Ukraine: gospel joy for refugee children
John Chamberlain
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
One of the devastating aspects of the war in Ukraine is the huge number of people – the UN estimate the figure at 12 million – who have fled their homes with little more than the clothes they were wearing.
Around seven million people are still thought to be displaced inside Ukraine itself, many in the western region of Rivne and Sarny where Christian charity Mission Without Borders (MWB) is operating.
Urgent call
on homeless
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
A warning
from charity Crisis UK that
hundreds of thousands of UK households
could become homeless
this winter, has
prompted London City Mission (LCM) to
issue an urgent call for help.
Figures
show
that, up
to now, good
progress had been made with 2,689 fewer
people sleeping rough in the year to April
2022 compared to the previous year. An
LCM
spokesperson
said
the warning of
the
impending
rise
in homelessness
is a
‘heartbreaking projection’
threatening
the
work already done.
£500,000,000 Christian giving marked
Jenny Taylor
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
When builder and Brethren member Sir John Laing was motivated by his deep faith to give away money for the gospel he could little have dreamt that almost £500 million would be given to Christian causes.
Now the trustees of the J.W. Laing Trust are celebrating the centenary of the initial gift that got it going. After Sir John Laing, who died in 1978 aged 98, took over the management of his family’s small building business, he built it into a global construction and civil engineering group, employing over 10,000 people, and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Newfrontiers founder addresses FIEC leaders on identity
Joel Murray
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
The founder of the Newfrontiers network
of charismatic evangelical churches, Terry
Virgo, has addressed 100 FIEC church
leaders.
He was speaking at the London Leaders’
Gathering of the Fellowship of Independent
Evangelical Churches (FIEC).
ACE appointments
en staff
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
Bishop Andy Lines, of the Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE) is to be assisted by two new assistant bishops.
Stuart Bell (photo left) who led St Michael’s Aberystwyth, the largest Anglican church in Wales, and Ian Ferguson (right), a minister from Westhill Aberdeen, will serve in the Anglican Convocation in Europe (ACE).
Welsh Bible roots call
Rob James
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
The current cost of living crisis could prove an opportune moment for Baptists to rediscover their Biblical roots, a Welsh leader says.
Writing in a recent newsletter, Baptist Union of Wales’ Mission Director Simeon Baker acknowledged the challenge of maintaining large buildings and the pressures that brings, not least on church finances and this is likely to get even harder over winter.
Mercy flight saves Chad medic’s wife
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
A 370-mile emergency flight saved the life of a medic’s wife in Chad, the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) reports.
Gary Clayton writes: In 2021, MAF flew 1,443 medevac passengers worldwide. Many of the patients flown were touched by the love of Christ and the care they received from MAF pilots. This year, thanks to MAF planes, many more life-saving medical emergency flights are taking place in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.
42kg of sausage and ex-mafia man boost mission
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 May 2022
Passion for Life – the movement which has
been seeking to see the gospel of Christ
preached across the British Isles this recent
Easter and which is supported by over 750
churches – is celebrating some of the creative
ways it has been used by churches to tell
their families and communities about Jesus.
Dundonald Church in Wimbledon, part
of Co-mission, held a South Africa-themed
‘Around
the Braai with
the Bodyguard’.
It took 42kg of South African sausage to
feed the nearly 300 people who attended
the event. They heard some amazing stories
from Rory Steyn, about his time as chief
bodyguard to Nelson Mandela, and learned
how the person of Jesus had an even bigger
impact on his life.
Londoners’ ‘mission heat’ on the rise
London Gospel Partnership
Date posted: 1 Sep 2021
Along with the rest of the UK and Ireland, churches across London are preparing for a month of mission in Easter 2022 as part of the initiative A Passion for Life (APFL).
The prayer of those in the London Gospel Partnership is that there might be clusters of churches equipped and actively on mission in each of the 32 boroughs across the city – that many across London might be reached for Christ.
Christ for all the nations
en staff
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
As many parts of the world came to Birmingham for the Commonwealth Games, so the gospel in turn was brought to them.
A variety of missions groups including Birmingham City Mission, Great Lakes Outreach (GLO) and Youth With A Mission (YWAM) brought teams to the area to work alongside local churches.
From three to 25,000 – but militants tried to kidnap my teenage daughter
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
Indian church-planting missionary Elavatta Abraham has an extraordinary experience of how God has worked in his life.
He told his story exclusively to Evangelicals Now during a brief trip to the UK to attend the Cambridge Leaders Network conference.
Buffalo saves ambushed mission worker and family
Gary Clayton of Mission Aviation Fellowship writes:
In 1 Corinthians 15:32, the apostle Paul refers to fighting wild beasts in Ephesus. Although it’s unclear whether this is a reference to enraged opponents of the gospel or an allusion to a particularly cruel form of Roman punishment, for many MAF passengers the organisation’s light aircraft are the only way they can avoid the peril posed by man and beast.
