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‘Hey, Dad, the sermon today was 1 hour 7 minutes and 20 seconds long. All in Portuguese.’

My gap-year daughter was on her regular Sunday collect-call home from her short-term mission placement in Brazil. ‘So I spent the time memorising the books of the Bible. Do you want to know what they are? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus….’ My first thought was: ‘I’m paying for this call while you rattle off all the books of the Bible’. My second was: ‘Isn’t it great that my teenage daughter wants to knows her way around the Bible?’

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 Jun 2013

Bill Lees died on March 14 in Reading where he had lived since 1966.

His earlier ministry in Malaysia had continued to be a major part of his life so that it was appropriate that the main address at his Thanksgiving Service was by Dr. Philip Lyn from Skyline Church, Kota Kinabalu, East Malaysia.

EN: How would you sum up the success of A Passion For Life 2010?

TH: A Passion for Life 2010 was hard work!

Mission is hard work and it costs us to do it. It means that we stick our heads up and make some noise in our communities; it means inviting people to events and therefore introducing the risk of being known not only as Christians but as Christians who believe some serious things and want other people to believe the same.

I lead a pastoral team with a Christian charity, Mission Care, which provides nursing and residential care for vulnerable adults in South East London.

Over 800 students each day in February heard compelling presentations of the Christian faith.

Richard Cunningham (Director of UCCF: The Christian Unions) spoke at the university mission in my first year as an undergraduate in Cambridge 17 years ago, and the student evangelism bug that I caught back then hasn’t left me. So it was especially thrilling to see him welcomed back by the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) to speak at their ‘What Kind of God?’ mission event from February 4-8, alongside Os Guinness (respected author and social critic).

Can prisoners be transformed by the gospel? In theory, we know the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. But here are three recent examples where that is exactly what has happened in practice.

‘C’ came from a church background but had lost his faith when his little nephew died. By the time he was released from prison he had rediscovered his relationship with God and was committed to serving him in the mission context in a local church. ‘J’ decided, when he came to prison, that it was now or never in terms of finding out about Christianity. He will be baptised shortly, and is seeking to give his life to Jesus. ‘S’ has been a Christian for a number of years but has struggled with drugs. Although very knowledgeable about Jesus, the basics of his faith have been rebuilt, and he too is now considering baptism. That is a major step for him, because, as he says, ‘It’s a once and for all’ — when he is baptised, there is no turning back to his old ways.

Edith Rachel Merritt Seville Schaeffer was born in Wenzhou, China, to missionary parents working in the China Inland Mission.

Though she lived in China only until the age of six, she retained vivid memories and a life-long love of China. The family moved back to the States and, while attending Beaver College, she met Francis Schaeffer. They were married in 1935. He had three pastorates in the States in the then Bible Presbyterian Church, with her always completely involved. Their daughters Priscilla, Susan and Deborah were born during those years while their son Franky was born in Switzerland in 1952.

St. Andrew’s Parish Church, Leyland, packed over 70 events into an amazing nine days under the umbrella of ‘Life Week’ in March.

A team of 12 students from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, led by the enthusiastic octogenarian evangelist Dr. Michael Green, spearheaded the mission. The church and surrounding venues were consistently packed as exciting and varied events drew in many from this enclave of South Ribble Borough, Lancashire.

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 May 2013

Andrew Butler, who died from cancer in Taiwan on March 2, had served for 40 years with OMF International.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2013

I grew up in a boarding school. My father was a boarding school house master, and we lived on the grounds of this community.

I did not grow up in a manse or vicarage or parsonage. My children, of course, are growing up ‘Pastor’s Kids’ (PKs). How can I help them flourish in that environment?

A young Nigerian boy looks out of his bedroom window. Hoping to see the flash of headlights. Hoping to hear the sound of tyres on the gravel drive. He isn’t waiting for the postman to deliver his shiny new bike. He isn’t waiting for his mate to collect him for the long-awaited cinema trip. He is simply waiting for his mum and dad to turn up to take him home — the mum and dad he has never met.

He waits his whole childhood. He thinks he would have made quite a good son, despite his high energy levels. He certainly would have made them proud the day he won his Olympic medals, or the day he was awarded an MBE for services to athletics. But Kriss Akabusi spent his whole life in foster care and care homes; potential parents visited him, but none picked him.

