Lausanne: Mission, unity, joy – and controversy
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 24 Oct 2024
More than 5,200 delegates from 202 countries shared bread and wine in a powerful display of evangelical unity at the end of the 2024 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation held in South Korea.
The informal Lord’s Supper was led by Korean and Japanese individuals as an example of how reconciliation in Christ brings different individuals and nations together.
Middle East: ‘sleep-deprived and anxious’
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 26 Oct 2024
‘We are sleep deprived and anxious,’ evangelicals at the centre of the Middle East conflict have told en, ‘but we keep faith in God.’
As the conflict involving Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran reached ever-higher temperatures, staff at Christian TV station SAT-7 reported how they are caught right in the heart of the terrifying situation.
Scripture Union’s new boss aims for 95% of children
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 17 Jul 2024
Dave Newton took over as National Director of Scripture Union (SU) in March. Now he has his feet under the desk, Evangelicals Now asked him about his vision for its future.
SU was originally founded in 1867 to help adults and children know God through the Bible. Today, its 1,500 volunteers run over 60 camps and missions a year.
We need divine help more than ever, Ukraine pastors say
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 31 Jul 2024
Only divine intervention can bring about a lasting peace in Ukraine, church leaders there say.
That’s the message from a mission organisation working in the heart of the ongoing and bloody conflict caused by Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion.
Teesside outreach sees 1,400 respond
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 7 Jul 2024
Festival Teesside, featuring evangelist Andrew Palau, was ‘a massive success’ and the ‘fruition of 15 years of hard work,’ says mission organiser Stephen Sutton.
Sutton, who is pastor of Beacon Baptist Church, Middlesborough, also said that the gospel seed had been sown and that local churches were now deploying ‘the skills of the harvest field’ which the Palau team provided.
Over 800 youth equipped for mission
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2024
About 850 young people and youth leaders attended this year’s Sorted one day youth conference, which took place at Westminster Chapel.
Attendees came from a wide variety of Anglican, Baptist, Free/Independent churches and many others. Most were from around London, but there were also groups from Essex, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Brighton, Bournemouth, and Norwich.
Albania: 3,000 people hear the gospel
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jul 2024
Over 3,000 people have heard the gospel in Tirana, Albania, at a major event organised by evangelicals in the country.
Before the mission, about 800 evangelicals met to focus on the church’s evangelistic imperative and to remember that ‘Jesus teaches us that we as a church should be lifted as a city up on the mountain top,’ Evangelical Focus reported.
In the rainforest, something is stirring... the gospel
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Spiritual battles continue day and night across the globe, including in the heart of the remote rainforest. The following example was featured in The Washington Post recently.
Rupert Shelley, Director of Mission Partnerships at international mission agency Crosslinks, says it reminds us how ‘the gospel is indeed growing and bearing fruit in extraordinary ways across many parts of South America’.
Churches destroyed, thousands displaced
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Christians working in Mozambique are becoming increasingly concerned about the human cost of the wave of violence now sweeping south across the country.
The persecuted-church agency Open Doors reports that over 70,000 people, mostly women and children, have been displaced from their homes in northern Mozambique following a sharp rise in attacks by Islamist militants.
Gaza: can Christianity now survive?
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Thirty out of the estimated 1,000 Christians still left in Gaza have been killed, according to local church sources.
And as Gaza’s Christian population continues to shrink, down from about 3,500 before the war began, commentators fear that one of the oldest Christian communities in the world may be literally dying out.
Javier Milei: Do cry for me, Argentina?
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2024
The Church Mission Society (CMS), which absorbed the South American Mission Society (SAMS) in 2009, has responded to the election of far-right populist outsider Javier Milei as the new President of Argentina.
Speaking exclusively to Evangelicals Now, CMS spokesperson Naomi Steinberg commented: ‘From a mission point of view, we can see that the political, economic and environmental situation in Argentina is precarious and needs much prayer. Our people in mission in the region are praying that the new President will be surrounded by a leadership team that is wise, compassionate and full of integrity’.
Orthodox Jew wants Gazans to ‘get a little Jesus’
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2024
An Orthodox Jewish writer Jonathan Feldstein is currently ‘praying for Gazans to get a little Jesus in 2024’.
Feldstein is president of the Genesis 123 Foundation, whose declared mission is to ‘build bridges between Jews and Christians with Israel in ways that are new, unique, and meaningful’. He made the call as he believes ‘the best and safest way to change the situation and bring peace [in Gaza] is for the masses of Gazans, and Palestinian Arabs in general, to convert to Christianity’.
Climate hope – if promises are kept, say evangelicals
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2024
Even as it opened, the UN Climate Change Conference COP 28 was making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The BBC revealed claims that hosts, the United Arab Emirates, were planning to make oil and gas deals with 15 other countries at the event. Despite that, many Christian groups were represented there, some as part of the Christian Climate Observers Program, a non-denominational Christian presence advocating for God’s creation. All are, perhaps, encouraged by the fact that COP28 for the first time featured a ‘faith pavilion’. Evangelicals Now spoke to four leading Christian environmental organisations about their hopes and fears for the conference.
