Prisons: from despair to hope
Glynn Jones
Date posted: 1 Oct 2016
Glynn Jones challenges us to get involved with the mission field in UK prisons
The facts of hopelessness for those in prison are stark.
Letter from America
Trumped
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
I am a ‘legal alien’, I carry a Green Card and all our children have been born here, but I cannot vote in America.
With that in mind and also being a pastor, it is inimical, unwise, and probably unedifying for me to talk about party politics.
Purchased with blood
Tom Marcus
Date posted: 1 Oct 2016
Tom Marcus suggests the relevance of the story of the early Ugandan and English martyrs for today
To understand the African bishops’ stand on homosexual practice today, it is helpful to remember the heroic early days of the Ugandan church.
Knowing God Better
Uniting God’s people
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
Social commentators frequently remind us of a paradox of our age.
Alongside the integration and cohesion of globalisation, there has been an accompanying and more troubling trend – the rise of nationalism and tribalism. Fracture lines are seen across nations, communities and eth-nicities. As Christians we joyfully affirm the counter-cultural unity which the gospel brings. But often we do not see this working as it should. A pastor was once asked if he had an active congregation. ‘Oh yes’, he replied. ‘Half of them are working with me, and half of them working against me’.
Missionary marriages in trouble
Mike Peterson
Date posted: 1 Aug 2016
Mike Peterson asks: ‘That missionary family might be smiling in the photo on your fridge, but is their marriage hanging by a thread?’
I winced as the lights suddenly cut off.
Capital Gains
The invisible mission field
Graham Miller
Date posted: 1 Nov 2015
Reading through Scripture I am struck by Christ’s commitment to those on the margins of society.
I feel challenged that he didn’t use clever strategies to aim first to reach the best and brightest from the Jerusalem temple school so that they could be useful for his efforts. Instead, Jesus spent time with lepers, tax collectors, fishermen, women and Samaritans. In recent years the movement to revitalise the church with new plants and initiatives has sometimes focused on the young, the bright and the mobile. If we are to be faithful to the Great Commission we must be careful that our outreach doesn’t leave out large segments of society.
A pair of shoes led me to Christ!
Randy Newman
Date posted: 1 Oct 2016
A quarter of a million Jewish people live in the UK – and this month, most of them will be celebrating Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But for Randy Newman, author of Questioning Evangelism, it was this Jewish Festival that started his journey to faith in Christ. Everything changed when he looked down at his shoes…
I was born into a Jewish family in the suburbs of New York City.
The Shandong revival
Jonathan Bayes
Date posted: 1 Aug 2016
Jonathan Bayes with a little bit of history of the church in China during the 1930s to encourage us
Shandong is a coastal province in the north-east of mainland China.
The place of prayer
Peter Lewis
Date posted: 1 Aug 2016
Peter Lewis encourages us to realise that seeking God’s face is never a waste of time
It must have been a strange sight.
Knowing God Better
Hearing God’s Word
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Aug 2016
It was similar to working on the mains electricity of a house, but doing so with the electricity still switched on!
This was how the scholar-clergyman J.B. Phillips explained the experience of working on a paraphrase of the Bible some years ago.
From death to life
Donald Morrison
Date posted: 1 Jul 2016
Donald Morrison reports on the precious life of a baby saved by the gracious intervening providence of God
How true the words of William Cowper.
Oxford’s 25 missions
Andrew Atherstone
Date posted: 1 Feb 2015
In February, the Christian Union at Oxford University launches a major mission to students: Andrew Atherstone delves into the archives.
Tim Keller and Os Guinness are in town.
The gospel on the Somme
As the country commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme we are enabled to read a believer’s diary
William Ransley left the Army in April 1889.
Wise as serpents?
Andrew Fellows
Date posted: 1 Jul 2016
Andrew Fellows, director of Christian Heritage Cambridge, asks what it means to be counter-cultural
To be a Christian is to be counter-cultural.
What is a nation?
Jim Sayers
Date posted: 1 Apr 2016
As the debate over the united nations of Europe floods our media, Jim Sayers asks a pertinent question.
2016 is the year for the people of Britain to think hard about nationhood.
Single women: when it goes wrong
Rebecca and Eleanor’s last piece on single women employed by churches and other ministries
In the last two months in en, we have given an overview of the findings of our research.
The Third Degree
Students reach students
Kate Duncan
Date posted: 1 Apr 2016
Kate Duncan and relay worker Joanna Robertson share five ways
Over the last three months, more than 38,000 students have attended a university Christian Union mission week event.
Knowing God Better
Becoming like God’s Son
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 May 2016
I remember the evening vividly.
A frail old man, walking stick in hand and supported by a friend, slowly climbed the steps to the Keswick platform and onwards to the lectern. During his life, he had spoken on every continent of the world, to multiple thousands in baseball stadia, to hundreds in church buildings of every denomination, to congregations gathered under trees and at many student missions.
Lausanne & the polemical imperative
Ranald Macaulay
Date posted: 1 Mar 2016
Ranald Macaulay asks if the 1974 Congress missed something vital
When the Lausanne Congress opened in 1974 the global community was being treated to searing images of the Ethiopian famine.
Christ on the campus
Mindi Aleme
Date posted: 1 May 2016
Mindi Aleme tells us of a remarkable school which is deeply influencing missionary children in Ethiopia
When some think of Ethiopia, they think only of her poverty.
Extreme Christianity?
Matthew Roberts
Date posted: 1 May 2016
As the government ponders bringing the church into line with ‘British Values’, Matthew Roberts speaks up for radical faith
I have a confession to make. I am an extremist.
Paying female church staff?
Rebecca and Eleanor’s second article based on research among single Christian women working for churches and ministries
In last month’s en, we gave an overview of our findings concerning single women Christian workers.
WEST in Union
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 Feb 2016
There are big changes afoot for one of the UK’s independent theological colleges
On 12 January, WEST (Wales Evangelical School of Theology) announced that it is to transform into Union.
Five years after Cape Town
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Feb 2016
Julia Cameron brings us up-to-date with the Lausanne Movement
It is five years this month since the Cape Town Commitment was published. In that time it has spread out widely, and down deeply, across the continents, in major and ‘minor’ languages.