Living a life of reckless abandon
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Gary Clayton remembers five missionary martyrs and tells us of a new play about their story
Missionary Ed McCully wrote this to his friend Jim Elliot on 22 September 1950:
THE EUSTON SPACE CENTRE?
en staff
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Reach out. Build up. Send out.
A mission statement of ‘sharing the life-giving story of God with London and the world’ could seem overambitious to say the least, but with the use of a vast building in central London surrounded by people from all around the world, this Euston Church statement is wonderfully appropriate.
Gentle correction
Richard Coekin
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Dear Readers of en,
I was very grateful for the kind commendation of my new book Gospel DNA on page
25 of your May 2017 edition by Pastor Mark
Troughton.
I appreciate
that his warm
approval was only well meant, but it was sufficiently over-generous for me to feel obliged
to
comment.
I would
like
to openly
acknowledge
the obvious but
important
truths that the 30 Co-mission ministries in
London that he mentions (19 established
churches and various pioneer ministries) are
attributable a) to the extraordinary grace of
our living Lord growing his churches by his
living Word; and b) to the collective efforts
of many servant-hearted leaders and congregation members across London. I raise this
because we are clear throughout Co-mission
not only that we are daily dependent upon
God, but also that if we fail to give him the
glory he deserves we may rightly face his discipline. For ‘neither he who plants nor he
who waters is anything but only God who
gives the growth’ (1 Corinthians 3).
Iraq: Kurdish Bible done
Church Mission Society
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
A team of Bible translators in Kurdistan,
northern Iraq, working against the backdrop
of civil unrest and religious persecution, have
completed the first-ever translation of the
whole Bible into the Central Kurdish Sorani
language and launched it in April.
For eight years, mission partners have
worked alongside
indigenous Kurds and
other foreign nationals drafting text, checking names, terminology and style, and finally
checking
both
the Old
and New
Testaments so that they could be published together for the first time as the complete
Bible.
9 YEARS OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
Craig Dyer
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Did you hear about the Scotsman, the Englishman and the three Irishmen?
Well, no one is more amazed than them that, over the past nine years, around a million people in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan and now Congo have looked at Jesus in Mark’s Gospel using Christianity Explored (CE ). As with all gospel growth, it is the story of God at work in and through his people.
Wick’s missionary pastor
Mike Finnis
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Much-travelled pastor and missionary the Revd Gilbert McAdam started a new chapter of his life on 31 March, on the northern coast of Scotland with his wife Emily and their ten-year-old adopted daughter Claire from the Philippines.
Mr McAdam, 66, was inducted as minister of Wick Harbour Mission, answering the prayers of the church’s five woman members who had kept the cause alive since the death of their former pastor Jimmie Cormack in 2008.
Smuggling Bibles into China?
Steve Laverty
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
Steve Laverty with a salutary tale of his experience
26 October 2016 was the day the Chinese authorities arrested four Northern Irish lads for moving Bibles from Hong Kong (HK) into China. I was one of them.
news in brief
Australia: life upheld
The Australian state of Tasmania rejected a Bill to legalise euthanasia in May.
The legislation was defeated by 16 votes to eight in the lower house of the Tasmanian Parliament. It marks the third time in ten years that a euthanasia Bill has been defeated in the state.
The new Gretna Green?
Martin Ayers
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
On 8 June, the Scottish Episcopal Church voted at its General Synod to permit same-sex weddings in its churches.
The Scottish Episcopal Church (the SEC) is the Anglican Province in Scotland. A relatively small province, it ‘gave birth’ to the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA), by consecrating America’s first bishop.
Evangelical options
David Baker
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
Let’s consider some possible futures for Anglican evangelicals concerned about the Church of England.
Option 1: Remain and resist
This is the strategy from Lee Gatiss of Church Society, Bishop Rod Thomas and many others. In this view, the battle is not lost. As I write, the next bishops’ report on marriage and sexuality is awaited. Southwell bishop Paul Williams – who spoke at a Proclamation Trust conference a few years ago – says: ‘Whatever some would like to claim, the Church of England is and remains faithful to the teaching of Scripture on these matters…’ The new document ‘will be deeply rooted in and faithful to Scripture,’ he claims.
