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September 24 2009 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Charles Simeon, a great man of God whose 54-year ministry at Holy Trinity, Cambridge (1782-1836) had such a remarkable impact on the work of the gospel in this country and much further afield.

At the time of his conversion as a first-year undergraduate, there was only a handful of evangelical ministers in the Church of England, but, by the time of his death, it is estimated that a third of Anglican pulpits were occupied by evangelicals, as many as 1,100 of whom had been profoundly influenced by Simeon at Cambridge. What can we learn today from his teaching and example?

We regularly receive appeals in the West to help feed the poor and hungry of the world. But we understand by faith that there is a greater famine going on, a famine of hearing the life-giving, soul-nourishing Word of God.

Even in countries where there are packed and thriving churches, very often the pastors have little training and a poor grasp of how to teach the Bible properly. This makes many Christians, in Africa and elsewhere, extremely vulnerable to false teachers and prosperity gospels.

Every parent, grandparent and youth worker knows the gnawing sense of anxiety they feel when someone they know first goes up to university or college. Especially if they’ve had the experience themselves, they know the full-on impact of those first few days and weeks as a fresher.

The bewildering numbers of new faces and names and choices; deciding what clubs to join and sports to pursue; managing the laundry and working out how to survive on a student loan; and, of course, learning to negotiate the campus and the timetable! The freedom and the options that university or college life inevitably offer can be a heady mixture. So many parties and so little time! Life back home, especially life in the church youth group, can seem so tame and restrained and, oh, so far away. For a Christian young person there is the challenge of finding a good church, making new Christian friends, and not abusing their newfound freedoms.

James Cary

Date posted: 1 Aug 2009

When poets talk of the birds twittering in the trees, a different picture is now evoked.

Imagine sparrows and starlings pecking away at laptops, telling the other birds who are ‘following them’ what they’re doing. Twittering or, more correctly, tweeting, reached critical mass a few months ago when Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross both decided to use Twitter. But what is it?

I wonder how David felt as he stood in Goliath’s shadow, slingshot in hand with just five smooth pebbles? Pure fear?

The full realisation that he was puny and the one he was about to fight was a literal giant? No doubt he should have been petrified of what was in front of him but he knew the saving power of God behind him.

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 May 2009

James Hudson Taylor III died on March 20 at his home in Hong Kong. Like his great-grandfather he loved Christ and the Chinese and served them to the end. Some of his last words were, ‘God is good’. He was a great example of a godly man and a warm friend and colleague.

James was born in China to missionary parents who resolved to stay in the country to serve the Christian believers as the war with Japan developed. He was interned with other children and staff of the CIM Chefoo school. His grandfather, Herbert, was in the same camp and he got to know him well and thus had a direct personal link with Hudson Taylor himself!

At Forum last September, UCCF’s fifth Gospel Project, FREE, was officially launched. Around 1,000 students, staff, and Relay workers saw the unveiling of 400,000 copies of impressive new FREE gospels, and more than 20 additional resources.

Andrea Minichiello Williams works for Christian Concern for Our Nation (CCFON) and the Christian Legal Centre. These organisations are heavily involved in the crucial task of defending our liberties and helping Christians facing discrimination of various kinds in the UK. At the beginning of March she gave a short interview to EN...

EN: Tell us briefly how you became a Christian.

AMW: When I was four, the local Methodist church sent a minibus around the neighbourhood where I was living inviting the children to Sunday School. I was put on the minibus. When I arrived at Sunday School, Mrs. Hicks, told me all about Jesus and I fell in love with him there and then.

James Philip, minister of Holyrood Abbey Church, Edinburgh (from 1958 to 1997), had probably the most searing intellect of his generation in the Church of Scotland. He was a humble man, warm in his pastoral concern, and much loved in the CUs.

His output was prolific; many of his sermons and Bible reading notes (covering the whole Bible) are on the web (http://www.proctrust.org.uk, http://www.thetron.org). He loved the arts, classics and music, drawing on their grand themes to illustrate Scripture. There was something of the Apostle Paul’s burden upon him as he climbed the pulpit steps; he yearned to present everyone mature in Christ.

What’s the slowest thing on six legs? Three Christians trying to get through a door — they all keep saying ‘No, no! After you!’

Such was the mood at week one of New Word Alive at Pwllheli. Surrounded by Christians in an atmosphere of unity, celebration, and enjoyment we basked in the Welsh sun (believe it or not) and sat under God’s Word. Vaughan Roberts’s Bible Readings from 1 Corinthians set the tone each day before guests poured into various seminars, training tracks, and leisure activities.

With the Passion for Life mission coming next year, many of us would like to witness for Christ but are not good at opening up conversations with our friends. Here Daphne Ross gives us some gentle pointers.

First, pray that God will both give you a heart to speak for him and enable you to make and take opportunities.

These days many people seek answers to life’s questions on the internet. Looking for God is a ministry for Christ which taps into this modern phenomenon.

Looking for God is a website accessed through a Google search when buzz words like ‘God’, ‘peace,’ ‘faith’, etc. are typed in. The aim of the website is to draw people to consider Christianity.

