Morocco: help comes
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
Christians from around the world are on the ground bringing urgent relief in Morocco, following the huge earthquake there. The epicentre of the quake was in the Atlas Mountains, about 40 miles southwest of the busy tourist city of Marrakech. Thousands are dead and injured.
A representative of the Bible Society in Morocco said: ‘Your prayers and concern mean a lot to us here in Morocco … I am in the affected area, working alongside teams from different churches. We are delivering food supplies to believers and their families, and we are also assessing the needs for the near future.’
French evangelical group under fire
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2023
Evangelical group Torrents de Vie has attracted the hostility of the media and the government in France after a journalist covertly recorded images and conversations at one of the organisation’s summer camps.
Torrents de Vie means ‘Streams Of Life’. Part of a larger international inter-denominational Christian ministry, it is active in ten French cities offering seminars, pastoral counselling and conferences. Its website says it ‘offers spiritual support, combining teaching, listening and prayer, to Christians of all denominations seeking help for their personal difficulties. Our values are based on Biblical love and grace’.
Keswick role
Emma Harrison
Date posted: 1 Sep 2023
Keswick Ministries has announced the appointment of Mark Ellis as its new Ministry Director, effective from September 2023. He follows James Robson, incoming Principal of Oak Hill Theological College.
Mark has wide experience in Christian leadership, including overseas mission work with OMF, leading UCCF’s team in Scotland and as Director of Christian Unions Ireland, pastoring a flourishing church plant in Dundee, and most recently as part of the leadership team at Christ Church Newcastle.
Very different… but all one
Emma Harrison
Date posted: 1 Sep 2023
Record numbers of children and young people attended this year’s Keswick Convention, the organisers say.
Keswick Ministries has revealed that of the 10,000 attendees this summer, 2,500 were youngsters and teenagers.
Niger: plea for prayer
en staff
Date posted: 1 Sep 2023
Niger Christians are asking for prayer as the country continues to face turbulence.
Mission organisation Open Doors UK says people should pray for the safety of the churches, and especially believers who have converted from Islam.
Long-running camps cut
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Sep 2023
The curtain has come down for good on Urban Saints national summer camps, which have been running across several sites across the UK and Ireland for many decades – though local and regional ones will continue.
Previously more widely known as Crusaders, Urban Saints summer camps for children and young people up to 18 have been run by volunteers since the early 1900s. This year’s camps ran through summer from the very first summer weekend. Interim CEO Richard Giles said : ‘We’re grateful for their servant heart and passion.’
Church plants spurred on by Irish mission initiative
Mark Loughridge
Date posted: 1 Jan 2023
At least two new churches have been planted in Ireland in tandem with the recent ‘What’s the Story?’ (WTS) outreach initiative in Ireland.
Christ City Church in central Dublin (some members pictured) had been looking to plant a church in the more residential area in the south of the city to reach the people there.
Innovative outreach to Jerusalem holocaust survivors
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jul 2023
An innovative gospel outreach in Jerusalem has sparked great interest among hundreds of Jewish people wanting to know more about the claims of Jesus.
The brainchild of the International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP), the five-day initiative was specifically designed for those who had lived through the Holocaust. It comprised four tours of Biblical sites in Galilee, ending with a concert featuring performances by local musicians (all Jewish believers in Jesus), and a gospel presentation by IMJP missionary, Aviel Sela. It formed part of a strategic plan, developed over a number of years, to reach Jewish people with the good news about Jesus. More than 200 people joined the site tours, to places such as the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, and 185 Jewish people attended the concert, 156 of whom gave their contact details and took away Christian literature.
Fifty years of a family’s faithful witness in PNG
In 2019, website devpolicy.org told the story of Sally’s life and background. Cleo Fleming wrote:
Sally’s family has lived and worked with the Bedamuni people of PNG since the late 1960s, when her parents, Tom and Salome Hoey, went to Western Province to establish a Christian mission there. Raised in farming families from Queensland, they were both immensely practical people who had a range of life skills to add to the training they received at Tahlee Bible College before leaving Australia.
