EMA 2017: fruit amid the battle
JEB
Date posted: 1 Aug 2017
It wasn’t easy to find the Barbican Centre
for
this
year’s
Evangelical Ministry
Assembly (EMA) amid London’s burgeoning road and building works. But it was
worth the tricky navigation for Tuesday –
Thursday, 27–29 June.
The conference theme was ‘Bearing Fruit
and Growing’, with the morning Bible readings coming
from Ephesians. These were
given by Andy Gemmill of
the Cornhill
Training Course in Scotland and reminded
those there that, amid the spiritual battle,
‘your church is what Christ’s rule looks like
now.’ We need to ‘do church’ (I’m not sure I
like
that phrase) by
faith, not by
sight,
because for all its present flaws the church
displays God’s wisdom to the astonishment
of the heavenly powers.
Wye Jesus
Evangelical Movement of Wales
Date posted: 1 Aug 2017
Bethesda Evangelical Church (Hay-on-Wye)
and EMW, with Show Jesus, an evangelistic
enterprise, supporting, spent four days seeking to share the wonderful news of Jesus and
his
love
with
folk
attending
the
International
Hay-on-Wye
Literature
Festival in late May.
Following the theme – ‘LIFE - what’s your
question?’ the gospel was shared through artistic skills including pottery, storytelling, poetry and through preaching. Michael Ots spoke on
suffering
linked
to
the
tragic Manchester
bombing. Local author and church member
Ollie Balch led a guided tour around Hay.
Durham’s purple patch
UCCF
Date posted: 1 Aug 2017
Durham Christian Union won an award for
‘Best Society Event’ at the National Society
Awards on 19 May.
Hosted by the National Union of Students
and Red Oak Roller, the evening celebrated
university
societies
around
the United
Kingdom and what they contribute to their
members, their campuses and to the wider
community.
Radical inclusion?
Rob Munro
Date posted: 1 Aug 2017
Superficially we did the usual things: passing obscure legal provisions.
For example, there was giving official permission not to have to wear robes at main services (which I realise you all have done faithfully up until now); the valiant effort to put something to do with mission on the agenda. We even had the obligatory ‘current affairs’ motion, this time from the Archbishops following the surprises at the General Election, generally calling for more prayer and appropriate lobbying.
Narrow way
Karen Soole
Date posted: 1 Aug 2017
Book Review
TO BE A PILGRIM:
40 days with The Pilgrim’s Progress
Read review
Hearing God in the Old Testament
Keswick Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2017
I asked my wife, Bridget, for her thoughts on where to go with this article. She laughed and said: ‘Why do you ask me? You’re the one who’s taught the Old Testament!’ Then she added: ‘But I do keep hearing people saying, “I find the Old Testament really hard.”’
I’ve heard that many times, too. So I want to do three things here: acknowledge some of the challenges; ground our view of the Old Testament as God’s Word; give one pointer as to how to hear God’s Word in the Old Testament (OT).
Cult hero
Association of Evangelists
Date posted: 1 Aug 2017
In June it was announced that Tony Brown would be joining the team of the Association of Evangelists.
As a former Jehovah’s Witness, his special interest is outreach to the cults, as well as teaching churches how to reach people caught up in cults.
The gospel in African soil
Jim Sayers
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Why is Africa so prone to falling foul of pernicious prosperity teaching?
Ian Flanders produces radio Bible-teaching programmes for Francophone Africa with Grace Baptist Mission Radio.
Algeria: God has raised up his church
OM
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
When OM Field Leader Youssef and his wife Hie-Tee moved to his native Algeria in 1988 to establish an OM ministry, a revival among the Kabyle people was already sweeping the northern region. ‘Before 1981, there were very few believers,’ Youssef said. Today, he knows of believers in every one of the 2,400 Kabyle cities, villages and towns.
In July 1981, the early Kabyle church, 40 to 50 believers, started a two-year process of praying and fasting, memorising 365 verses about fear. A new Kabyle radio ministry broadcast sermons and teaching across the region, and a church in Ouadiha, led by an Algerian-Swiss couple, began a wide literature distribution campaign in villages and showed the Jesus film in local cafés.
Rwanda: revival, genocide & recovery
Paul Perkin
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Rwanda is a land of contradictions. Arriving at Kigale one is immediately aware that this is quintessential Africa, and yet, ‘This is not Africa as I know it!’
One of the first hints is the airport inspection for plastic bags, banned in the country for environmental reasons. This beautiful, hilly, and in parts mountainous land is spotlessly clean – almost manicured.
Living a life of reckless abandon
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Gary Clayton remembers five missionary martyrs and tells us of a new play about their story
Missionary Ed McCully wrote this to his friend Jim Elliot on 22 September 1950:
THE EUSTON SPACE CENTRE?
en staff
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Reach out. Build up. Send out.
