The Third Degree
UCCF
Date posted: 1 Apr 2002
'My name is Kathy. I'm from China, and I'm wanting to find out about God.' What an introduction! As we began to chat, after a lunch bar event at Leicester University, I saw she was like so many international students in the UK. Kathy hadn't been to a Christian meeting before, or even seen a Bible. However, she was curious to know about the nature of God, and fascinated by the person of Jesus.
In London alone there are a quarter of a million international students. Higher Education is bringing the 'nations' to our doorstep, so we can think globally, yet act locally. At an international evening in the Midlands, the Christian Union welcomed students from literally around the globe. From Brazil to Malaysia, Albania to China, Kazakhstan to the Maldives, Japan to Cyprus, they enjoyed food and friendship, as well as hearing something of Jesus. Many churches and CUs are committed to such work, yet 80% of international students in the UK return to their countries without ever having made a British friend, let alone one who is a Christian.
Jazz for Jesus
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Apr 2002
Bill Edgar is both a professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and an extremely talented jazz musician who has spent a lot of his life in France. He is not only very intelligent and cosmopolitan, but uses his gifts to share the gospel in various ways. EN took the opportunity to interview him while he was in Britain earlier this year.
EN: Bill, tell us about your background?
BE: My parents met in North Carolina during the war, while Dad was in the army. That is where I was born. Shortly after, we moved to Paris, France, and I grew up there. Then we spent seven years in New York. But after that, the rest of Dad's professional career until he retired in 1983, was in Geneva. It was not a Christian home, but it was a wonderful home.
Reality TV?
Julie Skelton
Date posted: 1 Apr 2002
The other week I found myself among the audience of celebrities, record executives and prize winners at the annual Britannia Music Awards or the 'Brits'. It's very unusual for my name to be picked for anything, but as it happened, I had casually voted for certain nominees on the 'Brits' website several weeks previously.
My name was then automatically put into a draw which I promptly forgot all about, until a phone call from the local radio station complete with on-air interview to confirm that I was, for once, a winner. I went from being an ordinary housewife to rubbing shoulders with the stars at the Earls Court all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza.
Significant people
John Carrick
Date posted: 1 Mar 2002
When preaching, I often feel I should bow to the congregation, like the teacher who daily bowed to his class of boys. 'I never know,' he said, 'if one day a boy might be important.' There was a boy in his class named Martin. His second name? Luther.
Do you realise that every congregation of Christian believers is a group of important and significant persons?
Heaven in a nightclub
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Mar 2002
How can you mix church and jazz? What do God and jazz have in common? Well, the answer is 'a great deal' according to Professor William Edgar of Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.
Not only is Bill Edgar a professor of apologetics at perhaps the foremost Reformed seminary in the USA, but he is also an extremely gifted jazz pianist.
The Trio - remembered best by secular feminists
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Nov 2001
Virago Press keeps alive one of the greatest stories of women missionaries, now all but lost to evangelicals.
Hardly known for its love of Christian truth, Virago republished The Gobi Desert by Mildred Cable and Francesca French in the mid 1980s, and has included an excerpt from that in its Book of Women Travellers.
Some more reasons for hope
The following grounds for hope were published in November in the third (2002/2003) edition of Religious Trends. It focuses on the years 1995-2000 with a forecast to 2005 giving information and analysis on church membership and church attendance.
Belief in God is still high
Two-thirds, 67%, of the population believed in God in the 1990s, and over half, 52%, in heaven. Half, 49%, said they believed in Jesus as the Son of God. While these proportions have declined over the past 30 years they continue to be relatively high.
God's supremacy
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Dec 2001
John Piper, the well-known author, conference speaker and pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, was in England during October. EN obtained an interview with him at the offices of the Zacharias Trust in Oxford. . .
EN: What was the most significant factor in you becoming a Christian?
Godly gifts for Christmas?
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Dec 2001
What can you give as a Christmas present which will be both spiritual, encouraging and enjoyable?
Good question. Here are some suggestions from EN.
Operation World
Top of the list this year must come a copy of the new edition of Operation World, the comprehensive guide to global Christian mission. Picking up our news from British TV, fascinated by pictures of horror and working to a secular Western agenda, we very often have a highly distorted view of what is going on in the world.
Moving mountains
William Grunbaum
Date posted: 1 Dec 2001
Back in 1917 the mountain of Communism thrust itself into human history with the revolution in Russia.
During subsequent decades it engulfed one country after another in its Red embrace.
Triple murder 30 years on
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Jan 2002
Edinburgh. Wednesday January 5 1972. Elaine was in the basement of the Scripture Union building near the West end of Princes Street, rehearsing for an evangelistic concert.
Elaine was a gifted, warm-hearted extrovert, a few months away from sitting Higher exams at James Gillespie's High School. She was an achiever: academically across a range of subjects; on the sports field; as a musician with a fine soprano voice; and as a leader. That evening she sang a song about discovering faith, strumming her guitar.
The uniqueness of Christianity
Ray Porter
Date posted: 1 Jan 2002
'He's a Pakistani, but I think he's a Christian', was one of the more bizarre comments from Rochester Cathedral at the announcement that Michael Nazir-Ali was to be the new Bishop.
New syllabuses for Religious Education have shown that there is a continuing debate about which religion should be taught in state schools. The Prince of Wales has declared his desire to be a defender of 'faith' or 'the divine' rather than of any religious group. The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to favour a multi-faith Coronation Service for Charles III. There are some suggestions that the evangelisation of ethnic minorities in Britain should be banned as racial discrimination. It is in this climate that we are to speak about the call to cross cultures with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not just non-Christians who are confused about the link between race and religion.
Evangelical confidence
Philip Hacking
Date posted: 1 Nov 2001
The Decade of Evangelism is well and truly over, to the concealed (or unconcealed) delight of many.
There were advances made for the gospel in the Decade of Evangelism but, sadly, church attendance continued to slide and the Christian influence in our nation to wane. In my article last month I pleaded for a renewed confidence in the gospel. That must be paramount; then we need renewed confidence in how to proclaim it.
Surprised by God at Christmas
A brother serving in Asia
Date posted: 1 Dec 2001
As I considered serving the Lord abroad I had many doubts about whether he would really provide for my needs as a Christian worker on the field.
Yes, I had read missionary biographies, which spoke of God's wondrous provision for others, but would he really provide for me, a former telecom manager living in suburbia? Could I leave the comfort and security of home?
Monthly column on the arts
David Porter
Date posted: 1 Oct 2001
As I write this, the television is full of images of appalling destruction, the aftermath of the terrorist attack on America. I had planned to write at length this month about our family visit to the States this summer, but for obvious reasons that will have to wait for another time.
Let me instead take a few moments to celebrate one small part of American Christianity, which we encountered during our visit: the Mennonite community in the Central Valley of California. We stayed with a Mennonite family near Fresno, whom we had got to know over the years through their visits to L'Abri Fellowship but had never visited ourselves.
