Ten questions with: Israel Oluwole Olofinjana
en staff
Date posted: 9 Jun 2025
Israel Oluwole Olofinjana is director of One People Commission, part of the Evangelical Alliance.
He is a Baptist minister and has led two multi-ethnic Baptist churches and an independent charismatic church. He is the founding director of Centre for Missionaries from the Majority World, a mission network initiative that provides cross-cultural training to reverse missionaries in Britain. He is a consultant to the executive team of Lausanne Europe, advising them on matters related to diaspora ministries in Europe.
the ENd word
From fed up to fed
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 9 Jun 2025
There was a time when I got a bit fed up with the 23rd psalm.
Admittedly, it’s not a great way to feel about a piece of Scripture, but I’d come to associate the psalm almost entirely with funerals of unbelievers. While an Anglican minister, before moving to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC), I conducted many such funerals, and the default hymn choice for the generation of non-churchgoers I was burying was Abide With Me and The Lord’s my Shepherd, the latter always sung to the tune of Crimond.
Four books to enthuse your family in worldwide mission
Catherine MacKenzie
Date posted: 8 Jun 2025
I am writing this article from a hotel room in Krakow, Poland where I am meeting international Christian publishers and missionaries from around the world.
We are a stone’s throw away from the Schindler factory made famous by the book Schindler’s Ark and the subsequent film Schindler’s List.
earth watch
Energy, emissions, and the choice of Boaz
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 8 Jun 2025
Energy, and how we produce it, is the key to a stable climate. Three quarters of emissions come from energy production. Get energy right, and we’ve broken the back of it. So, the latest Global Energy Review report from the highly regarded International Energy Agency is a vital health check. What’s happening to energy demand? How are we producing it? Does the arc of emissions bend toward zero?
According to the report, the answers to those questions are: one, it’s going up; two, increasingly from renewables; and three, either no or only slowly. Now, I know it’s hard to engage with numbers and percentages. So, here are just two headlines. In 2024, global energy demand rose by 2.2%. And carbon emissions rose by 0.8%. Behind those headlines is a mixed story. On the plus side, most of the growth came from wind and solar energy. In fact, 40% of all energy now comes from low carbon renewables and nuclear. But on the minus side, use of gas, oil and coal also rose, and carbon emissions are still going up, when we need them to be going down (fast).
safeguarding briefing
Why Matthew 18 doesn’t apply to spiritual abuse
Jules Loveland
Date posted: 8 Jun 2025
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt.18:15-17).
Matthew 18:15-17 is often the blueprint for resolving conflicts in church settings. It outlines a process:
South Asian interchange
Seeing spiritual realities?
Rani Joshi
Date posted: 7 Jun 2025
I don’t know about you, but I’ve walked through some difficult experiences in life – from losing my parents, broken relationships and financial trials, to trauma and health scares.
John 10:10 reminds us that we have an enemy who seeks to steal, kill and destroy. Yet Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. Time and time again, I see people held in bondage by trauma and sin. Although God has redeemed us, working out our salvation and discipleship is a continuous journey.
the pastor's toolkit
Church leaders, have you accidentally stopped leading?
Phil Moon
Date posted: 6 Jun 2025
When church leaders get busy, or just simply older, it’s very easy for some leadership qualities - and the things leaders are supposed to actually do - to fall by the wayside.
That doesn’t help our leadership, nor does it help those we lead. Here are seven leadership qualities that can so easily drop off the radar:
sharing Christ with Muslims
How do I invite Muslims round for a meal?
Hisham E.M.
Date posted: 6 Jun 2025
Unfortunately, most first-generation immigrants have never been invited to a Western home. Even second and third generation Muslims rarely experience this. The solution is very simple: invite them!
There are several reasons that may prevent us from doing this. We can feel just too busy, or that it would be complicated to have someone over we don’t know very well. We may feel uncomfortable about it. But let me encourage you to invite them into your home and persevere with your invitations. This will help your Muslim contacts get used to Western culture. Invite them! They can only say yes or no!
defending our faith
Artificial apologetics?
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 5 Jun 2025
In a study of 1,016 job categories, only 36 were shown to be largely unaffected by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These included ‘jobs’ like athlete and dancer. What about evangelists and apologists?
You can ask ChatGPT to “prepare a talk on Why God Allows Suffering” or “present a case for the reliability of the Bible” and, at the click of a button, get some pretty good suggestions. Artificial apologetics has arrived.