A mission statement of ‘sharing the life-giving story of God with London and the world’ could seem overambitious to say the least, but with the use of a vast building in central London surrounded by people from all around the world, this Euston Church statement is wonderfully appropriate.
Gentle correction
Richard Coekin
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
Dear Readers of en,
I was very grateful for the kind commendation of my new book Gospel DNA on page
25 of your May 2017 edition by Pastor Mark
Troughton.
I appreciate
that his warm
approval was only well meant, but it was sufficiently over-generous for me to feel obliged
to
comment.
I would
like
to openly
acknowledge
the obvious but
important
truths that the 30 Co-mission ministries in
London that he mentions (19 established
churches and various pioneer ministries) are
attributable a) to the extraordinary grace of
our living Lord growing his churches by his
living Word; and b) to the collective efforts
of many servant-hearted leaders and congregation members across London. I raise this
because we are clear throughout Co-mission
not only that we are daily dependent upon
God, but also that if we fail to give him the
glory he deserves we may rightly face his discipline. For ‘neither he who plants nor he
who waters is anything but only God who
gives the growth’ (1 Corinthians 3).
Iraq: Kurdish Bible done
Church Mission Society
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
A team of Bible translators in Kurdistan,
northern Iraq, working against the backdrop
of civil unrest and religious persecution, have
completed the first-ever translation of the
whole Bible into the Central Kurdish Sorani
language and launched it in April.
For eight years, mission partners have
worked alongside
indigenous Kurds and
other foreign nationals drafting text, checking names, terminology and style, and finally
checking
both
the Old
and New
Testaments so that they could be published together for the first time as the complete
Bible.
9 YEARS OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
Craig Dyer
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Did you hear about the Scotsman, the Englishman and the three Irishmen?
Well, no one is more amazed than them that, over the past nine years, around a million people in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan and now Congo have looked at Jesus in Mark’s Gospel using Christianity Explored (CE ). As with all gospel growth, it is the story of God at work in and through his people.
Wick’s missionary pastor
Mike Finnis
Date posted: 1 May 2017
Much-travelled pastor and missionary the Revd Gilbert McAdam started a new chapter of his life on 31 March, on the northern coast of Scotland with his wife Emily and their ten-year-old adopted daughter Claire from the Philippines.
Mr McAdam, 66, was inducted as minister of Wick Harbour Mission, answering the prayers of the church’s five woman members who had kept the cause alive since the death of their former pastor Jimmie Cormack in 2008.
Smuggling Bibles into China?
Steve Laverty
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
Steve Laverty with a salutary tale of his experience
26 October 2016 was the day the Chinese authorities arrested four Northern Irish lads for moving Bibles from Hong Kong (HK) into China. I was one of them.
news in brief
Australia: life upheld
The Australian state of Tasmania rejected a Bill to legalise euthanasia in May.
The legislation was defeated by 16 votes to eight in the lower house of the Tasmanian Parliament. It marks the third time in ten years that a euthanasia Bill has been defeated in the state.
The new Gretna Green?
Martin Ayers
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
On 8 June, the Scottish Episcopal Church voted at its General Synod to permit same-sex weddings in its churches.
The Scottish Episcopal Church (the SEC) is the Anglican Province in Scotland. A relatively small province, it ‘gave birth’ to the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA), by consecrating America’s first bishop.
Evangelical options
David Baker
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
Let’s consider some possible futures for Anglican evangelicals concerned about the Church of England.
Option 1: Remain and resist
This is the strategy from Lee Gatiss of Church Society, Bishop Rod Thomas and many others. In this view, the battle is not lost. As I write, the next bishops’ report on marriage and sexuality is awaited. Southwell bishop Paul Williams – who spoke at a Proclamation Trust conference a few years ago – says: ‘Whatever some would like to claim, the Church of England is and remains faithful to the teaching of Scripture on these matters…’ The new document ‘will be deeply rooted in and faithful to Scripture,’ he claims.
Get up and give it a go!
Mike Mellor
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
Mike Mellor with some motivation for evangelism
It was pioneer missionary C.T. Studd who asked in exasperated disbelief: ‘How can a man believe in Hell unless he throws away his life to rescue others from its torment?’
Welwyn: Open Day
Rachel Buckley
Date posted: 1 Jul 2017
On 6 May, the European School of Biblical Studies, formally School of Biblical Studies, held its annual Open Day at Welwyn Evangelical Church.
About 200 people came to hear from this year’s students and from Dr Garry Williams, Director of the John Owen Centre. The theme Celebrating the Reformation not only reflected on this year being the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, but is also the subject on which Garry lectures at the School.
