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Global health charity Mercy Ships has taken possession of its brand-new vessel at an event at the Tianjin Xingang shipyard, China. The Global Mercy, which is 174 metres long and displaces 37,000 tonnes, is the world’s largest civilian hospital ship.

Mercy Ships has been working on this new project for more than eight years. Contracts were signed in 2013, and the keel laid in 2015. Sea trials were successfully completed in late April this year. The Global Mercy will now sail to Antwerp where it will be fitted out with IT and medical equipment. The ship’s volunteer crew will also start to arrive then, before it will be presented to sponsors, future volunteers and the media in early 2022.

MAF’s peace-promoting planes are helping the aviation organisation’s partners to visit some of the most war-torn regions in South Sudan.

According to the UN, the first five months of 2020 saw a 220% increase in incidents of intercommunal violence in South Sudan’s Jonglei State compared with the same period two years ago.

When Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) Pilot Nathan Fagerlie landed in the remote village of Mokndoma in Papua, Indonesia last year, he could tell something was wrong.

‘Can you help us?’ asked Tim Ingles, a missionary serving there. ‘We have a situation.’

A Finnish evangelical Christian leader who is facing court because of his orthodox beliefs on sexual morality has spoken to en, declaring that public opinion is on his side.

However, The Revd Dr Juhana Pohjola, Bishop Elect of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF), criticised what he called the ‘awkward silence’ of the established church in his country.

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.

The human cost of the violence in northern Mozambique is laid bare in a number of eyewitness accounts of the fighting, and its aftermath, that Evangelicals Now has obtained from local Christians.

Several atrocities have recently taken place, with dozens of civilians being killed and at least 11,000 displaced after militants invaded Palma, Cabo Delgado on 24 March.

A NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station has recently said that sunrises in space reminds him of a Bible verse from the Psalms.

Victor Glover, one of the seven crew members of the space station Expedition 64, posted two images of the sun shining just above Earth’s horizon on Instagram and Twitter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

It’s not very often a preacher has to scale a cliff to get into his pulpit, but that is the kind of terrain that Pu Zhidui must overcome as he oversees eight churches comprising 2,000 believers.

The area in which Pu preaches, Fugong county, has 360 churches and 80,000 Christians, but just 67 lay preachers and four pastors.

The Global Assembly of Pastors for Finishing the Task (FTT) has held an online forum to discuss how to mobilise churches to cover 5,000 unengaged and unreached people groups.

FTT is a movement of 1,600 churches and organisations who have come together to reach the Unengaged, Unreached People Groups (UUPGs). These are people groups who have no access to a Bible, believers, or a body of Christ and have less than 0.1% evangelical believers. Rick Warren is the director.

The story of Anglican growth in Africa and decline in the West is very familiar, but this is often spoken of as if it were simply the result of underlying social, economic and cultural forces, without giving sufficient attention to the role that leadership plays, for good or ill.

The Anglican Church of Kenya, which has just celebrated its 50th anniversary as an independent Province, is an interesting example. The current Archbishop and Primate, Jackson Ole Sapit, may not yet be as well known outside Kenya as some of his predecessors (such as David Gitari who was a prominent opponent of President Moi’s attempt to entrench one-party rule, and Eliud Wabukala, who was Chairman of GAFCON from 2011 to 2016), but he too is bringing courageous and creative leadership to the Anglican Church of Kenya.

Even though the number of flights MAF made in 2020 was reduced because of coronavirus, its planes were still able to bring hope, help and healing to 26 of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations.

In Kenya, where overland travel can be dangerous by day and treacherous at night, Pilot Daniel Loewen-Rudgers flew a baby boy from Dukana, on the Ethiopian border, to Kijabe Hospital, when the condition of the newborn became critical. According to Daniel: ‘It was a miracle we could fly to a good hospital like Kijabe during the pandemic.’

90% of pastors have no formal theological education, a specialist in theological education in the Global South has told an international consultation.

Dr Manfred Kohl, who has experience in supporting and financing ministry training, explained that for this reason he funds only people – and not buildings. He also challenges institutions and their funders to think radical thoughts about theological education.

Exclusive photos and report from Phil Good in Beirut, Lebanon. Phil and his wife Sylvie work with the Church Mission Society (CMS) and the evangelical Resurrection Church there.

‘Resurrection Church Beirut (RCB) has raised funds and undertaken to repair 100 homes that have been damaged. Counselling support is ongoing and will be needed for many months to come; the repercussions of this event will reach a long way into the future and the church is preparing for the long haul. After the news fades, so many people will need to rebuild their lives, and rebuilding lives is what the church knows about.

An English evangelical led a German man and his Bolivian wife to Christ after he met them by seeming chance in the very highest point of St Peter’s Roman Catholic basilica in the Vatican.

Greg Downes, Director of Ministerial Training, and Dean of The Wesley Centre for Missional Engagement at the evangelical training college, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, says:

Saudi Arabia has called the United Nations to focus on ‘eliminating Islamophobia’ as an outworking of tackling online racism and xenophobia.

Meshaal Bin Ali Al Balawi, Saudi’s Head of Human Rights at the United Nations Mission in Geneva, addressed the Human Rights Council, flagging the internet as a ‘space for practicing racism’ as he called for the UN to work towards finding a ‘solution’. The Saudi leader stated that the world needs to ‘prohibit racial discrimination in all its forms’.