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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
Door to door
Steve Hay
Date posted: 1 Oct 2014
Dear Sir,
In reply to Mike Payne’s letter (Sept en ) ‘visiting opportunities’ – I have been conducting door-to-door visiting for 30 years, first in South London, then here in North East Scotland.
Pakistan: leaflet drop
World Watch Monitor
Date posted: 1 Oct 2014
In what looks like a bid to extend its influence in the South Asian region, so-called Islamic State (IS) militants have allegedly distributed 12-page pamphlets in the north-west of Pakistan, in Peshawar and in Afghan refugee camps based near its outskirts, it was reported in early September.
They were written in Pashto and Dari, and titled Fatah (Victory) The editor’s name, however, appears fake and their place of publication obscure. For a long time, Afghan resistance groups, including the Haqqani Network, Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan and the Tora Bora group have published similar pamphlets, magazines and propaganda literature in Peshawar’s black markets. However this latest spread has raised fears of a possible link between IS and such militants, threatening all non-Muslims.
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.
Lessons for the future from the US?
Andrew Symes
Date posted: 1 Aug 2014
At the end of June I was privileged to attend the Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a vibrant and upbeat gathering of nearly 1000 people at St Vincent University, Pennsylvania.
It was a celebration to mark five years since its formation, to worship together and hear from the Lord, and to recommit itself as a movement under the leadership of Archbishop-Elect Foley Beach to mission based on the foundation of God’s Word.
news in brief
New CEO
Christian Witness to Israel, the international mission to the Jewish people, which was
founded
in 1842, has appointed Joseph
Steinberg as its new Chief Executive Officer
from July 1.
Joseph grew up in a Jewish home in the
USA and as a teenager, after searching the
Old Testament scriptures, became convinced
that Jesus was the promised Messiah.
Seeing ahead 2020
With plans to facilitate the planting of 20 new churches across Birmingham by 2020, June’s annual Birmingham conference, with around 100 in attendance, noted that almost half of that target has been reached within four years.
A range of churches from different denominations and networks, including New Frontiers, Birmingham City Mission, Church of England and FIEC came together, committed to seeing people come to Christ.
New kid on the block
Dave Gobbett has recently become lead minister at Highfields, Cardiff, one of the largest churches in Wales. EN interviews him
Dave is married to Sally and they have three young children.
To the open air of France
Open Air Campaigners
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
It was reported in July that Peter Kennelly of OAC Ministries (Open Air Campaigners) is resigning as National Director to work with OAC in France. His change of direction is based on timely guidance that characterises his journey of faith.
Over the years, Peter has taken part in missions and outreach activities, in Britain and abroad. ‘I always had a heart for France and the French-speaking people,’ he explains. ‘I’ve been learning the language and going over to France regularly to join others in evangelism.
news in brief
Afghanistan: two shot
Two Finnish women working for International Assistance Mission (IAM), a Christian aid charity, were killed by gunmen in Herat in late July, both having worked in Afghanistan since March 1997.
Two men, travelling by motorcycle, shot the women while they were in a taxi. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The IAM has worked continuously in Afghanistan since 1966 and is well known there as an openly Christian aid organisation that works to capacity build in healthcare and socio-economic development.
Australia: home-grown jihadis
Peter Riddell
Date posted: 1 Sep 2014
The capital cities of Australia’s states experienced their first Muslim Global Dawah Day on July 5, with teams of young mission-minded Muslim activists distributing leaflets and engaging in street evangelism for Islam. They took their lead from a wealth of online resources, with well-known British activist Abdur Raheem Green being a key spokesman for the worldwide campaign.
Although Global Dawah Day had little profile in the mainstream Australian media, it came at a time of considerable public anxiety and government activity over reports of home-jihadis grown leaving to fight for radical Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq. In early July, the Australian Attorney General warned that at least 60 Australians are actively involved in fighting with extremist groups, such as the newly declared Islamic caliphate, with a further 150 providing various forms of support.
John Stott’s right hand
Frances Whitehead was John Stott’s secretary and played a crucial role in his life. EN carries a slice of her upcoming biography
The staffing for John Stott’s global operation was modest, as was its office space.
