GBM: who will go?
JEB
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
Overseas missionaries are still very much
needed. The title of this year’s conference of
the Grace Baptist Mission was ‘Here Am I,
Send Me’. No punches pulled there!
The meetings took place this year at the
Friends Meeting House next
to Euston
Station in London on Saturday 29 October.
It is a convenient place to travel to and
people came from all over the country in
their hundreds to this challenging and very
uplifting day. There was a plethora of seminars
given by serving missionaries from Brazil,
the Philippines, Poland, France and central
Asia, as well as reports concerning radio
work and outreach to Asian communities in various cities in Britain.
Adèle Ellis 1936 –2016
Ray Porter
Date posted: 1 Jan 2017
Adèle MacBeath was set on an academic
career in the early 1960s. An MA graduate
from Glasgow University with a double
first, she then completed an MLitt on the
Italian
author
Lampedusa
and
had
embarked on doctoral studies in Rome
when God intervened to redirect her life
into missionary service.
She had fallen in love with David Ellis, a
student at the Bible Training Institute, where
her father, Andrew MacBeath, was Principal.
Christianity without apology?
Kevin DeYoung
Date posted: 1 Jan 2017
Kevin DeYoung asks if it is biblical for Christians to defend their rights
Christians in the West are familiar with apologetics as an intellectual or worldview exercise.
Repeal Abortion Act
Donald Morrison
Date posted: 1 Jan 2017
Dear Sirs,
Back on a very dark and dismal October
day in 1967 one of the worst-ever laws in this
country, the Abortion Act, was passed by
Parliament. In 2017, if the Lord tarries, this
dreadful law will be 50 years old. While pitiless and heartless pro-abortion activists will
be celebrating
this anniversary,
there are
countless numbers across the UK who will be
lamenting. They are craving, and earnestly
praying,
for
the day when
the Abortion
(1967) Act will be forever aborted. And no
wonder, when one considers the appalling
statistic that, up to the end of 2015, nearly
8.5 million babies have been aborted across
the UK. Enough is enough.
The Third Degree
Carols
Kate Duncan
Date posted: 1 Jan 2017
‘I've got some questions’, Rachel began.
‘I think we can take things to another level with the carol service.’
TO A CITY IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Steve Wilcox
Date posted: 1 Jan 2017
Throughout 2017, the city of Hull, or Kingston-upon-Hull, will be in the national spotlight.
This is because Hull has been chosen as the national ‘City of Culture’ for the year – an honour and privilege which the city has taken to heart.
A sense of place
George Moody
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
George Moody gets us thinking about the meaning of locality
Over 40% of buildings on the English Heritage at Risk Register are churches.
Peru: jam and mission
Latin Link
Date posted: 1 Sep 2015
Homemade jam is bringing integral mission
to Quechua communities of Cusco, it was
reported in early August.
For the past four years, ATEK, an organisation that seeks to strengthen local churches through the use of Quechua Scriptures,
has provided training in needy communities
of Paruro province.
Thailand: needs of Grace International School
Ann Webb
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
Grace (GIS) is an amazing school for missionary children in Northern Thailand that was set up in 2004 by a group of parents who wanted to keep missionaries on the field.
They recognised a need for a good, affordable education for missionary children, that would enable their parents to stay serving in Asia, to support and care for their children, third culture kids with different needs. Grace is more than a school, to many it is family.
Highland conference
Andrew Allen
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
The 64th Free Church School in Theology
was held 5 – 8 September at Carronvale
House, Larbert.
As in previous years, it was an opportunity
for rekindling friendship and fellowship with
other ministers and committed Christians
from across the UK and Ireland.
news in brief
Azerbaijan: Bible society
After various attempts over more than 20 years, the State Committee in Azerbaijan registered a Bible society in September.
The Bible Society will have to subject all its publications to the State Committee for the compulsory prior censorship of all literature about religion produced in or imported into Azerbaijan. Publications will only be allowed to be distributed at state-approved venues. Bibles are still banned or removed during raids by the authorities.
