Scottish call
to mission
20 Schemes
Date posted: 1 Jun 2022
Nine churches have been planted in just
ten years in a pioneering Scottish project
– thanks to believers who have grasped the
concept of ‘missional living’.
20schemes is a church planting ministry
set up and
run by Niddrie Community
Church, which is located in the scheme of
Niddrie, south-east Edinburgh. And this year
the initiative is celebrating a decade in action.
Evangelical Futures: What’s the future for Anglican evangelicals?
A new book to be published in June by IVP called God’s Church for God’s World brings together voices drawn from all major Anglican evangelical networks in the UK, demonstrating a commitment to the gospel being proclaimed and a unity both throughout and beyond the Church of England.
With a number of young contributors, it also offers a glimpse of possible futures for the Anglican Church. This extract (with some very minor adaptations for publication here) not only summarises the book’s contents but also gives a flavour of the situation Anglican evangelicals face – a useful overview both for them and also for non-Anglicans to whom the whole Anglican ‘thing’ can sometimes seem understandably perplexing and exasperating.
Shoe leather and locusts eaten in horrific drought
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Jun 2022
Facing its worst drought in 40 years, food and water in Madagascar are so costly at the moment that reports are coming in of communities eating locusts, leaves, clay and even shoe leather to survive, the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) says.
MAF writes: UNICEF says that half a million children under the age of five will be ‘acutely malnourished’ this year, with a further 110,000 facing ‘severe malnourishment’.
Blood and fire
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Jun 2022
Book Review
‘WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE’:
William Booth, the Salvation Army and the
Skeleton Army Riots
Read review
Affinity seeks diversity, welcoming ethnic minority churches
Affinity
Date posted: 1 Jun 2022
It has been an exciting first half of 2022 for Affinity, a network of around 1,200 churches and Christian organisations working in partnership for the sake of the gospel, writes Graham Nicholls.
We were delighted to welcome new members to Affinity – churches from a diverse range of backgrounds including majority Jamaican, Congolese and Chinese churches.
Ten Questions: ‘More than a conqueror’
Geoff Thomas
My name is Geoff Thomas and I was the pastor in Alfred Place Baptist Church (Independent) in Aberystwyth for 50 years. I retired five years ago. My wife Iola died after having Alzheimers for four years. Two years after Iola’s death I married our old friend Barbara and came to live in Chiswick, London. For someone who loves history, London is a most interesting place for an old man, though I do miss the seaside and friends in Aberystwyth. There are many gospel churches in London and it is surprisingly religious. I am a member of Amyand Park Chapel in Twickenham and thank God for the congregation and its pastor, Gerard Hemmings.
Images from Ukraine
Churches minister to Ukraine’s war-stricken young and old:
Photo Left – Hunter Brewer, of the Presbyterian Church in America’s Trinity Church (Collierville/Germantown area of Memphis), writes: ‘We have a family in our church plant and the mum is from the Ukraine. Her brother-in-law is a minister there. This is a picture of her niece. She drew a picture of the Russians bombing and the air raid speaker. Let us pause for a second and pray for peace (Ps. 22:28).’
pastoral care
Ministry’s dark feelings
Helen Thorne-Allenson
Date posted: 1 Jun 2022
Ministry is a privilege. It’s a hugely high
call. And whether we’re full time and paid,
or volunteering a few hours within the local
church, we can all know we have a part to
play in the greatest mission the world has
ever known.
It’s wonderful
to help people come
to
Christ and grow in their faith, in all the
circumstances of life. The process of pointing
people to Jesus can be a joy. The relational
depth, a delight. When we glimpse the fruit
God is bringing into people’s lives, we can be
stirred to praise. But, just between you and
me, that’s not how we always feel, is it?
Do we tell half-truths?
This year, there has been a stand-out new genre on streaming services: the scammer show.
These dramatic reconstructions of ‘fake it until you make it’ chart the rise and fall of charismatic individuals who persuaded people to depart with eye-watering sums of money. Among them, Inventing Anna is the story of the fake German heiress Anna Sorokin, WeCrashed tells of the Neumans who raised billions of dollars whilst running at a colossal loss and, in my opinion, the best, The Dropout charts the fall of the biotech company Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes.