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Southern Baptist missionary Don Caswell saw the armed terrorist walking towards him and knew - just knew - the gunman was coming to kill him.

'I was looking at him and I saw him look at me. And that instant I realised he was coming right towards the pharmacy', Caswell said in his soft Texan's accent.

Peter Jensen is the evangelical Archbishop of Sydney. He flies into Britain in January to take a series of meetings under the title, Anglicanism past, present and future - what is the future for the Church of England?

Though these meetings were planned many months ago they have taken on new significance since Dr. Rowan Williams has been named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

Anniversaries for 2003

General

Robert Estienne, the leading printer in Geneva at the time of the Reformation, was born in 1503. He printed Bibles in French, using roman type rather than the heavy 'Black Letter' type, which made for greater ease of reading, and from 1551 introduced the practice of numbering individual verses, which has been followed in English translations.

Lilias Trotter, missionary to Algeria, was born in London in 1853. A gifted painter and sensitive writer, she formed the Algiers Mission Band (now Arab World Ministries).

You're in church. You get chatting to a student who has just finished their first term studying Theology. You ask if they are struggling being an evangelical in that environment and they say, 'Not really'. You know the position of some in the department at their university, so you ask the question again, 'Surely, you must be finding it tough?'. They casually reply, 'No'.

Discovering this to be the typical response of most Theology and RS students in the UK, has been one of the biggest surprises for Daniel Strange and David Gibson, who co-ordinate UCCF's work among this group. 'We both started the job expecting to work with students wanting help with loads of theological issues', explains David. 'But the reality is that we have great resources, but few students are interested.'

I'm often asked if I see any encouragement in my travelling and preaching throughout the country. There are many heartening things happening, despite the difficulties we often face. Christmas events already seem part of the dim and distant past, but my itinerary throughout December illustrates some of the things from the evangelical scene that do my heart good.

* It is thrilling to see groups of 18-21 year-olds organising major evangelistic events which hundreds of their friends attend. This is what university carol services are. Bath Abbey, Coventry Cathedral, a derelict Anglican church in Plymouth, Great Halls in Reading, Cardiff and Aston were packed with students hearing the gospel.

In 1981 20th-Century Fox released a David Puttnam film about two British athletes who won gold medals in the Olympic Games in Paris almost 60 years before (in 1924). The film won critical acclaim and has been shown many times on television since then.

It brought to the public eye Eric Liddell, a Christian man who turned down the opportunity to compete in the 100 metres, the blue riband event at the Games, because its heats were to be held on a Sunday.

The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) is a global fellowship with ministry in over 140 countries - UCCF is the UK national movement.

EN: You have your World Assembly in 2003. Tell us first about that.

Your churches are sleeping!

Brother Yun escaped to the West a couple of years ago, and is now based in Germany. Here, in a further extract from his book, he gives an opinion of the church in the West.

I've seen people in Western churches worshipping as if they're already in heaven. Then someone invariably brings a comforting message like, 'My children, I love you. Don't be afraid, I'm with you'. I'm not opposed to such words, but why is it that nobody seems to hear a Word from the Lord like, 'My child, I want to send you to the slums of Asia or the darkness of Africa to be my messenger to people dying in their sin'?

Literally millions of students in this country are being neglected in gospel work. Further Education (FE) Colleges have for too long been the forgotten frontier of student ministry. Many Christians hardly know these students exist, or are oblivious to the spiritual needs of the colleges on their doorsteps.

The facts speak for themselves: in the last academic year 2.35 million students were enrolled at FE colleges in England alone. Yet there are only 139 Christian Unions that UCCF know of, most of which have 2-5 members. Admittedly, many areas of Christian ministry are desperately lacking in resources, but at present there are only a handful of workers dedicated to FE colleges. As Steph Bushell, a student at Merton College, south London said recently: 'FE colleges are full of lost people as well'.

William Taylor is the Minister of St. Helen's Bishopsgate in the City of London, where Dick Lucas preached before his retirement. William has been outspoken in his opposition to the appointment of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. In this frank interview with EN, he explains why...

EN: What are the problems with Rowan Williams becoming the next Archbishop of Canterbury?

Jay Smith is an American missionary who holds weekly discussions at the historical Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, London, which provides an open forum for the confrontation between the gospel and Islam.

He serves in Britain under the auspices of Brethren in Christ World Missions, and in October had a weekend conference in Dublin where he debated with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, 'encouraged by the realisation that, as Christians, we have little to fear when faced by the edifice of Islam in its many guises'. Smith and Dr. Elsie Maxwell were flown over by 'Dialogue Ireland', an ecumenical (Catholic/Protestant) group interested in 'dialoguing' with peoples of other faiths.

