What a Christlike identity means for a Christian cricketer
Graham Daniels
Date posted: 2 Dec 2025
As the English side prepares to walk out at The Gabba for the second Test match in the Ashes series in Australia, the echoes of Perth (the location of the first Test match) still ring in many minds.
The first Test left wounds: batting collapses, public disappointment, confidence shaken. But for the Christian in the dressing room — and for those of us watching with faith — this moment carries deeper significance.
pastoral care
When those ungodly emotions return
Helen Thorne-Allenson
Date posted: 2 Dec 2025
As the winter nights draw in, the log burner in our house gets used a little more. In the evenings, the flames dance – towards the end of the night, they diminish – soon there are just embers to be seen – eventually the fire goes out. Sometimes, however, that is not the end of the story. Sometimes – seemingly out of nowhere – the flames revive, and they can be fierce.
Some of us will know something similar in our sanctification. Something happens – our ungodly emotions or words run hot – but, with prayer and a Bible-centred pursuit of change, we become more like Christ. Sometimes the ungodly emotions feel as if they have disappeared; it feels like a victory has been won, but then they seem to re-emerge in a flash. Anger ignites, reviving hurts from the past; jealousy overwhelms as an unwanted memory pops up. Something we thought was long dealt with comes rushing back.
history
O Come, All Ye Faithful
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Dec 2025
Many of us will sing these marvellous words this Christmas from the carol O Come, All Ye Faithful, that was first printed in English in 1751: “God of God, Light of Light, Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb; Very God, Begotten not created.”
The first and third lines of this stanza, the second in the hymn, are clearly dependent upon the wording of the creedal statement issued by the Council of Nicaea (325). They bear witness to the ongoing significance of this turning-point in the history of the church.
imperfect parenting
Advent & the power in waiting
Katie Holloway
Date posted: 30 Nov 2025
Whether you mark it in a formal way or not, Advent is a season of waiting. I don’t think there’s a single child in the country this month who’s not counting “how many sleeps” until Christmas Day, even while their parents are silently hoping for just “a few more sleeps” to get everything done.
Waiting is hard. Though we likely don’t find it as hard to wait for Christmas as our kids (though maybe you do!), as adults we still find waiting hard. Whether we’re waiting for an appointment, to find out some news, for our winter cold to get better, for God to change our circumstances… we don’t like waiting.
Revival, New Age and cultural Christianity
Rani Joshi
Date posted: 29 Nov 2025
As we head into the Advent season, I’m excited to share that we’ve just launched Discovering Jesus. This is a new eight-session video series designed to engage and invite people to watch, covering who Jesus is, the Bible, and topics around faith, identity and culture. It’s particularly helpful for people of Asian heritage, and those of different faiths (or none!) to explore these topics.
The past few months have been busy, writing scripts for this series and speaking at several conferences. Over that time, I’ve been reflecting deeply on what it truly means to be a disciple of Jesus versus a cultural Christian. One of the sessions explores what it looks like to genuinely follow Jesus and why some Christians may not necessarily reflect His likeness. Interestingly, this very question arose during the first edition of Discovering Jesus from participants who were curious about what authentic discipleship looks like.
Does the gospel make you dance with joy?
Jonny Pollock
Date posted: 28 Nov 2025
When our family watches social media reels together, there is one clip that reliably makes me groan: The Forrest Frank dance.
Perhaps you know the one; it’s a viral Christian dance that has spread across social media complete with arms flailing, legs bouncing, and faces radiating a grin so wide it seems smug. My children smile at me every time it pops up. I, on the other hand, mutter something about the true nature of Christianity and scroll on. For reasons I cannot quite explain, the sight of that carefree jig makes me a bit grumpy. My kids see joy. I see silliness. They laugh. I roll my eyes.
William Bates at 400: The Presbyterian voice we forgot
Martyn Cowan
Date posted: 27 Nov 2025
The story of the past is inevitably selective and this often results in some individuals being given, perhaps, undue prominence whilst other very significant figures end up being marginalised.
Accounts of later English Puritanism have often ended up focusing on the likes of Richard Baxter (1615–1691), John Bunyan (bap. 1628, d. 1688), and John Owen (1616–1683), leaving others, who in their day were highly significant, to almost disappear from the historian’s view.
letter from Ukraine
Exclusive: I'm in Ukraine now. This is how it feels
Ryan Burton King
Date posted: 26 Nov 2025
These are dark days for Ukraine. And I mean that, in the first instance, quite literally.