Global South & GAFCON collaboration
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
Delegates from 16 Anglican Provinces attended the sixth Global South conference at All Saints Cathedral, Cairo from 3-8 October, along with guests from Australia, Canada and England.
They issued a conference communiqué which gives strong counsel to the Church of England and foreshadows development of a structure to sustain orthodox Anglicanism. The Primates Councils of the Global South and GAFCON issued a further joint com-muniqué concerning same-sex unions.
We’ll see him at the Re-Org
Gavin Dickson
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
Gavin Dickson, SASRA Army Scripture Reader with some thoughts for Remembrance Sunday
There is a saying in the army when someone dies: ‘We’ll see him at the Re-Org’.
Prisons: from despair to hope
Glynn Jones
Date posted: 1 Oct 2016
Glynn Jones challenges us to get involved with the mission field in UK prisons
The facts of hopelessness for those in prison are stark.
The Third Degree
Great Forum
Kate Duncan
Date posted: 1 Oct 2016
I’m shivering in a tent!
I’m in a Shropshire field surrounded by over 1,000 students. It is Forum, UCCF’s national training conference for Christian Union (CU) leaders, and it’s hugely exciting.
S. Sudan: school re-opens
Morning Star News
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
On 14 November a judge in eastern Sudan
ordered a Christian school, that had been
taken over by government officials, to resume
classes under the prior Christian administration, according to the headmaster.
The Appeal Court
for Administrative
Affairs in Madani, Al Jazirah state, thus cancelled an order by the Madani commissioner
calling
for the closure of the Evangelical
Basic School, which armed police along with
civilians from Khartoum and elsewhere had
seized on 24 October, said the Revd Samuel
Suleiman Anglo, headmaster at the school.
Niger: YWAM kidnap
World Watch Monitor
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
The kidnap of a pioneering American missionary on 14 October is a ‘terrible tragedy’ for
the communities he served for 24 years,
according to the local mayor, and it has
raised security concerns among the country’s missionary community.
Jeff Woodke, 55, who worked for a branch
of the US-based Youth With a Mission, was
abducted by unknown assailants from the
town of Abalak
in northern Niger. They
killed two guards and he was taken to eastern Mali where Mujao – a radical Islamic
group – have a stronghold.
Letter from America
Trumped
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
I am a ‘legal alien’, I carry a Green Card and all our children have been born here, but I cannot vote in America.
With that in mind and also being a pastor, it is inimical, unwise, and probably unedifying for me to talk about party politics.
news in brief
Algeria: appeal hope
An Algerian Christian’s family appealed in October to the Algerian president for a pardon, after Slimane Bouhafs was convicted of ‘insulting Islam and the prophet Mohammed’ in posts he made on social media.
Bouhafs, who converted to Christianity in 1997, was sentenced to three years imprisonment on 6 September. He had shared someone else’s media posts. The family see the presidential pardon as the only possibly solution to set their father free as he is suffering with ill health and a Supreme Court appeal would take too long to come to court.
Demand for Bible app
Scripture Union
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
Children and schools in Blackpool are having to join waiting lists for Christian schools clubs as demand has far exceeded expectations for the groups based around Scripture Union’s award-winning app, Guardians of Ancora, it was reported in October.
The clubs, which run at lunchtimes and after school, identified Guardians of Ancora as the perfect fit to engage their target age ranges with biblical stories in a fun and relevant way. Scripture Union commissioned the Guardians of Ancora project to help children grow in faith, in the digital space.
Purchased with blood
Tom Marcus
Date posted: 1 Oct 2016
Tom Marcus suggests the relevance of the story of the early Ugandan and English martyrs for today
To understand the African bishops’ stand on homosexual practice today, it is helpful to remember the heroic early days of the Ugandan church.
Tilehurst launch
Dan Dwelly
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
ChristChurch Tilehurst launched on 4 September, having first been established as a congregation from Carey Baptist Church in Reading.
Originally operating as a satellite congregation called Carey Westwood Farm, the work grew from about 30 people, including children, to about 60. In 2015, with the blessing of Carey, they began the process of establishing the new church.
