In his Netflix show His Dark Materials (the clue is in the name), he played with the idea of career-ending jokes, and one such joke may have proved his point.