As the bleak skies and bitter cold of winter set in, Russia has renewed its strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in a cruel strategy to break the morale of the nation as it swiftly approaches four years since full-scale invasion by its eastern neighbour.
culture watch
Why do we love celebrities?
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 22 Nov 2025
Why do we love to watch celebrities appear on “reality tv”? The recent finale of The Celebrity Traitors, hosted by Claudia Winkleman, was watched by 11million people.
Flicking through the channels, you can watch everything from Celebrity Gogglebox, Celebrity Come Dine with Me, to Celebrity Bake Off, Celebrity Hunted, as well as the classic that is Strictly Come Dancing starring… celebrities! We don’t actually know these people. But we feel like we do, and as shows like Traitors roll out, we might feel like we know them better, and talk about them more, than we do our own families. But what makes us keep coming back for more – and keep on talking about them?
Is there really a ministry recruitment crisis?
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 22 Nov 2025
“Ministry recruitment crisis.” How do those words make you feel? Do they fill you with dread? Panic? Are you tempted to let out a sigh as you mutter that you aren’t surprised?
Back in September, Carrie Sandom, of the Proclamation Trust, told us that there is a fall in the number of men and women coming forward for ministry training. What are we to think? en spoke to key players in the evangelical world, including principals and directors of some of the UK's leading seminaries and colleges.
Orthodoxy & evangelicals – what’s the appeal?
Kenneth Brownell
Date posted: 20 Nov 2025
The news that a church affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) has become Orthodox (see this en article) will have come as a shock to many.
An evangelical Anglican congregation defecting? Possibly we could understand that, since it would be used to formal liturgy and bishops etc; but an FIEC church...!
Is it time to change what children are taught at church?
Jonny Woodbridge
Date posted: 18 Nov 2025
Here’s a question: In your Sunday youth and children’s groups (assuming you have them), what do you teach? And how do you decide what to teach?
I think there are three approaches — all of which I have used. Let’s look through them and consider their strengths and weaknesses.
defending our faith
'The cross is not a flag to wave, but a faith to proclaim'
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 18 Nov 2025
I once visited an Israeli primary school in Jerusalem and looked around a classroom. It was much the same as any classroom in the UK, with desks, pots of crayons, bookshelves, and work displayed on walls. But something caught my attention with one set of arithmetic posters. Addition was not symbolised by the plus sign but by an upside-down letter T.
I asked the headteacher and learned that the tradition goes back to at least the 19th century and was a deliberate avoidance of a sign that otherwise looked like the Christian cross. Not all Israelis follow this convention, but it is common among the more orthodox Jews.
the Bible in action
‘A transformative tool’: The New Testament in heart languages
Martin Horton
Date posted: 17 Nov 2025
The recently released State of the Bible report, which was written about here on en's website, reveals the exciting acceleration of Bible translation around the world today. But behind the statistics are personal, powerful stories.
This month, I want to share two: one from last Christmas, and one from Easter. Both speak to the wonder of hearing the gospel in your own language for the very first time.
engaging with culture today
How well do we know our different cultures?
Debbie D.
Date posted: 16 Nov 2025
The articles in this series are about “engaging with culture”. Recently I have been pondering “just which culture should I engage with, or try to understand more?”
In my neighbourhood I meet people from many countries, shopping, working in the supermarket, waiting for the bus. In church too the percentage of people who were born outside the UK has increased greatly. I wonder what they make of us locals!
everyday evangelism
The challenge of sharing Jesus in the workplace
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 15 Nov 2025
For many Christians, the place with the most challenges and opportunities for sharing their faith is the workplace. While most evangelistic training, prayer and activity is church-focused, the reality is that believers spend the bulk of the time they spend with non-Christians, in offices, shops, factories, airports or campuses.
A friend of mine once went on a short-term medical mission to Africa. Many Christians promised to pray for her trip. Her reply was striking: “Thank you. But please also pray for me the rest of the year too, because being a Christian in NHS Scotland is harder than in Africa!” At a recent Christian conference, almost every hand went up when delegates were asked if they felt unequipped by their church for the challenges of workplace discipleship. Yet this remains the frontline where the church meets the world.
The murder that shocked medieval England
James Cary
Date posted: 14 Nov 2025
If the past is another country where they do things differently, as LP Hartley wrote, 12th century England is a foreign place indeed.
From diet to customs, and from clothing to life expectancy, the times in which Thomas Becket lived and, crucially, died, seem so alien we might be tempted to think that few lessons can be learned from these people who were part of a church that was doctrinally losing its way.
