USA: Driscoll’s ministry suspended
Religion Today
Date posted: 1 Oct 2014
Megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll announced to his Seattle-based congregation, via a pre-recorded message in late August, that he is taking a six-week leave of absence from his position as lead pastor of Mars Hill Church while various charges against him were formally investigated. Driscoll said he would take the time to seek council about the next season of his life.
Driscoll, along with Mike Gunn and Leif Moi, planted the church in 1996. Mars Hill grew to more than 13,000 people and stretched across 15 locations in five states: Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico and Arizona. Attendance has slumped over recent weeks to between 8-9000, and the church has announced the closure of at least three of its locations, and staff cuts of 30-40%. This leave of absence has come after a series of events which found Driscoll being confronted with significant questions about his character and leadership.
On the beach for Jesus
Alan Pibworth
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
‘He made the stars to shine, He made the rolling sea, He made the mountains high and He made me’ has been sung this summer by thousands of children who have never heard about the death and resurrection of Jesus and whose families never attend a church.
United Beach Missions teams have been sharing the good news of Jesus for a total of 60 weeks at beach resorts in England, Wales, Ireland, as well as in Spain and Portugal. With members as young as 15 but with some in their sixties and older, they have been motivated by a love for the Lord, a love for each other and a love for the lost.
Conversion of an archbishop
Andrew Atherstone meets the man who led Justin Welby to Christian faith
The convert is now a global religious leader.
To train young Africans
Andrew & Julie Carter
Date posted: 1 Oct 2014
Isaac, James and Peace (left to right) are all graduates of the African Bible University (ABU) in Kampala, Uganda.
James’s father was the village witchdoctor and James was raised to follow in his footsteps. Miraculously, he was called out of darkness and into the light of the gospel. The Lord opened the way for him to study at ABU. James now works as an evangelist amongst young people in villages across Uganda, a nation where three quarters of the population are under 25.
The Third Degree
Forum for CU leaders
Daniel Stafford
Date posted: 1 Oct 2014
If you change the university, you change the world.
The world around us today is being shaped by the students of yesterday – nearly every business person, politician, academic, media presenter and opinion former started out as an undergraduate, their worldview formed and shaped by their university experiences. It follows logically that to shape tomorrow’s world, we need to shape tomorrow’s leaders today. That is why the witness and ministry of Christian Unions is so vital.
news in brief
Bangladesh: threats
The congregation of a church in Boldipukur has been threatened by unknown parties warning them not to pursue legal action against attackers who carried out a violent robbery in early July.
Around 50 Muslim attackers rounded up and attacked workers at the church and seized valuable items. They attempted to rape female church workers. Police arrested 12 people in connection with the robbery. It is thought that the robbers were trying to find and steal land ownership documents for the site.
ReNew
Mark Burkill
Date posted: 1 Nov 2014
For evangelical Anglicans who grow weary
of the vital battles over women’s ministry
and sexuality in synods and elsewhere, the
2014 ReNew conference (22–23 September)
was a great encouragement and inspiration.
It is not that the necessary task of contending for biblical truth was ignored, but
that this was seen within a bigger context.
That bigger context is the work of pioneering, establishing and securing healthy local
Anglican churches.
Hands on in Cambridge
Chris Akhurst
Date posted: 1 Nov 2014
September 7 saw friends and family of Steve and Lynsey Auld gather with the congregation of Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge, for Steve’s ordination to pastoral ministry and induction as assistant pastor at Eden.
Steve and Lynsey have two young sons, Hudson and Elliot, and are from Northern Ireland. Steve played rugby for Ireland in the Under 19 Rugby World Cup in 2003. After graduating from Queen’s, Belfast, Steve served as youth pastor at Elmwood Presbyterian Church, Lisburn, from 2005 to 2009, before going to Madagascar with Africa Inland Mission as part of a church-planting team. From there he went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Illinois, where Don Carson was his academic advisor.
Letter from America
Light on gay marriage
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Nov 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court has just decided to not decide on gay marriage.
As anticlimactic as a non-decision decision is, this was nonetheless of great significance. Effectively, the Supreme Court has legitimated the decisions of States to allow gay marriage by refusing to intervene (one way or another). Commentators have wondered whether this was motivated so as not to be tarnished with a Roe v. Wade like stigma which the Court has carried ever since its decision on abortion in the eyes of the conservatives.
Somerset’s spiritual milk
Andrew Paterson
Date posted: 1 Nov 2014
On September 27, Edington Chapel in Somerset held a welcome and commissioning service for Matthew Edwards, as a pastoral church worker on a part-time basis.
