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The apostle's vision of heaven, with saints 'from every nation, tribe, people and language' is brought vividly to life by the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).

This summer its' World Assembly drew delegates from 115 national student movements, and from most of the other 35 countries where work has started. As the names of one country after another came up on the screen in the opening meeting, it was hard to keep back the tears. The last countries to appear were those who would formally join the Fellowship that week: Russia, Rwanda, Indonesia, Belize, Lesotho and St. Lucia. They rolled up the screen to spontaneous applause.

If you want a long history of Christian work at university, and a wide variety of local churches to choose from, then Queen's campus in Stockton is not the place to go.

However, in the last five years the Christian Union has grown from non-existence to one of the fastest growing groups in the country. Their aim is simple: to proclaim the gospel to as many students as possible. God has honoured their work and people are sitting up and taking notice; not just their fellow students, but other CUs in the North East too.

Recently I met a man who, five years before, had been converted to Christ after no less than 15 years as a heroin addict.

The Lord's means of his deliverance and salvation was an open-air preacher who had faithfully made Christ known outside Whitechapel Tube Station in London.

R.V.G. Tasker, a former Professor of New Testament at Kings College, London, once wrote that 'hope is a psychological necessity'.

Such is certainly the case at the beginning of a new year for those of us who are members of the Church of England as we face many uncertainties in matters of belief, finance and strategy. Thankfully 'hope springs eternal in the human breast' and, although there is much gloom on the horizon, most of us still find ourselves harbouring some hopes of better things to come.

Why are ministers going to North America and why should they think of staying here? Ken Brownell has investigated this pressing question...

I have been thinking about writing this for some time. Every so often we hear of a good minister leaving this country and moving to North America. When recently I heard that two very well-known ministers are planning to do just that, I decided the time has come. Because I am an American, but have lived here for 27 years, I may be able to say what a Briton could not without sounding like sour grapes.

8.00 am. The park has been abandoned for years. Only the frame of the swings is left - the rest has been ripped up or burned down. Just yards away the smouldering corpse of another car continues to send up smoke to the heavens. A mother and her children scurry past on their way to school. The picture is bleak. The future...

Like many other council estates, the St. Mellons estate in Cardiff has had its fair share of problems over the years. The large out-of-town estate was written off by the former Welsh Secretary, John Redwood, as a den of single mothers and scroungers.

Six months managing the Africa Inland Mission Guest House in Kampala in 2002. Fascinating (kupendeshwa is the Swahili). Missionaries are particularly interesting people. . . .

Here comes Wayne from Texas. True, he does not have six guns and a stetson. But the laconic drawl and the laid-back ambience are vintage Wild West. He is 'just down from Sudan'.

The withdrawal of Western powers from former colonies after World War II was accompanied by a developing sense of guilt at Europe's colonial past.

Hand in hand went a progressive disengagement by post-colonial Western societies from Christian mission activities. Within Western societies in general, and even within some parts of the church, mission came to be regarded as controversial at best, and with downright hostility in certain quarters. It came to be seen by many as just another form of colonialism.

A cartoon-caption competition in the American Christian journal Leadership featured a spectacle-wearing sheep speaking from behind a pulpit. In my favourite among the ten listed winners, the sheep is saying, 'I want to thank all 99 of you for giving Pastor Bob the freedom to seek me out'.

The well-known parable of the lost sheep, as recorded in Luke's Gospel, contains a rhetorical question: 'Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a 100 sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?"'

If we look back over the 20th century, the sudden and disastrous onslaught of AIDS ranks as one of its great calamities. It is one of the greatest challenges for the 21st century.

How has the Christian church worldwide risen to that challenge?

The TV news has concentrated on the strategy of war in Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's statue, but, on both sides of the firing line, there are other stories to tell...

Pocket New Testament and Psalms, produced for the Armed Forces by Scripture Gift Mission, have been in increasingly high demand in the Gulf. The camouflage-covered and ship-crested Bibles are proving an essential piece of kit for frontline troops.

