Hundreds attend new Cotswold Bible Festival
John Martin
Date posted: 1 Jan 2020
Saturday 23 November marked the inaugural Cotswold Bible Festival. Around 700 adults and children converged on the festival town of Cheltenham for a day of thought-provoking Bible teaching, excel-lent music and a whole host of seminars and fun activities.
The event was conceived by a group of like-minded local evangelical Christian leaders who were keen to run a Keswick-style event for churches across the Cotswolds. The vision for the event came together a year ago, with encouraging conversations with Jonathan Lamb and James Robson at Keswick Ministries leading to the formation of ‘Keswick Gloucestershire’ in association with the Keswick Fellowship – a network of similar events across the country. The event itself was given separate branding to help draw in those who were less familiar with ‘Keswick’, and to allow for other events to be run under the ‘Keswick Gloucestershire’ banner in the future.
SAVING VALLEY CHAPELS
BBC Wales
Date posted: 1 Jan 2020
In a chapel in the heart of the South Wales valleys a coffee morning is in full flow. A handful of retired men are in attendance. Like most weeks numbers are relatively low. But for the minister who has organised it, the Revd Robert Stivey, it is still something of a triumph.
Just over a year ago, the Calfaria Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in Porth was shut and was awaiting demolition. However, Stivey stepped in, purchased it for under £40,000 of his own money, and then re-opened the vestry once more.
Highfields: ‘open-air preaching to a million people’
FIEC
Date posted: 1 Jan 2020
Highfields Church in Cardiff was able to share the hope of Christ with around a million people as they hosted BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship on 17 November.
The live broadcast lasted 38 minutes and was split equally between singing and speaking, giving Lead Minister Dave Gobbett a great opportunity to share Christ with a worldwide audience. He said: ‘The main thrust of my message from Ephesians 2 was that Jesus uniquely brings people together because Jesus uniquely brings people to God. Only Jesus can pull our troubled world together.
El Salvador: faith on the frontline
OM
Date posted: 1 Jan 2020
Josué Sánchez, 32, from El Salvador, knows all about risk.
‘I grew up in the most dangerous town in Central America,’ Josué said. ‘There are violent gangs who fight for territory and will kill for no reason. Everyone in El Salvador faces this every day. It’s a matter of knowing how to survive. It’s like: “Welcome to the jungle”.’
The modern war on truth
Chris Wright
Date posted: 1 Jan 2020
Chris Wright discusses the ramifications of living in a society where lying is the norm
‘What is truth?’ asked Pontius Pilate. Jesus had just said: ‘Everyone who is on the side of truth listens to me’ (John 18:37-38).
history
Reformers & mission V
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Nov 2018
Geneva was not a large city. During Calvin’s lifetime it reached a peak of slightly more than 21,000 by 1560, of whom a goodly number were religious refugees.
Nevertheless, it became the missionary centre of Europe in this period of the Reformation. Calvin sought to harness the energies and gifts of many of the religious refugees so as to make Geneva central to the expansion of Reformation thought and piety throughout Europe. This meant training and preparing many of these refugees to go back to their native lands as evangelists and reformers.
Maria Millis: the definition of an unsung saint
Brian Maiden
Date posted: 1 Oct 2019
In a new series, Brian Maiden gives a short biography of some believers you may not have heard of...
Have you ever heard of Maria Millis? Probably not. But before I tell you about her, let me tell you about Lord Shaftesbury.
Wycliffe in Wales
Wycliffe
Date posted: 1 Nov 2019
Wycliffe Bible Translators opened its new
Wales office in Bridgend on 14 September.
Carwyn Graves, Wycliffe’s Wales Team
Leader,
spoke about
the
long history of
Welsh mission workers, who often pushed
for mother-tongue Bibles
and
literacy
programmes where others
ignored
them.
Yet, he also focused on the future, and how
churches in Wales can still be meaningfully
involved
in world mission today through
praying, giving and going.
USA: more than ten minutes
Christianheadlines.com
Date posted: 1 Nov 2019
A 134-page report released in September,
shows that some 35 million youths raised in
Christian families in the USA will give up
on Christianity by the year 2050.
Greg Stier – founder of the youth ministry
Dare 2 Share – says the report, called The
Great Opportunity, is a chance for Christians
to
‘flip the switch’.
‘How about not
just
slowing down the bleeding, what if there
was a revival that flipped those stats? That
is what we are praying for. How do we flip
the switch?’
Eisteddfod outreach
Evangelical Movement of Wales
Date posted: 1 Oct 2019
News from the Eisteddfod Mission during August always shows that an eclectic group of people are reached by the missioners who speak to Welsh and English-speaking festival goers.
This year was no exception. The first day included a couple who had belonged to a sect. On the second day, a person said that after death she would return as a cat or dog. As with most times of mission, there can be the feeling that one is trying to sell umbrellas to people who are living in a dry desert. Most people just don’t see their need of Christ. In fact many people answering the question ‘describe your life in three words’, used happy and contented in their responses.
50 years ago: 4 Christmases, 2 bishops, 1 gospel
Christopher Idle
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
Christopher Idle reflects on two memorable Christmas Carol Services where two bishops shared their story of coming to Christ.
When David Sheppard came to live just across the road from us in Peckham, it seemed providential.
Who was at Bethlehem?
