Tearfund accused of treating Wales ‘as a colony’
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 1 Jun 2024
Evangelical charity Tearfund is being urged to reconsider a decision to axe its final paid employee in Wales and oversee ministry there from London – prompting a former director to accuse it of treating the country like ‘a colony’.
This year, for the first time since 1987, the organisation won’t have a staff member promoting their mission in the nation. It is the fourth and final role to be cut from Tearfund Wales in the last three years.
Nicky Cruz: Keeping on keeping on at 85
Luke Randall
Date posted: 1 Jun 2024
Nicky Cruz has revealed that his ongoing mission at the age of 85 is to bring people to Jesus in a world which sees many young people harmed by ‘loneliness’ and a ‘lack of ethics’.
In an interview with Evangelical Focus before he attended the ‘Fire in Your Bones’ conference in Madrid in early May, he spoke about how today’s world seems to have prompted an increasing number of young people to consider suicide as an option, as he did aged nine following a traumatic childhood, but that ‘transformation is in Christ.’
Craigavon: Gospel unity
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 1 Jun 2024
In a powerful display of unity, the four main evangelical groups within the Church of Ireland (COI) came together in April for a day of worship, teaching and prayer.
Ministry collective First Things hosted the gathering, inviting evangelicals from New Wine, Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship, Southern Anglican Fellowship of Evangelicals and Evangelical Fellowship of Irish Clergy to St Johns Parish Centre in Moira, Craigavon on 27 April. They were thrilled to see over 350 people from across the groups come along.
TGCUK idea gains momentum
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 1 Jun 2024
The idea of a UK ‘Gospel Coalition’ is continuing to receive varying degrees of support.
At the start of April, evangelical umbrella group Affinity announced it was entering discussions to form such a new body – and that it might even ‘replace’ their own organisation (see May issue of en).
What shapes your faith? The Trinity?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 1 Apr 2024
‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). Those three words could hardly be more bouncy.
They seem lively, lovely, and as warming as a crackling fire. But ‘God is Trinity’? No, hardly the same effect: that just sounds cold and stodgy. All quite understandable, but Christians must see the reality behind what can be off-putting language. Yes, the Trinity can be presented as a fusty and irrelevant dogma, but the truth is that God is love because God is a Trinity.
European Mission Fellowship at Ballymoney Baptist
Dan & Sara Downey
Date posted: 1 Jul 2023
European Mission Fellowship held its annual Ballymoney conference in Ballymoney Baptist Church, NI, on 20 May 2023.
With approximately 130 people filling the church, Phil Dunn (EMF’s NI Representative) introduced the theme of the event: ‘Here we stand! Not ashamed of the gospel’. In a world that we all know is changing rapidly, Phil reminded us that we are called to stand firm, courageously contending for the truth of the gospel. This set the tone for the morning, which was to include mission news, panel discussions and book reviews.
Mission in one of the remotest schools on earth
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Jul 2023
Deep in the heart of the jungle lies Nomad Mougulu High School (NMHS), one of the remotest schools on earth.
Mougulu lies in the heart of a rainforest in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) Western Province. The nearest secondary school is a week’s walk away.
Pilot Ping to the rescue!
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Apr 2024
‘It’s a privilege,’ say staff with the Mission Aviation Fellowship, ‘to be the sole air ambulance service for the entire population of Timor-Leste.’ The Christian aviation charity responds to multiple medical emergency flight requests every week, flying to and from Dili to save hundreds of lives.
Because her village has no roads and no electricity, pregnant Marcia Pereira de Sousa was forced to walk for four hours to receive help from a rural health clinic on the eastern side of Atauro Island.
What made Jesus tick? What does it show?
Andrew Nicholls
Date posted: 1 Mar 2024
Have you ever watched someone be far, far more loving than you, and wondered how they do it?
I can think of a lady who, in caring for her husband with worsening dementia, showed endless patience, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, helping him with the same ordinary little things, over and over and over again. I never saw her cross, or even a little irritated at her husband for his inability to do the simplest things or to remember anything from one minute to the next. I often wondered how I would be in a similar situation, and I’m pretty sure I would soon be irritated. Her beautiful character was a mystery to me – how did she do it? What made her tick so much better than me?
Gaza: can Christianity now survive?
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Thirty out of the estimated 1,000 Christians still left in Gaza have been killed, according to local church sources.
And as Gaza’s Christian population continues to shrink, down from about 3,500 before the war began, commentators fear that one of the oldest Christian communities in the world may be literally dying out.
What is the value of running intensive preaching training weeks cross-culturally?
Neil Watkinson
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Having been involved in short intensive weeks of preaching training for pastor-preachers and Bible teachers in Africa and Asia for the last 17 years – six of them based in SE Asia with Crosslinks – it’s been good to reflect on the question: ‘Of what value are these – do they not simply run the risk of cultural imperialism, even in preaching style?’
