Lost sheep
Peter Grainger
Date posted: 1 Jul 2003
A cartoon-caption competition in the American Christian journal Leadership featured a spectacle-wearing sheep speaking from behind a pulpit. In my favourite among the ten listed winners, the sheep is saying, 'I want to thank all 99 of you for giving Pastor Bob the freedom to seek me out'.
The well-known parable of the lost sheep, as recorded in Luke's Gospel, contains a rhetorical question: 'Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a 100 sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?"'
AIDS across the world: a Christian response
Steve Fouch
Date posted: 1 Jul 2003
If we look back over the 20th century, the sudden and disastrous onslaught of AIDS ranks as one of its great calamities. It is one of the greatest challenges for the 21st century.
How has the Christian church worldwide risen to that challenge?
Faith on the front line
The TV news has concentrated on the strategy of war in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's statue, but, on both sides of the firing line, there are other stories to tell...
Pocket New Testament and Psalms, produced for the Armed Forces by Scripture Gift Mission, have been in increasingly high demand in the Gulf. The camouflage-covered and ship-crested Bibles are proving an essential piece of kit for frontline troops.
Monthly column on student work
Emma Carswell
Date posted: 1 Apr 2003
Reports from CUs across the country show that the spiritual investment of church leaders, student workers, Christian writers, supporters, missioners and 'unknown' individuals are paying off.
Over 40 missions took place in Christian Unions during the last term. Hundreds of students heard the good news of Jesus for the first time. Christian students clarified their understanding of the gospel and have a new enthusiasm for sharing it with others. Individual students around the country have 'turned from idols to serve the true and living God'.
Assumed evangelicalism
David Gibson
Date posted: 1 Jun 2003
You may have heard the story of the Mennonite Brethren movement. One particular analysis goes like this: the first generation believed and proclaimed the gospel and thought that there were certain social entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel and advocated the entailments. The third generation denied the gospel and all that were left were the entailments.1
Another story. In 1919, Trinity Great Court in Cambridge saw a meeting between Rollo Pelly, the Secretary of the liberal Student Christian Movement, and Daniel Dick and Norman Grubb (Presi-dent and Secretary of the evangelical Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union). The meeting was to discuss the re-unification of the two movements that had split in 1910. Norman Grubb's account of the meeting is infamous:
Monthly column on student work
Nigel Pollock
Date posted: 1 Jun 2003
Emma Carswell, the regular writer of this column, is on her honeymoon. I am sure that even the most enthusiastic reader will forgive her absence in the circumstances. I had the pleasure of being at the wedding where Roger Carswell preached with an enthusiasm and directness which only the father of the bride could have pulled off. Rico Tice, who was conducting the wedding, told me he almost became a Christian (again).
Weddings always bring into focus for me what student ministry is all about. I believe that the effectiveness of any student ministry is seen most clearly in the quality of its graduates. The end point is seeing young men and women making the transition into the workplace with a love for the Lord and a passion for the gospel. Many start as students with a better idea of what they don't want to be like as parents, partners and workers. The challenge is to give them a positive vision of what God could do in and through them.
Monthly column on student work
Emma Carswell
Date posted: 1 Feb 2003
The task of evangelism for most Christian Unions is quite daunting. At Newcastle University for example, the student population is in excess of 15,000, whereas the CU has around 100 regulars this year. It is impossible to expect each of them to sustain friendship with around 150 other students, yet they do want to share Christ with this number. Similar comparisons can be made in the 334 Higher Education institutions in this country.
Matt Walmsley, evangelism secretary for Newcastle University CU was determined to overcome these hurdles. Last summer he developed a growing concern for the crowds of new students beyond the immediate reach of the CU through friendship. He shared this burden with other leaders in the CU and together they came up with 'Firestarters', a programme designed to initiate a gospel conversation with every first year student. Matt said: 'My vision was for the CU to do this each autumn, so that three years down the line every student at Newcastle University had been given the opportunity to hear the gospel.'
When God works quickly
Andrew Bradley
Date posted: 1 Feb 2003
We easily overestimate what can be achieved in a year and under-estimate what can be achieved in five but when God works such assessments are often turned on their head!
In 1993 my wife and I took over the leadership of the Criccieth Scripture Union Beach Mission which in 2003 celebrates its centenary.
Monthly column on hymns and songs
Christopher Idle
Date posted: 1 Mar 2003
The Pimlico Plumbers (plc) have twice been voted Domestic Installers of the Year. Or so I believe from the information displayed on the side of the white van parked just up the road from us.
For the intelligent evangelical reader, this piece of free advertising raises several immediate questions. First, what is their phone number? Second, when did this happen - recently or around 1924, for instance? Third, were the years consecutive and, if so, what happened the third year? Fourth (multiple), who were the voters, was the result close, predictable, or contested, and were the results independently verified? I am sorry that to all these queries I have no firm answers.
The peace process that works
Mike Moore
Date posted: 1 Apr 2003
Think of Israel and what comes to mind? Whatever images the word 'Israel' may conjure up, the picture of Jews and Arabs breaking bread and worshipping together will probably not be among the first.
