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David Baker

Date posted: 1 Nov 2003

Hundreds of delegates at a landmark gathering of Anglican evangelicals have been challenged to renew their passion for the essentials of evangelical belief - and to trust one another more.

Around 2,000 people, including about 30 bishops from Britain and abroad, attended the Fourth National Evangelical Anglican Conference (NEAC4) in Blackpool over five days to hear dozens of speakers focus on the theme 'Bible, Cross and Mission'.

At the London Men's Convention in May there was an interview with Ben Stone, who works for Schroders.

This month Ben tells EN more about life as a Christian in the City (London's financial district), and how he set up the Christian group that meets regularly at his firm . . .

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2003

I recently went to hear Chuck Colson, the famed author of Born Again, once notorious as an insider in the political Watergate scandal. He was sent to prison. But in the midst of the maelstrom surrounding him, Chuck Colson became 'born again'. Ever since, he has been the highly regarded and influential leader of Prison Fellowship.

Colson was speaking about Jonathan Edwards. In his lecture he touched on a wide variety of contemporary themes and issues that are facing evangelicals. In particular, he suggested, the drift towards moral relativism was likely to face a turnaround as a result of September 11. It's hard, was the gist of what he was saying, to swallow the idea that there is no evil in the world when you watch airplanes on suicide missions colliding into buildings containing thousands of human lives.

UCCF came into being as it defended Bible Christianity on campus. Recent events Loughborough University show that their historical stance is still necessary...

We are two Christian students at Loughborough and this is our account of the attempts that have been made to maintain a biblical witness on campus over the last few years. Our purpose in writing this article is to encourage university students to be faithful disciples of Christ by rooting evangelism and discipleship in the word of God.

Worship & war

Before this series signs off (next month, after four years; believe it or not, it replaced Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the paper), and before postmodernism is eclipsed by something else, let's try out a bit of pm-ism here. That is, the text you are reading and singing from may sometimes be crucially defined by its context or its readers, whatever the author thought it meant.

For example, however you chose to remember September 11, November 11 still reverberates at least in the older national British consciousness. 'Armistice Day' may have been transferred to 'Remembrance Sunday', but it is 11/11 which defines the relevant religious observance-for some, the last surviving vestige of a liturgical year.

'Restoring Hope to the Church' was the title of a recent Anglican national initiative featuring church leaders and parishes engaging with their communities. However, hope for the Church of England rests in whether it will turn away from the liberal agenda that has dominated it for so many years to the gospel agenda outlined in the Bible.

There is great hope coming from the mainly orthodox and growing Anglican Communion which appears determined to exercise biblical discipline on the New Westminister decision to allow same-sex blessings and the New Hampshire decision to appoint the first gay Bishop, Gene Robinson. Manchester Cathedral has been caught up in this crisis by agreeing to host a service in October for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.

Unless a British Christian of the current generation has been stolidly attending only one church, or one kind of church, for the past 20 years, it is unlikely that he/she will have failed to encounter 'Mission Praise', in one of its many shapes or forms.

The success of this book has been phenomenal; in some congregations it has swept the board, and even in otherwise catholic, reformed, liberal or charismatic assemblies it has crept in at least as an alternative option for Sunday or the week night gathering. How come?

Golden streets?

STREETS PAVED WITH GOLD

The story of the London City Mission

It's been a scorcher of a summer. As I write, temperatures are climbing towards a record 100 degrees. So as Britain basked in the hottest summer and students dispersed to go on mission teams, family holidays, or to earn some cash, what have I been up to? Did I stop work in the absence of any student activity on campus? Have I spent the summer months topping up my tan and perfecting my barbecuing techniques?

I may have been tempted to, but instead a sweltering office in Victoria has been my home. But I'm not complaining, because I was given the exciting task of working with a team of students and UCCF staff around the country to prepare three new projects for launch in September.

Terry White from Belfast found a Bible in a council skip. It changed his life.

I come from a non-Christian family. In 1985, while walking up the road one morning, a friend offered me a job. Immediately I said 'yes'. I wanted it because I had been unemployed for three years. He told me to come down to the council offices for an interview. After I had a medical, I got the job!

As UCCF gives thanks for 75 years of witness to Christ in the student world EN asked Dr. Oliver Barclay, a staff member of UCCF from 1945 and General Secretary 1964-1980, to reflect on his involvement with the Christian Union movement.

EB: What was your experience as a Christian student?

Jonathan Stephen, who for many years has pastored Carey Baptist Church in Reading, takes up the position of Director of British Evangelical Council from September. Known as a man who likes to get things done, EN asked Jonathan about what the future might hold . . .

