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Rebecca Chapman

Date posted: 1 Aug 2022

As final preparations for this summer’s Keswick Convention were being made, en spoke to its Ministry Director, the Revd Dr James Robson.

With the much-awaited Keswick Convention of 2022 almost upon us, James joined us on Zoom, from a light-filled room full of books. With all that is happening at Keswick, including the Derwent Project, there was certainly no shortage of things to be grateful to God for…

A new book to be published in June by IVP called God’s Church for God’s World brings together voices drawn from all major Anglican evangelical networks in the UK, demonstrating a commitment to the gospel being proclaimed and a unity both throughout and beyond the Church of England.

With a number of young contributors, it also offers a glimpse of possible futures for the Anglican Church. This extract (with some very minor adaptations for publication here) not only summarises the book’s contents but also gives a flavour of the situation Anglican evangelicals face – a useful overview both for them and also for non-Anglicans to whom the whole Anglican ‘thing’ can sometimes seem understandably perplexing and exasperating.

We have all heard the phrase ‘build back better’ many times in recent days as everyone seeks to establish what a new normal will look like.

For the church of our Lord Jesus Christ the pandemic has given all of us an opportunity to review much of our activity and to ask serious questions, as we emerge from the various restrictions, as to how we can recalibrate and refocus on the centrality of the good news of the gospel.

Jason Roach

Date posted: 1 Jul 2022

I slipped in at the back of the church. In front of me was a family with an eight-year-old girl sitting nervously next to her dad. She looked even more agitated when a man that she didn’t know sat next to her in one of the few seats left.

Her dad saw her nervousness, put his arm around her and said: ‘Don’t worry. Let me tell you a story about this man. Ten years ago, I was new to this country. I walked into this church for the first time not knowing anyone. This guy walked across from the other side of the church and made me feel like family.’

This year marks the 300th birthday of John Brown of Haddington.

In 1722, Brown was born into a poor Christian family in Scotland. As a young teenager, he found himself an orphan after an illness claimed the lives of his parents. Soon after, he found himself quite sick as well. Brown wrote this in his memoirs, ‘Four fevers on end brought me so low within a few months of my mother’s death, as made almost every onlooker lose all hopes of my recovery.’

As we consider our future as evangelicals, we should return to the commission the Lord Jesus gave before His ascension: ‘But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).

Sharing our faith is core to our identity as followers of Jesus Christ, and Christians sharing their faith with others has been used by God to underpin the growth of the global church – despite heresy, persecution and scorn, the gospel prevails!

An ancient Chinese proverb reminds us that ‘to prophesy is extremely difficult, especially with regard to the future’.

This is certainly the case as we try to anticipate the future of evangelicalism, and is heightened still further by the fact that we live in a context of considerable social and political volatility, confront a rising and more aggressive secularism, and live within communities with growing non-Christian religious affiliation. But most of all, humility is called for because of the most significant reality of all – God’s sovereign engagement in the life of the church and in the realities of our world. In the midst of so many unknowns, we trust His good purposes.

Geoff Thomas

My name is Geoff Thomas and I was the pastor in Alfred Place Baptist Church (Independent) in Aberystwyth for 50 years. I retired five years ago. My wife Iola died after having Alzheimers for four years. Two years after Iola’s death I married our old friend Barbara and came to live in Chiswick, London. For someone who loves history, London is a most interesting place for an old man, though I do miss the seaside and friends in Aberystwyth. There are many gospel churches in London and it is surprisingly religious. I am a member of Amyand Park Chapel in Twickenham and thank God for the congregation and its pastor, Gerard Hemmings.

Iain Taylor

Date posted: 1 Feb 2022

Eighty years ago what is now an unremarkable industrial estate outside Swindon was a hive of activity. Scores of Supermarine Spitfires rolled off the production lines at the South Marston works in the fight to rid the world of Adolf Hitler.

Today a small part of the same site is, its occupiers claim, busily embroiled in the vital spiritual struggle to send to pastors across the developing world the books they need to teach the gospel accurately to their flocks.

In my day-to-day interactions, it is rare to find women discussing theology, ecclesiology, the state of the current evangelical church, missions, or really anything vital to the well-being of the church.

Our conversations revolve mainly around two subjects: our children – how we will educate them, what they are eating, if they are sleeping, and our husbands and their jobs. If we are in a close and healthy group, we may intermittently discuss our walk with Christ, spiritual growth, or struggles. But, at least in my experience, those are few – and even in them, true theological discussions are highly uncommon.

Michael Reeves

Date posted: 1 Apr 2022

The New Testament has a good deal to say about the importance of being gospel people.

Paul’s letter to the Romans, for example, is a New Testament book all about the gospel and about being gospel people. In the first 11 chapters, Paul lays out the ‘gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures’ (1:1–2). It is good news ‘concerning his Son’ (1:3), the Last Adam (5:12–21), our only hope. And it is good news concerning ‘the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood’ (3:24–25). In Romans, we read that: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;’ (3:10–12).

The Nazareth Trust is one of the largest Scottish Christian organisations, the third-largest employer in Nazareth and one of the largest Christian organisations in Israel.

We are a diverse organisation with individuals from different backgrounds working together. Our story traces its roots back to 1861 when Dr Vartan, a freshly graduated Armenian doctor and devoted Christian, opened the first clinic in Ottoman Galilee.

