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In the city centres of Oxford and Cambridge in June, people from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Turkey, China, Russia and atheists from the UK stopped to hear a presentation of the gospel as a United Beach Missions ‘Christian Answer’ team preached and witnessed for the Lord Jesus.

Many stopped, asked questions and listened to reasoned, interactive, Christian presentations: ‘How can God allow evil?’, ‘Who am I?’, ‘Reasons not to be an atheist’, ‘Did Jesus rise from the dead?’ And then there were the very many personal conversations as people willingly and eagerly discussed the claims of Jesus Christ.

Supporters of the European Missionary Fellowship (EMF) in the north-west of England gathered at Chorlton Evangelical Church, Manchester on March 8 for an afternoon conference.

A report was given by EMF missionary Volodymyr Kostyshyn, who pastors a church in Ternopil, west Ukraine, both about his own ministry and also about recent political developments in Ukraine.

There was a glossy feel to the annual meetings of the Grace Baptist Mission on Saturday 27 October.

First of all, the venue, the Friends Meeting House in Euston, London had been refurbished – new seats, new stage, flashy data projector equipment and perhaps best of all new loos!

The first week of November saw over 460 delegates meeting on the Norfolk coast for what is fast-becoming a key gathering for gospel-focused leaders in the free churches. It was this year’s FIEC Leaders’ Conference. Julian Hardyman (Eden Baptist, Cambridge) described it as ‘unmissable’ and ‘one of the highlights of my year’!

By any standards it was an outstanding time with spiritually nourishing, expository preaching, excellent seminars, encouraging reports of developments within the FIEC family of churches, well-led corporate worship and many informal opportunities to encourage one another in ministry. In the final session, John Stevens (FIEC national director) said simply: ‘I think we met the Lord Jesus together’. It would be hard to find a better or truer description of the week.

‘Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them’ (Psalm 111:2), were the words with which Martin Leech, director of the European Missionary Fellowship (EMF) opened one of the sessions at the mission’s October Autumn Conference.

EMF missionaries came from Belarus, Belgium, Czech Republic, Romania, Spain and the UK to stay at Guessens, Hertfordshire – the Mission’s HQ – for a long weekend of Bible ministry, reports, prayer, discussion and fellowship. Public meetings were held at Guessens on the Friday evening at which Matt Hill, the new director of Spanish Christian publishing house Editorial Peregrino and István Salánki from London’s Hungarian Reformed Church spoke of their ministries.

A service of thanksgiving for the new building of Lower Ford Street Baptist Church (LFSBC) in Coventry was held on 11 October.

The official opening had already taken place on 14 September when the Lord Mayor of Coventry, the local MP, and those involved in the construction attended. The previous building, strategically located on the edge of the city centre near to Coventry University and opened in 1857, was no longer fit for purpose. Rebuilding started in 2013. Hillfields Evangelical Baptist Church and Durbar Avenue Evangelical Church kindly shared their services/buildings while LFSBC were ‘homeless’.

London City Mission (LCM) held its annual Thanksgiving Service on September 17 with guest speaker Andy Paterson, Mission Director with FIEC, inspiring and motivating LCM staff and supporters alike as he called on them not to lose their nerve or to give up on sharing the gospel verbally.

He also challenged LCM to: ‘Help plant and support indigenous gospel-hearted churches with some of the brilliant evangelists that you have. You need to work with those churches so that they effectively welcome and grow people who are coming to faith in Christ. Please use your expertise to develop a generation of working-class church leaders’. Thirdly, he impressed upon the LCM the role it has to play in helping to train and equip churches in London to cross cultural boundaries and create truly multiracial, multi-ethnic churches in London.

On October 1, the Reform Council expressed its dismay that the objectives of the ‘Shared Conversations on Scripture, Sexuality and Mission’ had been changed. As a result orthodox Anglicans had been, in effect, excluded.

It has called on its members not to participate under these conditions.

‘He made the stars to shine, He made the rolling sea, He made the mountains high and He made me’ has been sung this summer by thousands of children who have never heard about the death and resurrection of Jesus and whose families never attend a church.

United Beach Missions teams have been sharing the good news of Jesus for a total of 60 weeks at beach resorts in England, Wales, Ireland, as well as in Spain and Portugal. With members as young as 15 but with some in their sixties and older, they have been motivated by a love for the Lord, a love for each other and a love for the lost.

Isaac, James and Peace (left to right) are all graduates of the African Bible University (ABU) in Kampala, Uganda.

James’s father was the village witchdoctor and James was raised to follow in his footsteps. Miraculously, he was called out of darkness and into the light of the gospel. The Lord opened the way for him to study at ABU. James now works as an evangelist amongst young people in villages across Uganda, a nation where three quarters of the population are under 25.

September 7 saw friends and family of Steve and Lynsey Auld gather with the congregation of Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge, for Steve’s ordination to pastoral ministry and induction as assistant pastor at Eden.

Steve and Lynsey have two young sons, Hudson and Elliot, and are from Northern Ireland. Steve played rugby for Ireland in the Under 19 Rugby World Cup in 2003. After graduating from Queen’s, Belfast, Steve served as youth pastor at Elmwood Presbyterian Church, Lisburn, from 2005 to 2009, before going to Madagascar with Africa Inland Mission as part of a church-planting team. From there he went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Illinois, where Don Carson was his academic advisor.

On September 27, Edington Chapel in Somerset held a welcome and commissioning service for Matthew Edwards, as a pastoral church worker on a part-time basis.

Matthew worked for ten years with the Open Air Mission. The chapel is rejoicing that God has guided them to this new venture of employing Matthew to help in outreach to the community, re-starting children’s work and building up and encouraging the church fellowship. Matthew and his wife, Sandra, have been living in central Cardiff and have now relocated to a small village in Somerset and are living in a converted milking parlour.

The number of people even within the Co-Mission Senior Staff who thought that God would provide the full complement for our first cohort of Antioch Planters could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

But remarkably and very wonderfully God has not only sent 14 men who have joined the Co-Mission pioneering church planting initiative, the Antioch Plan, applicants have even had to be turned away. This experience has been both a rebuke and a thrill because of God’s goodness.

‘Let Glasgow Flourish’ reads the city motto. And flourish it did at the Commonwealth Games from July 23 – Aug 3.

The city blossomed with many thousands of visitors and a successful 11 days of sporting excellence, with England topping the medal charts. However, what the current motto fails to reveal is that there was once a bit more to it. The original motto read like this: ‘Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of your Word and the praising of your name’. It was shortened to its current, secular format, back in the 17th century.

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.

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.