Exclusive: the untold story of Mozambique
Iain Taylor (BBC News / Zitamar News / Growing Hope)
Date posted: 1 May 2021
The human cost of the violence in northern Mozambique is laid bare in a number of eyewitness accounts of the fighting, and its aftermath, that Evangelicals Now has obtained from local Christians.
Several atrocities have recently taken place, with dozens of civilians being killed and at least 11,000 displaced after militants invaded Palma, Cabo Delgado on 24 March.
ten questions:
Alex Jacob
1. How did you become a Christian?
LCM gossips the gospel in midst of pandemic
London City Mission
Date posted: 1 Mar 2021
Covid makes it more important than ever for Christians to be gossiping the gospel, according to the London City Mission.
Graham Miller, Chief Executive of London City Mission says: ‘Lots of meetings have been closed, but the opportunities for conversations are still there.’
Astronaut broadcasts Scripture verses from space
Evangelical Focus
Date posted: 1 Mar 2021
A NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station has recently said that sunrises in space reminds him of a Bible verse from the Psalms.
Victor Glover, one of the seven crew members of the space station Expedition 64, posted two images of the sun shining just above Earth’s horizon on Instagram and Twitter.
Damnable heresy or useful tool?
Ray Porter, formerly Director of World Mission Studies at Oak Hill Theological College and Chair of Global Connections responds to the article ‘The contextualised gospel – delightful, doubtful or damnable’ published in the February issue of en.
The history of contextualisation has almost as many failures as successes. Dr Wells and his daughter have questioned some patterns of contextualisation that are embraced in mission circles today and suggested that they in fact represent ‘another gospel’.
The Bible in action
'It is a blessing to translate the Bible in my language'
Bryony Lines
Date posted: 1 Mar 2021
‘Ever since I tasted the goodness of the Lord, I have desired that my own people would come to know Him and His salvation,’ says Simon, whose name has been changed to keep him safe. ‘It has been such a blessing to be able to work on translating the Bible into my language.’
‘Before I became a Christian, I was going on with my life in the best way I knew how,’ continued Simon. ‘Although I am from a hunter-gatherer community, my family had moved from the interior villages of Kenya while I was young, and came to more of a mixed (multicultural) community.’
The contextualised gospel – delightful, doubtful, or damnable?
Tim Wells and Lois H.M. Wells
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
What is the gospel? That sounds like a pretty basic question that every Christian knows the answer to. But wait, what are your ‘go-to’ Bible verses if you were asked to sum up the key elements of the gospel? Take a minute to jot them down – we will return to them later.
The gospel, like the spectrum seen in a quality diamond, radiates an exquisite array of themes. Each of the four Gospels, for example, has its own unique emphasis on the person and work of Jesus: Matthew (Jesus as King), Mark (Jesus as Servant), Luke (Jesus as Man) and John (Jesus as God). They also record how our Saviour brought the good news to a kaleidoscope of cultures, classes, religious standings, genders and ages. But how much should this variety in the starting point of the hearer determine the nature of the gospel message presented to them?
40,000 view new video on Jesus
CEM
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
More than 40,000 people have viewed a beautifully-illustrated presentation of Jesus in its first month of being released.
What is Christianity? was created by Christianity Explored Ministries (CEM). Using rich imagery and a voiceover from Thabiti Anyabwile, it tells the story of human history. It’s the story of our creation by God and our rebellion against Him; the story of salvation found only in Jesus.
New leader for global group
Christian Today / ThomasSchirmacher.net
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
New Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), German theologian Thomas Schirrmacher, has begun work after being inaugurated.
The WEA was established in 1846 and works in 129 countries. It claims to represent 600 million evangelicals.
Christian medics rush to aid of boy and chimpanzee
Gary Clayton of the Mission Aviation Fellowship writes: For more than 75 years, MAF’s fleet of light aircraft has been flying patients from some of the world’s most hard-to-access areas to hospital.
Many MAF flights involve women facing pregnancy complications, accident victims or people wounded due to tribal conflict. Two, less typical, MAF medevacs involved a two-week-old chimpanzee and a ten-year-old boy.
Stark warning to Southern Baptists
Iain Taylor / Southern Baptist Convention
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
Departing President of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), J.D. Greear, has used his final message to the Executive Committee to demand that the church engages constructively with Critical Race Theory (CRT).
The talk coincided with the much-publicised decision of leading Bible teacher Beth Moore – a longstanding critic of Donald Trump – to quit the SBC, saying ‘I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists.’
Churches badly harmed by Equatorial Guinea blast
Iain Taylor / Evangelical Focus
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
More than 100 people were killed after a massive explosion in Equatorial Guinea (central West Africa) in March, with 600 injured and almost 300 in hospital. More than 60 people were rescued from under the rubble by the civil protection corps and the fire service.
