Church family?
Adam Sparks
Date posted: 1 Apr 2004
Last month I began by introducing the problem of intergenerational tension in the church.
Getting the message out
Vaughan Roberts
Date posted: 1 Mar 2004
A young student was in despair. Her life was in turmoil and she felt a deep emptiness within.
Somehow she knew she needed God, but she had no idea where to find him. One Sunday, on the way to the supermarket, she saw crowds of young people going into a church and she began to wonder if she might find what she was looking for inside. But she did not go in. It was a frightening, unfamiliar place - she wouldn't know where to sit, when to stand or what to say; so she walked away.
Church family?
Adam Sparks
Date posted: 1 Mar 2004
Much progress is being made in inter-church and interdenominational co-operation and unity.
However, the trend is often not mirrored within individual fellowships. Sadly, much of this disunity is split along generational lines and many churches are finding it difficult to 'keep everyone happy'.
To Affinity and beyond
John Benton
Date posted: 1 May 2004
The British Evangelical Council (BEC) has a new name - 'Affinity', with a subtitle, 'Church-centred Partnership for Bible-centred Christianity'.
The British Evangelical Council (BEC) has re-invented itself. Its re-launch took place on March 25 at a smart London hotel, with a swish DVD presentation and reporters from national daily newspapers present.
A Diary of Revival - The outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening
Kevin Adams
Date posted: 1 May 2004
This year is the centenary of the 1904/05 Welsh Revival. Here we read of its beginnings . . .
On Sunday evening 18 December 1903, Evan Roberts preached his first sermon at his home church of Moriah, Loughor. He preached on Luke 9.23: 'Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."'
The Third Degree
UCCF
Date posted: 1 Feb 2004
Paul, a student a Reading University, stood up at the CU house party to deliver a simple message: 'Talk to your friends about Jesus like Sam and Rosie did for me, and support this mission week. If it wasn't for last year's mission I wouldn't be a Christian.'
At UCCF we are so thankful to readers of EN for your prayers during the CU mission weeks last year. Paul and numerous others around the country put their trust in Christ last spring and we praise God for that. We thank God too for the students who have been converted throughout the year.
The Third Degree
UCCF
Date posted: 1 Mar 2004
Students are not lacking in imagination. Take a recent CU house party. What would you do with the leftover food from your church weekend away? Distribute it throughout the church? Donate it to a local hostel? Freeze it for the next weekend away? Not these students. Following the example of Aberdeen CU, Durham decided to auction off everything that was unused, with proceeds going to their forthcoming 'life' mission.
Ranging from bread to pasta, a signed copy of The Blurb (signed by the CU's vendor) to A Call to Spiritual Reformation by Don Carson, the items were put up for auction. With the treasurer looking on eagerly, the bidding got underway.
From 1966 to 2002?
Jim Packer
Date posted: 1 Apr 2004
Recent tensions in the Anglican Communion over homosexual practice have caused Professor Packer great heartache. Here he takes the opportunity to explain his actions.
In 1966 in Britain, when evangelical leader Martyn Lloyd-Jones called on Anglican evangelicals to leave the Church of England, I, with John Stott and others, stayed put and maintained that this was not the way to go.
'Atheists are fools and agnostics are cowards'
Jonathan Carswell
Date posted: 1 Apr 2004
During a recent trip to the UK, Phillip Jensen, Dean of Sydney, was involved in various student evangelistic outreaches.
Prior to speaking on 'Atheists are fools and agnostics are cowards' at Durham University Christian Union, Jonathan Carswell caught up with him in a Durham coffee shop.
UCCF's contribution to the Worldwide Church: part 2
Lindsay Brown
Date posted: 1 Jan 2004
Last month, Lindsay Brown focussed on UCCF's influence in Britain; in this second article, he looks at UCCF's contribution to the church worldwide.
Under God, UCCF has been one of the greatest influences in the history of mission in the 20th century - a fact of which few British evangelicals are aware. In this article, I have space only to trace its impact on the growth of evangelical student ministry around the world. It was one of the ten founding members of the IFES, which now brings together over 300,000 students in 150 countries. UCCF continues to play a significant part in developing student ministry in many nations. The link between a strong student ministry and faithful church teaching hardly needs to be spelled out.
