The tide is turning, what are the prospects now?
David Potter
Date posted: 1 Nov 2001
A perceptible change is evident - and not before time!
After nearly 2,000 years Christians are becoming more aware and accepting of people with learning disabilities.
Books in the bloodstream
Carol Grugeon
Date posted: 1 Oct 2001
This autumn sees the publication of four books from the Carswell family, and all have the underlying aim of spreading the message of the gospel in differing ways.
Emma Carswell, marketing executive of Paternoster Publishing, would like to see a new approach to evangelism in literature. Working with authors around the world, Emma encourages them to write creatively for unbelievers, as well as persuading Christians to use books as a central tool in evangelism. 'People are very innovative and imaginative in different methods of evangelism, but when it comes to books they tend to be less creative. I would love to see a wider range of evangelistic books that approach the gospel from different angles, and are written for people of varied backgrounds and spiritual stages', said Emma. Her own book, Love in a Box, is written with this vision in mind.
Letter from America
When size matters
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Sep 2001
What is the largest Protestant denomination in the world? By some counts, the answer to that question is the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
The SBC is just astonishingly big. Imagine the biggest big thing you can think of then times it by something even bigger. That's about it. Since its organisation in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, the SBC has grown to 15.8 million members who worship in more than 40,000 churches in the United States.
It could never happen here?
Margaret Jones
Date posted: 1 Sep 2001
My children must have been about six and ten. The six year-old happily gave up her room for two of them, the other had the spare room.
'They' were three young workers from a well-known Christian organisation who had come to hold a mission in our town along with our church young people. We had a great week - even though they ate us out of house and home!
Operation World
Jonathan Francis
Date posted: 1 Sep 2001
Winning the world
A new 21st century edition of the missions book Operation World is about to be published. Jonathan Francis of Paternoster Press took time to introduce it to us.
Operation World is a book specifically written to change the world. The authors, many of whom have been working on the Operation World project for years, do not shrink from this fact.
Biography of John Stott, Vol. 2
Timothy Dudley-Smith
Date posted: 1 Sep 2001
Towards the end of the 1950s, Richard Bowdler left the staff of All Souls, Langham Place, and the ministry of 'Chaplain to the Stores' passed to Michael Harper.
He was a Londoner (the family home had been in Welbeck Street) and he had long been an occasional visitor to All Souls. He was converted to Christ in his first year at Cambridge, and during the vacations had alternated between All Souls and Westminster Chapel.
Post-genocide Rwanda
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Jul 2001
Julia Cameron of IFESworld talks with Phocas Ngendahayo, General Secretary of the IFES student ministry in Rwanda.
JC: Phocas, tell us first about yourself.
PN: I have completed two terms at the Cornhill Training Course. One of my main activities in Rwanda is to teach the Bible in student Christian Unions. I'm a physiotherapist, so since I had no formal training in how to teach the Bible, I needed to be equipped in this way.
What are you worrying about?
Gordon Robertson
Date posted: 1 Aug 2001
There used to be a terrible worrier in the office. Every day he'd arrive with a frown like the Rift Valley.
Till one day he was all smiles. 'What's happened?', colleagues asked. 'Oh, I've paid a consultant to do all my worrying - only £100 per day'. 'But', they gasped, 'however will you afford that?' Smiling, he replied: 'That's his worry!'
Wrestling with Demons?
Charles Hoole
Date posted: 1 Aug 2001
An increasing number of Christians see a demon behind every bush.
Some go so far as to view all the problems of life as demonically animated. So their own problems - temper, sexual lust, discouragement, overeating, loneliness, disappointment, poverty - become personalised as demons of the respective sin or struggle that needed to be cast out.
Letter from America
Asking Americans
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Aug 2001
There is a certain on-going friendly rivalry between Canada and America. One instance of this is the continuing disagreement between the two countries over who won the last war they fought against each other in the 19th century. Americans are taught that they did. Canadians know they did.
Another instance of this friendly rivalry is a radio show in Canada called Asking Americans. In this show, a radio reporter travels down to America and asks Americans various spoof questions. These questions are designed to expose Americans as being woefully ignorant of what is going on in the world outside their national boundaries.
Monthly column on hymns and songs
Christopher Idle
Date posted: 1 Aug 2001
'Come, ye souls by sin afflicted'. We sang that at least three times at Limehouse, as my annotated Anglican Hymn Book reveals; the last occasion being in 1984, a year of some personal affliction for me. It is a hymn found in other discerning books from Congregational Praise to Christian Hymns, among those still in use.
Whom were we addressing? Probably ourselves and one another; unlike Joseph Hart's marginally earlier 'Come ye sinners, poor and needy' (also in AHB) which made good preaching but not good singing. The one we did sing encapsulates some gospel Scriptures rare in hymns: 'Blessed are the eyes that see him' and so on. But the hymns came to life again as a precious part of local history.
Students get their marks
Bob Horn
Date posted: 1 May 2001
This spring has seen an evangelistic initiative by Christian Unions on many campuses to reach out with the message of Christ using Mark's Gospel. Bob Horn of the Universities & Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) reports. . .
He was a philosophy student and he had never read any part of the Bible. Then a Christian friend gave him a copy of Mark's Gospel during the Christian Union's mission last term.
France: religious clampdown
French Christians are bracing themselves for problems resulting from a controversial new law aimed at controlling the activities of dangerous religious sects. But it is also likely to affect ordinary churches.
Some churches were already considering removing the word 'evangelical' from their names, the president of the French Protestant Federation (FPF), the Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, said from Paris.
