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St John’s Wood is west of Regent’s Park in London, a neighbourhood made famous by Lords Cricket Ground. The Edgware Road is also a centre for London’s Arab population.

At the heart of this community is St John’s Wood Road Baptist Church, a Grace Baptist church that has served this area for well over a century. In 2005 it had fallen on hard times, but Chris and Helen Hawthorne came to revitalise it, gathering a growing community around God’s word. During their time they sent a member to church-plant in Bordeaux, and another returned to serve in Assam, India. Finally, in 2018 the church sent Chris and Helen through GBM to head up Proclamation Institute Zambia, leaving Scott Little as the new pastor.

In the summer of 2019, a group of young people representing 14 European nations met in Italy for Ready Set Go Multiply (RSGX). This is an annual summer programme to train future sports ministry leaders and is facilitated by the European Christian Sports Union, a network of churches, charities, and individuals seeking to make disciples in sport across Europe.

The delegates on RSGX spend two weeks in Bible and sports training ahead of a week running sports camps or community projects in another European country. This summer they served at a camp in Eastern Europe.

Our day started with a 5.30am alarm and a bleary-eyed drive into London. By 8.45 we had our seats within eight feet of a TV in the ‘Signal Box’ at Euston Station to witness one of the greatest displays of English rugby ever! Could this day get any better?

The Grace Baptist Mission Annual Delegates’ Meeting was not an immediately obvious progression! GBM exists to ‘help churches support their missionaries worldwide’ and it is funded by, directed and answerable to the churches that it supports. The church delegates’ meeting, the church business part of GBM’s Annual Mission Day, began with a focus on the Great Commission and Matthew 16:18. We have seen progress through mission – because Jesus is building his church. There have been hard times – because the gates of hell are arrayed against us. But we press on – because we know Jesus is in charge and Satan will not prevail!

‘20 new churches in Birmingham by 2020.’ That was the stretch goal that we set for ourselves, under God in 2010.

It was beyond any single church, network or denomination to achieve it, and humanly speaking, it seemed impossible. The last ten years have been a lesson in how God delights to do the impossible, and it has been a privilege to have front-row seats.

Wednesday 6 November saw the inaugur-al ‘Pray for London’ event hosted by the London Gospel Partnership.

Over 100 church leaders and church workers, along with many other believers, gathered together at East London Tabernacle for a time of dedicated prayer for God’s saving grace to be seen powerfully throughout London.

Co-Mission churches have long used the metaphor of a lifeboat to remind ourselves that we need to be rescuing the perishing.

Richard Coekin (Co-Mission) has drawn on lessons from the Titanic disaster and Neil Powell (City to City) has written of the need for ‘a Dunkirk spirit, where a huge number of lifeboats were mobilised to realise a vision far too big for any group to achieve alone’.

The Christmas holidays tend to be a great time for kids. The average family in the UK will spend an additional £2,000 over the Christmas period on gifts, food and trips.

It is not the same picture for everyone, though. 700,000 kids in London are living below the poverty line, after you’ve taken housing costs into account. For these homes the additional financial stress of Christmas can often be the cause of family arguments, stress, and domestic abuse. It is not surprising that, despite the cold weather, winter is a time when many kids run away for the first time.

Saturday 23 November marked the inaugural Cotswold Bible Festival. Around 700 adults and children converged on the festival town of Cheltenham for a day of thought-provoking Bible teaching, excel-lent music and a whole host of seminars and fun activities.

The event was conceived by a group of like-minded local evangelical Christian leaders who were keen to run a Keswick-style event for churches across the Cotswolds. The vision for the event came together a year ago, with encouraging conversations with Jonathan Lamb and James Robson at Keswick Ministries leading to the formation of ‘Keswick Gloucestershire’ in association with the Keswick Fellowship – a network of similar events across the country. The event itself was given separate branding to help draw in those who were less familiar with ‘Keswick’, and to allow for other events to be run under the ‘Keswick Gloucestershire’ banner in the future.

Highfields Church in Cardiff was able to share the hope of Christ with around a million people as they hosted BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship on 17 November.

The live broadcast lasted 38 minutes and was split equally between singing and speaking, giving Lead Minister Dave Gobbett a great opportunity to share Christ with a worldwide audience. He said: ‘The main thrust of my message from Ephesians 2 was that Jesus uniquely brings people together because Jesus uniquely brings people to God. Only Jesus can pull our troubled world together.

In a chapel in the heart of the South Wales valleys a coffee morning is in full flow. A handful of retired men are in attendance. Like most weeks numbers are relatively low. But for the minister who has organised it, the Revd Robert Stivey, it is still something of a triumph.

Just over a year ago, the Calfaria Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in Porth was shut and was awaiting demolition. However, Stivey stepped in, purchased it for under £40,000 of his own money, and then re-opened the vestry once more.

Wycliffe Bible Translators opened its new Wales office in Bridgend on 14 September.

