Mission among Welsh speakers: an urgent need
Gwilym Tudur
Date posted: 13 Nov 2024
In mid-October, Wales held its annual Shwmae Su’mae Day. Translated roughly as ‘hi there’, both shwmae (pronounced shoe-mai) in south Wales and su’mae (pronounced see-mai) in north Wales are colloquial greetings used to start a conversation.
Held since 2013, the purpose of Shwmae Su’mae Day is to encourage people to begin conversations in Welsh and promote its use in everyday discussions. Now in its 11th year, Shwmae Su’mae Day has become a national occasion as businesses, workplaces, and universities host events to motivate employees and students to practice the language.
earth watch
Tending to our recycling gnat and carbon camel
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 9 Sep 2025
The lights flicker briefly. Then complete darkness. A few seconds later, the drone of back-up generators all across the neighbourhood, the part-muffled roar of our own, and with bleeping electronics, everything’s back on.
Living in Dar es Salaam 20 years ago, we soon got used to the blackouts. It happened so often, it barely made the news. Here in the UK though, even a short interruption is big news and a few days, especially in winter, a state of emergency. That’s perhaps as it should be.
earth watch
Is real change possible in stewarding God’s earth?
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 2 Aug 2025
Is real change possible? That, for those who watch closely our heating world, is the crucial question. If we’re to avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown, we need actual real change.
Or to bring it into the Biblical narrative, if we’re to fulfil our first calling to rule and care for all creation as God’s agents, we’ll need actual real change. It sounds obvious but it’s not always easy to see.
Shock as Spurgeon's College closes
en staff
Date posted: 31 Jul 2025
Spurgeon's College, London, is to close with immediate effect.
The evangelical Baptist College was set up in 1856 by famous Victorian preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Savings protection rise could help churches
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 1 Sep 2025
Kingdom Bank - a UK Christian bank whose mission is to help churches grow - has welcomed a proposal to raise savings protection, saying it'll help churches.
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) exists to protect people's money if a financial firm fails. The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) has proposed an increase to the FSCS standard deposit protection limit, from £85,000 to £110,000 per eligible depositor, per authorised firm.
Pop star Mike Posner is a 'new man'
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 30 Aug 2025
In a recent Facebook post, musician Mike Posner expressed his desire to serve God.
The 37-year-old pop star wrote: “I’m a professional recording artist and my mission is to serve God and my fellow man.”
Italy: Thousands march for Jesus
Luke Randall
Date posted: 24 Jul 2025
Thousands of Christians have marched through Milan’s city centre carrying banners exclaiming that “Jesus is the light”, and “Jesus gives you freedom”.
The “March for Jesus” event, attended by about 5,000 people, proceeded through some of the city’s most famous streets and ended outside Milan Cathedral, where groups performed dances and songs. The event, dubbed by many as a “Joy March”, was organised by the Evangelistic Network in Mission (REM) in collaboration with churches and mission organisations, according to Evangelical Focus.
Cambodia 50 years on: Stories from the killing fields
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 21 Jul 2025
It is 50 years since the brutal Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia. Their genocide resulted in the deaths of 1.5-2 million people in the four years that followed. Here, the testimony of Christians from that time echoes down the years.
You are about to read some remarkable stories, writes Julia Cameron in the foreword to the book from which these accounts are drawn. They will stay with you. I’m sure of that.
politics & policy
Age checks for porn: A first step, not a full stop
James Mildred
Date posted: 25 Aug 2025
This summer the UK took a huge step forward in making the internet safer for children. At the heart of the Online Safety Act are the age verification provisions.
From the end of July, all social media platforms and commercial porn sites had to put in place robust and effective age gates to stop under-18s from accessing pornographic content. Platforms who fail to comply will be investigated and could face fines or court orders to stop them streaming in the UK.
Nations unite in prayer
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 25 Aug 2025
A “global week of prayer” is scheduled for the 1st to 7th of September, with the aim of offering nonstop prayer for every nation on Earth over the seven days.
An international, interdenominational prayer movement, 24-7 Prayer started in 1999 and has been using 24-7 Prayer Rooms to encounter God and drive mission and outreach for 25 years.
Iran: Prayer times attract non-Christians who sense ‘peace’
Luke Randall
Date posted: 19 Jul 2025
Non-Christians in Iran have asked believers if they can join in with their prayer times – such is the peace they sense in these gatherings, a mission leader says.
In an exclusive interview with en, David Yeghnazar, the executive director of Elam Ministries, revealed how Christians in the region are reacting to the ever-changing situation and how their lives may be impacted by the conflict.
‘Lost’ Martyn Lloyd-Jones tapes recovered
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 22 Aug 2025
Several recordings, currently not available anywhere in the world, have been obtained by the organisation committed to preserving and distributing the sermons of Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
The Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust (MLJ Trust) wrote on X: “One recording in particular is of special interest, and as far as we know, this ‘might be’ one of the last surviving copies of that sermon from [the evening of Friday] 1st November 1974!”
