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There used to be a terrible worrier in the office. Every day he'd arrive with a frown like the Rift Valley.

Till one day he was all smiles. 'What's happened?', colleagues asked. 'Oh, I've paid a consultant to do all my worrying - only £100 per day'. 'But', they gasped, 'however will you afford that?' Smiling, he replied: 'That's his worry!'

This spring has seen an evangelistic initiative by Christian Unions on many campuses to reach out with the message of Christ using Mark's Gospel. Bob Horn of the Universities & Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) reports. . .

He was a philosophy student and he had never read any part of the Bible. Then a Christian friend gave him a copy of Mark's Gospel during the Christian Union's mission last term.

Tim Chester

Date posted: 1 Jul 2001

September 2000 saw the launch in Sheffield of the Northern Cornhill Training Course.

Northern Cornhill is based on the Proclamation Trust's successful Cornhill Training Course.

French Christians are bracing themselves for problems resulting from a controversial new law aimed at controlling the activities of dangerous religious sects. But it is also likely to affect ordinary churches.

Some churches were already considering removing the word 'evangelical' from their names, the president of the French Protestant Federation (FPF), the Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, said from Paris.

Ten years ago, Marcel Stoob was playing professionally on Switzerland's football team. 'Football was my passion', he says, 'and I was good'.

But then an Achilles heel injury put an end to his dreams for competing for the World Cup. When his young wife also suddenly died of cancer, it seemed like the end of the world. He recalled: 'I thought, why does God take everything away from me that I care about?'

A university hall packed with 2,000 African university students gathered after Christmas to face the challenge of cross-cultural mission. They came from everywhere between Egypt and South Africa.

February's EN reported on the Urbana Missionary Convention organised every three or four years for US students.The triennnial TEMA Conferences for Young People have drawn the attention to the needs of the unevangelised world.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2001

Writing from the US, Josh Moody aspires to be an evangelical Alistair Cooke as he begins a series ...

One Saturday morning in May 1891, in the unchurched and sprawling industrial area of East Moors, Splott, Cardiff, two men could be seen putting up a large tent.

The older man of 45, John Pugh, was unused to swinging a sledgehammer and he had lumbago for a month. The younger man, Seth Joshua, who was in his early 30s, was adept at the job. Just as they finished, one of the rough characters of the area passed by. He was curious as to what was going on.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2001

Doctrinal controversies are far from uncommon in America. Of course, the ecumenical movement is influential here, with the Evangelical and Catholic attempts to form some kind of statement that can get mutual approval, the broad-based evangelistic campaigns of Luis Palau and the like, and with other, more liberal, ecumenical movements. But, there is still much in the way of doctrinal disagreements and arguments in churches, between churches, in denominations.

One of the most important ongoing battles in this regard is in the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the world, has extraordinarily rich reserves of money and talent, and is very influential throughout the world by way of its vigorous and commendable support of missionaries. Being so large makes it vulnerable to mega-politics.

Billy Kennedy is an evangelist with many years of outreach and pastoral experience in reaching young people. He talked to EN about his life and its lessons.

EN: Billy, tell us about the early days of your life.

Once upon a time an international mission (they used to be Missionary Societies) asked me for a list of 'missionary hymns' to use at its meetings and services. I drew up a core selection of 120 drawn from over 30 books

We wondered whether to classify them or simply list them A-Z. I offered two basic sections; God's initiative (Jesus shall reign; Thou whose almighty word) and our response (Facing a task unfinished; O Master, when thou callest)- and so on. But many classics (Ye servants of God; We have a Gospel to proclaim) include both, matching the perspective of the Great Commission in Matthew 28.

Publishing Christian art books today is a hazardous business; most of it is in the hands of small enthusiastic publishers committed to publishing art rather than building a business empire.

So it's been quite a surprise in the last year or two to see one of the most exciting developments in this field coming, originally, from Britain's largest publishing-and-bookshop giant, STL. The first mention in this column came with an enthusiastic review of Hilary Brand and Adrienne Chaplin, Art and Soul (1999), published under STL's Solway imprint and one of the most substantial books on Christian art to have been published in the evangelical market since Hans Rookmaaker's decades ago.

In his now almost legendary address at the opening of a 'National Assembly of Evangelicals' held in October 1966, Martyn Lloyd-Jones urged that evangelicals must stand apart from false ecumenism and 'stand together as churches, constantly together, working together'.1 It has been all too easy for commentators of every doctrinal hue to draw simplistic and unjustifiable conclusions from what was said that night. The fact is that the preacher had no clear blue-print for the future in his mind.

This past autumn I had a seven-week journey through eight provinces of China and was made aware of a serious theological threat to the unity of this country's fast-growing Church.

Since 1996 Bishop K. H. Ting (Ding Guang-xun) has been advocating with a sense of urgency a Faith Reform Movement, the teaching of which strikes at the very heart of Protestant theology. This concept was enunciated when the Three Self Patriotic Movement was formed in the early 1950s.

General

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 affirmed that the divine and human natures are united in the person of Christ.

The Officers' Christian Union was founded in 1851.

Know anyone with a camping stove stashed away somewhere?

It could be a valuable evangelistic tool this month. Oh no! Just when you thought it was safe to read a youth column, someone's mentioned the 'e' word.

As the first year of the new millennium draws to a close, the calls for Christian unity regardless of truth, seem to be ever louder. The following article came to EN from The Institute for Evangelical Formation and Documentation (IFED) and Italian Evangelical Alliance.

In the years following Vatican II (1962-65) evangelicals have shown renewed interest in Roman Catholicism.

My story is of how God became 'my hiding place', my hope in a place where there was no hope.

My parents came over to England in the early 1960s. I grew up in the city of Coventry in a Pakistani Muslim home. Family life was very strict and traditional; we were not allowed to mix socially with the English children at school.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2001

He was an unusual character. Small, squat and very lively.

A group of bright-eyed, intelligent students were gathered around him, crowding out the large room in which we were meeting. There were books everywhere - wall-to-ceiling bookshelves with line upon line, double-shelved large volumes of theology and philosophy, science, and you name it.

John Piper is the senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church (BBC) in Minneapolis.

He is author of more than a dozen books and has been in the UK speaking at conferences organised by such diverse groups as FIEC, Banner of Truth and the Clarendon Centre.

Radical changes are in prospect for all churches in England and Wales . . .

Proposals put forward by the Home Office and the Charity Commission will require places of worship to register with the Charity Commission from April 2001. The Charity Commission estimate that in total 100,000 groups will be affected.

The first article in a three-part look at a serious hindrance to evangelical unity . . .

Earlier this year, a booklet was issued with the title Bible Churches Together - A Plea for True Ecumenism(1). It had three related aims: to clarify the position of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches with regard to the ecumenical movement, to provide some background information about the new network called Essentially Evangelical and to urge greater co-operation between all churches that were genuinely submissive to the authority of the Bible.

God's grace has miraculously transformed a notorious cocaine smuggler, a man who destroyed countless lives, into an ardent Christian.

Jorge Valdes said he was pocketing more than $1 million a month in the late 1970s as the US head of Colombia's notorious Medellin cartel, then the world's largest criminal organisation.

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim ('In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate') - is how most speakers began their talks at the London conference of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists in September.

One speaker began with the words: 'In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; peace to him that is far off and to him that is near - Isaiah 57.19'.