Karen Soole

Date posted: 1 May 2013

Some Christians were offended by the airing of Melvin Bragg’s BBC documentary The Mystery of Mary Magdalene on Good Friday.

I was not one of them; possibly because my expectations were so low that I was pleasantly surprised by the affirmation of the Gospel accounts as historical evidence.

‘The fruit of the Spirit is joy.’

If a Christian is defined as someone in whom God’s Spirit lives, then a joyless Christian is a contradiction in terms. Yet we all know that much of life is not characterised by joy, and so we either tend to feel guilty, because clearly we are not ‘spiritual’ enough, or we sigh briefly and then get on with things. But there are those nagging Bible commands. ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice’ (Philippians 4.4). What’s it all about?

More than happiness

The first thing to realise is that joy is not the same thing as happiness. Often people say that joy is much deeper, which has led to the observation that some Christians’ joy is so deep it never seems to surface! The difference is not so much in depth as in duration. Happiness happens — it comes and goes and is largely the response of our emotions and feelings to external events. Nobody can be permanently happy; indeed you only have to set out determined to ‘be happy’ to soon feel quite miserable. So what is the joy that Christians have which is not experienced by those who do not share our faith?

Over 90 CU mission weeks have taken place on campuses all around Britain this academic year.

Responses to the gospel have been varied but Christian Union events weeks continue to be a source of great encouragement.

JR: You speak around the country about the need to grow and disciple leaders within local churches. Briefly, how do you understand biblical leadership?

MH: Paul speaks in Philippians 1 and 2 Corinthians 1 about working with people for their progress and joy in God, so that they grow firm in their faith and have abundant joy in Christ. That’s a great, simple definition of spiritual leadership. You don’t have to think very hard to see why a church that is standing firm in their faith and full of godly joy is going to be a beacon for the gospel.

Adrian Reynolds

Date posted: 1 Mar 2013

2013 marks 30 years of the Evangelical Ministry Assembly.

It’s now well established as an annual feature in the ministerial calendar. But why do people keep coming. EN asked a few regulars.

Most of our youth groups are attached to a church. It may be just one of the activities the church gets up to alongside its services on Sunday. There are youth groups which are completely separate from the life of the church and there are others where there is some kind of link between the two. How much should integration be attempted or should we wait until they are 18 when they simply move up to ‘adult church’?

All-age service

One answer to this is the all-age service which some do well and for others it becomes a children’s service where the adults and older children are spectators. In a typical church with people of most ages represented, is it possible for there to be some degree of shared activity? Starting with services, I think it is possible to bring young people into what is done there. If they stay in the morning services or turn up in the evening their presence needs to be acknowledged. That does not mean the whole service is geared to their language and culture, but, if they are there, what can’t they do. They can welcome at the door, they can read a lesson, they can pray, they can play in the worship band and, at the end, they can help count the money and make the coffee. It may even appropriate for a 16-year-old to preach the first five minutes of a sermon (initially) and have his talk critiqued by a sensitive mentor.

Here are some encouragements and challenges from the past.

The monk Columba sailed from Ireland, with 12 companions, and after a perilous journey landed on the island of Iona in 563. He founded a monastery there to train young men for the evangelisation of the North Picts.

‘Would you like to hear more about the restored gospel?’

This is a question many of the 58,000 missionaries for the Mormon Church (or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) ask people worldwide every day. This 14-million-member-strong movement is getting public attention as Mitt Romney, the losing US presidential candidate for the Republican Party, is a committed member.

Though nominal Christianity is declining in Britain, Bible-believing Christian faith seems to be making real headway.

The increasing suspicion that God has something special in store is epitomised by the transformation that has occurred at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology (WEST) in the last couple of years.

John Chapman, Sydney’s leading evangelist for more than 50 years, passed away in hospital on November 16 2012 at the age of 82.

‘Chappo’, as he was affectionately known, was converted in his teens and was active in youth ministry. Following a stint as a manual arts teacher, he spent a year in Moore College and was ordained in the Diocese of Armidale in 1957. After a challenging curacy in Moree, he was appointed Youth Director for the Diocese in 1960 and then Director of Christian Education (1966-68).