Family campaigner James Dobson dies
en staff
Date posted: 21 Aug 2025
Influential US evangelical author and psychologist James Dobson died today, Thursday, it has just been announced.
News agency Associated Press described him as "a child psychologist who founded the conservative ministry Focus on the Family and was a politically influential campaigner against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights". He was 89.
Tim Davies appointed as new Diocesan Bishop
en staff
Date posted: 17 Jul 2025
Tim Davies is the new Diocesan Bishop for the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), a GAFCON-aligned grouping outside the Church of England.
Andy Lines will continue in his roles as Diocesan Bishop of the Anglican Convocation Europe (ACE) and Presiding Bishop of the emerging province of the Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE), AMiE says. These are likewise not part of the CofE.
Silas Balraj takes top role at Tearfund
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 21 Aug 2025
Tearfund, a Christian charity that partners with churches in the poorest countries, has appointed its new Chief Executive.
Silas Balraj joins Tearfund with decades of experience from his time at Compassion International, where he held several senior roles including Country Director for India, Vice President for Asia, and Senior Principal in the charity’s global programme function.
Keswick Convention's international dimension
Attila Kapocs
Date posted: 16 Jul 2025
During its long history, the work of Keswick has rippled around the world, and there are now established ministries in some 16 countries, with nearly 90 individual Conventions, large and small.
The Hungarian work, known as BalatonNET, is an example of a nation catching the vision and making it its own, shaping a programme that is attracting young and old, and which is uniting believers across different denominations. Attila Kapocs tells the story…
After #KesCon25: Some reflections
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 14 Aug 2025
“Hear God’s Word, become like God’s Son, and serve God’s mission.” That’s what Keswick Ministries is hoping to have achieved with its three-week 2025 convention.
This year, the event celebrated 150 years since its first gathering. An estimated 14,000 people, including 3,500 children and teenagers, took part in a programme spread across three weeks (14 July to 1 August).
Students re-envisioned for evangelism through The Send
Thomas McBride
Date posted: 14 Jun 2025
UCCF recently partnered with The Send, a campaign that seeks to "activate believers to live a missional lifestyle by adopting and reaching real mission fields at home and abroad".
Through evenings of worship, prayer and praise, The Send encourages young people to pray for revival in our nation, something that is also deeply rooted within the ethos of UCCF.
The loneliness epidemic - and the church's mission
'I don’t know how to say, "I’m lonely," without sounding like I’m saying, "I’m a loser,"' a middle-aged man said to me not long ago. 'And I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m an ungrateful Christian.'
After all, this man said, he’s at church every week—not just there, but active. His life is a blur of activities. But he feels alone. In that, at least, he’s not alone.
Repeatedly, almost all of the data show us the same thing: that the so-called 'loneliness epidemic' experts warned about is real. We all know it’s bad, and we sometimes have a vague sense of why it’s happening. The answers that some come up with are often too big to actually affect any individual person’s life. Smartphones aren’t going away. We aren’t all moving back to our hometowns. We see a kind of resigned powerlessness to change society’s lonely condition. So why can’t the church fix this?
Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone
The answer lies partly in a book published a near quarter-century ago: political scientist Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Earlier this summer, The New York Times interviewed Putnam, asking him whether, since he saw the loneliness crisis coming, he saw any hope of it ending.
Putnam reiterated that the answer is what he calls 'social capital,' those networks of relationships needed to keep people together. Social capital comes in two forms, Putnam insists, and both are necessary. Bonding social capital is made up of the ties that link people to other people like themselves. Bridging social capital consists of the ties that link people to those unlike themselves.
The first time I was on set with a television talk-show host who, like me, grew up Southern Baptist, he turned to me before we went on the air and said, 'Pop quiz: What should always be the first song in a hymnal?' I immediately responded with the right answer ('Holy, Holy, Holy'), and we high-fived. No one else on that set knew what we were talking about. The secularist in the producer’s chair might have thought, 'What’s "Holy, Holy, Holy"?' The churchgoing evangelical behind the camera might well have thought, 'What’s a hymnal?'
That little detail of shared tribal memory, though, represented more than trivia. It was a way of recognizing one another—the same sort of church background, from the same sort of time period, the same sort of shared experience. We knew in that moment that, even if no one else in New York City knew the names of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, we did, and, even if no one in that television network building could say what words would follow 'I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag,' we would. All of us experience equivalent moments of bonding social capital.
Putnam makes it clear that one form of social capital is not 'good' and the other 'bad.' When you’re sick and need to be taken care of, usually that comes from relationships made with bonding capital. That’s good, but—when taken too far—really dangerous. Putnam notes that the Ku Klux Klan is 'pure social capital' of the bonding sort. Bridging capital, Putnam argues, is much harder, but both are needed for a person or a society to escape isolation.