New series on evangelism for every believer
FIEC
Date posted: 1 May 2021
Evangelism for Every Believer is the title of a
new series on the website of the Fellowship
of
Independent
Evangelical Churches
(FIEC).
FIEC Mission Director Andy Paterson
explains the background to the launch of this
new initiative:
Exclusive: the untold story of Mozambique
Iain Taylor (BBC News / Zitamar News / Growing Hope)
Date posted: 1 May 2021
The human cost of the violence in northern Mozambique is laid bare in a number of eyewitness accounts of the fighting, and its aftermath, that Evangelicals Now has obtained from local Christians.
Several atrocities have recently taken place, with dozens of civilians being killed and at least 11,000 displaced after militants invaded Palma, Cabo Delgado on 24 March.
Newton is the
new Tyndale
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 May 2021
A new theological centre along the lines of
Tyndale House, Cambridge, is to open in
Oxford this September.
Professor Michael A.G. Haykin, a regular
contributor to en, will be serving as the
first Director of Newton House when it is
inaugurated.
Mr Baker offers bread of life – and more!
Andrew Dalton
Date posted: 1 May 2021
An evangelical congregational church in West Yorkshire is offering two different kinds of bread to its neighbourhood – the Bread of Life, and ordinary bread as well!
Each week Morley Community Church receives (free of charge) supplies of bread, confectionery, vegetables, fruit and innumerable packets of food of all descriptions. Pictured here is Ray Baker with some of the provisions.
Vaccine passports fear
EN
Date posted: 1 May 2021
Almost 1,000 church leaders have urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson not to impose controversial vaccine passports on churches in England.
In an open letter published a few days ago, the pastors and ministers say they are ‘are wholly opposed to this suggestion’ and say that to ‘deny people entry to hear this life-giving message and to receive this life-giving ministry would be a fundamental betrayal of Christ and the gospel.’
LCM gossips the gospel in midst of pandemic
London City Mission
Date posted: 1 Mar 2021
Covid makes it more important than ever for Christians to be gossiping the gospel, according to the London City Mission.
Graham Miller, Chief Executive of London City Mission says: ‘Lots of meetings have been closed, but the opportunities for conversations are still there.’
Astronaut broadcasts Scripture verses from space
Evangelical Focus
Date posted: 1 Mar 2021
A NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station has recently said that sunrises in space reminds him of a Bible verse from the Psalms.
Victor Glover, one of the seven crew members of the space station Expedition 64, posted two images of the sun shining just above Earth’s horizon on Instagram and Twitter.
Stark warning to Southern Baptists
Iain Taylor / Southern Baptist Convention
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
Departing President of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), J.D. Greear, has used his final message to the Executive Committee to demand that the church engages constructively with Critical Race Theory (CRT).
The talk coincided with the much-publicised decision of leading Bible teacher Beth Moore – a longstanding critic of Donald Trump – to quit the SBC, saying ‘I can no longer identify with Southern Baptists.’
New vision for North West
The North West Gospel Partnership (NWGP) exists to help churches work together to reach the North West with the gospel. The region has a population of over 7 million people and so the task is great and complex. In recent months the Trustees have been revisiting and reviewing the Partnership’s purpose, aims and strategy. Mark Pickles tells us more:
To reach even 10% of the population (700,000 people) we would need 7,000 churches (assuming an average membership of 100); at present we have about 100. Put like that, the sheer size of the task is overwhelming. We are committed to the three-fold task of church planting, church revitalising and church strengthening.
Christian medics rush to aid of boy and chimpanzee
Gary Clayton of the Mission Aviation Fellowship writes: For more than 75 years, MAF’s fleet of light aircraft has been flying patients from some of the world’s most hard-to-access areas to hospital.
Many MAF flights involve women facing pregnancy complications, accident victims or people wounded due to tribal conflict. Two, less typical, MAF medevacs involved a two-week-old chimpanzee and a ten-year-old boy.
Evangelical
church grows
in Spain
Iain Taylor / Evangelical Focus
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
New official data reveals that almost 2% of
the Spanish population now identifies as
Protestant or evangelical.
In
the 20 years
to 2018,
this group
multiplied eightfold, to become the fastest-growing denomination in the country. And
those evangelicals are now worshipping in well
over 4,200 churches across Spain, opening on
average 16 new churches a month.
40,000 view new video on Jesus
CEM
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
More than 40,000 people have viewed a beautifully-illustrated presentation of Jesus in its first month of being released.
What is Christianity? was created by Christianity Explored Ministries (CEM). Using rich imagery and a voiceover from Thabiti Anyabwile, it tells the story of human history. It’s the story of our creation by God and our rebellion against Him; the story of salvation found only in Jesus.
New leader for global group
Christian Today / ThomasSchirmacher.net
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
New Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), German theologian Thomas Schirrmacher, has begun work after being inaugurated.