Stepping out in faith: I said, ‘OK Jesus, I’m here…’
Carl Knightley
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
‘Never in a million years would you have seen me knocking on someone’s door. That’s someone else’s ministry, I would have told you.’
These were the words of Maria, a member of Forestdale Church in Croydon, South London.
New Scottish partnerships?
John MacKinnon
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
One of the fruits of the ongoing Life22 mission
initiative of A Passion for Life has been the
initiation of some promising conversations
around Scotland about the possibility of the
establishment or in some cases re-establishment
of Regional Gospel Partnerships (RGPs).
Nick McQuaker,
the development officer
for
the partnerships, has been on a
tour
around Scotland meeting key church leaders in
Edinburgh, Fife, Aberdeen, Moray, and Ayrshire.
Antidote to gadding about
The Free Church of Scotland’s 69th School
in Theology began with the life of Alexander
Moody Stuart by the Rev John W. Keddie.
It
was
a
resounding
and
thrilling
commencement to the School, writes E.T.
Kirkland. It is important to note that this
is not a conference but a school, meaning
the papers are given by those who regularly
attend as opposed to recruiting conference
speakers. This has the benefit of enabling
ministers to study a particular subject which
ordinarily
they may not do. Because of
this, the quality of the papers exceeds those delivered at conference level.
Taiwan: now more than 2,500 Christian fellowships
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
David Eastwood is Field Director for OMF in Taiwan, where he has been working for 30 years, and now oversees 70 missionaries.
OMF’s focus in Taiwan is on working-class and marginalised communities, such as prostitutes, the homeless and orphans, who are often overlooked by those agencies who concentrate on reaching the middle classes. Evangelicals Now spoke to him exclusively about the current situation there.
UK in transition: Keep calm and carry on!
John Stevens
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
The death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, after her remarkable 70-year reign, inevitably causes great uncertainty for the future. How might Britain change under her successor?
She has been a focus for stability and national identity in a fast-changing world, and a voice for the centrality of Christian faith in the public square. None of us knows the full extent of her influence behind the scenes, but many Christians assume that she has been a bulwark against ever-advancing secularism and progressivism. They fear that her death will allow these forces greater sway, and that the very integrity of the United Kingdom may be more difficult to sustain without her.
Modern
slavery alert
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
With modern slavery in the UK escalating,
evangelical churches are being challenged
to dedicate Sunday 25 September to prayer
and taking action to help trafficking victims.
‘Freedom Sunday’, coordinated by
the
International
Justice Mission
(IJM), has
been chosen as a day dedicated
in
the
UK and abroad
for corporate prayer
for
individuals trafficked into modern slavery –
and to take action to end it.
Addis Ababa to London: Meron’s pioneering mission
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Feb 2022
Meron (Mary) Haile has become the first woman missionary from Ethiopia to be a part of Serving in Mission (SIM) UK’s Engage programme. The 29-year-old is now serving with Inspire at St James, Clerkenwell, as part of SIM’s strategy of bringing experienced workers from overseas to work with churches in their multicultural contexts.
Engage helps (mainly urban) UK evangelical churches to share the gospel cross-culturally with the different ethnic and religious communities now embedded where they are. Many churches now recognise the strategic gospel opportunity – on their own doorsteps – to reach those who have not heard the good news of Christ.
The church that grew – from two!
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Aug 2022
From two to more than 120 people in nine years – a London church plant which began with a couple meeting individuals in the first year before launching as a living-room Bible study, is now planning to send its very first convert to start a new church in West London.
Malcolm Riley and his wife moved to London in 2013 with a desire to reach the next generation from the city centre. They came with literally nothing, having just left St Ebbe’s Oxford; with no staff team, no core group, no salary, no vicarage and no church building. ‘But we had two Bibles,’ said Malcolm.
First flight is answer to decade of prayer
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Aug 2022
A few weeks ago MAF pilot Roy Rissanen flew a team of American missionaries from a remote part of Guinea – the journey representing the first operational flight of MAF’s latest African programme.
With only 5% of Guinea’s roads being paved and the country’s railway network no longer running, the severe lack of transport makes life difficult for aid and development agencies, churches and missions in isolated areas.
German believers help Ukraine
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Aug 2022
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February Evangelicals Now has been inundated with stories about how UK churches and Christian groups are helping refugees and reaching out to them with the gospel. But Christians in other parts of Europe have been busy too.
Here is how Message Germany (an international hub of Manchester-based The Message Trust) has responded to the crisis.
Grateful at
Keswick ’22
The Keswick Convention 2022 brought
thousands
of Christians
together
this
summer under the banner of ‘All One in
Christ Jesus’ (see also en, August).
The theme was ‘Grateful’ and there was
certainly much
for which to be grateful,
writes Emma Harrison.
Christianity’s future: African, female – and untrained?
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Sep 2022
Christianity’s future is likely to be shaped by African women, new research says – but there is a danger of false teaching being influential as well.
New research by American scholar of the history of mission, Gina Zurlo, shows that women are the majority in churches nearly everywhere in the world, and that Christianity’s future is poised to be shaped by African women in particular.