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’.
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:
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.
everyday evangelism
The priesthood of all believers: is it really what you think it is?
Glen Scrivener
Date posted: 1 Jan 2022
‘Gosh, that was marvellous, I could never do that’ said the woman next to me at an evangelism seminar.
We had just watched an excellent evangelist run a 90-minute training session on leading others to Christ. We both agreed that the session was terrific and we both agreed that we could not do what the evangelist had just done (and I say this as someone with ‘Evangelist’ on my business card). But I think we can all recognise the sentiment.
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.
On The Edge: a safe space
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.
pastoral care
Letting down others?
Helen Thorne-Allenson
Date posted: 1 Feb 2022
Do you ever feel as if you are letting everyone down? The inbox is out of control. The people you’ve been meaning to phone still haven’t heard from you. The to-do list is spiralling. And, even when you do meet with someone, you’re conscious they’re not getting your best (It’s not just you! Ed.).
At times like this we know that life isn’t sustainable, but we also desperately want to deliver what we (or others) think we should. So, distracted, demoralised and demotivated, we try to plod on, hoping that – one day, if we try hard enough – we’ll manage to catch up. If that doesn’t work, we can always run away, we remind ourselves – subconsciously at least, that’s often our Plan B.
news in brief
From Russia with love
From Siberia to Greater Manchester, Russell Phillips has taken over as pastor of Radcliffe Road Baptist Church, Bury.
While studying Russian at Cambridge, Russell went to Novosibirsk, Russia with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). He met his wife Oxana there and they married in Scotland in 1999.
everyday evangelism
Three questions on evangelism and the three wrong right answers!
Glen Scrivener
Date posted: 1 Dec 2021
When I train people in personal evangelism there are three questions I ask which always elicit the right wrong answers.
They are the right wrong answers because they are the ones I expect people to give. But they’re also the right wrong answers because, in their own way, they are correct. It’s just that you can be correct and wrong at the same time. Let me share the three questions and the answers they usually provoke:
Josep Rossello: what’s next?
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.
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?
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.
Unholy Halloween: what’s the history?
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Nov 2021
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tipping points: loveless marriages & abusive churches
en continues to seek to provide a forum for us all to learn as broadly as possible from sinful and shameful abusive actions. Our foremost thoughts and prayers must be with the survivors and victims.
It is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The final straw is small; it barely weighs anything but, added to the burden already carried, it crushes.