From prison to Westminster Chapel
London City Mission
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Graham Miller, Chief Executive of London City Mission, shares his joy of hearing dramatic accounts of people who have been saved out of chaotic and destructive lives into God’s family:
Meet Craig (see photo), brought up in North West London in a non-religious household. By the age of 21 he was living a chaotic life, committed a crime and was sentenced to prison.
Haiti: help after tanker fireball horror
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
A petrol tanker which crashed, overturned
and exploded – unleashing a fireball killing
90 – is the latest in a series of tragedies for
Haiti, after which Christian agency MAF
has helped bring disaster relief.
The Mission Aviation Fellowship has been
at the forefront of assisting in the wake of
this most recent traumatic event – only a
short while after starting to wind up
its
humanitarian
response
to an earthquake
which had claimed 2,200 lives a few months
earlier. When the devastating 7.2 magnitude
earthquake struck Haiti’s western peninsula
on 14 August 2021, causing major damage
and destroying tens of thousands of homes,
MAF personnel responded immediately.
An alcoholic father. Homeless as a child in Brazil. Ministry in Nepal. Now the UK…
Jonathan Winch
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Jonathan Winch, Executive Director of Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Newcastle, spoke to Ronaldo André, one of their students. This is part of their conversation. ‘When I was five I ran away from home; my father was an alcoholic and would have killed me. I spent the next year and a half living on the streets of Brazil.
‘The police can’t arrest little children; they just beat them up and let them go. My life as a little child became about drugs, theft and robbery on behalf of the criminal gangs that vie for control of Brazil’s streets. I witnessed stabbings; I saw people setting others on fire. And then one day a woman stopped me and offered me a place in a children’s home.
Should we own property?
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Dear Editor,
I was fascinated by the article ‘Should we own property?’ by Michael Haykin (en December) about Benedict’s rule regarding private ownership. I am busy re-reading the wonderful biography William Carey: The Father of Modern Missions, by S. Pearce Carey, and am interested to add to the discussion the fact that he and originally four others agreed a covenanted community of fellowship in Serampore, based: ‘on equality of each, pre-eminence of none; rule by majority, allocation of function by collective vote; superintendence by each in monthly rotation; … the mutual forbidding of trading or of labour for personal gain, together with the pooling of all earnings, the apportionment of frugal pay to each family according to its needs, and the consecration of the whole surplus to the Mission’s expansion’ (pp. 183/4).
30 churches Scottish aim
John MacKinnon
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
The Free Church of Scotland have recently released a video and booklet promoting their aim to see a healthy gospel church for every community in Scotland:
Healthy in ministry; healthy in mission; healthy in training; and healthy, growing gospel congregations that are a blessing to the community around them. David Meredith, the Mission Director of the Free Church of Scotland, said: ‘The key to developing a healthy gospel church is to be rooted in two things – rooted in the world of the Bible and its proclamation, while building a bridge into contemporary society. The sweet spot of being faithful to Christ and the Bible, and engaging with our own society.’
Michael Griffiths: a life
Reuben Grace
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Dr Michael Griffiths, renowned author,
speaker and former General Director of
OMF International, died at the age of 93
on 9 January.
Michael was born
in Cardiff
in 1928,
and came to faith in Christ in 1942 at a
Christ’s Hospital School Christian Union
meeting, under the preaching of an exiled
German pastor. Studying Natural Sciences
at Peterhouse College, Cambridge,
he
served on the Executive Committee of the
Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union
in several positions, including as President.
He graduated
in 1952, but stayed on at
Ridley Hall to train for Anglican ministry.
At this time Michael met his wife Valerie, at
a conference on English Puritans at Martyn
Lloyd Jones’ Westminster Chapel.
AMiE renews
aim for 2050
AMiE
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
The Anglican Mission in England (AMiE)
says it is seeing encouraging signs of growth
both
in existing churches and
in new
fellowships joining.
AMiE describes itself as ‘a fellowship of
faithful Anglican churches committed
to
gospel mission’ and is linked to GAFCON,
the global movement of Anglicans committed
to orthodox views on sexuality.
750 churches show passion!
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
More than 750 churches across the UK and Ireland have signed up to A Passion for Life – a pioneering, month-long, evangelistic mission this Easter.
The mission is providing the tools to enable individual churches to ‘plan, build and promote’ their evangelism in the lead-up to Easter. They range from online support resources to training videos, which the organisers said are being well-received by churches.
Meeting Frank Schaeffer – atheist son of Francis
Luke Barrs
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Frank Schaeffer (not to be confused with his father Francis) titled his memoir Crazy for God with the helpful subtitle How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.
