Shooting for the moon in Manchester
Ralph Cunnington
Date posted: 28 Apr 2025
In a speech delivered at Rice University on 12 September 1962, John F Kennedy famously said: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Manchester is a city of 2.8 million people where less than 1% of the population currently attends a gospel church. We would need to plant 60 new churches of 100 people just to keep up with population growth at the current rate over the next ten years. The "moon shot" of the Northern Gospel Project is to plant 30 healthy gospel churches by 2030.
France: One new church planted ‘every ten days’
Luke Randall
Date posted: 28 Apr 2025
There are encouraging reports of new gospel growth in France – with evangelicals claiming one church is being established every ten days, and a new study revealing younger Protestants are increasingly likely to identify as evangelical.
Data collected by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) on behalf of the Protestant Federation of France reveals that younger people and those on lower incomes who regard themselves as practicing Protestants in France are increasingly likely to identify as evangelical Christians.
letter from America
The US and UK: Transatlantic lessons
Josh Moody
Date posted: 27 Apr 2025
I recently returned to the UK for a preaching tour. I preached 13 times in about as many days. Godcenteredlife.org had a conference in London. We did a missions conference with Crosslinks in Belfast. And more.
It’s made me reflect, with renewed up close and personal experience, on the differences, strengths and weaknesses of the different church scenes. Obviously, there are many more, and much bigger, churches in the USA. Right before I came to the UK, I heard of another church in the USA of about 15,000 people in attendance – a church that previous to that brief awareness moment I had never heard of. If there was a church in the UK with 15,000 people in attendance I would have heard of it and been quite familiar with it. But the size difference is not the most notable, nor in some ways, the most important distinction.
Myanmar: ‘Your prayer is our hope...’
Luke Randall
Date posted: 24 Apr 2025
Following the devastating earthquake in Myanmar, which has killed thousands and destroyed many buildings, evangelicals are reporting a desperate need for aid – and glimmers of gospel opportunity.
The 7.7 magnitude quake has prompted an immediate humanitarian crisis in a country which has been gripped by civil conflict for four years, with missionaries in the nation already experiencing a “tenfold increase” in requests for missionary aid even before the earthquake.
news in brief
Netherlands: Euthanasia increases
The number of deaths by euthanasia in the Netherlands rose by 10% last year. The regional euthanasia review committees found that the vast majority of the 9,958 people to have been euthanised in 2024 had advanced physical illnesses, but doctors have been urged to take great care when dealing with psychiatrically unwell patients.
The Guardian reports that the number of people who died by euthanasia increased by nearly 1,000 between 2023 and 2024 and, perhaps most startlingly, the number who were killed due to psychiatric illness rose from just two in 2010 to 219 last year.
Network celebrates 15 years
en staff
Date posted: 18 Apr 2025
The Grace Baptist Partnership, a network dedicated to planting, training and revitalisation, is celebrating 15 years of mission and outreach.
Representatives from more than 20 churches gathered at Dunstable Baptist Church for the annual Grace Baptist Partnership (GBP) Prayer and Praise gathering. The structure of the event flowed with the ministry emphases of GBP, namely growing leaders, planting and revitalising churches, and reaching nations.
USA: New task force to remove ‘anti-Christian’ bias
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 18 Apr 2025
President Trump is on a mission to get rid of “anti-Christian bias” in the US, creating a task force especially for the purpose.
Headed up by Attorney General Pam Bondi, the task force is to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government”, Trump announced in Washington recently during National Prayer Breakfast events.
Jack Hemmings, pioneer pilot, dies aged 103
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 23 Feb 2025
Jack Hemmings, who has died at the age of 103, was co-founder of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), the largest humanitarian airline in the world.
In 1945 Jack, an RAF Squadron Leader tasked with protecting the Bay of Bengal from Japanese invasion, read an article advocating the need to use planes to ‘carry messengers of peace and to unload cargoes of blessing’. As RAF Flight Lieutenant Murray Kendon wrote: ‘Instead of spreading destruction and death why should [aircraft] not now spread life and healing by that message wherein lie the seeds of peace and power?’
Pakistan’s little-known Christian story
Mike Wakely
Date posted: 5 Feb 2025
In a small town in western Punjab, now in northern Pakistan, there lived a Hindu from a caste of farmers. His name was Nattu Lal. He heard the gospel, put his faith in Christ and was baptised in November 1872.
Nattu was the son of the head man in his village. His family was wealthy, but Nattu wasted his money and proved himself to be a poor Christian witness. But he did one thing that was of immense importance. He brought a poor man called Ditt to faith in Jesus.
the ENd word
How questions about the resurrection are changing in 2025
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 7 Apr 2025
Alistair Begg recently said that preaching is often “less about telling them something new, but more about reminding ourselves what we mustn’t forget”.
