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Mission and music

February and March seem to be a big time of year for missions. Churches, University and School Christian Unions all over the country put on talks, events, dinners, and 'grill-a-Christians' to get their guests of wide-ranging tastes in earshot of the gospel.

Accompanying those events, or even integral to them, will be the use of music. Whether in the background during the event, or up front in a classical concert or jazz night, music can play a big part in breaking down cultural barriers so that the culturally uncomfortable message of the gospel can be heard. Many great evangelists have used music to great effect. Dwight Moody and Billy Graham are the two most famous examples.

‘Mission needs experienced people.’ ‘Churches should give to mission sacrificially, and that means sending their pastors.’

In the beginning…

uccf:thechristianunions has always held the cross at the centre of its ministry. It was in 1910 that the first Christian Union (Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union) disaffiliated from the dominant Christian student movement of the time (the SCM) because of the SCM’s liberal interpretation of key gospel doctrines — notably they did not hold as central the atoning blood of Jesus.

The Inter-Varsity Fellowship (now known as uccf:thechristianunions) was formed shortly after. ‘It was only a few months later that the realisation dawned on us that if a CICCU was a necessity in Cambridge, a union of the same kind was also a necessity in every university of the world’ (F. Donald Coggan, Christ and the colleges, p.71).

In the evangelical student world, theology can hardly be said to have a good name. ‘Ivory Tower’, ‘God in a box’ — such are the slogans used to describe and dismiss the rigorous thinking-through of biblical truth.

Added to this, the secular academy has had a long history of antagonism towards any place for personal belief within its theology and religious studies departments, providing a significant challenge for any evangelical students. So, Dr. Bruce Winter, Warden and Director of Tyndale House, writes:

How much do you know about the computer games that teenage boys will be asking for this Christmas?

If you were lucky enough to own a ZX80 games console in the late 70s then you were probably the envy of all your friends. Oh the excitement of the downhill skiing game! The joy of avoiding huge white square pixels with your cursor as they hurtled towards you at increasing speeds! Perhaps you even had a brilliant top score in the game of ‘pong’, the table tennis game with the rewarding ‘beep’ as the ball was successfully batted back over the electronic net. What satisfaction on a rainy afternoon!

September is an important time for students! It marks the end of summer and for many it’s the beginning of a new journey as they leave home — often for the first time.

It was also a key time for CU leaders across the UK as they gathered together for Forum 2005 — UCCF’s national CU leaders’ training conference. Over 400 CU leaders, 60 CU Staff Workers and 50 Relay volunteers attended this year’s event at the Quinta Conference Centre, Oswestry, from September 5 to 9. From Bangor to Bognor they were all united in heart and mind with a common purpose and vision — the evangelisation of our universities and colleges.

‘Jesus’s instruction for us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for the harvest tells us that the need of the day is to get as many young men and women as possible into full-time paid gospel ministry’ reflects a prevailing culture among ‘our kind of evangelicals’.

Our emphasis on getting ‘good people’ into our apprenticeships, ministry training schemes and equivalents, and in turn sending them to theological college and into ‘ministry’, speaks volumes about our priorities — for our churches and for the individuals concerned.

I am not a doctor, a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I have been a patient. What I share is simply one person’s journey with depression.

I do not pretend to be a medical expert or to understand the working of the mind. However, like every other individual, including medical workers themselves, I battle against human frailty of one sort or another. For some people that may mean the limitation of physical weakness, for others it can be emotional or mental hurdles that may seem insurmountable.

It’s 100 years since Korean revival prayer meetings began. Of all places, its roots are found deep inside North Korea. One of AsiaLink’s staff went inside this most persecuted of countries.

Sinuiju doesn’t have much to commend it. This once bubbly logging town turned industrial community now has few signs of life. Its buildings are colourless, its people exhausted. Our train crawled alongside rolling stock that looked like it had been bombed.

I’ve got about an hour before my husband returns from work and we can watch the next episode in the fourth series of the hit serial ‘24’.

The first three episodes have set in place a nail-biting hostage scenario that only the mighty Jack Bauer of the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit could cope with, and I’m desperate to know how it all plays out.

Dr. Helen Roseveare, now in her 80th year worked with the Heart of Africa Mission during the 1950s and 60s. Her autobiography Give me this Mountain is a Christian missionary classic. With the publication of her new book Digging Ditches, EN was able to get an interview with her.

EN: What part of Africa did you serve in as a missionary?

God has been at work in the South East of England. Over the last two years the Chinese Christian Fellowship in the town of Guildford has seen around 40 people come to Christ. One of the leaders tells their story …

God has a purpose for the Chinese people. We have a dream, that one day the land of China will not only be filled with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also be a place of mission to the whole world.

Evangelist Roger Carswell sees many churches in his work. Here he tells of a recent mission and some of its lessons.

One of the changes in evangelistic approach over recent years is the development of event-based, and targeted evangelistic meetings.

So much of the book of Acts is so encouraging that it comes as quite a shock to see Luke including the closing verses of chapter 15, where we read of a heated dispute between Paul and Barnabas.

Yet we need a realistic appreciation of how easy it is for the closest of friends in the leadership of a local church not only to disagree and fall out, but to divide with bitterness and go their own separate ways. And the Holy Spirit does so much more than show us the dangers of such division. He shows us the underlying attitudes that can cause divisions to arise over such practical issues as the suitability of a young man like John Mark for responsibility in an outreach venture.