Can we make the local church a training college?
Stanley Jebb
Date posted: 1 Aug 2005
A common complaint among churches is the dearth of candidates for the pastoral ministry.
A recent article contrasted two approaches: selecting men and challenging them to consider this calling, and praying, preaching and leaving it to men to hear God’s call. Actually there need be no conflict between these two approaches; both have been effective. In times of spiritual awakening, under powerful ministry, many more men hear the call than in less fruitful times.
Evangelism - a tricky business!
Steve Price
Date posted: 1 Aug 2005
Steve Price has been performing tricks and illusions since he was a boy. In July this year he left his post as Head of Design in an independent secondary school to use his mix of comedy and magic tricks to reach people for Christ. Here’s what he has to say about it all …
I guess it all started when my parents gave me a book called Ali Bongo’s Book of Magic for my ninth birthday. I played around with a few simple tricks and I’ve been hooked ever since.
The Third Degree
Roger Carswell has been an itinerant evangelist for over 20 years, faithfully preaching the gospel at church and university Christian Union missions across the UK.
At the last count he had been the main missioner at over 70 university missions. This year he spoke at Bristol, Durham, Newcastle, Stockton, Sheffield and Exeter. He just loves university missions! EN?s The Third Degree caught up with Roger to find out why.
Ernest Reisinger: a biography
Elmer Albright was a fellow-carpenter, born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, whose father was a coal miner. He and his wife, Evie, had come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour at the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Shamokin about five years earlier under the ministry of a Scotsman named George Atcheson.
As he worked with Ernie, Elmer began to speak to him of the Lord Jesus Christ, someone he invariably referred to as his Saviour. He told Ernie of God the Creator who made and sustained the universe, whose Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, had been sent into the world to deal with our greatest need, the guilt of our wayward living: ‘We deserve eternal death, because we are sinners, but the Lord Jesus, because he loved us, died for us.’ While Elmer explained the good news to him and urged him to read the Bible, he invited Ernie to come to the Sunday School which the government allowed a small group of Christians to hold in a recreational building on the base.
The big picture for small churches
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Jul 2005
If you are part of a small church you have a choice. You can choose to see the small size of the congregation as a reason to be discouraged and downhearted. Or you can choose to see the church’s smallness as a reason why you might be just the church God can use.
Where am I coming from with that last statement? Is it just foolish optimism? I don’t think it is. Here is my reasoning.
David Bentley-Taylor, 1915-2005
Michael Griffiths
Date posted: 1 Apr 2005
‘The finest missionary speaker, I ever heard’, Martyn Lloyd-Jones was reported to have said, by one of the six speakers at the memorial service held in Hereford Baptist Church on February 19.
What kind of Baptist?
Erroll Hulse
Date posted: 1 May 2005
Book Review
THE BAPTISTS
Key people involved in forming a Baptist identity
Volume 1, Beginnings in Britain (first of three volumes)
Read review
12 ways to miss the point
Dr Paul Adams
Date posted: 1 Apr 2005
Maths was never my strong point. But if (as Christian Research says) the church in the UK is in decline, it must be because there are fewer people born again each year than are leaving. Surely this is not good news for evangelicals, for whom the gospel is the ‘stuff of life’.
I can remember sitting under ‘faithful gospel preaching’ for years, and wondering why there were no unbelievers to hear it. We were told it was good for the saints to be comforted by the gospel. I still agree with that, but I think it misses the point. Surely the primary target for the good news is the hell-bound sinner who needs to be convicted and converted.
The Third Degree
Ken Cowan
Date posted: 1 Mar 2005
Widnes College Christian Union - possibly the smallest CU in the world.
Both members meet in a shabby classroom every Tuesday lunchtime for prayer and Bible study, led by their FE (further education) CU staff worker, Martin Povey. 'Not exactly the cutting edge of campus-based evangelism', you might be thinking.
Believing in the Triune God
Tim Chester
Date posted: 1 May 2005
Let me explain how I came to write this. I was reading the Bible with two friends who are Muslims.
