HK: mission fear
Peter Morrison
Date posted: 1 Nov 2020
Christian missions from across the world, which are based in Hong Kong, may be forced out, it is feared.
There is an increasing ‘climate of fear’ in the former colony, according to a missionary speaking under a pseudonym to Evangelicals Now.
Jewish openness prompts new outreach
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
International Mission
to
Jewish People
(IMJP) is to step up its efforts to reach and
share the gospel with Jewish people living
in London, the result of a discernible new
openness among some to hear and receive
the good news.
One
such person was Simon, a young
Jewish punk rock singer. Befriended by an
IMJP missionary, he revealed how tough he
was finding lockdown. The missionary talked
about the hope he had in Jesus, Simon accepted
a copy of John’s Gospel and the two are now
having regular one-to-one Bible studies.
Jerusalem: Jewish people told of Jesus
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP) is organising evangelistic coach tours in order to reach Jewish Holocaust survivors with the gospel.
An increased openness among Jewish people to hear about Jesus as Messiah means that hundreds of Jewish people are now regularly joining IMJP’s Bible tours, where they visit sites in the Holy Land which have a particular significance in the story, life, and claims of Jesus.
Russia: a new spiritual awakening
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Evangelicals Now is regularly privileged to come across much faithful gospel witness by often small and (humanly-speaking) under-resourced evangelical ministries in sometimes far-flung areas of the world. The GoodWORD Partnership (GWP), founded by Blair Carlson in Minneapolis in 2005, is one of those.
Blair coaches national church leaders in local evangelism, guiding them with their outreach, including preparation and follow-up within local churches. He has just returned from Russia and Poland, where GWP helped lead a major evangelism training conference, the Forum for Evangelism in Russia, which is now in its fifth year. Blair spoke to Evangelicals Now afterwards:
Durham church inquiry plea
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Christchurch Durham is facing mounting pressure to commission an independent review following serious allegations of abuse of power against the pastor, who left last December.
Tony Jones, senior pastor at the independent Anglican church until his resignation last year, has been accused of abuses of power and governance and presiding over a ‘culture of fear’.
Target may be exceeded
Davy Ellison
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
April 2022 marks the half-way point of a
Ten Year Vision for the Irish Baptist College
(IBC).
As of this year, IBC has been in existence
for 130 years. Originating in Dublin in 1892,
it moved to Belfast in 1963 and since 2003
has been
located
in
the
lush countryside
near Moira. The College’s primary focus has
always been to serve the Irish church context;
even so, graduates have served on all the
inhabited continents of the globe.
New hope in Hull
Hull 2030 Steering Group
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
Around 50 members of more
than
ten
different churches have met at
Jubilee
Church Hull to celebrate all that God has
been doing since October 2018.
The vision of Hull 2030, which began
then, is to pray and work together to see 20
healthy gospel-centred churches planted in
Hull by 2030; as well as to encourage church
revitalisation and gospel co-operation.
Exclusive: persecuted Finn speaks out
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Mar 2022
As this edition of Evangelicals Now went to press, the trials of Finnish Christians Päivi Räsänen MP and Bishop Juhana Pohjola, of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, had started.
Both are accused of agitation against an ethnic group, specifically Räsänen’s ‘insulting’ of homosexuals on a radio programme and in a booklet published in 2004 by Pohjola.
Nine million mission gifts en route around the globe
Nick Cole
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
Samaritan’s Purse is once again sending over 9million shoebox gifts to thousands of churches around the world to give out to children in their local communities and take the opportunity to share the gospel with them.
Over 1,000 churches and many more families and individuals in the UK donated at least 250,000 shoeboxes to the Operation Christmas Child annual project. Additionally over 300 churches around the nation opened their doors as collection centres in November. The gifts are being sent to 2,355 churches in Albania, Belarus, Bosnia, Central Asia, Liberia, Middle East, Moldova, Nigeria and Serbia. The largest consignment of ten containers (80,000 shoeboxes) was sent to 556 church partners in Liberia and the smallest shipment of one container to the Middle East will be distributed in refugee camps and among the persecuted Christian community.
Titus Trust: ‘Power must be redeemed’
en staff
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
The future of organisations like the Titus Trust depends on whether they realise power must be redeemed as well as people, a psychologist who attended the Iwerne Camps has told en.
Dr Simon Walker, a Christian psychologist who works in school mental-health safeguarding, and who was at Iwerne Camps in the 1980s, was speaking after the publication of a report into the Titus Trust by independent charity Thirtyone:eight, which aims to protect vulnerable people from abuse.
Covid: wipeout fears, but church serves
Our worldwide Anglican news focuses this month on the life of a Christian community in India. Chris Sugden writes:
Divya Shanthi Church, School and Community Services grew out of St John’s Church ( Church of South India) Bangalore, India as a mission initiative to serve poor families in North Bangalore.
Online ‘Yorkshire pudding bake-along’ draws students
Kitty Hardyman
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
From Kingston-upon-Thames (photo left) to Strathclyde (photo right), students in Christian Unions across the UK have been active welcoming first-year students.
Dinners, picnics, tables at Freshers’ Fairs laden with cake, even an online ‘Yorkshire pudding bake-along’ – all these sought to create an inclusive space for any students’ first contact with Christians.
Seventy new missionaries mark 70 years of Slav mission
www.sga.org.uk
Date posted: 1 Jun 2021
The Slavic Gospel Association has marked its 70th anniversary by sending 70 new mission partners to spiritually- needy areas. Mark Foster, Director of Field Ministries, reports:
Covid-19 put an end to national and international travel in 2020, but not to gospel outreach and expansion. Slavic Gospel Association [UK], as part of its 70th Anniversary Projects, had planned to support the sending of 70 new missionaries into spiritually-needy communities – one for each year of its existence – to bring the good news of salvation in Christ. What would become of such a project in the paralysing lockdown due to the pandemic? Was there any hope of even getting near to that target? If it were reached, was any kind of spiritual return possible?