Local churches across the globe are growing without us, as Christ is proclaimed and the gospel bears fruit. So why do such Bible teaching and preaching training?
a Jewish Christian perspective
‘Are you for us or our enemies?’ Joshua 5:13
Joseph Steinberg
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Joshua entered the boundaries of Jericho at the start of Israel’s move into Canaan after the Exodus and 40 years of desert wanderings. There seems to have been a misunderstanding about the nature of what God was seeking to do – using Israel to eradicate sin from the land and establish a kingdom of righteous true-God worshippers.
It is no accident then that Joshua meets a man with a sword drawn in his hand. ‘Are you for us or our enemies?’ The man exclaims ‘No!’ He is for neither and reveals that he is none other than the ‘Commander of the LORD’s army’. Joshua, realising that he was standing before the Lord God, fell face down to the ground in reverence.
AMiE leaders consider how to be ‘rich’ in ministry
Tom Hutton
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Leaders of the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE) considered the theme ‘Rich’ at this year’s conference in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Leeds.
This was drawn from 2 Corinthians 10:6, where Paul writes: ‘Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, poor, yet making many rich, having nothing, and yet possessing everything.’
Mormonism: ‘A different Jesus,’ says former member
Luke Randall
Date posted: 1 May 2024
An ex-Mormon says she believes plans for a Mormon temple to be built in Sutton Coldfield spring from a financial controversy that the sect is facing.
The structure will be built on a site currently occupied by the church’s Birmingham mission offices and will be their first new temple to open in the UK since 1998, and the third of its kind in the country.
everyday evangelism
Should we ‘forget church, and just look at Jesus’?
Glen Scrivener
Date posted: 1 May 2024
In evangelism Christians have an incredible asset which too many think is a liability: the church.
Last month we considered the advertising campaign ‘He Gets Us’, and its tendency to pit a compassionate Jesus against His judgmental people. But it happens in personal conversations too. The failures of Christ’s people might come up, and the strong temptation can be to throw the church ‘under the bus’.
Ten Questions: Obedience and tribalism
William Wilson
1. How did you become a Christian?
No Word Alive in ‘25, say event trustees
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 1 May 2024
With efforts to find a new venue proving difficult, the hard decision has been made to cancel popular Bible conference Word Alive in 2025.
Since the shock closure of their venue, Pontyns Holiday Park, in November 2023, Word Alive Trustees and Director Nigel Beynon have been searching for an alternative site to host the conference. Being unable to find a ‘like for like’ replacement, however, has prevented them from planning for next year and ultimately led to the decision to cancel Word Alive for the second year running.
Move over Equality, Equity is the new kid in town: Here’s what it means
Tom Underhill
Date posted: 1 May 2024
Over the past few years, corporate HR departments and public bodies have quietly been wielding their Tipp-Ex in a bulk deletion of the letters ‘a’ and ‘l’. ‘Equality’ has been changed to ‘equity’ in a mass rebranding of EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) departments and initiatives.
Or maybe it wasn’t quiet: perhaps in your experience it was heralded with great fanfare. Either way, this deletion represents a significant extension of the EDI mission, now almost synonymous with the one term, Equity. So what is Equity, what does this change imply, and how should we think Christianly about these matters?
'Intense discussions' as Anglican Primates gather in Rome
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 1 May 2024
As I write, humid and thundery showers are predicted in Rome, Italy, as the Primates of the Anglican Communion reach half-time in their historic meeting.
Senior archbishops, presiding bishops, and moderators from churches across the globe have gathered for what we are told will be a time conceived as a pilgrimage. They will pray and study the book of Acts, visit holy sites in Rome, and reflect together about the mission and witness of the Church in the world.
Mission income declines
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Nov 2022
Income levels across more than 100 evangelical
mission agencies in the UK dropped in the
year to 2020 by £13 million – with the smallest
missions hardest hit, a snapshot report has
revealed. But missions which are more overtly
involved in proclaiming the Christian message
did not see a drop in income.
Eddie Arthur,
a
specialist
in mission
agency theology, reported that 105 mission
agencies suffered an overall fall in income of
4.6%. Between 2018 and 2020 it declined by
around 6% and it was not expected to have
recovered in 2021. He said it was too early to
judge the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic
on their incomes.
How the Titanic encapsulates the human dilemma
Last month a gold pocket watch worn by John Jacob Astor, the richest passenger on the Titanic, was sold for £1.2m at auction.
The watch was not recovered from the wreck but had been found when his body was recovered from the sea. Rather like ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’, it had stopped at 2.20pm when the ship slipped into the freezing waters of the Atlantic.