Who is the new president of The Gospel Coalition?
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 31 Jan 2025
Mark Vroegop has been appointed as the new President of evangelical network The Gospel Coalition (TGC).
Vroegop, who has pastored College Park Church in Indiana for nearly two decades, is a current TGC council member and board member. He was unanimously elected, and will be the third President of TGC, taking over from interim President Sandy Wilson.
New church takes off in Serbian city
Elma Mackay
Date posted: 28 Jan 2025
An evangelical church has been planted in Serbia’s fourth largest city, with ministry in Serbian and Portuguese.
The new congregation in Kragujevac consists of around 25 people and is the fruit of collaboration between Serbian believers from other towns, missionaries from Brazil, and the Scotland-based Christian organisation Blythswood Care.
Cymru focus on mission
Julian Richards
Date posted: 1 Aug 2023
Nearly 400 church leaders and teams from across the denominations and networks in Wales recently gathered at Venue2 Swansea for the annual New Wine Cymru leaders conference.
In the light of the statistical and empirical evidence pointing to a significant spiritual openness in Wales and the UK, the conference theme was creating a Culture of Mission in the Local Church. Conference guest speakers were Paul Williams who is the Bible Societies CEO and research Professor of Marketplace Theology at Regents university Vancouver.
Tolworth: A new Hope
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 20 Dec 2024
This autumn, a group of around 100 adults and children came together to launch a new church on an estate in Tolworth, south west London.
Hope Church Tolworth is an initiative between members of Cornerstone Church, Kingston (who are a part of church-planting network Co-Mission) and others who have come from Emmanuel Church, Tolworth (who are Anglican). They met for the first time on Sunday 24 November in a local Primary School building, following months of gathering for prayer, picnics and meals. The pastor is Bart Erlebach, who was formerly the minister of Emmanuel, Tolworth.
Barnabas Aid: Police involved; regulatory scope widens
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 23 Jan 2025
A man and a woman are under police investigation for suspected fraud, alongside the regulatory investigation into Barnabas Aid (formerly Barnabas Fund), a charity supporting persecuted Christians – which has been widened to include four linked charities.
Wiltshire Police has confirmed it arrested two people on 7 November 2024 ‘in connection with an ongoing fraud investigation’.
letter from Uganda
From Essex to Uganda: ‘Culture shock and feelings of panic’
Philip Knight
Date posted: 5 Dec 2024
In November 2023, my wife Heidi and I pulled up our roots, leaving our Essex home and the church I had pastored for 28 years, for Koboko, North West Uganda.
Our mission? To help the team of Keliko believers who are translating God’s word into their mother tongue. The work is supported by Wycliffe Bible Translators and Grace Baptist Mission.
‘God speaks my language’
Nicola Laver
Date posted: 4 Dec 2024
‘God speaks my language’ – the theme and testimony of many at Grace Baptist Mission’s Annual Mission Day.
At Friends House on London’s Euston Road, many GBM missionaries shared stories on the last Saturday in October of how people all over the world are hearing God’s word in their own heart language – through preaching, teaching, Bible translation, personal evangelism, literature and radio programmes.
letter from Latvia
Introducing the prophets in Latvia
John Woods
Date posted: 6 Jan 2025
I am writing this letter while in Latvia on one of my regular visits to teach at the Latvian Biblical Centre (LBC) in Riga.
Over three weekends I am contributing to four of LBC’s programmes. So far, I have been teaching on Identity for the School of Christianity, Work and Society, Introducing the Prophets for the foundation course: Theology and Ministry, and The Kingdom of God on the Missional Church Programme. This is an example of the range of things that LBC offers. My final weekend in Latvia will be with the School of Preachers Course that I started in 2018. This is a two-year programme consisting of eight weekend teaching sessions with regular cluster group meetings for application in between these weekends. There have been 44 graduates from the course so far. It is a joy to see some of our students coming back to preach at our weekend sessions and field questions on how they approached their preparation.
