Rethink your church strategy
Ian Buchanan
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
Ian Buchanan recommends that we now need to think in terms of intergenerational ministry
I’ve been thinking about 20th-century church growth logic.
Latvia: battling the sex trade
Ruth Firth
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
Freedom 61 is a Christian organisation based in Latvia’s capital city, Riga, and is an initiative of Youth With A Mission (YWAM).
Taking its name from Isaiah 61.1, Freedom 61’s mission is to proclaim freedom to victims of human trafficking, freedom to men who are buying women for sex, and also to protect the freedom of those who are at risk of being trafficked.
UCCF: summer travels
Angeline Liles
Date posted: 1 Sep 2015
Each summer UCCF sends teams of Christian
Union (CU) students from all over Britain as
a tangible expression of one of the core values
of being generous in world mission.
Some teams remain in British towns working alongside local churches in their outreach
to communities, while others travel further
afield. During June and July this year, eight
UCCF summer teams headed to places like
Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine and Slovakia, to
join alongside the CU movements in those
countries. Our prayer is that God has used
these summer teams powerfully to bring the
nations to praise him.
FFM: 100
The Fellowship of Faith for the Muslims (FFM) is celebrating their centenary anniversary.
This prayer movement began at the Keswick Convention in 1915, inspired by a challenging address by Dr Samuel Zwemer, the missionary speaker that year. Started during WWI, at a time when little was known about the Muslim world by most Christians in the West, it soon led to hundreds of Christians around the world committing themselves to daily intercessory prayer for Muslims, with branches in different countries.
A new vision for the Fens
Anne Roberts
Date posted: 1 Sep 2015
September 11–12 sees a new initiative in
rural Norfolk much in need of life-changing
Bible teaching.
‘Word on the Wash’ is a weekend conference
hosted by Terrington St Clements Parish
Church, near Kings Lynn. The Fens and the area
around the Wash may not seem like a dramatic mission field and it is not served by many
major roads, but there is a real spiritual need.
Nigeria: eye-opening visit
Paul & Christine Perkin
Date posted: 1 Sep 2015
Christians
in Northern Nigeria use
the
word
‘Crises’ in the same way that the
word
‘Troubles’ was used
in Northern
Ireland of a terrorist attack or other act of
sectarian violence.
‘Have you heard there was another Crisis
yesterday
in Kanu
(or Kaduna or
Jos)?’
means children were abducted, or a church
was torched, a pastor was killed, or a bomb
exploded in a market.
Rugby World Cup outreach
Tim Howlett
Date posted: 1 Sep 2015
From mid-September to the end of October, thousands of people will be following with interest the Rugby World Cup in England and Wales. There will be 47 matches at 12 different venues before the final is played at Twickenham on 31 October.
United Beach Missions has produced 100,000 rugby-themed gospel leaflets (written by Roger Carswell) with the aim to distribute as many as possible outside the grounds on match days.
Switzerland: gospel kiosk
As a land-locked country, Switzerland doesn’t seem the most obvious place for United Beach Missions to operate.
But in the first fortnight of July, thousands of people visit Montreux for the world famous International Jazz Festival. The ‘Kiosque Biblique’ is a permanent small wooden chalet, built in 1965, situated along the lake front and open from March to October each year. It is owned by the local Christian bookshop and run by volunteers. The kiosk sells drinks, postcards and souvenirs, but its main purpose is to sell Bibles and Christian books in many languages. Everybody who buys something is offered a free leaflet about the Christian faith in their own language.
Where’s the Scottish Church?
Andy Hunter
Date posted: 1 Jul 2015
Andy Hunter investigates the causes of spectacular spiritual decline north of the border
Christian identification in Scotland has now fallen below that in England.
Africa: radio training
Roger Cook
Date posted: 1 Jul 2015
Nyankunde is a small town near the Ugandan border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which I visited in 1989 on my very first trip to Africa.
In March I was responding to a request for training and technical help from a young man who has started a radio station to bring a ‘message of reconciliation’ to this war-torn area.
Field work
Ray Porter
Date posted: 1 Jun 2015
Book Review
MISSION MATTERS
Essays on the Theory, Practice and Contexts
of Mission
Read review
Nones on the rise
Dr James Emery White
Date posted: 1 Jul 2015
Martin Salter interviews Dr James Emery White for en
James Emery White is senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and founder of Serious Times, a ministry which explores the intersection of faith and culture and hosts ChurchandCulture.org. Recently he authored the book The Rise of the Nones about people with no faith.