Reports from CUs across the country show that the spiritual investment of church leaders, student workers, Christian writers, supporters, missioners and 'unknown' individuals are paying off.

Over 40 missions took place in Christian Unions during the last term. Hundreds of students heard the good news of Jesus for the first time. Christian students clarified their understanding of the gospel and have a new enthusiasm for sharing it with others. Individual students around the country have 'turned from idols to serve the true and living God'.

Emma Carswell, the regular writer of this column, is on her honeymoon. I am sure that even the most enthusiastic reader will forgive her absence in the circumstances. I had the pleasure of being at the wedding where Roger Carswell preached with an enthusiasm and directness which only the father of the bride could have pulled off. Rico Tice, who was conducting the wedding, told me he almost became a Christian (again).

Weddings always bring into focus for me what student ministry is all about. I believe that the effectiveness of any student ministry is seen most clearly in the quality of its graduates. The end point is seeing young men and women making the transition into the workplace with a love for the Lord and a passion for the gospel. Many start as students with a better idea of what they don't want to be like as parents, partners and workers. The challenge is to give them a positive vision of what God could do in and through them.

You may have heard the story of the Mennonite Brethren movement. One particular analysis goes like this: the first generation believed and proclaimed the gospel and thought that there were certain social entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel and advocated the entailments. The third generation denied the gospel and all that were left were the entailments.1

Another story. In 1919, Trinity Great Court in Cambridge saw a meeting between Rollo Pelly, the Secretary of the liberal Student Christian Movement, and Daniel Dick and Norman Grubb (Presi-dent and Secretary of the evangelical Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union). The meeting was to discuss the re-unification of the two movements that had split in 1910. Norman Grubb's account of the meeting is infamous:

We easily overestimate what can be achieved in a year and under-estimate what can be achieved in five but when God works such assessments are often turned on their head!

In 1993 my wife and I took over the leadership of the Criccieth Scripture Union Beach Mission which in 2003 celebrates its centenary.

The task of evangelism for most Christian Unions is quite daunting. At Newcastle University for example, the student population is in excess of 15,000, whereas the CU has around 100 regulars this year. It is impossible to expect each of them to sustain friendship with around 150 other students, yet they do want to share Christ with this number. Similar comparisons can be made in the 334 Higher Education institutions in this country.

Matt Walmsley, evangelism secretary for Newcastle University CU was determined to overcome these hurdles. Last summer he developed a growing concern for the crowds of new students beyond the immediate reach of the CU through friendship. He shared this burden with other leaders in the CU and together they came up with 'Firestarters', a programme designed to initiate a gospel conversation with every first year student. Matt said: 'My vision was for the CU to do this each autumn, so that three years down the line every student at Newcastle University had been given the opportunity to hear the gospel.'

The Pimlico Plumbers (plc) have twice been voted Domestic Installers of the Year. Or so I believe from the information displayed on the side of the white van parked just up the road from us.

For the intelligent evangelical reader, this piece of free advertising raises several immediate questions. First, what is their phone number? Second, when did this happen - recently or around 1924, for instance? Third, were the years consecutive and, if so, what happened the third year? Fourth (multiple), who were the voters, was the result close, predictable, or contested, and were the results independently verified? I am sorry that to all these queries I have no firm answers.

Think of Israel and what comes to mind? Whatever images the word 'Israel' may conjure up, the picture of Jews and Arabs breaking bread and worshipping together will probably not be among the first.

How can people who are poles apart politically in a land torn by bitter strife find any common ground for friendship and reconciliation? What can bring together the members of two communities, who from childhood learn to distrust each other?

I climbed the worn steps of the former Presbyterian church in a large city in east China. As nearly every seat was taken I had to go to the highest gallery of the church.

It was the mid-week young people's meeting. It began with some rousing singing of both traditional hymns and modern choruses. Then the young pastor gave a 45-minute Bible study from the Old Testament on being sensitive to the guidance of God in every circumstance.