Encouragement in Europe
Michael Ots
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
Michael Ots reflects on ten years of the Fellowship of Evangelists in the Universities of Europe (FEUER)
The name FEUER is a slightly tenuous acronym, using English words to spell the German word meaning ‘fire’.
EFAC: successful re-launch completed
The Revd Richard Crocker
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
The Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion (EFAC) held the second part of its 2018 international Council meeting in Nairobi in October.
The successful establishment of the Council heralds EFAC’s reemergence as a powerful international Anglican ministry. EFAC’s vision is to encourage and develop biblically faithful fellowship, teaching and mission, as well as to resource church leaders throughout the Anglican world. There were 22 participants, including those from existing, reviving (four) or developing EFAC national Chapters. Five continents were represented and 11 participants were bishops.
Timothy Alford 1933–2018
Simon Percy
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
Timothy Alford went home to glory on 6 December 2018.
I first met Timothy when I was a young pastor in the early 1990s and he was the General Secretary of Africa Inland Mission (AIM). Little was I to know then how much of an influence he would have upon me and the work I am now doing at Pastor Training International (PTI).
Revitalisation: why bother?
John James
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
John James on what is so good about turning round dying churches
‘It is easier to give birth than raise the dead,’ my friend replied, as I began to talk about the church revitalisation project we were prayer-fully considering.
Keith Small 1959–2018
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
Keith Small was one of the foremost Qur’an scholars of our time. His work on early manuscripts was to provoke new questions among secular and Islamic scholars alike.
While at Dallas Theological Seminary, Keith read of Henry Martyn, and resolved to give his life to work among Muslims. He married Celeste Gardner in 1985, equally committed to the Muslim world, and they moved to the UK in 1989, settling in Dewsbury.
Megan Franklin 1981–2019
Lena King
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
On Sunday 16 December at the end of a Christmas service, Megan Franklin, wife of the pastor of St Giles Christian Mission, Islington, eight-months pregnant, slipped on a step and cut her knee.
It seemed so minor that my husband, along with the others present, heard nothing of it. However, it soon turned everything upside down. After suffering headaches Megan visited hospital on Christmas Day and their intensity with resultant loss of sight soon caused alarm. On Friday 28 she phoned to cancel our family visit, yet the following day she permanently lost consciousness. She died as a result of a Strep-A bacterial infection on Sunday 6 January. Mercifully, the doctors were able to deliver the little boy successfully by Caesarean, to become the seventh child in the family.
Non-violent protest in China
Asia News
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
One hundred people plus Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Church in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, were arrested over the weekend of 8-9 December.
Sensing that arrest was imminent, the pastor drafted a letter, asking that it be made public two days after his arrest. In it he expresses his ‘disgust’ for Communist persecution of Christians, but says he is not interested in changing the country’s social system. His goal is to bear witness through non-violence and to denounce violations of religious freedom. God will bring down the Communist regime. The church has existed for thousands of years, but no political power has lasted thousands of years.
Sharm El Sheikh church
Langham Partnership
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
In December, the Revd Dr Andrea Zaki joined
the South Sinai Governor to lay the foundation stone for the first evangelical church in
the Red Sea city of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
Dr Zaki, President of
the Protestant
Churches in Egypt, said the church will seek
a holistic mission by serving everyone equally.
news in brief
Algeria: closure
The official notice that a village pastor in Algeria received on 30 December confirmed that his church had been ordered to close.
Pastor Rabah Messaoudi had won a legal battle in 2017 after local officials in the Muslim country tried to close his church. Those acting for the pastor have said they will appeal again, as the church is affiliated to an organisation of 45 churches through which the national commission confirms their authenticity.
‘Sad... but never surprised’
Esther Smith
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
Esther Smith reminds us of the work of the charity Caring for Life
‘We’re never surprised by what we find behind closed doors; sad, but never surprised.’
history
Calvin’s atrocities?
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Feb 2019
‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’.
This famous first line by L.P. Hartley (1895–1972) in his novel The Go-Between (1953) has long been a favourite maxim that orients my teaching of history, for it is notoriously difficult to treat former eras of history with the degree of empathy that they need to make them understandable.
Brave men
Ernest Shackleton’s advert for volunteers for his Antarctic expedition may be mythical.
Nevertheless, it truly reflects the brave spirit of the men who went. ‘Men wanted for a hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, constant danger, safe return doubtful…’ But such ‘foolhardy’ courage is desperately needed today by evangelicalism in the West. This relates to two particular areas.