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In 1983 I left teaching in a large comprehensive school to work full time as a travelling evangelist.

Before then, evangelism had been my life, so that when God called me into this work, it was a natural progression from what I had been doing. In the last quarter of a century there have been huge changes not only in society and church, but also in methods of evangelism. Some of this has been rapid.

I know of a woman living in a large town who is suffering from terminal cancer, has few friends, no family close, is very isolated and in need of friendship and support.

I am sure that every true Christian would want to reach out to her to offer friendship, prayer and the encouragement of the gospel. Unfortunately, this has not happened. Sadly, this lady lives in a small bedsit just around the corner from a large shiny new church and they know nothing of her or she of them! Are there many others like this lady on our doorsteps who are not reached? What can be done?

John Brand

Date posted: 1 Dec 2009

On November 9, the Rev. Dr. Colin Peckham, Principal Emeritus of the Faith Mission Bible College, Edinburgh, was suddenly called home.

Colin was born, and also born again, in South Africa. He grew up with a farming background but, after studying agriculture, felt the call of God to Christian ministry and studied for a degree in theology at the University of South Africa. He earned a Master’s degree from Edinburgh University and successfully gained his doctorate.

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 Nov 2009

The most exciting thing about teaching at a theological college is seeing students go out into ministry.

Some have obtained a curacy and can look forward to a further three or four years of training on the job. Others have obtained similar posts as assistants in Free churches. All of them can now look forward to an assured salary and housing. Their future financing will be the responsibility of their church.

20 years ago I was driving through Germany one November evening when, on the car radio, I picked up some news which was to shake the continent: East Germans were pouring through a breach in the Berlin Wall.

I had been visiting Christians in Poland and Hungary and knew that they would find this almost unbelievable. According to Vaclav Havel, ‘The fall of the Communist empire is an event on the same scale of historical importance as the fall of the Roman empire’. Oxford scholar Timothy Garton Ash has suggested that there is not a corner of the world that has not in some sense been touched by the consequences of 1989.

NM: Could you sum up the purposes of The Square Mile project and how you would like to see them expressed in action?

KK: Our hope is that The Square Mile resource equips and encourages churches to better demonstrate and proclaim the gospel. I long to see churches with a clearer vision for their role in the community and helping Christians connect their everyday lives with God’s work in the world — through mercy (demonstrating God's compassion to the poor), influence (being salt and light in the public life of the community), life-discipleship (equipping Christians for missional living as workers and neighbours) and evangelism (faithful and relevant communication of the gospel).

The Lausanne Covenant, substantially crafted by John Stott, includes the phrase: ‘Evangelisation requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world’.

One might argue that the three wholes embodied in this ringing phrase are hardly new, and go back to the Apostle Paul, if not to the patriarch Abraham himself. Let us look at what each means.

EN: What’s the point of theological college?

MO: For me, a theological college exists to serve local churches, working in partnership with them to carry out the great commission of Jesus to make disciples of all nations. Everything we do has to be seen in the context of that big picture — we’re here to help churches do what Jesus calls us to do.

One idea which is guiding Oak Hill a great deal just now is that our task is to train the equivalent of GPs, rather than specialists. A good GP has the breadth and depth of medical training to deal with whatever medical problem next walks through the door. They can’t say, ‘I’m only going to treat people who’ve injured their left elbows, but I won’t treat anyone who’s got ingrowing toenails’. The same is true of church pastors. They can’t pick and choose the situations and problems which arise in their churches, but have to offer biblical care and teaching to their people wherever they are in life.

In September, Cornerstone Evangelical Church, Nottingham celebrated the 40th anniversary of Peter and Valerie Lewis’s ministry there.

The story of Cornerstone tells how God can have plans for a small, back-street church in a Midland city which has touched thousands of lives and reached to the ends of the earth. No one should underestimate the potential of small churches, but we can also rejoice in the strategic role of larger churches in Britain today.

UCCF’s mission is to the university. We exist to proclaim the message of Jesus in the student world and see young people becoming his disciples.

To that end, we produce an array of resources to equip Christian students for their mission — tooling them up for the work of mission. A happy by-product of this is that many of our resources can be put to good use in the local church as well: in youth groups, for training, for church-based student work.

A university freshers’ week is typified by hordes of people doing exactly what they want; enjoying their new-found freedom, spending their student loan and often consuming vast amounts of alcohol. During this time everyone is trying to find their place, to make new friends and to get off on the right foot.

Imagine, or maybe you have been there yourself, a Christian trying to get by in this. For some it’s exciting, full of opportunities to get involved and have fun, but to stand tall for Jesus. For some it’s terrifying, being dragged to clubs and bars every night and having to explain over and over again why they aren’t getting drunk.

This may not seem like a very spiritual article but it has come to me with real force in recent weeks.

Accurate record keeping is not on most youth leaders’ agendas as it is a bit of a pain taking registers of young people and there are many more exciting things to do in an evening of youth ministry. At a recent Root 66 training session (no plug intended!!), I asked the leaders to write down the names of five of their group and asked them to estimate how often each of these students came to the group. The usual response to that question is something like, ‘I suppose it’s about half the meetings this term’.

It used to be the Belgian Congo, it later became Zaire, and today it’s back as the Democratic Republic of Congo. I want to tell you as best I can of what God most wonderfully did for our church in the NE corner of the country back in the 1950s.

God sent a wonderful visitation of the Holy Spirit to us. In the Congo-Swahili language that we used, we called this visitation Baraka ya Roho Mutakatifu (the blessing of the Holy Spirit).