EN: Can you remind us of the function of BEC and how it came into being?

The apostle's vision of heaven, with saints 'from every nation, tribe, people and language' is brought vividly to life by the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).

This summer its' World Assembly drew delegates from 115 national student movements, and from most of the other 35 countries where work has started. As the names of one country after another came up on the screen in the opening meeting, it was hard to keep back the tears. The last countries to appear were those who would formally join the Fellowship that week: Russia, Rwanda, Indonesia, Belize, Lesotho and St. Lucia. They rolled up the screen to spontaneous applause.

If you want a long history of Christian work at university, and a wide variety of local churches to choose from, then Queen's campus in Stockton is not the place to go.

However, in the last five years the Christian Union has grown from non-existence to one of the fastest growing groups in the country. Their aim is simple: to proclaim the gospel to as many students as possible. God has honoured their work and people are sitting up and taking notice; not just their fellow students, but other CUs in the North East too.

Recently I met a man who, five years before, had been converted to Christ after no less than 15 years as a heroin addict.

The Lord's means of his deliverance and salvation was an open-air preacher who had faithfully made Christ known outside Whitechapel Tube Station in London.

R.V.G. Tasker, a former Professor of New Testament at Kings College, London, once wrote that 'hope is a psychological necessity'.

Such is certainly the case at the beginning of a new year for those of us who are members of the Church of England as we face many uncertainties in matters of belief, finance and strategy. Thankfully 'hope springs eternal in the human breast' and, although there is much gloom on the horizon, most of us still find ourselves harbouring some hopes of better things to come.

Why are ministers going to North America and why should they think of staying here? Ken Brownell has investigated this pressing question...

I have been thinking about writing this for some time. Every so often we hear of a good minister leaving this country and moving to North America. When recently I heard that two very well-known ministers are planning to do just that, I decided the time has come. Because I am an American, but have lived here for 27 years, I may be able to say what a Briton could not without sounding like sour grapes.

8.00 am. The park has been abandoned for years. Only the frame of the swings is left - the rest has been ripped up or burned down. Just yards away the smouldering corpse of another car continues to send up smoke to the heavens. A mother and her children scurry past on their way to school. The picture is bleak. The future...

Like many other council estates, the St. Mellons estate in Cardiff has had its fair share of problems over the years. The large out-of-town estate was written off by the former Welsh Secretary, John Redwood, as a den of single mothers and scroungers.

Six months managing the Africa Inland Mission Guest House in Kampala in 2002. Fascinating (kupendeshwa is the Swahili). Missionaries are particularly interesting people. . . .

Here comes Wayne from Texas. True, he does not have six guns and a stetson. But the laconic drawl and the laid-back ambience are vintage Wild West. He is 'just down from Sudan'.

The withdrawal of Western powers from former colonies after World War II was accompanied by a developing sense of guilt at Europe's colonial past.

Hand in hand went a progressive disengagement by post-colonial Western societies from Christian mission activities. Within Western societies in general, and even within some parts of the church, mission came to be regarded as controversial at best, and with downright hostility in certain quarters. It came to be seen by many as just another form of colonialism.

It seems that very few churches or Christian mission organisations make any effort to consider how the context of their mission is likely to change before they plan. There is a tendency to plan as though the future is simply an extension of the present.

Futurists seek to identify driving forces for change. There is a widespread consensus that one of the major driving forces for change as we race into the 21st century is globalisation. It is our belief that globalisation is already changing the world in which we live, seek to serve Christ and think about mission. We join others and use 'McWorld' as a metaphor to characterise the globalisation of our planetary society.

A cartoon-caption competition in the American Christian journal Leadership featured a spectacle-wearing sheep speaking from behind a pulpit. In my favourite among the ten listed winners, the sheep is saying, 'I want to thank all 99 of you for giving Pastor Bob the freedom to seek me out'.

The well-known parable of the lost sheep, as recorded in Luke's Gospel, contains a rhetorical question: 'Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a 100 sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?"'

If we look back over the 20th century, the sudden and disastrous onslaught of AIDS ranks as one of its great calamities. It is one of the greatest challenges for the 21st century.

How has the Christian church worldwide risen to that challenge?

The TV news has concentrated on the strategy of war in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's statue, but, on both sides of the firing line, there are other stories to tell...

Pocket New Testament and Psalms, produced for the Armed Forces by Scripture Gift Mission, have been in increasingly high demand in the Gulf. The camouflage-covered and ship-crested Bibles are proving an essential piece of kit for frontline troops.