Evangelism Now: ten key truths outlined
Iain Taylor
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
‘Evangelism
in a time of crisis’ was the
theme of the 2021 Evangelism Conference,
entitled ‘Evangelism Now’, held at All Soul’s
Langham Place.
Rico Tice set out the three key principles
of evangelism: it must be based on God’s
sovereignty; the gospel must be presented
with both integrity and truth; there must be
no deception in how we operate.
Baby saved from flesh-eating condition
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
A five month-old girl named Sangai, who needed urgent medical treatment for a flesh-eating condition, has been saved by a Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot in Liberia.
Little Sangai was also suffering from hydrocephalus – a build-up of fluid on the brain. The condition, if left untreated, can damage brain tissue.
College cuts: doubt over evangelism centre
en staff
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
An evangelical theological college has axed
the role of Director of Ministerial Training,
bringing into doubt the future of its specialist
centre for training future evangelists.
Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, said loss of income
due to the pandemic necessitated the change
– which means theologian evangelist Greg
Downes (photo) will lose his job as well as
his family home, which went with the role.
Three new churches are launched in London
Co-Mission
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
Co-Mission says it is ‘thrilled’ about three new church plants that, ‘in God’s kindness’, have just launched in London.
Redeemer Queen’s Park in north-west London launched on Saturday 25 September at 4 p.m. in Salusbury (sic) Primary School. Over the last year, God has graciously assembled a core team of 25 adults with a few kids to boot. Amazingly, 65 adults and 13 kids turned up for their launch, and even more the second week! Most arrived through personal relationships with the core team. Others connected with Redeemer through flyering or social media. The church’s university outreach and its children’s work are big draws.
Marginalised find mercy on London streets
London City Mission writes: The cruelty of the pandemic has been that people already struggling have been hardest hit.
It’s those on the margins of society who were more likely to have died or suffered loss from Covid. It’s those living in crowded homes, less able to socially distance, whose low-paid work, if it hasn’t disappeared, has put them more at risk of contracting the virus. And it’s those for whom Covid, far from being a chance to save money, has added costs in the form of additional heating and food. London has been especially hit; reliance on foodbanks has more than doubled in the capital this year.
New hope at Hope Church
AMiE
Date posted: 1 Dec 2021
The Anglican Mission in England (AMiE) has a new member church – Hope Church Goldthorpe in South Yorkshire.
The congregation is meeting in Astrea Academy Derne, on the south side of Goldthorpe village.
Surge in student gospel interest
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 1 Dec 2021
There has been increasing openness to the gospel among university students in the UK this Autumn, the UCCF has reported.
One unbelieving student attended an Abertay Christian Union (CU) lunchtime talk on ‘Lasting Joy’. Afterwards he said: ‘If this is true, you have a genuine hope for eternal happiness. If it’s not, you still have an anchor that allows you to find joy in this life – I find that exhilarating!’
‘Dial-a-doughnut’ and ‘Circus’ inspire 1,000 young leaders
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 1 Oct 2021
Having never set foot on campus, having met only a few members in their CU and feeling uncertain about what university life will be like this term, many Christian Union leaders were especially eager to come to Forum 2021.
Forum is UCCF’s annual training conference for CU leaders, aiming to inspire and equip them to share the gospel in the universities, before they head back to campus in September. This August, over 1,000 students from across Great Britain arrived at the Quinta Christian Centre in Shropshire. They met friends face-to-face, sang praise to God, attended seminars and put their heads together to plan for the year in front of them.
Gabby’s new mission at FIEC
FIEC
Date posted: 1 Dec 2020
Gabby Samuel has joined the FIEC as the Women’s Ministry Development Worker.
Gabby is the youngest member of the Ministry Team and is supporting the FIEC as it raises the next generation of women’s ministry workers, as well as helping FIEC to think carefully and wisely about issues related to ethnic diversity in church.
Moldova and east Ukraine: breakthrough among young?
Slavic Gospel Association & Mission Without Borders
Date posted: 1 Sep 2021
Moldova has suffered particularly badly in the Covid pandemic, coming as it did on the heels of a severe drought and disastrously poor harvests in 2020, which added to the already heavy burdens of the poor and vulnerable.
Poverty is endemic in large sections of the populace, and its consequences are evident not only in material terms but in the realm of relationships, and particularly family life. This scenario is common in a number of East European countries. Families are poor. The parents cannot find work to sustain their children and their homes. They take the decision to go to other countries where work can be found, and children are left in the care of ageing grandparents who themselves find life difficult and challenging. Often this results in children growing up without adequate parental guidance and discipline, and falling prey to many dangers and temptations, including addiction, sexual abuse, and even human trafficking. It is no exaggeration to say that chaos is evident in many family situations.
Riga resumes in-person Bible training
John Woods
Date posted: 1 Oct 2021
It is great to be in Latvia in late summer when the daylight still holds until late evening and the temperature can still be hot. It was a particular delight for me to be there with Anthony Billington, associated with the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity, to teach a weekend course on Whole Life Preaching as part of the two-year School of Preachers programme at the Latvian Biblical Centre (LBC) in Riga.
It had been nine months since the group were able to meet in person. We have managed to maintain the teaching via Zoom involving three languages. It was lovely to have the buzz of personal interaction in those September sessions.