John Peet
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
John Peet sheds light on the central characters in the nativity scene and explains their significance of their presence.
Last Christmas my wife and I were talking about those who were at Bethlehem. We found it most instructive to think on who and why.
INVESTING IN THE FUTURE
Daniel Blanche
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
In November, the Riviera International Centre, Torquay, hosted The FIEC Leaders’ Conference. This year’s theme, Leadership at Every Level, was perfectly timed; as attendance reached 1,000 and the FIEC continues to grow numerically, now is the time to carefully consider how to raise up leaders to ensure growth is lasting, sustainable, and deeply rooted in biblical truth.
John Stevens, FIEC President, opened proceedings by reminding the gathered pastors, elders, women’s workers, and other leaders of the biblical vision for leadership from Ephesians 4. Godly leadership, he instructed, proceeds from an identity rooted in the gospel; to lose sight of that is to build ministry on oneself. And the danger? A ministry that finds its worth in oneself will be slow to delegate, loathe showing humility or weakness, and will find pride in concentrating power. Only the gospel sets one free to serve.
politics & policy
Dark side of the Internet
James Mildred
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
Without a doubt, one of the most important responsibilities God gives to anyone is the one He gives to parents. Charged with raising their children in the fear of the Lord, theirs is a serious and difficult task. Joy and sorrow often go hand in hand in the mission and task of raising young people.
The challenge of raising children is all the more difficult today because of the Internet. First invented in 1990, it has grown enormously, in ways few predicted when it arrived on the scene. Like most things, there is plenty to enjoy about it. The Internet allows for greater connectivity and for the easier spread of information.
When Google becomes God
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
Book Review
THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM:
The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power
Read review
Oracle chickens out
en / The Christian Institute
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
A Reading shopping centre, part-owned
by an investment company based in Abu
Dhabi, caved in to LGBT demands to drop
a US
fast-food restaurant
from renting
premises, it was reported in October.
Owners of the Oracle centre in Reading
will not renew Chic-fil-A’s six-month lease,
claiming it is the ‘right thing to do’. In 2012
the
restaurant’s CEO, Dan Cathy,
stated
that
the company supported
the
‘biblical
definition of the
family unit’. It donated
money to Christian charities that support traditional marriage.
Slavic Gospel Association: 70 years young…
Mark Foster
Date posted: 1 Oct 2019
Next year, Slavic Gospel Association [UK] will celebrate its 70th birthday. In 1950, Peter Deyneka, the founder of the mission in the USA some 13 years earlier, visited churches in the south of England. Believers caught the vision for reaching Slavic peoples for Christ and the UK branch of SGA was formed in that year.
The initially small efforts to bring encouragement and help to Eastern European people displaced by the Second World War and living in camps in England, Germany and Austria, quickly blossomed. It then burgeoned into a ministry which took Christians through the Iron Curtain, and into situations where the churches were severely persecuted for their faithfulness to Christ and the gospel.
history
Reformers and missions
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Jul 2018
The 16th-century Reformers had a poorly-developed missiology and overseas mission was an area to which they gave little thought.
That is what is said. ‘Yes’, this argument runs, ‘they rediscovered the apostolic gospel, but they had no vision to spread it to the uttermost parts of the earth.’ Possibly the first author to raise the question about this failure of early Protestantism was the Roman Catholic theologian and controversialist, Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621). He argued that one of the marks of a true church was its continuity with the missionary passion of the apostles. In his mind, Roman Catholicism’s missionary activity was indisputable and this supplied a strong support for its claim to stand in solidarity with the apostles.
A tale of two cities: ten years on
Richard Hagan and Matthew Roberts
Date posted: 1 Oct 2019
en interviews Richard Hagan and Matthew Roberts who moved to Canterbury and York respectively to plant new churches
Ten years ago this month, Matthew Roberts and Richard Hagan moved with their young families to York and Canterbury them to plant new churches. en asked about the story of Trinity Church York and Emmanuel Church Canterbury.
EFAC today: looking ahead to Lambeth 2020
Bishop Henry Scriven
Date posted: 1 Nov 2019
John Stott is one of my heroes and I had the privilege of meeting him several times. Among the vast number of signifi-cant things that he achieved in his life was the founding of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion in 1961.
EFAC has the clear aim and purpose to encourage and develop biblically faithful fellowship, teaching and mission throughout the Anglican world. Such an all-encompassing purpose must necessarily be honed down to goals that are realistic.
Hope in Vauxhall: one year on…
FIEC
Date posted: 1 Sep 2019
A church plant on an urban housing estate will this month celebrate its first anniversary and its success in building a congregation that represents around a dozen nationalities.
While Hope Church Vauxhall’s first year has brought some challenges, including the death of one of its young couples, Senior Pastor Sam Gibb says he is seeing tremendous gospel progress.
Anglicans 2020: vision, doom or muddle?
As we look ahead to the coming year, what may happen?
According to American pastor F. Kenton Beshore, the second coming of Jesus will be between 2018 and 2028, with the Rapture by 2021 at the latest. Well, who knows? Maybe F. (as I affectionately call him for short) will be proved right. Or maybe not. F. reckons it’s all got to kick off within a generation of the founding of modern Israel in 1948, with a generation being 70-80 years. He’s not one for vagueness, our F. He’s not Church of England.