Stay, says bishop
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2024
Jill Duff, Bishop of Lancaster, who is orthodox on issues of sex and sexuality, and has been a leading voice opposing change, spoke to en.
She said: ‘Why should we leave? One of my heroes of church planting in the Polynesian islands was George Selwyn, an architect of the Anglican Communion. He had a compellingly pragmatic response to error: “But how, you will ask, shall the truth of doctrine be maintained if we tolerate in the mission field every form of error, and provide no safeguard for the purity of the faith? I answer that, as running water purifies itself, so Christian work is seen to correct its own mistakes.” I urge evangelicals to resist any intimidation, but instead to stay and contend for the gospel through the Church of England.’
Scripture Union aims for ‘at least’ 3,500 groups in five year programme
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Nov 2023
Scripture Union is aiming for ‘at least’ 3,500 groups in just three to five years time as it embarks on a new nationwide initiative.
SU – a Christian charity for children and young people aiming to share the gospel – is beginning its new ‘Mission Possible’ nationwide tour.
Portugal: rapid evangelical growth
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Sep 2023
UK mission agencies Crosslinks and European Mission Fellowship are hailing the astonishing growth of evangelical churches across Portugal over the last few years, driven mainly by highly intentional church planting.
Data recently published by the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance shows a remarkable increase in church plants by evangelical churches. Fully 44% of the evangelical churches in the country were started after 2001 and over 60% have ‘defined plans and locations to plant new churches in the next five years’. A large majority say their church is growing. These churches range in size from less than ten members to congregations of over 300.
Pain after report on Mike Pilavachi
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
Churches and Christian organisations have spoken of their sadness and pain as the official report into well-known charismatic leader Mike Pilavachi said he displayed coercive and controlling behaviour at the church and had inappropriate relationships.
His actions included massaging young male interns and wrestling young men as he used his ‘spiritual authority to control people’.
S. Sudan: Believers share – though poor
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Nov 2023
South Sudanese Christians caught up in the
ongoing civil war have been sharing their
few possessions with others – and seeing
people give glory to God.
Tut Kony, director of a South Sudan-based
umbrella mission organisation
says:’ Our
organisation is partnering [Bible translators]
unfoldingWord
[sic]
in
translating
the
Bible into Sudan’s unreached-people group
languages. It also runs a school for believers
from a Muslim background who are leading house church networks. Since the start of the
war, we have also provided 562 families with
food, and basic medical supplies.
Christian climate scientists speak out
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Sep 2023
The summer heatwave across the northern hemisphere has seen almost uncontrollable forest fires break out from Canada to China, Algeria to Greece, as soaring, record temperatures hit the high-40°sC.
But as soon as the flames were doused, the question on many people’s minds was – to what extent are these record thermometer levels the result of human-made climate change?
French evangelical group under fire
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
Evangelical group Torrents de Vie has attracted the hostility of the media and the government in France after a journalist covertly recorded images and conversations at one of the organisation’s summer camps.
Torrents de Vie means ‘Streams Of Life’. Part of a larger international inter-denominational Christian ministry, it is active in ten French cities offering seminars, pastoral counselling and conferences. Its website says it ‘offers spiritual support, combining teaching, listening and prayer, to Christians of all denominations seeking help for their personal difficulties. Our values are based on Biblical love and grace’.
Haiti: rare piece of good news in dark situation
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
A Christian nurse who was kidnapped in
Haiti has been released, saying she ‘holds
no grudges’ against her abductors and
forgives them.
She added: ‘My clinic doors are always
open to you or anyone in need when you’re
sick or wounded, without any problem.’
Morocco: help comes
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
Christians from around the world are on the ground bringing urgent relief in Morocco, following the huge earthquake there. The epicentre of the quake was in the Atlas Mountains, about 40 miles southwest of the busy tourist city of Marrakech. Thousands are dead and injured.
A representative of the Bible Society in Morocco said: ‘Your prayers and concern mean a lot to us here in Morocco … I am in the affected area, working alongside teams from different churches. We are delivering food supplies to believers and their families, and we are also assessing the needs for the near future.’
Innovative outreach to Jerusalem holocaust survivors
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jul 2023
An innovative gospel outreach in Jerusalem has sparked great interest among hundreds of Jewish people wanting to know more about the claims of Jesus.
The brainchild of the International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP), the five-day initiative was specifically designed for those who had lived through the Holocaust. It comprised four tours of Biblical sites in Galilee, ending with a concert featuring performances by local musicians (all Jewish believers in Jesus), and a gospel presentation by IMJP missionary, Aviel Sela. It formed part of a strategic plan, developed over a number of years, to reach Jewish people with the good news about Jesus. More than 200 people joined the site tours, to places such as the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, and 185 Jewish people attended the concert, 156 of whom gave their contact details and took away Christian literature.
The world’s most daring mission?
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
An international humanitarian organisation whose director was previously imprisoned in a freezing cold metal container by the Taliban has become the first Christian group permitted to return to Afghanistan.
Shelter Now International (SNI) has been invited to return by the hardline Islamic regime to help with relief efforts in the country. And it has already provided humanitarian aid in the provinces of Khost and Paktika after severe earthquakes struck there recently.