The Third Degree
UCCF
Date posted: 1 Jan 2004
How's your personal evangelism going? - I'm not just asking if you've been leading on Christianity Explored course or even speaking at guest events. I'm wondering how we're all doing in making opportunities to explain the gospel to people, talking about Jesus with our work colleagues, or unbelieving family members, and finding ways of being a witness in the community in which we live?
I'm asking, not because I'm in a position to make such a challenge, but because I have been deeply challenged. And by a surprising group of people: students in Christian Unions.
Look back with thanks - anniversaries in 2004
Joy Horn
Date posted: 1 Jan 2004
General
Robert Bruce, Scottish minister, was born in 1554. Having opposed King James VI's design to introduce bishops into the Church of Scotland, he was banished from Edinburgh and for several years confined to Inverness, but great crowds attended whenever he was able to preach.
James Buchanan, Scottish Free Church theologian, was born in 1804. Like most Scottish evangelicals, he left the established church in 1843, and became minister of St. Stephen's Free Church, Edinburgh, and later professor in New College.
English lessons
John Marsh
Date posted: 1 Mar 2004
Book Review
MORE THAN A METHODIST
The life and ministry of Donald English
Read review
Holes
Mary Stolarski
Date posted: 1 Mar 2004
None Review
Sit back & enjoy HOLES
Read review
Letter from America
A tale of two games
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Mar 2004
This year the Super Bowl was between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers. During the Super Bowl I went to a Super Bowl party.
A Super Bowl party means eating and watching the game on TV, or at least the commercials which air in between the frequent time outs and other interruptions which so bemuse a British observer. The commercials are particularly expensive to air during this prime time viewing moment of the year and consequently vie for being the most memorable or funny.
'Worse than us!'
Gerard Chrispin
Date posted: 1 Mar 2004
Hypocrisy is just as alive in the prisons as it is in the churches!
Usually, preaching the gospel in prison means that most of your hearers know they have 'messed up' their lives, and they know that you know they have. So there is often a more honest starting point of admission of sin than sometimes we see in our respectable churches.
Mission impossible
Many evangelical churches are relatively small and face great problems. At EN we dreamed up the kind of difficult local church situation into which young ministers/pastors and their families are often sent.
We asked four men to comment on how they might, under God, seek to turn things round if they were confronted with such a church.
Reach the lost estates of Britain
Jen Baxter
Date posted: 1 Feb 2004
Twenty per cent of Britain's population lives on housing estates - almost ten million people. Yet these areas are little impacted by churches.
The Living in Estates Conference was designed 'to refresh and encourage those already engaged in this mission field and to inspire and advise those thinking about making the move'.
Islam unveiled
Paul Wells
Date posted: 1 Feb 2004
Islam in France is on the move. It is estimated that there are now about five million Muslims in France (against fewer than one million Protestants or Jews), and one million or so have full voting rights.
Such a substantial minority can only be expected to make its voice heard and to retain the electoral attentions of politicians.
Paul Brand: joy beyond riches
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Dec 2003
Dr. Paul Brand was best known for his medical labours among lepers in India. His work was immortalised in the popular book 'Ten Fingers for God' by Dorothy Clarke Wilson. He died in July, though his obituary did not appear in The Daily Telegraph until September.
He was the son of missionary parents in India. When I saw the notice of Dr. Brand's passing I took a special interest because his father, Jesse Brand, was sent out to India as a missionary from our own congregation way back in 1907. In fact, his grandfather, Henry, besides being an alderman of Guildford, was also a deacon of our church. Jesse was noted for his evangelistic zeal. With others he had begun a tract society in the town and it is interesting to read some of its records. The members distributed Christian tracts to houses, on public transport and in the public parks. During 1905-6, nearly 19,000 tracts were given out. One entry in the records reads: 'Dogs were a menace. But two women went to a house with a tract in one hand and a bone for the dog in the other!'