Churches begun in Bracknell and Harrogate
AMiE
Date posted: 1 Jan 2025
Planting new churches to reach people with the good news of Jesus has always been part of the culture of the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE) and one that AMiE recognises will need to take different forms to suit a changing landscape across England.
One such church that AMiE is hoping to plant is in Bracknell with Nick Algeo, an ordained minister with a licence from the Diocesan Bishop of AMiE to start a church. Nick is moving with his family to Bracknell in the summer of 2025, and is looking to start Sunday services soon after. Over the next few months, he hopes to raise financial support and gather the beginnings of a group to start the church. A daunting prospect, but one that he trusts and prays that God will provide the resources for.
Manchester: Vision for 30 new churches by 2030
Ralph Cunnington
Date posted: 30 Dec 2024
The Northern Gospel Project is seeking to see 30 gospel churches planted in Greater Manchester by 2030, through training, funding, and providing care for church planters and their teams.
So far, we have trained 15 church planters through the Incubator training course, cared for seven church planters through Planters Collectives, and raised £63,000 to seed fund church plants across the city.
A life remembered: Tony Campolo
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 30 Dec 2024
The outspoken American preacher and ‘Red Letter Christian,’ Tony Campolo died last month aged 89.
The evangelical speaker and author was a forceful influence in the American church and was best known for calling Christians to follow Jesus’ teaching by loving and serving the poor and vulnerable in society.
The Parthians are coming... to Matthew’s Gospel
Ray Porter
Date posted: 24 Dec 2024
The visit of the Magi recounted in the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is one of the more curious parts of the Christmas story.
First, that we find it in this Gospel which is written primarily for a Jewish audience, and secondly, that such pagan astrologers should be lauded as those who come from a distant land to worship the infant Jesus. And then we have the matter of the star, which has excited the imagination of astronomers down the centuries; and that is before we get the accretions of legends and the perversions of countless nativity plays. The symbolism that we attach to the gifts they brought and the echoes that we find of Old Testament prophecies take us away from a consideration of what we might be able to reconstruct from their contemporary historical setting and why their coming so alarmed not just Herod but the whole of Jerusalem.
Grace Baptists meet for mission
Jonathan Hoadley
Date posted: 1 Dec 2023
The Grace Baptist Mission (GBM) has held its Annual Mission Day in Euston.
Highlights of this year included welcoming missionaries to serve in Uganda, in the Netherlands (Abigail and Adrian Yeboah – see photo), and a new missionary to join the Radio Team based in the UK.
Why is our Christmas crackers?
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 4 Dec 2024
As we approach Christmas, our minds turn again to images of a baby in a manger, an undisclosed number of Magi, sheep, shepherds and heavenly messengers, Jesus’ faith-filled mother Mary and his selfless father Joseph.
But is the season as simple and straightforward as it at first appears?
'Dynamic' Gospel Coalition UK could help 'Reformed complementarians', says Nicholls
en staff
Date posted: 24 Oct 2024
A new Gospel Coalition for the UK and Ireland could help those with ‘broadly Reformed and complementarian convictions’ develop ‘new and dynamic partnerships,’ Affinity’s Graham Nicholls says.
Speaking to en, and in the wake of the most recent meeting of the advisory council of Affinity – an evangelical umbrella group uniting 1,200 evangelical churches and organisations which succeeded the old British Evangelical Council founded by Martyn Lloyd-Jones – Nicholls said no other organisation was quite filling that gap at the moment.
Niall Dunne to be new Team Leader for Creation Fest
Creation Fest
Date posted: 28 Nov 2024
After ‘prayer and deliberation,’ the board of Creation Fest UK is pleased to announce the appointment of Niall Dunne as the charity’s new Team Leader, it reports.
Niall is a familiar face in the organisation, having been a member of a band that performed at Creation Fest’s annual event during its early days in Devon, and more recently serving as the organisation’s Pastoral Lead for the past seven months. As Team Leader, Niall will oversee all aspects of the year-round charity, including the annual summer festival in Wadebridge, Cornwall.
‘The baby was struggling to breathe...’