'How should old mission agencies adapt to the challenges of reaching the world in the 21st century?'

That is a question with which Andy Lines is having to wrestle. Last year Andy became the new General Secretary of Crosslinks, formerly known as the Bible Churchmen's Missionary Society, and EN interviewed him recently to see, among other things, what his thoughts were.

Getting on for two and a half years ago, Michael Lockwood moved from Thornhill Baptist Church with his wife and two daughters to join with four believers in fellowship at Hall Green in Haworth, West Yorkshire. He tells us what happened...

We went with an awareness of some of the inherent difficulties of life in a small church and prepared as well as we could for the hardships ahead. What we were not prepared for, however, was the enormous blessings we would experience, not despite the church being small but because it was small.

The American poet/songwriter Paul Simon wrote about the way human life goes. He described it like this:

Slip sliding away...

Something like a fifth of the world's people are Chinese. Woven into the fabric of the largest population on earth is the rich thread of China's ethnic minorities, numbering more than 100 million people. They are vastly outnumbered by the majority 1.2 billion Han Chinese.

'Operation World' has proved a great help in stimulating prayer for world-wide mission. But there is another book, 'Operation China', by New Zealander Paul Hattaway, published by Piquant, which introduces the reader to these hidden minority peoples within China. They account for only 6.7% of China's population, but they inhabit 62.5% of the territory.

2002 is the 50th anniversary of the death, in April 1952, of Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Though unknown outside specialist missionary circles, he was widely acknowledged in his lifetime as the world's foremost authority on all matters relating to Christian witness to Islam.

This reputation emerged from a 50-year career involving pioneer missionary work, literature propagation and advocacy work on behalf of mission to Muslims and finally a career in teaching and writing on missionary theology and practice.

Over the summer months many missions and gospel events are going on all over the country. One such outreach by students from Cardiff University went on into July and took place in the Rhondda Valley.

Wales has seen great days for the gospel in years gone by, but now things are different. For some time students from Cardiff Christian Union have had a burden to evangelise the valleys of South Wales and have set up a group called Revive to reach out. During term time a number of them go up to the valleys each week to work in youth clubs based in local churches in the area.

One year ago Claire Osborne walked into the Quinta Centre a confident graduate. She was looking forward to a year on the UCCF Relay programme 'meeting students for coffee and loving people'. All her illusions were soon to be shattered. The reality was that she was to be stretched and challenged more than she could ever have imagined.

'Relay' began as a response to UCCF's desire to put more people on the ground to work among students and to invest in and develop student leaders. It is now an established one-year training and discipleship training programme that has placed almost 400 recent graduates with Christian Unions across the country.

Francis Schaeffer brought a prophetic message to the church over 30 years ago about the sanctity of human life. Dr. Robert W. Evans's forthcoming book 'The Descent of Dignity' revisits the message that Schaeffer implored us to hear.

JC: You describe Francis Schaeffer in your book as your unseen friend. Tell us about his influence on you.

When Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer arrived in Afghanistan, they had come to help bring a better life and a little hope to some of the poorest and most oppressed people in the world.

Within a few months, their lives were thrown into chaos as they became pawns in historic international events. They were arrested by the ruling Taliban government for teaching about Christianity to the people with whom they worked. In the middle of their trial, the events of September 11 2001 led to the international war on terrorism, with the Taliban a primary target.

Surely we must stand amazed at the comparative lack of prayer in the British churches.

Think about our nation at present. Family breakdown is rife. Street crime is at record levels. Our media is awash with pornography. There is abortion on demand. Drugs are easily available. The churches are dwindling. Islamic extremism is on the rise. I can imagine the Lord Jesus standing at the door of many a church prayer meeting and thinking to himself: 'What has to happen to this country before my people will come and take prayer seriously?'

It was in a small student room late one night at Reading University in 1974 that the Holy Spirit whispered to me: 'You must become like a child' (Matthew 18.3).

As I asked God to be my Father, my searchings for truth and reality were finally over, I was born again, I realised that the Lord had died to save me and my life as a true Christian started. I was 18 and in my first year studying Psychology and Linguistics.

The value of churches having regular visiting teams going out with the gospel cannot be over-emphasised.

It is effective and not as difficult as many believe. Through visiting we meet people of all age-groups, and, given time and patience, we can gain their confidence and forge friendships with those who are interested to look into the Christian faith. Contact will be made with hundreds who do not attend church services.

During one of his lectures on apocalyptic literature this year at Word Alive, Don Carson explained how we can be diverted from the gospel by what may have been good experiences in our lives.