Get up and give it a go!
Mike Mellor
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
Mike Mellor with some motivation for evangelism
It was pioneer missionary C.T. Studd who asked in exasperated disbelief: ‘How can a man believe in Hell unless he throws away his life to rescue others from its torment?’
Welwyn: Open Day
Rachel Buckley
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
On 6 May, the European School of Biblical Studies, formally School of Biblical Studies, held its annual Open Day at Welwyn Evangelical Church.
About 200 people came to hear from this year’s students and from Dr Garry Williams, Director of the John Owen Centre. The theme Celebrating the Reformation not only reflected on this year being the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, but is also the subject on which Garry lectures at the School.
The Shack: re-inventing God
JEB
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
Revisiting William Paul Young’s book as the story comes to the cinema
Back in 2007 when the book by William Paul Young came out I can remember reading in the end-notes a rather impassioned plea from the author that his readers should pray that one day his story would be made into a movie.
New Zealand: Middle-earth at crossroads
Peter Riddell
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Some things will never change in New Zealand. The spectacular scenery in the South Island, so graphically captured in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, will remain for the benefit of future generations, as will the more subtle but equally appealing beauty of the country’s North Island.
Similarly, but less desirable, the country’s location on the Pacific Ring of Fire, prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, will remain for posterity.
Latin America
Alan Tower
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Dear en,
Thank you for your concern for historical perspective and a coverage of global mission issues. We refer to the article on Latin America in the April issue (p.10).
Awakening Latin America
Nathan Schmutz
Date posted: 1 Apr 2017
For the first half of the 20th century, Latin America was an almost exclusively Catholic continent. Though the gospel had been preached in Latin countries for decades, the local evangelical church hadn’t grown significantly. In 1970, only 4% of the population identified as evangelical and the continent was still considered a mission field. But this was about to change.
Operation Mobilisation started with an outreach of a few young students in Mexico, but the focus soon shifted towards Europe, the Muslim World and India. MV Logos, OM’s first ship, was already in service in those parts of the world when the prospect of a second ship opened the possibility for OM to return to Latin America in an impactful way.
A turning point in our society?
Paul Barnes
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Paul Barnes interviews Mike Overd and comments on the Street Preacher Movement
A new threshold was crossed for British justice in February.
standing together
Post-Christian Christianity
Graham Nicholls
Date posted: 1 May 2017
How does the church operate in an increasingly hostile culture which no longer assumes Christianity is essentially good?
That was the topic when around 75 people, mostly church leaders and theological students from across the whole of the UK and from widely different denominational groups came together in March for the biennial Affinity Theological Study Conference.
France: camp fire
World Watch Monitor
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Local churches in Dunkirk helped to evacuate terrified migrants on 10 April as a devastating fire spread through their camp in northern France.
La Linière camp in Grande-Synthe, just outside Dunkirk, housed an estimated 1,500 migrants, including a handful of Christian converts, but was reduced to ‘a heap of ashes’, a local official said. Afghan migrants reportedly began to set fire to the chipboard cabins in which the migrants lived and the fires quickly spread. Riot police intervened.
Life is Christ, death is gain
Peter Jensen
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Peter Jensen’s sermon from the thanksgiving service for Mike Ovey, at All Souls, Langham Place on 13 March
Here is the world’s stark truth: you are either alive or you are nothing.
Virtual ministry?
en staff
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
en looks at how we are being encouraged to utilise online resources in our churches
Everyone values high-quality resources.
Banner conference starts new life
JEB
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
A new page has been turned. For over 50
years the Banner of Truth ministers’ conference met at Leicester University. This year
(24-27 April) the venue changed.
Around 300 men gathered for the first
time at Yarnfield Park in Staffordshire. It is a
purpose-built conference centre and proved
to be rather a pleasant upgrade.
Did he say it?
Graeme Fairbairn
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Dear Sir,
I read with interest the article by John McLernon on mission strategy (en, May 2017); he presented well some of the challenges and competing claims that we experience as we aim to remain faithful to our calling to make disciples in a rapidly changing world.
