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With plans to facilitate the planting of 20 new churches across Birmingham by 2020, June’s annual Birmingham conference, with around 100 in attendance, noted that almost half of that target has been reached within four years.

A range of churches from different denominations and networks, including New Frontiers, Birmingham City Mission, Church of England and FIEC came together, committed to seeing people come to Christ.

It was reported in July that Peter Kennelly of OAC Ministries (Open Air Campaigners) is resigning as National Director to work with OAC in France. His change of direction is based on timely guidance that characterises his journey of faith.

Over the years, Peter has taken part in missions and outreach activities, in Britain and abroad. ‘I always had a heart for France and the French-speaking people,’ he explains. ‘I’ve been learning the language and going over to France regularly to join others in evangelism.

July 8-10 saw the second year of the experiment to relocate the Evangelical Ministers’ Conference to London’s Barbican Centre.

It is a venue with lots of space and dignity about it, and though many people loved the buzz of the old days the acres of room at the Barbican makes it a much better experience than playing sardines at St Helen’s. However, going for a well-used secular venue does have it’s difficulties. The Barbican had double-booked (with Sir Simon Rattle I was told) and so EMA had to be deferred two weeks from its original place in the calendar. This was reflected in the slightly fewer numbers who attended. That was a shame because these were great conference days.

The Antioch Plan is a new church planting initiative for London.

It’s been launched by Co-Mission, the cross-denominational church planting network run by Richard Coekin. This exciting development is an attempt to gather and plant ‘house church’-sized congregations across the wide variety of Greater London’s geography. Their objective is to recruit, train and deploy a cohort of ten to 15 pioneer church planters and fund them over a three-year period. And they’ve been given £1 million to finance it.

Ryan Burton King

Date posted: 1 Jun 2014

From April 4–6 a group of around 70 young people met for a weekend on the site of All Nations Christian College in Hertfordshire to consider ways of getting involved in evangelism and mission.

This annual event of the Grace Baptist Churches in South East England for Christians aged 15-25, celebrated its tenth anniversary with moving times of worship, helpful workshops, excellent Bible teaching, and lots of opportunities for fellowship.

en staff

Date posted: 1 Jun 2014

After 40 years of beach mission work at Lyme Regis, United Beach Mission (UBM) are happy that in the Spring of this year they were granted a further three years to run the children’s summer club after a challenge by a local councillor, over the past two years, put the work under threat.

Councillor Mark Gage, who in his profile on the Lyme Regis Town Council website puts a priority area for development as ‘youth facilities’, expressed concerns about UBM’s work with children on the beach. In the local paper, Tim Howlett, UBM’s executive officer, was clear that families are made aware of the Christian nature of the work of UBM and its aim to share the good news of Jesus, encouraging families to be involved and that no children are encouraged to attend without the permission of their parents.

Keswick has announced a more detailed programme for this year’s Convention, as new chief executive Jonathan Lamb settles into the role.

The Convention, which runs from July 12 – August 1 in the Lake District town, is exploring some of the deep questions of life, and has invited apologists Ravi Zacharias, Chris Sinkinson and Roger Carswell, and Bible teachers Vaughan Roberts, Ian Coffey and many others to preach. The Convention also aims to make its programme helpful to Christians who bring non-believing friends and relatives with them in its third week.

Over the last 50 years the European Missionary Fellowship [EMF] has been investing in training Christians for the work of gospel ministry in Europe and subsequently many other parts of the world too.

The anniversary was marked at the Open Day of EMF’s School of Biblical Studies on May 10 at Welwyn Evangelical Church, Hertfordshire. Around 150 attended specially arranged meetings.

On Saturday, March 1, over 90 people came to The Net, a training day in evangelism and evangelistic preaching, at Enfield Evangelical Free Church, organised by United Beach Missions and Roger Carswell and sponsored by 10ofthose.com .

Johnny Prime, pastor of the church, set the scene for the day as he showed from Luke 5 that the Lord Jesus is the loving people-catcher who catches sinful people for the purpose of catching others. As we preach the Word of God we throw out the net to others even when conditions may not look ideal.

Excitement is building as many churches across the nation gear up for A Passion for Life (APFL).

This is a nationwide mission initiative from gospel churches which had its first outing in 2010.

Over 100 students responded to the gospel at a UCCF city-wide student mission entitled ‘Rumour Has It’.

The Prohibition Era-themed week of events, which took place in late January, saw around 20 CUs from across London team up with 15 churches to put on a week of evangelistic events.

‘Life on life, together on mission’ lies at the heart of the NT vision for discipleship and it should therefore be at the heart of our vision for the local church. This has been the central conviction of the ‘Crowded House’ since it began in 1996, under the leadership of Steve Timmis.

But how could this conviction begin to shape the approach of churches with a similar theology and similar convictions about mission, but which have existing patterns of church life which may or may not facilitate this missional emphasis? That was the key question explored in a highly stimulating consultation in October facilitated by the Crowded House team, which brought together people from 11 churches (mostly, but not exclusively, from the FIEC but all conservative evangelical).

On May 20, Affinity held its annual Churches and Mission Day at Highbury Baptist Church in London, discussing the question ‘Is sending cross-cultural missionaries preferable to supporting indigenous gospel workers?’. John McDonald of Grace Baptist Mission urged churches to see that supporting a gifted national believer may be a far better way of using limited resources. If encouraged to support an indigenous worker, churches may say that they cannot support or pray for someone they have never met. And how will he or she send prayer letters if they do not speak English? Yet Paul had never met the Colossians and was constantly praying for them (Colossians 1.9). This is a challenge to our churches.

Culture of dependency

Do our mission strategies help or hinder? Do we ‘use’ national believers in our strategy, or do we serve them in theirs? If some level of control and accountability is lost in the process, is that a sacrifice worth making? Unless we let them lead, they may not escape from a culture of dependency which will stunt their maturity as leaders and churches.

Oxford can seem to be a place that meanders along at snail’s pace; dreaming spires, etc.

But dig a little deeper, and you find that Oxford life is hurtling along at a bewildering speed: corners of land morphing overnight into student accommodation, ever-growing pockets of social deprivation, and waves of new arrivals from all over the globe.

Immediately after planting a new church in the neighbouring town of Thame in 2008, Long Crendon Baptist Church (LCBC) started making plans to redevelop the church building.

During the weekend of February 1-2, the church celebrated the opening of its new £1.5m facilities. An Open Day was held for the community on the Saturday, during which thanks were given to the architects, builders and various other community organisations who had offered use of their facilities during the nine months in which the church building was out of action. Visitors were impressed with the transformation of the building.

This year was the turn of the Renewal Centre in Solihull to play host to the Grace Baptist Mission (GBM) annual meetings.

On October 26, the venue was full with 750 or more Christians from across the country. The theme was ‘A heart for mission’. One of the highlights of the day was the introduction of new missionaries who have come into the work.