Islamic State militant turns to Christ
Religion Today
Date posted: 1 Jul 2015
An Islamic State militant has reportedly converted to Christianity after dreaming of a ‘man in white’, who he believed was Jesus, it was reported in early June.
The ISIS fighter had killed many Christians before the dream, and had confessed that he ‘actually enjoyed’ killing the Christians.
A little adrift
Barbara Sherwood
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
Book Review
HEART OF A LIONESS
Sacrifice, Courage and Relentless Love
Among the Children of Uganda
Read review
A little gem
Karen Soole
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
Book Review
A CHRISTIAN'S POCKET GUIDE TO LOVING
THE OLD TESTAMENT
One Book, One God, One Story
Read review
Guildford: King’s Church
King’s Church Guildford
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
It was with great joy that the members and supporters of King’s Church Guildford met on 9 May for a Service of Thanksgiving and Commissioning.
Around 150 people from near and far gathered in the Boxgrove Primary School hall, where the church meets every Sunday afternoon, to give thanks to God for his great goodness in the early months of the establishing and development of the church. It was also an opportunity to pray for and commission the leadership of the church and in particular the pastor.
Dr Montagu Barker 1934 –2015
Professor David Cranston
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
Monty Barker was born in Glasgow on 12
March 1934. After studying classics he
turned to a career in medicine, training at St
Andrews and Dundee.
In 1954 he was diagnosed with TB meningitis and for one month was expected to die. He
recovered and a career in psychiatry followed,
partly though the advice of a senior college
who told him ‘You don’t have to be bonkers to
become a psychiatrist’. He was appointed as a
consultant in Bristol, where junior staff and
medical
students
found him an excellent
teacher, although at times quite intimidating.
A building project?
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
Dear en,
I plan to update my 2007 book Building for the Gospel: A handbook for the visionary and the terrified. It is written for churches which are exploring the possibility of a building project.
Syria: rescuing Christians
The Times / en
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
The generosity of British Christians who saved a penniless Jewish child from Nazi-occupied Austria has prompted support for a rescue mission to save Christians from death at the hands of Islamic State.
Lord Weidenfeld arrived on a Kindertransport train in Britain in 1938 with only a few shillings in his pocket. Now aged 94, he is helping Barnabas Fund to rescue up to 2,000 Christian families from Syria and Iraq and resettle them elsewhere.
Japan: Hiroshima and humanity
JEB
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
In July I found myself in the city of Hiroshima in Japan.
This August sees the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on this city from the US bomber named Enola Gay. There is now a Peace Park at the site under where the weapon was detonated 600m above the city. The museum has a scale model where the bomb is represented as a small ‘sun’ – which in some respects it was – exploding in the air at 8.15am on the morning of 6 August 1945. There will no doubt be ceremonies to mark the anniversary of this ghastly event, which in many ways sadly marks the advent of ‘the nuclear age.’
A time to plant
Matthew Mason
Date posted: 1 Aug 2015
Why is British soil unproductive for the gospel? How can we not lose heart? At St Paul’s Hammersmith on 25 June, The Planting Collective – a partnership of Acts 29, Co-Mission, and the FIEC – heard Tim Keller and John Piper offer answers at their first biennial conference, ‘A Time to Plant’.
It was thrilling to see 400 delegates from across the UK, Europe, Africa and America. 25 years ago, church planting in Britain was unusual. Now, many churches are being planted, in villages and cities, reaching young professionals, the urban poor, immigrant communities and middle England. It was also encouraging to be reminded that there is no mystique to planting. Most delegates and seminar presenters were ordinary pastors of ordinary churches. The central things are prayer, God’s Word, love for people, godly lives and a heart for the lost.
Nepal: shaken to the core
Paul Barnes
Date posted: 1 Jun 2015
‘We are expecting a massive earthquake someday.’
A Christian leader told me this when I visited Kathmandu a couple of years ago. Nobody knew when, but they knew it was coming: the seismologists predicted it.
Soul provider on track
Railway Mission / London City Mission
Date posted: 1 May 2015
The UK’s rail chaplaincy service, providing
pastoral support
to rail staff and British
Transport Police officers, has from early April
been provided solely by the Railway Mission.
Its partner organisation, London City
Mission, has moved resources from workplace
settings in order to focus on the least reached
in the capital – those in poverty and on the margins. The two Christian charities, both
established in the 19th century, have worked
closely together for many years to provide a
confidential
listening ear and meaningful
advice to people at all levels of the industry.
The Railway Mission plans to take on an
additional two chaplains by the summer.
