Churches uniting in prayer for London
London Gospel Partnership
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
Wednesday 6 November saw the inaugur-al ‘Pray for London’ event hosted by the London Gospel Partnership.
Over 100 church leaders and church workers, along with many other believers, gathered together at East London Tabernacle for a time of dedicated prayer for God’s saving grace to be seen powerfully throughout London.
Chile: hospital mission
OM International
Date posted: 1 Mar 2019
Logos Hope volunteers connected with
people in front of Antofagasta’s hospital, to
tell them the gospel and pray with those who
are unwell and their visitors.
The crew members approached people and
relatives waiting for treatment outside the
hospital. After introducing themselves, they
asked if there was anything they could pray for. When people accepted prayer, they spoke
with them more personally, prayed for their
requests and told them about their faith.
news in brief
New pastor in the Cwm
5 October saw
the
induction of Pastor
Steve Dyer to the pastorate of the Mission
Cwmtwrch, a village 15 miles north of
Swansea in the South Wales valleys.
Pastor Dyer’s
relationship with
the
Mission has grown steadily for several years.
In Spring 2019, he felt led to accept a call
from the Mission – a church that has its
origins in the 1904 Welsh Revival. Pastor
Dyer continues to work with Oasis Church,
now based in Gorseinon, which he planted
in early 2008.
London Church Planting Academy
Co-Mission
Date posted: 1 Nov 2019
Co-Mission churches have long used the metaphor of a lifeboat to remind ourselves that we need to be rescuing the perishing.
Richard Coekin (Co-Mission) has drawn on lessons from the Titanic disaster and Neil Powell (City to City) has written of the need for ‘a Dunkirk spirit, where a huge number of lifeboats were mobilised to realise a vision far too big for any group to achieve alone’.
Bahamas: dealing with Dorian
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
On 1 September 2019, Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas. The Category 5 storm, with 185mph winds and storm surges of up to 23 feet, is one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes to make landfall.
Regarded as the worst natural disaster in the country’s history, the storm caused widespread flooding and destruction. It killed at least 50 people and left more than 70,000 people homeless.
A new home
Graham Miller
Date posted: 1 Dec 2019
The Christmas holidays tend to be a great time for kids. The average family in the UK will spend an additional £2,000 over the Christmas period on gifts, food and trips.
It is not the same picture for everyone, though. 700,000 kids in London are living below the poverty line, after you’ve taken housing costs into account. For these homes the additional financial stress of Christmas can often be the cause of family arguments, stress, and domestic abuse. It is not surprising that, despite the cold weather, winter is a time when many kids run away for the first time.
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).
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”.’
news in brief
Albania: earthquake
A Christian charity has offered ‘practical, emotional and spiritual support’ to the thousands of families left homeless by the devastating earthquake in late November.
More than 50 people were killed and a further 13,000 were left homeless, with 26 schools also damaged – affecting 10,500 children. Some being helped noted that their faith in the Lord was not shaken despite the devastation surrounding them now.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
The surprising problem of freedom
Most of us claim to want freedom. We don’t like being constrained. We want to do things our way, according to our pref-erences, how things suit us. We can get behind the concept of personal autonomy.
What we’re less happy about is when the autonomy granted to us is extended to others. Though we perhaps acknowledge the world would be a very boring place if we were all the same, there’s that little part of us that thinks – despite that – we’re basically right, the way we do things is best and so if everyone was a bit more like us the world would be a happier place. We are the arbiters of normal, moderate credible living and others are different shades of weird based on how closely they ape the way we do things.