Frank Schaeffer (not to be confused with his father Francis) titled his memoir Crazy for God with the helpful subtitle How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.

His writing is engaging and thought-provoking, especially for myself as a Christian father and pastor. His father, Francis Schaeffer, was a much-beloved Christian thinker who utilised contemporary music, art history, and philosophy to answer the questions of his day. He was truly countercultural in the way he wrote and lived.

In recent years, we who call ourselves Christians have been speaking and writing about topics like ‘abuse in the church’, ‘cruelty in the sanctuary’ and the dangers that can be found in ‘God’s house’. It seems that the place God designed to be a refuge for His people has instead, at times, become a den of thieves.

These descriptions are what we call an oxymoron – statements that are a combination of contradictory words and incongruous elements. Think about this now common phrase: ‘abuse in Christian organisations’. These words should take our breath away and cause up to weep. Sadly, they often result in scrambling for ways to hide or ignore the abuse so that the ‘Christian’ organisation can proceed undisturbed. We have forgotten God’s word to the young boy Samuel. When called by God, Samuel responded: ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’ God told him that he was about to bring judgment on Eli’s house forever for the iniquity he knew … and did not rebuke’ (1 Sam. 3:13).

A recent initiative is helping evangelicals in some of the traditional denominations evaluate their long-term future within them. Susie Leafe writes:

On The Edge exists for those, who with great reluctance, are at different stages of pondering whether for reasons of conscience, practicality or ministry effectiveness they can remain in the Scottish Episcopal Church, Church of England or Church in Wales.

Nicola Laver interviews the South American bishop who came to the UK on a mission which has unfolded in unexpected ways

An exodus of evangelicals from the Free Church of England (FCE) continues against the backdrop of serious fraud allegations and a culture of secrecy against its senior leadership. Both the police and the charity regulator are investigating a range of allegations against Bishop Primus John Fenwick, who is resisting calls to resign.

The road to hell, in a quote generally attributed to Samuel Johnson or St Bernard of Clairvaux, is paved with good intentions.

Whether you’re a UK believer organising a ‘Light Party’, an evangelical Christian running a ‘hell house’¹ in America, an avid trick-or-treater pounding the streets, or one of the 11,766 people in England and Wales identifying as Wiccans in the 2011 Census, Halloween is an issue that’s hard to avoid.

Church is not a business, right?

In recent months many of us have come to question the businesslike approaches of many megachurches and church plants, particularly as scandals have revealed the thin ice on which some have been built. But, before we overreact and discredit this businesslike approach, we should not lose the valuable insights that those with a good business head have brought to our churches.

As a precocious youngster I devoured Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, the Austrian climber who after World War II became tutor to the young Dalai Lama in Tibet.

I still have the newspaper clippings of the thrilling escape of the Dalai Lama into India from Chinese troops in 1959. I then had no idea that over 50 years later I would myself see the golden roofs of the gigantic Potala Palace in Lhasa and cross the vast plateau with its nomads and herds of yaks.

One of life’s most enjoyable experiences and one that spans the globe in its cultural relevance is the joy of sharing a meal amongst family, friends or even on occasions with complete strangers.

In the journey of life, I’ve known the simplicity of an apple given at great sacrifice in a poverty-stricken African village, the elaborate feasts of civil gatherings, the splendour of wedding celebrations, the countless choices of restaurant menus and, my favourite, the gathering round the family table for home-cooked fayre where the main ingredient is love.

Ben Kwashi, Bishop of Jos, calls Christians to keep sacrificing for the sake of the gospel

Mission is the hallmark of the church. John Stott put it this way: ‘Mission is an activity arising out of the very nature of God. The living God of the Bible is a sending God, which is what “mission” means.’

In 2011 IVP published what was intended by the author to be his final book – summing up decades of prayer, study and ministry. John Stott’s The Radical Disciple, ten years on, continues to provoke, encourage and inspire.

Stott’s own purpose in that book was ‘to consider eight characteristics of Christian discipleship which are often neglected and yet deserve to be taken seriously’. One of these was ‘creation care’, an issue which is increasingly coming to our attention and the focus of the world. With the Stott centenary running from April 2021 to April 2022, IVP took the decision to publish John Stott on Creation Care, a definitive collection of Stott’s writings on the topic, carefully compiled from throughout his ministry. Sam Berry and Laura Yoder, in their own way, have carefully curated tens of thousands of Stott’s own words, adding interpretation and context, to produce a vital new book.

It was Saturday, 25 September 1971. Tens of thousands of people, young and old, met together on London’s Trafalgar Square for the largest ever open-air gathering of Christians in British history.

People carried placards showing a map of the UK or showing messages like ‘Jesus loves you’. Some wore Nationwide Festival of Light (NFoL) T-shirts and there was a general atmosphere of sheer excitement and expectation.

James Cary

Date posted: 1 Aug 2021

We all thought there were four but actually there are five. Not Gospels, but tastes. There’s sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness. And the fifth is umami, the Pete Best* of the culinary world that was there from the beginning. Umami is a meaty, broth-like, or savoury taste.

What’s your favourite taste? For me, there’s nothing better than a juicy ripe sliced tomato with olive oil, salt, red onion and basil, accompanying a medium-rare T-bone steak with some twice-cooked chips. And mustard mayo. There’s a restaurant in Stellenbosch in South Africa which did that to perfection. One day, I hope to return there for that transcendent experience.