Praying in Parliament
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Aug 2023
The Prime Minister was among a bumper crop of MPs attending this year’s Parliamentary Breakfast on 27 June, alongside representatives from the Christian community.
More than 700 parliamentarians - including a record 180-plus MPs - and Christian leaders met together at Westminster Hall for the annual recognition of Christianity’s contribution to UK life.
Bournemouth Bible Week
David Cook
Date posted: 1 Aug 2023
‘Growing in faith, hope and love’ was the theme of this year as hundreds of people joined for the face-to-face meetings from 3-7 July.
The strapline of the Bournemouth Bible Week is 'Gathering the Churches, Preaching the Word.' It was encouraging to see larger numbers meet together this year than has been possible since 2020.
Grief inspires ministry of grace in Romania
Slavic Gospel Association
Date posted: 1 Aug 2023
The tragic early death of a young man, Filip Faragau, after a long battle with cancer, is providing the inspiration for a unique ministry in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Violeta, Filip’s widow, carried out their shared desire to provide affordable accommodation for cancer patients and their families in the city. In the months leading up to Filip’s death they met many who could not afford the cost of staying there, either to access treatment themselves or to care for loved ones receiving cancer care. The seed was sown for what is now ‘Casa Filip’, in Violeta’s own words, ‘a nice, comfortable place, where people could come and stay without having to spend a fortune for their accommodation’. Slavic Gospel Association (UK) have supported this vital work prayerfully and practically from the start. Filip and his family were valued, long-term friends of the mission.
The world’s most daring mission?
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
An international humanitarian organisation whose director was previously imprisoned in a freezing cold metal container by the Taliban has become the first Christian group permitted to return to Afghanistan.
Shelter Now International (SNI) has been invited to return by the hardline Islamic regime to help with relief efforts in the country. And it has already provided humanitarian aid in the provinces of Khost and Paktika after severe earthquakes struck there recently.
PNG: Fifty years of a family’s faithful witness
In 2019, website devpolicy.org told the story of Sally’s life and background. Cleo Fleming wrote:
Sally’s family has lived and worked with the Bedamuni people of PNG since the late 1960s, when her parents, Tom and Salome Hoey, went to Western Province to establish a Christian mission there. Raised in farming families from Queensland, they were both immensely practical people who had a range of life skills to add to the training they received at Tahlee Bible College before leaving Australia.
Can the Church of England be revived?
Andy Mason
Date posted: 1 Jun 2023
It would be easy to answer that question with a quick ‘no’. After all, we Anglicans are facing huge problems: a loss of gospel truth, obstruction from bishops and ongoing spiritual compromise throughout the institution.
This present mess has been a long time coming, and it is, in many ways, no surprise. Surely, then, it is all over with the Church of England, and we should just leave such a moribund institution? There is, after all, nothing sacred about an ecclesiastical institution in and of itself, and we know that denominational borders are not the borders of spiritual Israel. Everything would be simpler if we just came out so that we could breathe freely once again!
Questioning students overflow outside at CU mission
Daniel Stafford
Date posted: 1 Apr 2023
An event hosted by Christian Unions in the city of Liverpool was so highly anticipated that students had to stand outside the venue to remain in earshot.
Students in University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores, and Liverpool Hope universities (pictured left and centre) came together to host a week of daily, high-profile, evangelistic events entitled ‘Truth Defined’. With students facing a much more unsettled and uncertain future, greater numbers than ever are open to considering faith, with over 100 students crowded into a packed-out venue.
‘I’m in’ – stem cell transplant student comes to faith
Kitty Hardyman
Date posted: 1 Jul 2023
‘What’s stopping you taking the step to become a Christian?’ For Chris, a student at Nottingham Trent University, this Spring was the point at which he was able to answer ‘nothing’ – and give his life to Jesus Christ, writes Kitty Hardyman of Christian student organisation UCCF.
Chris made his commitment of faith attending the Word Alive conference alongside faithful friends from Nottingham Trent Christian Union who had walked with him during the past four years at university. The journey had been long, but surrounded by 800 other undergraduates and the wider church family, it was at Word Alive that the decision was set plainly before him, and he was able to say: ‘I’m in’.