Carwyn Graves, Wycliffe’s Wales Team Leader, spoke about the long history of Welsh mission workers, who often pushed for mother-tongue Bibles and literacy programmes where others ignored them. Yet, he also focused on the future, and how churches in Wales can still be meaningfully involved in world mission today through praying, giving and going.

News from the Eisteddfod Mission during August always shows that an eclectic group of people are reached by the missioners who speak to Welsh and English-speaking festival goers.

This year was no exception. The first day included a couple who had belonged to a sect. On the second day, a person said that after death she would return as a cat or dog. As with most times of mission, there can be the feeling that one is trying to sell umbrellas to people who are living in a dry desert. Most people just don’t see their need of Christ. In fact many people answering the question ‘describe your life in three words’, used happy and contented in their responses.

A Reading shopping centre, part-owned by an investment company based in Abu Dhabi, caved in to LGBT demands to drop a US fast-food restaurant from renting premises, it was reported in October.

Owners of the Oracle centre in Reading will not renew Chic-fil-A’s six-month lease, claiming it is the ‘right thing to do’. In 2012 the restaurant’s CEO, Dan Cathy, stated that the company supported the ‘biblical definition of the family unit’. It donated money to Christian charities that support traditional marriage.

In November, the Riviera International Centre, Torquay, hosted The FIEC Leaders’ Conference. This year’s theme, Leadership at Every Level, was perfectly timed; as attendance reached 1,000 and the FIEC continues to grow numerically, now is the time to carefully consider how to raise up leaders to ensure growth is lasting, sustainable, and deeply rooted in biblical truth.

John Stevens, FIEC President, opened proceedings by reminding the gathered pastors, elders, women’s workers, and other leaders of the biblical vision for leadership from Ephesians 4. Godly leadership, he instructed, proceeds from an identity rooted in the gospel; to lose sight of that is to build ministry on oneself. And the danger? A ministry that finds its worth in oneself will be slow to delegate, loathe showing humility or weakness, and will find pride in concentrating power. Only the gospel sets one free to serve.

A church plant on an urban housing estate will this month celebrate its first anniversary and its success in building a congregation that represents around a dozen nationalities.

While Hope Church Vauxhall’s first year has brought some challenges, including the death of one of its young couples, Senior Pastor Sam Gibb says he is seeing tremendous gospel progress.

‘The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the very power of God.’

The words of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians opened REVIVE, Co-Mission’s Annual Bible Festival which took place at the University of Kent at Canterbury in June. In a Big Top filled with attendees from 28 Co-Mission churches across London, the weekend began with an evening of praise, prayer, interviews and a talk by Richard Coekin, CEO of Co-Mission, on ‘The Power of the Cross’. While the message of Christ crucified is despised as weak and foolish by the world, it is central to the Bible, history and Co-Mission. Indeed, it remains the only way that Co-Mission will grow as a network.

I long to see people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ all over London – particularly people from other cultures or faith backgrounds, or those who are marginalised by society or living in some of London’s most deprived communities.

Well before the horror of the 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower brought the area to national attention, my colleagues at London City Mission were talking with churches, praying and planning how to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to more people in the area. Having marked the two-year anniversary since that terrible night on 14 June 2017, I want to share with you some of the stories I’ve heard from people who are now ministering in the area alongside local churches.

The Evangelical Alliance announced in July that Gavin Calver will be its new Chief Executive Officer. He will succeed general director Steve Clifford, who announced in April that he is stepping down.

Dr Tani Omideyi, chair of the Evangelical Alliance’s board of trustees, said: ‘With a strong field of applicants, Gavin impressed the board with his extensive expertise and his vision for the future, and he left us with a sense of excitement and great expectation. We came out of the process feeling confident that we have found someone chosen of God for this new season.’

In the last week of August 1,000 Christian Union leaders gathered at the Quinta Christian conference centre in North Shropshire for the 100th Forum conference.

Over the last century, 40,000 students have been equipped for witness in their universities through Forum, and it was a privilege to stand alongside students this year.

The Free Church of Scotland will facili-tate a focused outreach initiative called ‘Generation19’ which aims to encourage local churches to reach out to their com-munities with the gospel.

In 2017 a census of Scottish churches was carried out by Brierley Consultancy which indicated a sharp decline in church attendance and engagement. The report showed that ‘some 390,000 people regularly attended church, being 7.2% of the Scottish population, down from 17% in 1984.’ This decline was the equivalent of ‘losing ten congregations per month’.

A lot has happened with 20schemes over the course of this summer, from holiday clubs to conferences to new partnerships. God is always at work in all things, but over the past few months 20schemes have seen Him do many big things.

On 20 June, the church-planting network hosted ‘Sing Scotland’ with Keith & Kristyn Getty and John Piper. The day began with a day conference where over 300 Christians from across the UK gathered. Topics focused on how we sing corporately and the preaching of God’s word.