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Thamesmead was the brainchild of the Greater London Council’s city planners: a new town on the south bank of the Thames estuary. Building on marshland east of Woolwich, developers initially experimented in the new urban architecture of the 1960s before returning to more conventional Barrett housing in the 1980s.

When phase two was built, Titmuss Avenue Baptist Church was planted, with a new building overlooked by high-rise homes and aerial walkways. The initial team under Michael Toogood established a small fellowship that then received wonderful pastoral care through the ministries of Derek French in the later 1980s and Robin Dowling in the 1990s. In the 2000s the church struggled for direction as Sunday attendance (paradoxically) increased.

Plans are underway for a new church plant in a deprived area of Liverpool.

The Cornerstone Collective – a group of FIEC and Acts 29 churches on Merseyside – will, God willing, plant into the Kensington area of the city in January 2021.

Manchester CU students woke up on the final day of Home, their February mission week, to a Facebook review that was painful to read. A student, who had attended events during the week, had written: ‘I can’t fault the friendliness of those helping with the week … but Home has put me off Christianity more than any other engagement I’ve had with faith.’

An estimated 50,000 students will have attended a Christian Union (CU) mission over these past few weeks. Across the country, CUs have sought to give every student an opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel through high-profile, focused weeks of engaging, persuasive and creative evangelism. As the Parable of the Sower tells us, the response will be mixed. This Manchester review was a sobering reminder that, despite all the CU’s efforts to bring people to Christ, some seed falls on the path and is immediately snatched away.

I’ve had people worry that the work of the London City Mission might be exploitative. Elderly people can be ripped off by someone pretending to be a friend; a homeless person could be exploited by heavy shepherding whilst they are weak.

That risk has been used by some to suggest that we should avoid evangelism amongst children and vulnerable adults lest we are accused of spiritual abuse. And yet I can think of no greater abuse than to know the good news of Jesus and to willingly hold it back from someone in desperate need. The vulnerable need Jesus!

It was announced in December that the Evangelical Alliance has appointed Peter Lynas as its UK director.

He will work alongside new CEO Gavin Calver, as he champions the voice of evangelicals to the media and brings leadership to the core areas of advocacy, mission and unity within the Alliance.

St John’s Wood is west of Regent’s Park in London, a neighbourhood made famous by Lords Cricket Ground. The Edgware Road is also a centre for London’s Arab population.

At the heart of this community is St John’s Wood Road Baptist Church, a Grace Baptist church that has served this area for well over a century. In 2005 it had fallen on hard times, but Chris and Helen Hawthorne came to revitalise it, gathering a growing community around God’s word. During their time they sent a member to church-plant in Bordeaux, and another returned to serve in Assam, India. Finally, in 2018 the church sent Chris and Helen through GBM to head up Proclamation Institute Zambia, leaving Scott Little as the new pastor.

In the summer of 2019, a group of young people representing 14 European nations met in Italy for Ready Set Go Multiply (RSGX). This is an annual summer programme to train future sports ministry leaders and is facilitated by the European Christian Sports Union, a network of churches, charities, and individuals seeking to make disciples in sport across Europe.

The delegates on RSGX spend two weeks in Bible and sports training ahead of a week running sports camps or community projects in another European country. This summer they served at a camp in Eastern Europe.

Our day started with a 5.30am alarm and a bleary-eyed drive into London. By 8.45 we had our seats within eight feet of a TV in the ‘Signal Box’ at Euston Station to witness one of the greatest displays of English rugby ever! Could this day get any better?

The Grace Baptist Mission Annual Delegates’ Meeting was not an immediately obvious progression! GBM exists to ‘help churches support their missionaries worldwide’ and it is funded by, directed and answerable to the churches that it supports. The church delegates’ meeting, the church business part of GBM’s Annual Mission Day, began with a focus on the Great Commission and Matthew 16:18. We have seen progress through mission – because Jesus is building his church. There have been hard times – because the gates of hell are arrayed against us. But we press on – because we know Jesus is in charge and Satan will not prevail!

‘20 new churches in Birmingham by 2020.’ That was the stretch goal that we set for ourselves, under God in 2010.

It was beyond any single church, network or denomination to achieve it, and humanly speaking, it seemed impossible. The last ten years have been a lesson in how God delights to do the impossible, and it has been a privilege to have front-row seats.

Wednesday 6 November saw the inaugur-al ‘Pray for London’ event hosted by the London Gospel Partnership.

Over 100 church leaders and church workers, along with many other believers, gathered together at East London Tabernacle for a time of dedicated prayer for God’s saving grace to be seen powerfully throughout London.

Co-Mission churches have long used the metaphor of a lifeboat to remind ourselves that we need to be rescuing the perishing.

Richard Coekin (Co-Mission) has drawn on lessons from the Titanic disaster and Neil Powell (City to City) has written of the need for ‘a Dunkirk spirit, where a huge number of lifeboats were mobilised to realise a vision far too big for any group to achieve alone’.

The Christmas holidays tend to be a great time for kids. The average family in the UK will spend an additional £2,000 over the Christmas period on gifts, food and trips.

It is not the same picture for everyone, though. 700,000 kids in London are living below the poverty line, after you’ve taken housing costs into account. For these homes the additional financial stress of Christmas can often be the cause of family arguments, stress, and domestic abuse. It is not surprising that, despite the cold weather, winter is a time when many kids run away for the first time.

Highfields Church in Cardiff was able to share the hope of Christ with around a million people as they hosted BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship on 17 November.

The live broadcast lasted 38 minutes and was split equally between singing and speaking, giving Lead Minister Dave Gobbett a great opportunity to share Christ with a worldwide audience. He said: ‘The main thrust of my message from Ephesians 2 was that Jesus uniquely brings people together because Jesus uniquely brings people to God. Only Jesus can pull our troubled world together.

Saturday 23 November marked the inaugural Cotswold Bible Festival. Around 700 adults and children converged on the festival town of Cheltenham for a day of thought-provoking Bible teaching, excel-lent music and a whole host of seminars and fun activities.

The event was conceived by a group of like-minded local evangelical Christian leaders who were keen to run a Keswick-style event for churches across the Cotswolds. The vision for the event came together a year ago, with encouraging conversations with Jonathan Lamb and James Robson at Keswick Ministries leading to the formation of ‘Keswick Gloucestershire’ in association with the Keswick Fellowship – a network of similar events across the country. The event itself was given separate branding to help draw in those who were less familiar with ‘Keswick’, and to allow for other events to be run under the ‘Keswick Gloucestershire’ banner in the future.