His writing is engaging and thought-provoking, especially for myself as a Christian father and pastor. His father, Francis Schaeffer, was a much-beloved Christian thinker who utilised contemporary music, art history, and philosophy to answer the questions of his day. He was truly countercultural in the way he wrote and lived.
Durham church inquiry plea
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Christchurch Durham is facing mounting pressure to commission an independent review following serious allegations of abuse of power against the pastor, who left last December.
Tony Jones, senior pastor at the independent Anglican church until his resignation last year, has been accused of abuses of power and governance and presiding over a ‘culture of fear’.
Target may be exceeded
Davy Ellison
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
April 2022 marks the half-way point of a
Ten Year Vision for the Irish Baptist College
(IBC).
As of this year, IBC has been in existence
for 130 years. Originating in Dublin in 1892,
it moved to Belfast in 1963 and since 2003
has been
located
in
the
lush countryside
near Moira. The College’s primary focus has
always been to serve the Irish church context;
even so, graduates have served on all the
inhabited continents of the globe.
New hope in Hull
Hull 2030 Steering Group
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Around 50 members of more
than
ten
different churches have met at
Jubilee
Church Hull to celebrate all that God has
been doing since October 2018.
The vision of Hull 2030, which began
then, is to pray and work together to see 20
healthy gospel-centred churches planted in
Hull by 2030; as well as to encourage church
revitalisation and gospel co-operation.
Russia: a new spiritual awakening
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Evangelicals Now is regularly privileged to come across much faithful gospel witness by often small and (humanly-speaking) under-resourced evangelical ministries in sometimes far-flung areas of the world. The GoodWORD Partnership (GWP), founded by Blair Carlson in Minneapolis in 2005, is one of those.
Blair coaches national church leaders in local evangelism, guiding them with their outreach, including preparation and follow-up within local churches. He has just returned from Russia and Poland, where GWP helped lead a major evangelism training conference, the Forum for Evangelism in Russia, which is now in its fifth year. Blair spoke to Evangelicals Now afterwards:
Exclusive: persecuted Finn speaks out
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
As this edition of Evangelicals Now went to press, the trials of Finnish Christians Päivi Räsänen MP and Bishop Juhana Pohjola, of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, had started.
Both are accused of agitation against an ethnic group, specifically Räsänen’s ‘insulting’ of homosexuals on a radio programme and in a booklet published in 2004 by Pohjola.
Jerusalem: Jewish people told of Jesus
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP) is organising evangelistic coach tours in order to reach Jewish Holocaust survivors with the gospel.
An increased openness among Jewish people to hear about Jesus as Messiah means that hundreds of Jewish people are now regularly joining IMJP’s Bible tours, where they visit sites in the Holy Land which have a particular significance in the story, life, and claims of Jesus.
Marking 160 years of Christian service in an Arab city
Mireia Prats Llivina
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
The Nazareth Trust is one of the largest Scottish Christian organisations, the third-largest employer in Nazareth and one of the largest Christian organisations in Israel.
We are a diverse organisation with individuals from different backgrounds working together. Our story traces its roots back to 1861 when Dr Vartan, a freshly graduated Armenian doctor and devoted Christian, opened the first clinic in Ottoman Galilee.
‘I fear Christendom has given much effort to hiding and ignoring iniquities we have known about…’
Diane Langberg
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
In recent years, we who call ourselves Christians have been speaking and writing about topics like ‘abuse in the church’, ‘cruelty in the sanctuary’ and the dangers that can be found in ‘God’s house’. It seems that the place God designed to be a refuge for His people has instead, at times, become a den of thieves.
These descriptions are what we call an oxymoron – statements that are a combination of contradictory words and incongruous elements. Think about this now common phrase: ‘abuse in Christian organisations’. These words should take our breath away and cause up to weep. Sadly, they often result in scrambling for ways to hide or ignore the abuse so that the ‘Christian’ organisation can proceed undisturbed. We have forgotten God’s word to the young boy Samuel. When called by God, Samuel responded: ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’ God told him that he was about to bring judgment on Eli’s house forever for the iniquity he knew … and did not rebuke’ (1 Sam. 3:13).
history
Evangelical weaknesses?
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
When did Evangelicalism as a movement emerge?
Is it a relative newbie, as some would assert, a creation of the 1940s out of the ruins of Fundamentalism or is it even more recent, a product of the Sixties? Or does it have much older roots?
What do we learn from a dramatic cave rescue?
In January, George Linnane joined the South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team. He volunteered after he had spent 54 hours trapped in a cave in the Brecon Beacons and was rescued by 300 volunteers. He joined the team ‘so I can help the next poor soul who finds themselves in this situation’.
As we approach the A Passion for Life Mission, and our churches begin to return to normal ministry after Covid, this story is a reminder of the essence of evangelism.