How can people who are poles apart politically in a land torn by bitter strife find any common ground for friendship and reconciliation? What can bring together the members of two communities, who from childhood learn to distrust each other?
Help! I'm an evangelical. Get me out of here!
Josh Hooker
Date posted: 1 Feb 2003
I love the church, but something is happening to the church that I don't like. Over the past year I have visited a number of independent evangelical churches in the area where I live and my visits have left me feeling uneasy.
This is not because the Christians that I have met are ungodly people, or because the Bible is not being taught week by week, or because major heresy has crept unnoticed into church life. No, I feel uneasy because of the 'church culture' that seems to pervade many of these conservative evangelical churches - a culture that hinders Christian growth and denies outsiders the opportunity of hearing the gospel.
China - a ripe harvest field
Peter Morrison
Date posted: 1 Feb 2003
I climbed the worn steps of the former Presbyterian church in a large city in east China. As nearly every seat was taken I had to go to the highest gallery of the church.
It was the mid-week young people's meeting. It began with some rousing singing of both traditional hymns and modern choruses. Then the young pastor gave a 45-minute Bible study from the Old Testament on being sensitive to the guidance of God in every circumstance.
One's perspective
Betty Vivian
Date posted: 1 Mar 2003
Singleness was a great Goliath that roared at me during the first 11 years of my Christian life.
For some people it is not a problem, but for a considerable number it is a severe one. Many married couples carry colossal burdens which are frequently obvious. The trials of singleness are not often appreciated or understood as they are so inward and against nature.
Monthly column for youth leaders
Roger Fawcett
Date posted: 1 Mar 2003
I believe it is an important responsibility to support young people at school, although my own involvement in the local Christian Union ebbs and flows. Do you know if your teenagers or younger children have a Christian Union or club at school?
As a youth leadership team think what you can do. You can pray for them, offer to visit, provide Bible Study resources, train the leaders, and invest in outreach projects. Don't forget about your youth group when they go home on Sunday night. On Monday morning they head for their battleground and try to live for Christ in one of the toughest places they will encounter - a 21st-century school.
Yemen: the one that got away
Southern Baptist missionary Don Caswell saw the armed terrorist walking towards him and knew - just knew - the gunman was coming to kill him.
'I was looking at him and I saw him look at me. And that instant I realised he was coming right towards the pharmacy', Caswell said in his soft Texan's accent.
Which way for Anglicans?
Peter Jensen is the evangelical Archbishop of Sydney. He flies into Britain in January to take a series of meetings under the title, Anglicanism past, present and future - what is the future for the Church of England?
Though these meetings were planned many months ago they have taken on new significance since Dr. Rowan Williams has been named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
A day to remember - Anniversaries for 2003
Joy Horn
Date posted: 1 Jan 2003
Anniversaries for 2003
General
Robert Estienne, the leading printer in Geneva at the time of the Reformation, was born in 1503. He printed Bibles in French, using roman type rather than the heavy 'Black Letter' type, which made for greater ease of reading, and from 1551 introduced the practice of numbering individual verses, which has been followed in English translations.
Lilias Trotter, missionary to Algeria, was born in London in 1853. A gifted painter and sensitive writer, she formed the Algiers Mission Band (now Arab World Ministries).
Monthly column on student work
Emma Carswell
Date posted: 1 Jan 2003
You're in church. You get chatting to a student who has just finished their first term studying Theology. You ask if they are struggling being an evangelical in that environment and they say, 'Not really'. You know the position of some in the department at their university, so you ask the question again, 'Surely, you must be finding it tough?'. They casually reply, 'No'.
Discovering this to be the typical response of most Theology and RS students in the UK, has been one of the biggest surprises for Daniel Strange and David Gibson, who co-ordinate UCCF's work among this group. 'We both started the job expecting to work with students wanting help with loads of theological issues', explains David. 'But the reality is that we have great resources, but few students are interested.'
An evangelist's encouragements?
Roger Carswell
Date posted: 1 Feb 2003
I'm often asked if I see any encouragement in my travelling and preaching throughout the country. There are many heartening things happening, despite the difficulties we often face. Christmas events already seem part of the dim and distant past, but my itinerary throughout December illustrates some of the things from the evangelical scene that do my heart good.
* It is thrilling to see groups of 18-21 year-olds organising major evangelistic events which hundreds of their friends attend. This is what university carol services are. Bath Abbey, Coventry Cathedral, a derelict Anglican church in Plymouth, Great Halls in Reading, Cardiff and Aston were packed with students hearing the gospel.
Run with patience
Graham Heaps
Date posted: 1 Dec 2002
In 1981 20th-Century Fox released a David Puttnam film about two British athletes who won gold medals in the Olympic Games in Paris almost 60 years before (in 1924). The film won critical acclaim and has been shown many times on television since then.
It brought to the public eye Eric Liddell, a Christian man who turned down the opportunity to compete in the 100 metres, the blue riband event at the Games, because its heats were to be held on a Sunday.