letter from Moldova
Bălți encouragements
www.sga.org.uk
Date posted: 29 Jan 2026
At the end of 2025, a group of 26 students graduated from the Slavic Gospel Association Mission School in Bălți, North Moldova.
It was the 16th such group to complete a two-year Bible training course designed to prepare men and women for a wide range of ministries in their spiritually needy land.
Martin Goldsmith: Much-loved Jewish disciple of Jesus
Charles Gardner
Date posted: 21 Feb 2026
One of Britain’s most well-known Jewish disciples of Jesus, Martin Goldsmith, has died peacefully, aged 91, after an extraordinary life of service to Christ.
After ten colourful years as a missionary in South East Asia with the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), he served for over 50 years as a gifted teacher at All Nations Christian College in Hertfordshire.
Saudi Arabia: Is a door opening for the gospel?
Luke Randall
Date posted: 28 Mar 2026
Gospel opportunities are on the rise amidst surging investment in tourism in Saudi Arabia.
The Middle Eastern nation has invested almost £600 million in its tourism sector as it aims to become a key global competitor in the industry by 2030. Platform 67, an organisation which liaises with missionaries around the world, says opportunities to share the gospel on the ground have increased as tourism booms.
Iran: ‘Streets smell of blood’
Luke Randall
Date posted: 20 Feb 2026
Christians in Iran continue to meet to grieve and pray amidst ongoing unrest and state brutality, with one person on the ground revealing that “the streets smell of blood”.
Early 2026 has seen Iran plagued by mass demonstrations, fuelled by economic hardship, against the nation’s brutal Islamic regime, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
10,000 mile journey to proclaim gospel in Glasgow
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 27 Mar 2026
Scottish band The Proclaimers famously sang that they would “walk 500 miles” and indeed “walk 500 more”.
But Tim Scoular and his family have moved their lives more than 10,000 miles from Sydney to Scotland – all for the sake of sharing the gospel in Glasgow.
The link between 'right living' and joy in the Spirit
James Burnett
Date posted: 26 Mar 2026
It’s marathon season. Could long-distance running get your life back on track with God? The Apostle Paul writes, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4v7).
Let’s start by exploring a link between method acting and Christians who run.
Tom Muir
Sarah Robinson
Date posted: 25 Mar 2026
Tom Muir has been inducted into the role of Church Planting Director in the Free Church of Scotland.
The induction took place at a meeting of the Edinburgh and Perth Presbytery. The Free Church is seeking to strengthen church planting across the denomination and support the development of new gospel communities in the years ahead.
The missionary mouse: How God used a pest for His purposes
Josh Williamson
Date posted: 23 Mar 2026
It was the end of a long day. As the night deepened, all members of the family were tucked up in bed. Then my wife decided to go and get a drink of water from the kitchen. As I lay in bed, drifting off, I heard a scream – a scream that spoke of an intruder in the house: an intruder with a long tail, little ears, whiskers, and a small nose… a mouse!
At the time, I didn’t know this late-night visitor would set off an evangelistic encounter. All I could think about was, "How do I get rid of this mouse?"
Foreign aid: An open letter to David Lammy
James Burnett
Date posted: 21 Mar 2026
Dear David, I trust you are well. I am writing to you about foreign aid cuts.
Red Nose Day, 2019
In response to Stacy Dooley’s visit to Uganda in 2019, you sought to redress the Red Nose Day narrative which, in your words, promoted a “white saviour” colonial attitude to Africa. You opined on the Victoria Derbyshire show: “Comic Relief is a 20-year-old formula that asks comedians to perform and sends celebrities – most often white – out to Africa, and that image evokes for lots of ethnic minorities in Britain a colonial image of a white beautiful heroine holding a black child, with no agency, no parents in sight.”
Evangelical alarm over Baptist vote
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 19 Mar 2026
Evangelicals in the Baptist Union say voting “none of the above” in this year’s presidential elections for the denomination may be the best option.
They say the choice of candidates on offer does not reflect the Biblical truth they wish to stand for.
Adrian Brixey
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 27 Jan 2026
Adrian Brixey has been appointed the new Chief Executive Officer of Grace Baptist Mission and takes up the role this month. Adrian and his wife Antonia are members of Trinity Baptist Church, Gloucester, where he was an elder until the end of 2024. He will work alongside mission director Daryl Jones who will be retiring in the coming months.
Brixey brings a wealth of mission experience, including 11 years’ service in Thailand; and a UK-based ministry among refugees.
Defining secularism
Date posted: 17 Mar 2026
Dear Editor,
In recent editions of en, the word “secularism” has cropped up many times. I led the track on secularism at the Lausanne Congress in Seoul in September 2024, and we worked on a model of analysis which I think clarifies the issues.
CEEC says 2026 will be a 'critical year' for the CofE
Helen Catt
Date posted: 10 Mar 2026
This year will be a critical one for the Church of England (CofE), says the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC).
"The Living in Love and Faith trajectory is going to continue (confirmed by the recent General Synod); deanery and General Synod elections will be taking place; and the pressure on finances, stipendiary ministry and ordinand numbers is ongoing," CEEC says.
everyday theology
Intellectualist faith?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 10 Mar 2026
Normally, those who think of themselves as people of the gospel do not openly deny the necessity of the new birth. But what if we did? We do not have to imagine, for that is effectively what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries with the Sandemanian sect. As Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) put it, the Sandemanians believed that saving faith is nothing but “bare belief of the bare truth”.
This was an intellectualist view of faith that sat especially well with the rationalistic times of the Enlightenment, though Robert Sandeman himself had an apparently evangelical logic for his view. Seeking to uphold a salvation that is all of grace, he argued that faith is really a human work if it involves any active leaning of the heart upon God. Faith must, he concluded, be nothing more than the mind’s assent that the gospel is true. It is an acknowledgment, not trust.
Ten Questions with Steffan Job
en staff
Date posted: 8 Mar 2026
Steffan Job is the Ministry Director of the Evangelical Movement of Wales, and an elder at Capel y Ffynnon, Bangor.
1. How did you become a Christian?
Missionary family escape Amazon riverboat disaster
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 22 Aug 2024
An American missionary and his wife who escaped a burning boat on the Amazon river with their young family have spoken about their incident, in which several died.
Ezra Brainard, a distant relative of 18th century missionary to the Native Americans David Brainard, was on the boat with wife Joanna and four children, including a young baby, on 29 July when it caught fire, exploded and sank. The couple’s two-and-a-half year old slipped away from Ezra after they jumped into the water, but someone pulled her into a canoe and took her to shore.
Ben Stansfield to lead Global Connections
Luke Randall
Date posted: 17 Jul 2024
Ben Stansfield has been appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of Global Connections, (GC) replacing Chris Wigram who had served in an interim capacity in recent months.
GC exists to equip the UK church and mission community in the world. Ben has spent over 25 years working for international charities, church ministries and discipleship ministries, so has helpful experience ahead of taking on the role.
How do we preserve our identity if we're in exile?
In my last article of this series (which you can read here), I considered how migration and exile are experienced by Christians in the UK in a variety of ways.
Whilst exile is usually associated with geographical displacement, exile can be experienced in various ways without ever leaving home. Cultural, economic, political and/or ecclesiastical exile can occur to any group of Christians, migrant or not. British evangelicals may be experiencing all kinds of exile, whether or not we have moved. When we find ourselves living in exile, how should we live?