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Operation Mobilisation, the outreach mission, was founded by George Verwer 64 years ago. This year marks the 50th anniversary of OM’s ship ministry. Seelan Govender, CEO of OM Ships, writes:

With more urgency than ever before as the numbers increase each year, we’re focusing on our vision to connect with the least-reached people groups of the world – those with little chance of hearing the gospel – in order to see them become vibrant communities of Jesus-followers.

An evangelical Middle East chaplain is playing a key role in resolving a long-running dispute which has left five sailors stuck on an abandoned tanker for years.

Andy Bowerman, Regional Director for the Mission to Seafarers, has been visiting the stranded crew of the Panama-flagged MT Iba since May 2019 to ensure they have adequate food, water and fuel – as well as responding to their requests for spiritual support and to questions about what motivates him to help them.

More than 100 people were killed after a massive explosion in Equatorial Guinea (central West Africa) in March, with 600 injured and almost 300 in hospital. More than 60 people were rescued from under the rubble by the civil protection corps and the fire service.

Local Christians and churches were badly affected too, with a Baptist pastor (as yet unnamed) killed and several members of the Baptist Church of Bata killed or injured.

New Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), German theologian Thomas Schirrmacher, has begun work after being inaugurated.

The WEA was established in 1846 and works in 129 countries. It claims to represent 600 million evangelicals.

Stephen Lungu, one of the great evangelists of recent times and revered as the ‘Billy Graham of Africa’, has died of coronavirus, aged 78.

Stephen grew up in pre-independence Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and was the product of a dysfunctional family, living on the streets and getting involved with street gangs.

Departing President of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), J.D. Greear, has used his final message to the Executive Committee to demand that the church engages constructively with Critical Race Theory (CRT).

The talk coincided with the much-publicised decision of leading Bible teacher Beth Moore – a longstanding critic of Donald Trump – to quit the SBC, saying ‘I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists.’

New official data reveals that almost 2% of the Spanish population now identifies as Protestant or evangelical.

In the 20 years to 2018, this group multiplied eightfold, to become the fastest-growing denomination in the country. And those evangelicals are now worshipping in well over 4,200 churches across Spain, opening on average 16 new churches a month.

Gary Clayton of the Mission Aviation Fellowship writes: For more than 75 years, MAF’s fleet of light aircraft has been flying patients from some of the world’s most hard-to-access areas to hospital.

Many MAF flights involve women facing pregnancy complications, accident victims or people wounded due to tribal conflict. Two, less typical, MAF medevacs involved a two-week-old chimpanzee and a ten-year-old boy.