John Stott’s right hand
Frances Whitehead was John Stott’s secretary and played a crucial role in his life. EN carries a slice of her upcoming biography
The staffing for John Stott’s global operation was modest, as was its office space.
TCKs: the third dimension
Alan Hewerdine on how missionary kids can enhance churches and Christian Unions
The 3D science-fiction movie Gravity won seven Oscars at this year’s awards ceremony.
Mission: no new crisis
Ray Porter
Date posted: 1 Jan 2013
Where is mission going? This is the question that Thorsten Prill asked in his three articles in the August to October 2012 issues of EN.
And it’s a vital question. The big trends in global mission are exciting and challenging. Global South churches are fast becoming key players in mission sending. Western Europe is once more being seen as a vital mission field. Numbers of churches in the UK are engaging directly in mission, sometimes by-passing the traditional mission agency route.
Steve Metcalf 1927 – 2014
Dr Ronald Clements
Date posted: 1 Aug 2014
Steve Metcalf, OMF International missionary to Japan for 38 years and a pastor of the
Japanese Christian Fellowship, London,
died on June 7, aged 86.
As a teenager Steve was interned by the
Japanese,
following
their occupation of
north China, during
the Second World
War. In his first
internment camp Steve
made a personal commitment to Christ. In
a
second camp at Weifang, Shandong
Province, Steve met
the Olympic gold-medallist, Eric Liddell, who had a profound
influence on his life.
EMA: Barbican block-buster
JEB
Date posted: 1 Aug 2014
July 8-10 saw the second year of the experiment to relocate the Evangelical Ministers’ Conference to London’s Barbican Centre.
It is a venue with lots of space and dignity about it, and though many people loved the buzz of the old days the acres of room at the Barbican makes it a much better experience than playing sardines at St Helen’s. However, going for a well-used secular venue does have it’s difficulties. The Barbican had double-booked (with Sir Simon Rattle I was told) and so EMA had to be deferred two weeks from its original place in the calendar. This was reflected in the slightly fewer numbers who attended. That was a shame because these were great conference days.
CE for prisons worldwide
Christianity Explored Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2014
Christianity Explored Ministries (CEM) announced in June a major new link up with Prison Fellowship International (PFI) where the Christianity Explored course will form a key part of PFI’s strategy of taking the gospel to prisoners throughout the world, with two pilot projects launched in Nigeria and South Africa.
PFI was founded in 1979. Its network of 45,000 volunteers currently undertakes monthly prison ministry with 2million inmates in 3,700 prisons in 127 countries. There are an estimated 10 million inmates in 22,000 jails across the world. The Prisoner’s Journey, PFI’s new, three-strand evangelism programme (of which Christianity Explored is the core part) aims to reach 1 million of these prisoners with the gospel by 2020.
Operation Trojan Horse?
Sam Soloman looks into the deeper implications of the Ofsted report into the Birmingham schools
It was disclosed that there was a programme of Islamisation going on in some Birmingham schools.
Why he hates the Reformation
Leonardo de Chirico gives an insight into the Pope’s thinking
Friendly. Appreciative. Always wanting to stress commonalities and to lay aside differences.
Scotland: which future?
Andy Hunter reports on the SOLAS debate on Scottish independence which took place at Charlotte Chapel, Edinburgh on June 11
All sides of this debate are agreed on one thing.
At the school gate
Karen Scott
Date posted: 1 Jun 2014
Book Review
ORDINARY MUM, EXTRAORDINARY MISSION:
Sharing God’s Love in Everyday Life
Read review
What in the world are we doing?
Michael Prest encourages the UK church to get out more!
World mission is not exactly having a heyday in the UK church.
NEW CAPITAL INVESTMENT!
Richard Perkins
Date posted: 1 May 2014
The Antioch Plan is a new church planting initiative for London.
It’s been launched by Co-Mission, the cross-denominational church planting network run by Richard Coekin. This exciting development is an attempt to gather and plant ‘house church’-sized congregations across the wide variety of Greater London’s geography. Their objective is to recruit, train and deploy a cohort of ten to 15 pioneer church planters and fund them over a three-year period. And they’ve been given £1 million to finance it.