Young French believers meet en masse
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jul 2023
Around 6,500 teenagers and young people from churches across France gathered in Zénith d’Auvergne at a large triennial congress – Echo 2023 – that seeks to encourage young members of evangelical churches to discover God’s calling. The theme of Echo 2023 was ‘See, I Am Doing Something New’ (Isa. 43:9).
The programme was based on three areas: ‘Me and God; Us and God; You and Me’. It included preaching, worship, workshops, concerts and special programmes for Ados (12–17 years old) and Jeunes (18 and over). Christian youth workers also offered training and connections. Seminars addressed issues such as Bible reading, Christian ethics, science and faith, and sexuality.
George Verwer through the decades: an appreciation
David Baker
Date posted: 1 May 2023
The impact of George Verwer, the mission pioneer who has just died (see obituary here), was so extensive that for me, as with many others, he has seemed like a constant influence, even though we never met.
My first encounter with his work was when one of the OM ships visited Bristol, where we lived, in the 1970s. To a small boy, the idea of Christians voyaging round the world giving out books seemed an exotic, alluring and rather exciting one, and I still remember the smiles of those serving on the ship.
New missionaries aim for first Bible
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 May 2023
Five years ago, a translation of the New Testament into Keliko – a South Sudanese language – was ceremoniously and joyfully carried into a Ugandan refugee camp church.
Today, new missionaries are preparing to fly to Uganda later in the year to join the Bible translation team. Philip and Heidi Knight will be working with the Keliko people – an ethnic group who have never had the Bible in their own language.
letter from the
Philippines: One year on, a new church plant
Reuben & Cathy Saywell
Date posted: 1 May 2023
One year here and the Lord has not only given us a clear mission to keep us busy, but also continued provisions to keep us going and countless blessings to keep us praising.
Just before our family took the big step onto the mission field, we were reminded at our commissioning service that the God who sends is also the God who supplies. The same Jesus who was described as Immanuel at His incarnation is the One who, at His ascension, was self-identified as the God who will be with us always, even to the end of the age. What a comfort to have studied, sensed, and seen that promise to be true over the past 12 months as missionaries, thousands of miles from home.
Pain produces church growth in Krakow
One Polish church in the southern city
of Krakow has experienced remarkable
growth over the last two years in surprising
circumstances: the Covid-19 pandemic and
warfare, writes Tim Thornborough.
Christ
the Saviour Presbyterian Church
(CSPC) currently meets in a converted bank
and, as we entered, we were handed headsets to
enable us to listen to the live translation of the
service from Polish to English. Others picked
up the headsets marked ‘Ukrainian’. My main
contact in Krakow is Sashko – a Ukrainian from
Lviv, just over the border from Poland – who is
the assistant minister at the church.
Operation Coronation reaches celebrities
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Jun 2023
Coronation Day was unforgettable for the nation, but it will also be remembered by some as the day they met with the King of Kings.
On the weekend of 6 May, hundreds of Christians joined Royal fans around Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and elsewhere in central London handing out gospels and Christian literature. Thousands of tracts and the coronation booklet God Save The King – co-authored by Roger Carswell and Alan Marsden – found their way into the hands of ordinary people, as well as celebrities such as TV hosts Ant and Dec and other guests at the Coronation.
From music to nerf guns: right across the UK - this is mission today
www.apassionforlife.org.uk
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
What does mission in the local church look like in 2022?
The answer is that it is as gloriously varied as each individual congregation and its members.
Can the Church of England be revived?
It would be easy to answer that question with a quick ‘no’. After all, we Anglicans are facing huge problems: a loss of gospel truth, obstruction from bishops and ongoing spiritual compromise throughout the institution.
This present mess has been a long time coming, and it is, in many ways, no surprise. Surely, then, it is all over with the Church of England, and we should just leave such a moribund institution? There is, after all, nothing sacred about an ecclesiastical institution in and of itself, and we know that denominational borders are not the borders of spiritual Israel. Everything would be simpler if we just came out so that we could breathe freely once again!