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 18 Oct 2024
Thanks to MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship), three vulnerable infants received urgent medical attention in Papua New Guinea.
‘One Monday afternoon,’ reports MAF Pilot Tim Neufeld, ‘I was thinking it was time to wrap up, but was asked to do a 15-minute flight to Nomane. A small baby was struggling to breathe, and recent heavy rains had caused several landslides, making it impossible to reach the nearest medical centre.’
Sex 'only for heterosexual marriage,' says possible Welby successor
en staff
Date posted: 21 Nov 2024
The Church of England’s lead bishop for the controversial ‘Living in Love and Faith’ (LLF) sexuality discussions – tipped by some as the next Archbishop of Canterbury – says he continues to believe sex is only for heterosexual marriage.
Martyn Snow, Bishop of Leicester, who is being touted as a possible successor to Justin Welby, answered ‘yes’ when pressed on the point in an interview with en. And he said Church of England evangelicals in the Alliance (the umbrella group of orthodox believers in the denomination) should not yet despair about their wishes for alternative structural provision being met.
letter from Australia
Year-long mission lifts off for 2024
David Robertson
Date posted: 1 Feb 2024
A national student mission in Australia is getting underway after more than 2,000 undergraduates attended a special conference in preparation.
The Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) is the largest student campus ministry in Australia. At the end of 2023 over 2,000 students (across Australia and many parts of the world) were transformed by, trained in, and sent with the gospel of Jesus at the AFES National Training Event.
Clare Heath-Whyte: Biographer of the neglected & ‘unfamous’
Andrew Atherstone
Date posted: 11 Oct 2024
Biography is perennially popular, one of the best-selling and most absorbing forms of historical writing.
Many biographies focus on the rich and famous, the movers and shakers, the politicians, warriors, celebrities and adventurers who have changed the world. But one of biography’s unique strengths is that it also allows marginal and neglected voices to take centre stage. Characters who are normally written out of the narrative step forward into the limelight. They may not have won great battles, led international campaigns, or created seismic shifts in global culture, but every life is fascinating and every voice has much to teach.
Andrew Neden becomes chair for Kingom Bank
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 8 Nov 2024
Andrew Neden has officially been appointed as Chair of the Board for Christian bank Kingdom Bank, succeeding David Swanney who had held the role for the past ten years.
Neden is a chartered accountant who has worked in a variety of different roles, including the Global Chief Operating Officer in Financial Services for KPMG. While joining the board in December 2023, he was formally appointed as Chair in March and uses his wealth of experience in the financial sector to play a key part in the governance of the bank.
letter from America
How weather affects the US psyche – and the UK’s too
Josh Moody
Date posted: 4 Nov 2024
At time of writing, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have had significant impact on parts of America.
The regularity of natural events like this (the ubiquitous insurance moniker ‘Acts of God’) is surprising for those who grew up in the more placid weather patterns of the UK. Yes, hurricanes can hit there too – I remember the one that (as the joke was) turned leafy Sevenoaks into ‘One oak’. I actually slept through that hurricane, awakening to the sound of other teenagers rushing around with hilarity at the mild effects of broken glass and the like where our dormitories were.
Nigeria: Horrific death toll of Christians
Luke Randall
Date posted: 1 Nov 2024
The Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) has called for the Nigerian government to strengthen religious rights, following their discovery that Christians have been the most violently persecuted group in Nigeria during the last four years.
A study by ORFA revealed that 16,700 Christians have been violently killed out of an overall civilian total of 55,900, mainly by Islamist extremists. This makes them the most discriminated-against people group in the country. Other groups to feature high on the list were security forces and terror group members.
Jewish mission marks anniversary
Charles Gardner
Date posted: 1 Apr 2024
Christ Church Jerusalem, the city’s headquarters of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish People (CMJ) is celebrating its 175th anniversary.
Founded in London in 1809 by William Wilberforce and others, CMJ last year celebrated the bicentenary of its involvement in the Holy Land. But it was not until 1849 that Christ Church was built.