Matthew worked for ten years with the Open Air Mission. The chapel is rejoicing that God has guided them to this new venture of employing Matthew to help in outreach to the community, re-starting children’s work and building up and encouraging the church fellowship. Matthew and his wife, Sandra, have been living in central Cardiff and have now relocated to a small village in Somerset and are living in a converted milking parlour.
London: Antioch Plan gets underway
Richard Perkins
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
The number of people even within the Co-Mission Senior Staff who thought that God would provide the full complement for our first cohort of Antioch Planters could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
But remarkably and very wonderfully God has not only sent 14 men who have joined the Co-Mission pioneering church planting initiative, the Antioch Plan, applicants have even had to be turned away. This experience has been both a rebuke and a thrill because of God’s goodness.
Glasgow games outreach
Paul Brenan
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
‘Let Glasgow Flourish’ reads the city motto. And flourish it did at the Commonwealth Games from July 23 – Aug 3.
The city blossomed with many thousands of visitors and a successful 11 days of sporting excellence, with England topping the medal charts. However, what the current motto fails to reveal is that there was once a bit more to it. The original motto read like this: ‘Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of your Word and the praising of your name’. It was shortened to its current, secular format, back in the 17th century.
Liberia: battling with Ebola
Suzanne Green
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
‘Unless immediate action is taken in Liberia – including isolating patients, a quarantine programme and protective gear – the death toll will likely reach into the thousands,’ says Dr Frank Glover, a medical missionary who partners with SIM International (known in the UK as Serving in Mission).
Glover was testifying before a US congressional subcommittee on August 7 about combatting the Ebola threat in Liberia.
The Third Degree
The Bristol come-back
Pod Bhogal
Date posted: 1 Aug 2014
Pod asked Canon Michael Green to write his column this month
It proved to be a remarkable mission which will not soon be forgotten.
Strangle the leadership and choke the churches!
This was a core element in the Communist strategy to suppress and destroy the evangelical churches in the Iron Curtain era.
It was a plan which had deeply damaging consequences for the cause of the gospel, resulting in thousands of leaderless churches and countless communities throughout Eastern Europe without a glimmer of gospel light. Moldova was one such country. Patrick Johnstone recorded, in his 1993 edition of Operation World, : ‘Training for pastors is the greatest need. There are 185 Baptist pastors – none of whom have received any formal training. Pray for the founding of a Bible school. Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) is seeking to help in this.’
Were U an OICC?!
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
Dear Sir,
The Oxford
Inter-Collegiate Christian
Union (OICCU) is once more gathering
former members
for
an
afternoon of
renewed fellowship, news and stories. The
speakers will
be
Andrew
Atherstone
(Wycliffe Hall, who is preparing a history
of
the OICCU),
and Lindsay Brown
(IFES/Lausanne Movement,
a
former
OICCU president). Current student leaders will tell of plans for the 2015 Oxford
University mission with Tim Keller.
Sized up?
JEB on what a prospective pastor might want to ask about your church
I did manage to accidentally retire a pastor before his time recently – but only in print. Graham Heaps doesn’t step back at Dewsbury until next Christmas.
Poland: European Leadership Forum
John Stevens
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
Back in May, at the same time that UK voters were expressing their increasing Euroscepticism in the European elections, I was privileged to attend the European Leadership Forum in Poland.
This is an annual ‘by invitation’ conference that seeks to serve and equip national Christian leaders to renew the biblical church and re-evangelise Europe. There were over 750 delegates.
Jerusalem: forced out
Morning Star News
Date posted: 1 Oct 2014
After seven years of harassment by hard-line
Muslims, a Palestinian church
in East
Jerusalem has been
forced out of
their
building, church leaders said in late August.
The
congregation of Calvary Baptist
Church, under Holy Land Missions, moved
out of their building in the Shofat area of
Jerusalem in July after Islamists threatened
their landlord. They are looking for a safer,
more permanent place to meet.
From law to gospel
John Stevens tells us about the birth of the City Church in Manchester
In 1996 I joined the Law Faculty at the University of Birmingham as Lecturer in Property Law.
Encourage one another
Susie Leafe
Date posted: 1 Oct 2014
Our dear brother John Richardson went home to glory this year. As a writer, he is a loss to this column, but his ministry has myriad legacies. Not the least amongst them is the annual Junior Anglican Evangelical Conference (JAEC) which took place in September.
The ‘Junior’ refers to the delegates – they are all people with less than seven years in ordained ministry, with some who are only just embarking on that path. It was wonderful to be there to see men and women from all over the country gathered to explore together their future ministry, in pursuit of John’s oft repeated goal – nothing less than the evangelisation of England.