Local Christians and churches were badly affected too, with a Baptist pastor (as yet unnamed) killed and several members of the Baptist Church of Bata killed or injured.
New leaders for CofE evangelicals
CEEC
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
Lis Goddard and Ed Shaw have become Co-Chairs of the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), it has been announced.
Ed Shaw is pastor of Emmanuel City Centre Church in Bristol, a congregation established in recent years via a Bishop’s Mission Order. He is also Director of Living Out – an organisation run by same-sex-attracted Christians setting out an orthodox, Biblical view of sexuality.
‘Billy Graham of Africa’ dies
Iain Taylor / godreports.com
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
Stephen Lungu, one of the great evangelists of recent times and revered as the ‘Billy Graham of Africa’, has died of coronavirus, aged 78.
Stephen grew up in pre-independence Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and was the product of a dysfunctional family, living on the streets and getting involved with street gangs.
Evangelical
church grows
in Spain
Iain Taylor / Evangelical Focus
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
New official data reveals that almost 2% of
the Spanish population now identifies as
Protestant or evangelical.
In
the 20 years
to 2018,
this group
multiplied eightfold, to become the fastest-growing denomination in the country. And
those evangelicals are now worshipping in well
over 4,200 churches across Spain, opening on
average 16 new churches a month.
evangelicals & catholics
Pope Francis, United Nations Chaplain?
Leonardo De Chirico
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
In observing the recent global activities of Pope Francis, the Argentinian philosopher Rubén Peretó Rivas asked whether Pope Francis aims at becoming the ‘Chaplain of the United Nations’.
His 2020 ‘universal’ initiatives indeed look like those of the United Nations in language, scope and content. While the encyclical ‘All Brothers’ reiterated the Roman Catholic universalism two (en, December 2020), other projects deserve to be mentioned in this respect.
New vision for North West
The North West Gospel Partnership (NWGP) exists to help churches work together to reach the North West with the gospel. The region has a population of over 7 million people and so the task is great and complex. In recent months the Trustees have been revisiting and reviewing the Partnership’s purpose, aims and strategy. Mark Pickles tells us more:
To reach even 10% of the population (700,000 people) we would need 7,000 churches (assuming an average membership of 100); at present we have about 100. Put like that, the sheer size of the task is overwhelming. We are committed to the three-fold task of church planting, church revitalising and church strengthening.
ten questions
David Norbury
1. How did you become a Christian?
New director for HOPE
Hope Together
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
Dr Rachel Jordan-Wolf has taken over from Roy Crowne as executive director to lead HOPE Together in the UK.
Rachel has worked closely with HOPE Together since 2010, when she was the Church of England’s National Mission and Evangelism Advisor.
Church planting: is the old method best?
Deiniol Williams
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
Church planting can sometimes seem like a relatively new phenomenon, but whether it is or not depends on what you mean by church planting.
A good friend and mentor of mine – who has planted two churches in France – believes that when Paul instructed Timothy to ‘do the work of an evangelist’ (2 Tim. 4:5), he was instructing him to plant churches. To evangelise – to make disciples of all nations (Mat 28:19) – is to see churches started. Church planting, in this sense of the term, is as old as the early church.
All Nations’ 90% IT cash boost
All Nations College
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
All Nations College has announced an ambitious plan to invest in technology for the College after a loss of £170,000 in expected income due to the pandemic.
They are budgeting £51,000 for a two-person team of ICT personnel that they say is needed. The scheme includes an ambitious new ‘Student Management System’ which will help All Nations to track and to manage all student data more effectively.
Skull plans to bring new life to Brighton’s dry bones
Association of Grace Baptist Churches (SE)
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
David Skull (aka Skully) has been serving Grace Church Guildford for the past 13 years. In July he will be moving with his wife Naomi and their four children to lead Grace Plant Brighton. He explains how this happened.
Back in 2012, Montpelier Place Baptist Church sadly closed. It represented a community of Christians who had been gathering in Brighton since 1834. The building was demolished in 2017, but we don’t believe this is the end of the story. Grace Plant Brighton is sowing the seeds of a new church in central Brighton in 2021.
Bishop Pat Harris 1934 – 2020
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
Bishop Pat Harris, former Bishop of Northern Argentina and of Southwell and Nottingham, and onetime Secretary of Partnership for World Mission for the Church of England died peacefully in December.
His family write: ‘Patrick was a man of deep faith, with strong convictions as a Christian since his Army days as a young officer. From there he went to Oxford to study law (at Keble College) where he was President of the Christian Union. After attending theological college (Clifton Theological College, Bristol), he was a curate at St Ebbe’s in Oxford from 1960-63.