He’s right. As a preacher I’m well aware that, to borrow a line from Oscar Wilde, “I have nothing original in me but original sin.” That’s not to say that I steal other preacher’s sermons (I don’t), but is an admission that I’m very unlikely to spot something brand new in a text that’s never been spotted before by anyone else. The truth has already been “once revealed to the saints” and my job is to bring out the meaning of what God has previously made known in the pages of Scripture.
safeguarding briefing
Safeguarding – it’s time for a critical conversation
Jules Loveland
Date posted: 28 Feb 2025
The news of Archbishop Justin Welby’s resignation at the end of last year sent ripples across the wider church. The news broke in the week leading up to Safeguarding Sunday where thousands of UK churches had already planned to shine a spotlight on the very issues that led to his resignation.
For some, the resignation was welcome news, for others it has raised concerns. But perhaps we can all agree that the safeguarding issues that have come to light are devastating, and we pray for all victims and survivors seeking healing and justice.
Creation care: It is a gospel issue, although not a salvation one
Chris Wright & Dave Bookless
Date posted: 25 Feb 2025
We appreciate the article ‘Is creation care a gospel issue?’ by John Samuel and Richard Buggs in the January issue of en, and share their concern that the phraseology of the Cape Town Commitment might be mistakenly interpreted as ‘adding works to grace,’ and thereby ‘undermining’ the message of the gospel itself.
That is certainly no intention of ours, or indeed of the Lausanne Cape Town Commitment, which elsewhere in Part 1.8 defines the gospel of grace very strongly in terms ‘trusting in Christ alone … on the work of Christ and the promise of God.’
‘Jesus is Lord, and I see my own sin’
Thomas McBride
Date posted: 1 Apr 2025
It has been a season of vibrant, missional events weeks for Christian Unions. With around 100 CUs taking part, the gospel message has been heard by thousands of students, and hundreds are exploring further.
Students in the University of Warwick Christian Union were some of the first to hold their events week this year, which was centred on the theme of “Hope”. Halfway through the week, Ben (name changed), a CU member’s housemate, decided to attend an event. His curiosity had been piqued after he heard the events week was taking place and he arrived with questions. Interested, but by no means certain of the truth of what he had heard, he said to CU members afterwards: “I don’t know why God loves us”.
FIEC appoints new Director for Essex
FIEC
Date posted: 30 Mar 2025
Simon Medcroft has been appointed to serve as Director for Essex with the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC).
Simon has served as pastor at Danbury Mission for 20 years and will now be seconded to FIEC for one day a week to serve affiliated churches in Essex – one of the fastest growing but least churched counties in the UK.
everyday theology
What is the most urgent need of the church today?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 27 Mar 2025
What is the most urgent need of the church today? Better leadership? Better training? Healthier giving? Orthodoxy? Moral integrity? Each of these are undoubtedly needs, but underneath them all lies something even more vital: gospel integrity.
In Luke 12, when thousands had gathered together to hear Jesus, He began to say to His disciples first: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (v1). That might have been unsurprising had He been warning the people as a whole, but He said it to his disciples first, to those who had already left all and followed Him.
‘Why do so many gospel churches favour the rich?’
Jim Sayers
Date posted: 22 Mar 2025
“There is nothing inherently admirable about people with money. Why, then, do so many gospel churches favour the rich?” That was the challenge given by Steve Kneale at a recent conference, challenging leaders to a “religion that is pure and undefiled” (James 2:27).
Many ministries target the rich and successful for “strategic” reasons, but does that mean we have shown favouritism in our giving to mission? It is much harder to fund gospel work among the poor; there is no payback and lots of help is needed.
Keswick Convention: Celebrating 150 years
Luke Randall
Date posted: 14 Mar 2025
The Keswick Convention will ‘prioritise the emerging generation,’ its Chief Executive says, as the event prepares to celebrate its landmark 150th anniversary this summer.
The convention was started in 1875 by Canon Thomas Harford-Battersby and Robert Wilson and was attended by three or four hundred people. Now, around 12,000 travel to the small Lake District town which has a population of just over 5,000.
New Director of Co-mission
en staff
Date posted: 1 Apr 2024
Andy Mason is the next Mission Director of church-planting network Co-Mission, it has been announced. He will begin the role on 1 September.
Mason will continue to be Minister of St John’s Chelsea, and aims to combine that role with being MD of Co-Mission, doing both part-time. The network aims to ‘plant and establish 360 reformed evangelical churches.’
Donald Trump: lessons in leadership?
Over the years, I have become more and more convinced that, from a human perspective at least, the most important factor in determining the growth and fruitfulness of the local church is leadership.
I have studied and analysed a large number of churches that have split, closed or gone into maintenance mode, and almost without exception the problem can be traced back to a leadership issue – either a lack of leadership, the wrong people in leadership, the wrong exercising of leadership or the wrong attitude towards leaders on the part of the congregation as a whole.