Each week they faithfully came to my home and we discussed a passage of Scripture over a cup of tea. Many of their questions were about the Trinity: How can God have a son? How can there be three Gods and one God?
Development, the Christian and the Muslim world
Peter Riddell
Date posted: 1 May 2005
The world’s population explosion is a much talked-about topic in development circles, and so it should be. After having taken millennia to pass the 2,000 million mark, it will take barely 100 years to increase from that figure to over 9,000 million by the middle of the 21st century.
The most densely populated countries have majority Muslim populations, so Muslims will constitute an increasing percentage of the world’s population in years to come. Coupled with this is the fact that Muslim communities worldwide are among the poorest. Therefore tackling population and poverty, urgent goals for world leaders in coming decades, will place increasing focus on the world of Islam.
A brother indeed
Open Doors
Date posted: 1 Mar 2005
It was 50 years ago that Brother Andrew started his ministry to persecuted Christians which has developed over the years and spawned the organisation Open Doors.
Brother Andrew's message to the church in the West at this time is simple. 'The church needs to accept the fact that there is a Suffering Church and repent of our lack of understanding and compassion.
Anglicans discipline liberals
David Baker
Date posted: 1 Apr 2005
The meeting in mid-February in Newry, Northern Ireland, attended by 35 of the 38 top bishops from across the globe, asked the US and Canadian churches to ‘voluntarily withdraw’ from a key ecclesiastical body for the next three years and to ‘consider their place in the Anglican communion’.
Some orthodox leaders had wanted tougher action to be taken, but the primates were advised by lawyers that there was no legal process by which any of the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces could be suspended.
Watching the web
Stephen Doggett
Date posted: 1 Apr 2005
When was the last time you came across a website all about aircraft? Chances are that you never have, unless you have specifically searched for one. And that’s despite the fact that there are five million sites dedicated to flying machines.
This is the type of question that a group of internet evangelists hope to raise in churches across the world during a special focus day on April 24. Only the problems with which they are concerned are not those of the aviation enthusiast but how to get the non-believer to view Christian websites? And, even if they did, how to get them to stay long enough to learn something of the gospel?
Losing faith in the UN?
Peter C Glover
Date posted: 1 Apr 2005
The Volcker Commission, the internal inquiry into the United Nation’s running of the $64 billion Iraqi ‘oil-for-food’ programme, has published its interim report.
In this report Chairman Paul Volcker claimed to have evidence of the corruption of UN officials, whom he accuses of having ‘seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations’.
The Third Degree
Jonathan Carswell
Date posted: 1 Jan 2005
John Wesley arrived in Newcastle upon Tyne on May 28 1742. He noted the following in his daily journal: 'We came to Newcastle about six, and after short refreshment, walked into town. I was surprised; so much drunkenness, cursing and swearing (even from the mouths of little children), do I never remember to have seen and heard before in so small a compass of time. Surely this place is ripe for Him who came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.'
250 years after Wesley arrived in the North East, it is fair to say that little has changed, perhaps it is even worse. Visit any of the university campuses, not just at the weekend, and hundreds of students will be consuming copious amounts of alcohol, having numerous sexual relationships, but having little or no regard for their Creator. However, surely we must respond, not with condemnation, but like Wesley did, with the attitude that these people are 'ripe for him'.
The Third Degree
UCCF
Date posted: 1 Dec 2004
With over 2,000,000 students in this country, Christians with a passion for evangelism have to be a good thing. The Life Gospel Project last year fuelled a new enthusiasm among students for sharing the good news of Jesus with their peers - and the momentum is growing.
During the last term, three major regional student events have focused on the importance of evangelism. Each aimed to encourage students to live out their university and college years for Christ, sharing him with others with relevance, creativity and faithfulness to the gospel message. In Exeter, students from across the South West soaked up a day of evangelism training. This was followed by a practical session doing questionnaires in the city centre.