UBM wins through
en staff
Date posted: 1 Jun 2014
After 40 years of beach mission work at Lyme Regis, United Beach Mission (UBM) are happy that in the Spring of this year they were granted a further three years to run the children’s summer club after a challenge by a local councillor, over the past two years, put the work under threat.
Councillor Mark Gage, who in his profile on the Lyme Regis Town Council website puts a priority area for development as ‘youth facilities’, expressed concerns about UBM’s work with children on the beach. In the local paper, Tim Howlett, UBM’s executive officer, was clear that families are made aware of the Christian nature of the work of UBM and its aim to share the good news of Jesus, encouraging families to be involved and that no children are encouraged to attend without the permission of their parents.
Cool Calvinism?
Matthew Cox
Date posted: 1 Jun 2014
Book Review
THE NEW CALVINISM CONSIDERED:
A personal and pastoral assessment
Read review
Future servants meet up
Ryan Burton King
Date posted: 1 Jun 2014
From April 4–6 a group of around 70
young people met for a weekend on the site
of All Nations Christian College
in
Hertfordshire to consider ways of getting
involved in evangelism and mission.
This annual event of the Grace Baptist
Churches
in
South East England
for
Christians aged 15-25, celebrated its tenth
anniversary with moving times of worship,
helpful workshops, excellent Bible teaching,
and lots of opportunities for fellowship.
Zambia: full speed ahead
Daniel Bullock
Date posted: 1 Jul 2014
As we move into a Jubilee year celebrating 50 years of independence we are seeing wonderful things happening here in Zambia.
In November 2013 the Lord provided all of the funds to finish the OM training centre. The training centre will continue to grow the work of training future African missionaries. Construction is now at full speed with over 70 workers each day. We are building lots of accommodation, an office block, classrooms and a main hall as well as the skills training centre and bookshop which have already been completed.
news in brief
Egypt: arrested
A Christian man has been arrested following complaints by Muslim neighbours that he was using his home as a church without a permit, it was reported in May.
The 55-year-old man from Minya in Upper Egypt, where Christians are particularly vulnerable to persecution, was arrested once before, in 2011, for the same offence. Every church building in Egypt requires a permit, but these are notoriously difficult to obtain and the Christian community has a woeful lack of places to meet for worship.
Nigeria: David Cameron gets it right
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Jul 2014
On Sunday June 29, Canterbury Cathedral hosted a service of Celebration and Thanksgiving, marking the 150th anniversary of the consecration of Samuel Ajayi Crowther in the Cathedral as Bishop of the Niger.
Bishop Crowther had been a slave and was made the first Anglican black bishop, of the Niger. He was an evangelist and church planter and promoted ‘wholistic mission’ especially combatting the slave trade. His slogan was ‘The Bible and the Plough’. The tragedy was that the Anglican church worldwide had no further non-white bishops until Bishop Azariah in India in 1912. Crowther, who was a distinguished linguist with a DD from Oxford, was too much of a threat.
Keswick – ‘Really?’
Keswick has announced a more detailed programme for this year’s Convention, as new chief executive Jonathan Lamb settles into the role.
The Convention, which runs from July 12 – August 1 in the Lake District town, is exploring some of the deep questions of life, and has invited apologists Ravi Zacharias, Chris Sinkinson and Roger Carswell, and Bible teachers Vaughan Roberts, Ian Coffey and many others to preach. The Convention also aims to make its programme helpful to Christians who bring non-believing friends and relatives with them in its third week.
Passion for life – in the swing
Sunita Selvarajan tells us what’s been happening as churches have reached out
Months of prayer and preparation has seen Christians across the country share the good of Jesus with neighbours, colleagues, friends and family.
Letter from America
Meet the president!
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 May 2014
Josh Moody interviews David S. Dockery, the newly appointed president of Trinity International University.
This university in Illinois, USA, includes Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where Don Carson is a professor.