Much of our energy in youth groups is centred on keeping our weekly meetings well organised and doing our best to maintain good teaching to our young people. If that’s so, great — keep it up.

But I wonder if it’s possible for our groups to become so insular that we lose the perspective of what is happening in our world. How often do we mention world mission in our group meetings and should we anyway? Is it wise to give our young people insight into a world that is beyond their everyday existence?

On occasions, those of us who have stayed with youth ministry in advancing years are the subject of ageist banter from our younger colleagues. But I wonder if the oldies should fight back a little on an area of ministry where, just maybe, our younger partners in the gospel have lost the plot.

I was recently involved in a university mission and the inevitable question arose about how friends are to be invited to the mission events. Different people recounted their successes and failures and one student came out with the statement: ‘I have texted and emailed all my course mates’, and then, as an afterthought, he said: ‘Oh yes, I spoke to one person face to face’, and it almost came out as an expression of failure that he had to forsake technology and speak to a human being. His case is probably extreme but I wonder if inter-personal skills are going out of fashion or, at the very least, conversation fashions are changing.

Every Christian schools worker I’ve ever met loves the job. What is there to not like?

Jeans and trainers are the standard uniform. Young people love us because, at any given time, the odds are good that we’re carrying chocolate. And we get to spend hours each week playing games. But, as with any work, there are stressful moments. Here’s a taster of a typical week:

Famous books

The final Latin version of Calvin’s Institutes was published in 1559. The six chapters of the first edition (1536) had now become 80, assembled in four books. This has been called ‘the most influential theological work of the Protestant Reformation’, but it is nevertheless accessible, interesting and inspiring to the 21st-century general reader.

C.I. Scofield’s dispensational, pre-millennial Bible was published in 1909, and gained a wide circulation.

The evangelical community is growing in London and leading the way for other European cities.

This was just one of the very positive messages coming out of the Urban Plant Life Conference held at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster on November 18. Sponsored by the London City Mission (LCM) and with major input from Tim Keller and the church-planting arm of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, this was an outstanding event. Apart from Keller’s excellent, clear and challenging teaching, what made it so remarkable was that it drew together Christians from quite different evangelical traditions all heavily engaged in planting churches.

Did you read about the incredible events surrounding a ‘follow up’ talk to a mission in which the speaker gathered those who had believed and accused them of being both illegitimate and children of the Devil? In response, this group of men turned violent and tried to kill him.

The speaker was, of course, Jesus and the ‘believers’ were religious Jews. To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (John 8.31-32).

While enjoying much of what Paul Helm had to say in his recent article on global warming (EN, November 2008), I would like to challenge a number of points he appeared to be making.

Show me a grown man with a goatee and I’ll show you a major league baseball player. Show me a grown man with a goatee wearing sandals and I’ll show you a youth pastor.

When I was a kid, I remember that the youth pastor at our church was totally different to any other pastor I’d ever seen. He quoted rock bands and wore blue jeans to church. He was cool in a way that the other adults in my life were not. I was proud to invite my friends to church and see their negative stereotypes of Christians get blown up. The youth group thrived and ‘unchurched’ kids were reached. The one thing that distinguished our group from others was that our pastor was cool.

It costs £5.7 million to train a fast jet RAF pilot, and almost £250,000 to train a doctor or dentist. Financial consultants KPMG spend £92,000 training a graduate. It even costs up to £30,000 to train a guide dog for the blind. On the other hand, a typical Bible college receives just £13,500 for two to three years full-time training.

As will become clear when we investigate costs later in this piece, an obvious question arises. How does it cost less to train a man for the pastoral ministry over three years than it does to train a dog for a little over a year-and-a-half? And how do you train a pastor, missionary or evangelist for a twentieth of what it costs to train a doctor?

Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about. Mission is, in that much-abused phrase, ‘what it’s all about’.

Now this is a bold claim. Does it make sense to speak of the Bible being ‘all about’ anything? Well, Jesus certainly thought so. In Luke 24, first to the two on the road to Emmaus, and then later to the rest of the disciples, Jesus made himself as Messiah the focus of the whole canon of the Hebrew Scriptures (verses 27 and 44).

Greetings from here in Co. Mayo in the Wild West of Ireland!

In Acts 16 we read of the Apostle Paul and his entourage seeking to enter Bithynia but being forbidden by the Holy Spirit. Finally they reached Troas where Paul has a vision of a man pleading with him: ‘Come over to Macedonia to help us’. This call changed history by changing the direction of the gospel from moving north into Asia, to moving west into Europe.

It is a secure fact of history that after the Romans crucified Jesus of Nazareth circa AD 33, his followers met weekly to worship him as Lord.

Pliny, governor of the Roman Black Sea province of Bithynia, reported to the emperor Trajan early in the second century that the Christians met on a ‘fixed day of the week’ and chanted hymns to Christ ‘as if to a god’ (Epistles 10.96). Pliny’s friend the historian Tacitus, governor of the adjoining province of Asia, wrote that Pontius Pilate had executed Christ during the reign of the emperor Tiberius.