It takes spiritual discipline to be masters of our diaries today
Tom Watts
Date posted: 5 Jun 2025
The sentiments of Oliver Rice’s article (en April), encouraging church members to be punctual, will resonate with any pastor.
I have lost track of the number of Sundays that my wife has turned to me at 10:31am as the service begins and whispered: “Where is everyone?” The answer is that they’re on their way. By 10:35am the numbers have doubled. By 10:40am almost everyone is there. The problem is, we started at 10:30am.
everyday theology
Bibliolatry? Us? Really?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 4 Jun 2025
The reason why evangelicals treat Scripture as their supreme authority is because it is the word of God. In other words, evangelicals believe in what is traditionally called the “inspiration” of Scripture.
Today, the word “inspiration” can be a little misleading, as if Moses, Paul, and Luke simply felt enthused one day and started scribbling. That is not at all what is meant! By inspiration is meant what Paul teaches Timothy when he writes of how “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings … All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:15-17).
everyday evangelism
Silenced by fear of the killer-question
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 3 Jun 2025
The following dialogue is fictitious but, as filmmakers say, “is inspired by real events”…
“I long to lead people to Christ but have trouble even speaking about Him. When it comes to it, I just bottle out, and feel deflated and disappointed.”
Leading them in worship - and bearing their burdens
Ben Slee
Date posted: 1 Jun 2025
The sense of grief in the room was palpable. News of the tragic and unexpected death of two young missionaries – known to many – had left a significant proportion of the congregation devastated and bewildered.
I was there leading the sung worship only as a guest; I knew neither the couple who had died nor most of those in the room, but I still found myself deeply affected.
engaging with culture today
Are you aching for home?
Magriet Cruywagen
Date posted: 1 Jun 2025
Before I moved to Glasgow in 2021, I lived and worked in Germany for almost 12 years.
As a native South African, I qualified to apply for German citizenship after a couple of years. There was, however, an important caveat. I would have to renounce my South African citizenship as part of the process. To many of my loved ones this was a no-brainer: “Do it,” they said, “a German passport is far more useful than a green mamba” – as we fondly refer to our bottle-green passports.
pastoral care
How to handle encouragement: Take it, turn it, track it!
Helen Thorne-Allenson
Date posted: 31 May 2025
“Brilliant sermon – thank you”. “I really appreciate your ministry”. “You are so good at pastoral care”.
Let’s be honest, those phrases don’t happen every day, but it is a joy when they appear. Amid the heavy workloads, spinning plates, regular discouragements, and deep awareness of our own limitations, most of us in ministry (paid or unpaid) appreciate a bit of praise. A modern-day Barnabas can make a real difference to our day. They can spur us on. Give us courage to persevere.
history
Daniel McPhail: A man of continual prayer
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 31 May 2025
It was in the depths of a Canadian winter – on 17 February, 1836 – that various delegates from six Baptist churches met in Montreal to form the Ottawa Baptist Association.
While two of the churches were based in Montreal (an Anglophone work and a French-speaking congregation), the others came from what was a considerable distance to travel in those days: Breadalbane, Dalesville, Hull, and Clarence. Among the stated aims of this Association were the deepening of the ties of fellowship between those “Baptist churches as agree in holding the sentiments commonly called Evangelical” as well as “the advance [of] the cause of Christ”. For the latter, it was stressed, a certain type of man was needed: “Men of deep personal piety – of compassion for ruined undying souls, strong as power, yet tender as a mother’s heart – of love to Christ, which glows with unceasing ardour – of holy, harmless zeal, which never tires – of humility, that sinks into the insignificance of a cypher – of moral courage, which meets difficulties, insurmountable to others, as little things…”
How can the Holy Spirit help us see Jesus more clearly?
Stephen Clark
Date posted: 28 May 2025
The person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ are foundational and central to the Christian gospel which is to be proclaimed to a needy and dying world.
How often the New Testament emphasises this! Here is a small sample of verses:
Is our apologetics ‘frightfully early 2000s, darling’?
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 27 May 2025
Controversial opinion: much of our evangelism and apologetics fails to scratch where non-believers are itching, because it seeks to answer questions they’re not asking.
Or, perhaps more accurately, we remain methodologically committed to answering questions they once were, but are now no longer, asking. With the exception of that old chestnut of theodicy (the ‘why suffering’ question) much of our apologetics output still seems to be looking to undercut the objections born out of the Enlightenment or the era of scientism, and I’m less than convinced that those once-pressing issues now represent the focus of the emerging generation’s attention and curiosity.
