Mission comes front and centre
Keswick Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
Tim Chester is our guide along the Keswick Convention’s path to world mission
‘Unknown to me, I had been waiting for this moment. Every part of me tingled with fervent joy and happiness that I was allowed the privilege of responding, and that Christ was inviting me to serve him, to be called his ambassador, his missionary.’
history
Reformers and mission II
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
Last month we begin to think about the argument that the Reformers had no missionary vision or passion.
This month we continue to ponder this important theme by looking at John Calvin’s thinking about the missionary advance of the church.
SENT: when mission takes us to a holiday cottage
Keswick Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
If a holiday cottage could write, it would fill many a book.
Visitors come and go and the cottage is woven into the tapestry of life. More often than not, the cottage forms the centrepiece of the annual holiday highlight. It offers four walls of protection from the hustle and bustle of the daily slog, a much-needed haven. Depending on its setting, it will also serve as a door into another world, a world of beauty and escape.
Chris Wright: a wee Belfast boy
Keswick Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
My parents were missionaries for 20 years in Brazil before I was born.
Two of my older siblings were born there. I arrived after they returned to Belfast shortly after the Second World War. So I grew up in a home where Christian faith was inseparable from mission commitment and global interest (aided by a stamp-collecting hobby). I remember asking Jesus to come into my heart as a young child of five or six, when my brother Paul asked me if my name was in the Lamb’s Book of Life; and when I asked how I could be sure (probably not quite understanding which book he had in mind), he told me to do just that.
GOD’S CALL TO CARE
Keswick Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
This year’s theme, SENT is at the heart of what the Keswick Convention has long been about: mission.
Mission overseas and mission ‘right where you are’, a going out into the world sharing the good news of the gospel through word and deed. This year, visitors to the Keswick Convention will have the opportunity to take a peek into the world of mission and experience some of the many opportunities we have, as Christians, to reach out to the lost and suffering. For the first time ever, the Global Village Experience will be available at the Convention and will be hosted on the pencil factory site right next to the missions exhibition tent, Base Camp.
USA: walk out on Pence
EN
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
In contrast to the UK prayer breakfast in
Parliament where the leaders of the nation
were called to listen to someone speak from
the Bible, the Southern Baptists took up the
request from Vice-President Mike Pence to
speak at their convention in mid-June.
In a piece
for The Gospel Coalition,
Jonathan Leeman wrote: ‘… having a political leader address our churches or associations of churches tempts us to misconstrue
our mission. Our mission is not the mission
of the Republican, Democratic or any other
party. Our mission, when gathered,
is to
work toward Great Commission ends. To
bring
in a politician risks subverting our gospel purposes to the purposes of that politician’s party. … it undermines our evangelistic and prophetic witness … it hurts the
unity of Christ’s body’. There would inevitably be divided political opinions in a church
over any individual or party.
The octogenarian in the train station
EN
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
On 3 July George Verwer celebrated his
80th birthday and announced a tour of the
UK to 20 or so train stations to give friends
a chance to meet him and pray.
He said he needed a ‘sabbatical’ from big
events after last year’s OM 60th celebration.
George said he wanted to be able to have
time to sit with people, and big parties don’t
allow for that. So through July and August he plans to sit in coffee shops and train stations for a few hours so people can have a few
minutes conversation, ‘maybe a prayer and
for sure a photo – for me maybe a few tears’.
People come, people go
Linda Allcock
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
Linda Allcock on the mixed emotions experienced in a mobile congregation
‘People come. People go.’ That was the phrase repeated in The Globe Church original promotional video at our launch in 2015.
Enfield: what’s in a change of name
FIEC
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
‘A name change on its own doesn’t really mean much… but it’s a great opportunity for us to use this to talk to people in Enfield about Jesus!’ said pastor, Nathan Howard, to a room full of church members.
And so it was put to the church: a ‘relaunch’ as Enfield Evangelical Free Church became Enfield Town Community Church. There would be new signage, a new website and a timely excuse for a big invitation to all their community.
Christopher Ash: ongoing surrender
Keswick Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
I suppose most of us sometimes wish our stories were more exciting than they are.
That goes for the stories of how God first brought us to faith in Jesus Christ; we sometimes wish – foolishly – that the contrast with our pre-conversion life might be more dramatic because we had sunk into deeper depths of sinfulness before our conversions than we did.
Why GAFCON?
Chris Sugden and Vinay Samuel
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
‘Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.’
The successful conclusion of GAFCON 2018, ten years after its formal beginnings as a global Anglican movement that had its roots in, among others, the Lambeth Conference of 1988 of which Archbishop Manasses Kuria of Kenya said: ‘This was our Lambeth’ and (then Bishop) David Gitari of Kenya said: ‘Anyone who wants a resolution passed in 1998 will have to come to terms with the African bishops.’
Falkirk: celebration
The Revd Iain MacAskill
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
A mission in the tradition of Billy Graham, with
his grandson Will Graham preaching, took
place in the Falkirk Stadium during June.
Central Scotland Will Graham Celebration
of Hope was advertised as ‘not just an evangelistic event; it is a process of prayer, training, outreach, and follow-up that takes place
over a 12-month period – and it begins and
ends with the local church’. Around 9,500
people attended over
the weekend, with
31,000 watching on mobile devices
from
87 countries across the world. 65% of the
spiritual responses to the event came from those under the age of 35. Will Graham
preached with clarity and conviction: about
the prodigal son; time; and the thief on the
cross at the finale on Sunday.
news in brief
Egypt: naked aggression
Coptic houses were attacked in a village on 4 June, after Copts objected to a group of young Muslim men swimming naked in a canal in front of their homes as Coptic women sat outside.
A Muslim mob gathered around the homes of Christians across the canal and began pelting them with bricks and stones, while shouting ‘Allah is the greatest’ and chanting slogans against Copts. They broke the windows and doors of houses, and looted and destroyed some properties. Six people were injured, requiring stitches.
Turkey: still being held
World Watch Monitor / CNN
Date posted: 1 Aug 2018
The American Charge d’Affaires in Ankara
said in late June that Turkey’s continued
detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson on
spying and terrorism-related charges was
impeding US-Turkish relations.
Philip Kosnett said there is a ‘strong sense
of unity in Congress between Republicans
and Democrats’ on the need for Brunson
to be released. He continued that there is:
‘A similar sense of unity between Congress
and the administration that, in order for the
relationship between Turkey and the US
to progress, we need to resolve that status
not only
for Brunson but also
for other
American citizens and local Turkish employees of US missions who we feel are detained
unjustly under the state of emergency’.