The WEA was established in 1846 and works in 129 countries. It claims to represent 600 million evangelicals.
‘Billy Graham of Africa’ dies
Iain Taylor / godreports.com
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
Stephen Lungu, one of the great evangelists of recent times and revered as the ‘Billy Graham of Africa’, has died of coronavirus, aged 78.
Stephen grew up in pre-independence Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and was the product of a dysfunctional family, living on the streets and getting involved with street gangs.
New leaders for CofE evangelicals
CEEC
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
Lis Goddard and Ed Shaw have become Co-Chairs of the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC), it has been announced.
Ed Shaw is pastor of Emmanuel City Centre Church in Bristol, a congregation established in recent years via a Bishop’s Mission Order. He is also Director of Living Out – an organisation run by same-sex-attracted Christians setting out an orthodox, Biblical view of sexuality.
Churches badly harmed by Equatorial Guinea blast
Iain Taylor / Evangelical Focus
Date posted: 1 Apr 2021
More than 100 people were killed after a massive explosion in Equatorial Guinea (central West Africa) in March, with 600 injured and almost 300 in hospital. More than 60 people were rescued from under the rubble by the civil protection corps and the fire service.
Local Christians and churches were badly affected too, with a Baptist pastor (as yet unnamed) killed and several members of the Baptist Church of Bata killed or injured.
New director for HOPE
Hope Together
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
Dr Rachel Jordan-Wolf has taken over from Roy Crowne as executive director to lead HOPE Together in the UK.
Rachel has worked closely with HOPE Together since 2010, when she was the Church of England’s National Mission and Evangelism Advisor.
All Nations’ 90% IT cash boost
All Nations College
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
All Nations College has announced an ambitious plan to invest in technology for the College after a loss of £170,000 in expected income due to the pandemic.
They are budgeting £51,000 for a two-person team of ICT personnel that they say is needed. The scheme includes an ambitious new ‘Student Management System’ which will help All Nations to track and to manage all student data more effectively.
Skull plans to bring new life to Brighton’s dry bones
Association of Grace Baptist Churches (SE)
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
David Skull (aka Skully) has been serving Grace Church Guildford for the past 13 years. In July he will be moving with his wife Naomi and their four children to lead Grace Plant Brighton. He explains how this happened.
Back in 2012, Montpelier Place Baptist Church sadly closed. It represented a community of Christians who had been gathering in Brighton since 1834. The building was demolished in 2017, but we don’t believe this is the end of the story. Grace Plant Brighton is sowing the seeds of a new church in central Brighton in 2021.
Bishop Pat Harris 1934 – 2020
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Feb 2021
Bishop Pat Harris, former Bishop of Northern Argentina and of Southwell and Nottingham, and onetime Secretary of Partnership for World Mission for the Church of England died peacefully in December.
His family write: ‘Patrick was a man of deep faith, with strong convictions as a Christian since his Army days as a young officer. From there he went to Oxford to study law (at Keble College) where he was President of the Christian Union. After attending theological college (Clifton Theological College, Bristol), he was a curate at St Ebbe’s in Oxford from 1960-63.
EMW hits the road in Wales
The Evangelical Movement of Wales writes:
‘Rather than holding our residential English language conference in Aberystwyth, we are making plans for the main speaker, Sinclair B. Ferguson, to preach in smaller venues around Wales in August. These meetings will also be live-streamed.
China: Preacher Pu climbs cliffs for the gospel
Bible Society
Date posted: 1 Mar 2021
It’s not very often a preacher has to scale a cliff to get into his pulpit, but that is the kind of terrain that Pu Zhidui must overcome as he oversees eight churches comprising 2,000 believers.
The area in which Pu preaches, Fugong county, has 360 churches and 80,000 Christians, but just 67 lay preachers and four pastors.
Awr i blant? Syniad gwych!*
Two encouraging pieces of news from the
Evangelical Movement of Wales (EMW).
Steffan Job writes:
A group of officers and leaders from the
camps and conference work have produced
some online videos to fill the gap left by the
summer cancellations, and so began Awr i
blant (An hour for children).
Christians in Sport reaches 70,000 in Covid and launches new evangelism resource
Jonny Reid of Christians in Sport writes: In the first lockdown, Christians in Sport encouraged sportspeople to Pray STAY Say – encouraging Christians to stay in the lives of their sports mates. As part of that campaign we delivered five online sports quizzes with a short talk explaining the Christian faith. We’re thrilled that over 70,000 people joined in.
In November, the second lockdown saw elite sport able to continue, but for competitive amateur sportspeople, sport halted once more. However, the guidelines gave opportunities for sportspeople to do something outside with one other person, so we launched Train 1-2-1. This brand-new resource encouraged people to go for a run or cycle with friends, and then ask them three questions about Jesus’ identity, mission and call.