Is this training for ministry?
Ray Evans
Date posted: 1 May 2000
Sadly 'Can't train, won't train' summarises what many ministers feel about developing the next generation of church leaders. But it needn't stay like that . . .
There is a wealth of encouragement in the Scriptures that point towards a much more positive approach. An increasing number of ministers are getting involved and passing on their insights and experiences (see, for example, The Briefing No. 218).
Get on board
Stephen Timmis
Date posted: 1 Jun 2000
Book Review
Crying in the Wilderness: Evangelism and Mission in Today's Culture
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FAITHS IN CONFLICT
Krish Kandiah
Date posted: 1 Jun 2000
Book Review
By Vinoth Ramachandra IVP. 179 pages Well worth reading, Vinoth Ramachandra's third book is another erudite and scholarly work aimed at challenging the assumptions of the opinion-makers in the Christian world. The book examines the contemporary religious world culture to reveal the opportunities and challenges for gospel witness.
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Monthly column on hymns and songs
Christopher Idle
Date posted: 1 Mar 2000
'But we sang that last week!' Do you know who chooses your church's hymns? Is more than one person involved? Prayerfully? Is it you? Are they chosen on the spot, or the day, week, or month before?
Most musicians, especially the non-expert, appreciate the early choosers. The church where the hymns were announced 12 months ahead, is an extreme case! However you answer my questions, the selectors affect us all.
The Boxer rebellion
Norman Cliff
Date posted: 1 Dec 1999
Mildred Cable once observed: 'The year 1900 holds the same significance as does the Flood in Old Testament chronology. All China mission history dates before or after 1900.'
Missions in China had been going for six decades of the 19th century when the Boxer Rising took place. There were 85,000 Chinese Christians in some 60 Protestant societies, and church buildings and institutions were just beginning to reach a fraction of the population.
Glorifying God in mission
Ms Elisabeth Elliott
Date posted: 1 Nov 1998
Of all the privileges God has given me, none has been greater than that of being a missionary.
I cannot remember a time when I did not hope that God would give me the opportunity to be a missionary.
Kingdom cool
Mr Adam Sparks
Date posted: 1 Feb 2000
Much of modern Western evangelicalism can be likened to a defective cookery book in which the methods are specified, but the ingredients are not or, at best, are very weakly defined.
The preparation details, oven temperature, technique etc., are given an inordinate amount of attention but the ingredients are overlooked. This article explores the concepts of style and content-relevance and truth, and urges us not to make truth a secondary matter.
A thousand years in the life of the church
Dr David Calhoun
Date posted: 1 Dec 1999
'With the near approach of the year one thousand,' Charles Williams wrote in The Descent of the Dove, 'Christendom everywhere expected the end. It did not come. The first millennium . . . closed and the second opened with no greater terror than the ordinary robberies, murders, rapes, burnings, wars, massacres and plagues, and the even less noticeable agonies of each man's ordinary life.'
In the year 1000, an important part of ordinary life in Europe was the Christian church. With the 'conversion' of Constantine in the early 4th century, the persecuted church had become the tolerated church and then, before long, the official religion of the Roman Empire. The invasions of the 'barbarians' from the north and east introduced chaos in the empire but extended Christianity through the conversion of the European tribes, and the 'centre' of the church shifted for the third time - from the Jewish Christian world of the eastern Mediterranean, to the Greco-Roman world of Rome, to the converted tribes of northern and central Europe.
China's Christian Millions
Tony Lambert
Date posted: 1 Jan 2000
Fangcheng County in southern central Henan, China is an agricultural district with 926,000 inhabitants. 60 years ago, Henry Guinness, David Adeney and other missionaries of the China Inland Mission travelled by bicycle with Chinese colleagues throughout the villages, and small churches were planted.
Today, there are so many Christians that hostile cadres have labelled the area a 'Jesus Nest'.
Mission on our doorstep
Ms Sally Sutcliffe
Date posted: 1 Nov 1997
What does cross-cultural mission mean to you? Brave souls hopping on a plane and flying across the world? But what about Britain? In many towns and cities, different faith communities live cheek-by-jowl.
If you are contemplating mission abroad but have not yet reached out to Asians here in Britain, why not? 'Reaching out to Muslims in Huddersfield' may not have quite the same ring as 'pioneering mission in rural Pakistan' but it is essentially the same thing.
GOOD NEWS ABOUT INJUSTICE
Peter Comont
Date posted: 1 Dec 1999
Book Review
By Gary A. Haugen IVP. 200 pages. £7.99 If you could give one gift to the next generation young believers, what would it be? Gary Haugen asks this question at the beginning of his book, Good news about injustice, and comes up with a simple answer: courage!
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36 Steps to Christian Leadership
Dixon E Hoste
Date posted: 1 Oct 1999
The name of Dixon E. Hoste is not well-known today. But there are three reasons why he deserves to be better remembered.
The first is that he was the second General Director of the China Inland Mission, the chosen successor of Hudson Taylor.
Roy Clements walks out
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Nov 1999
It is with great sadness that we report that Dr. Roy Clements, who resigned some months ago as minister of Eden Chapel, Cambridge, is now separated from his wife.
He had told her that he had a celibate relationship with a younger man who has acted as a research assistant for him. A very few close friends had been aware for a little while that Roy had struggled with homosexual attraction over a number of years.
Do you believe this?
Dominic Stockford
Date posted: 1 Nov 1999
Unlike the question of Jesus to Martha (John 11.26), I was never asked: 'What do you believe?' until I reached my early 30s.
It may seem an extraordinary story, but I am not extraordinary. If this leads to others moving forward in their faith, then God be praised.
A radical ministry of principled pragmatism
David Baker
Date posted: 1 Oct 1999
Is Vaughan Roberts a theological liberal? Certainly some may have been tempted to ask the question after he wrote an article in a theological magazine critical of the UCCF basis of faith. Then there is the fact that his views were slated by noted American evangelical Don Carson in his book The Gagging of God.
Just as well then, that Evangelicals Now sent me to interview the other Vaughan Roberts. For there are two people called the Rev. Vaughan Roberts, both clergymen, but with somewhat differing theology.
You in Your Small Corner - the elusive dream of evangelical unity
Mark Johnston
Date posted: 1 Sep 1999
There are few more significant challenges facing the church and churches of our day than that of pursuing meaningful unity.
The fact that Jesus prays for a unity which can be witnessed by a watching world in such a way as to endorse the credibility of the gospel (John 17.20-23) and the fact that Paul uses a verb which can be translated 'spare no effort' to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4.3), both point to a Christian responsibility which too many Christians too easily shirk.