Disciple-making leaders
JR: You speak around the country about the need to grow and disciple leaders within local churches. Briefly, how do you understand biblical leadership?
MH: Paul speaks in Philippians 1 and 2 Corinthians 1 about working with people for their progress and joy in God, so that they grow firm in their faith and have abundant joy in Christ. That’s a great, simple definition of spiritual leadership. You don’t have to think very hard to see why a church that is standing firm in their faith and full of godly joy is going to be a beacon for the gospel.
EMA: summer in the City
Adrian Reynolds
Date posted: 1 Mar 2013
2013 marks 30 years of the Evangelical Ministry Assembly.
It’s now well established as an annual feature in the ministerial calendar. But why do people keep coming. EN asked a few regulars.
Youth Leaders
Community life...
Dave Fenton
Date posted: 1 Apr 2013
Most of our youth groups are attached to a church. It may be just one of the activities the church gets up to alongside its services on Sunday. There are youth groups which are completely separate from the life of the church and there are others where there is some kind of link between the two. How much should integration be attempted or should we wait until they are 18 when they simply move up to ‘adult church’?
All-age service
One answer to this is the all-age service which some do well and for others it becomes a children’s service where the adults and older children are spectators. In a typical church with people of most ages represented, is it possible for there to be some degree of shared activity? Starting with services, I think it is possible to bring young people into what is done there. If they stay in the morning services or turn up in the evening their presence needs to be acknowledged. That does not mean the whole service is geared to their language and culture, but, if they are there, what can’t they do. They can welcome at the door, they can read a lesson, they can pray, they can play in the worship band and, at the end, they can help count the money and make the coffee. It may even appropriate for a 16-year-old to preach the first five minutes of a sermon (initially) and have his talk critiqued by a sensitive mentor.
Back catalogue
Joy Horn
Date posted: 1 Jan 2013
Here are some encouragements and challenges from the past.
The monk Columba sailed from Ireland, with 12 companions, and after a perilous journey landed on the island of Iona in 563. He founded a monastery there to train young men for the evangelisation of the North Picts.
The Mormons are coming
Bobby Gilpin
Date posted: 1 Jan 2013
‘Would you like to hear more about the restored gospel?’
This is a question many of the 58,000 missionaries for the Mormon Church (or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) ask people worldwide every day. This 14-million-member-strong movement is getting public attention as Mitt Romney, the losing US presidential candidate for the Republican Party, is a committed member.
Trainers tied for action!
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Feb 2013
Though nominal Christianity is declining in Britain, Bible-believing Christian faith seems to be making real headway.
The increasing suspicion that God has something special in store is epitomised by the transformation that has occurred at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology (WEST) in the last couple of years.
The Third Degree
12,000 at CU carol services
Pod Bhogal
Date posted: 1 Feb 2013
An estimated 12,000 students attended Christian Union carol services in 2012, the biggest of which drew over 3,000 attendees.
Associate Christian Union Staff Worker Michael Ots was the speaker at Durham Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (DICCU) carol service. He commented: ‘It was awesome to see over 3,000 people packing every corner of the cathedral to hear about Jesus. It’s not unusual for [carol service] attendance to be at least four times that of the CU. In Durham it was ten times! Student carol services are probably the most effective events of the whole year at getting not yet Christians to hear the gospel’.
John Chapman, 1930-2012
John Chapman, Sydney’s leading evangelist for more than 50 years, passed away in hospital on November 16 2012 at the age of 82.
‘Chappo’, as he was affectionately known, was converted in his teens and was active in youth ministry. Following a stint as a manual arts teacher, he spent a year in Moore College and was ordained in the Diocese of Armidale in 1957. After a challenging curacy in Moree, he was appointed Youth Director for the Diocese in 1960 and then Director of Christian Education (1966-68).
Letter from America
Caesar salad
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Dec 2012
‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s...’ This is the famous pronouncement of the Master in response to a particularly intense period of Pharisaic grilling. But what precisely does it mean as Christians in America negotiate a cultural landscape that appears less friendly to traditional Christian values and the message of the gospel than in the recent past?
The blogosphere is not short of answers, but I suggest that 1 John, in particular, provides a compelling look at the right way to respond. In the context in which John was writing, there was an incipient ‘Gnosticism’ that was advocating a toned down spirituality, denying that Jesus was the Christ in ‘flesh’, and therefore that it was possible to be spiritual without actual practical commitment to the local church or, indeed, without practising righteousness. In other words, in response to pressures from a pagan environment, the church was susceptible to a form of teaching that allowed it to live in a less combative fashion with its neighbours — understandable in its own right — but by means of denying core doctrines (‘Jesus is the Christ’) and core moral behaviour (‘practising righteousness’).
The Third Degree
Pray for 5, give to 5, invite 5
Pod Bhogal
Date posted: 1 Dec 2012
CUs in Great Britain have begun preparations for their February Uncover missions by launching the Uncover ‘pray for five, give to five and invite five’ campaign. UCCF hope that the national initiative, which involves students praying for five friends, giving those friends a Gospel and inviting them to read it one-to-one, will reach 50,000 students in 2012/13.
Tim Rudge, UCCF Field Director, was the main speaker for Royal Holloway Christian Union’s launch event. He commented: ‘The CU did a fine job. They made it simple, so that students could easily understand the strategy. On each chair the CU had put out a copy of the Gospel, a pray for five prayer card and a copy of the Uncover Seeker Bible Study Guide. They bundled their Gospels in to attractive “gift” packages of five.
New mission to England
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Aug 2011
‘The Anglican Mission in England [AMIE] stands for the promotion of mission, of biblical church planting and of the selection, training and deployment of ordinands for ministry in the Church of England.’
With these words, the Rev. Paul Perkin, the chair of AMIE’s Steering Committee, welcomed over 140 people to its inaugural event in St. Peter’s-upon-Cornhill, London, on June 22. The next day, Paul and other leaders of AMIE addressed a gathering of leaders on its vision at the Evangelical Ministry Assembly at St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, London.
Churches and charitable status
Ben Bourne
Date posted: 1 Jan 2013
Much ink has been spilled recently over the decision by the Charity Commission to deny the Plymouth Brethren charitable status in respect of one of its gospel halls in Devon (the Preston Down Trust).
The church trust, a member of the Exclusive Brethren, was refused charitable status on the basis that it failed to demonstrate that it provided a genuine public benefit.
Cruel to be kind?
Robert Strivens
Date posted: 1 Jan 2013
Book Review
WHEN HELPING HURTS
How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor ... and yourself
Read review
Careforce: the legacy
Ian Prior
Date posted: 1 Nov 2012
‘A legacy is something you leave behind that will benefit others.’
Have you noticed how in recent years everything and everyone has to have a legacy? Events, people, organisations are now measured by their legacy — by what of worth they leave behind.
Crosslinks: 90 years and counting
Andy Lines
Date posted: 1 Oct 2012
October 27 marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (BCMS), now called Crosslinks.
This is a landmark shared with the FIEC. As we look back with thanks to God, it is also salutary to ponder the continuing need for such a society.
Michael Cole, 1935-2012
Nick Cole
Date posted: 1 Nov 2012
Squadron Leader Michael Cole, OBE, explorer and practical missionary, was born on April 10 1935. He died of cancer on September 25 2012, aged 77, at his home in Ross-on-Wye.
Michael Cole adopted the words of the Victorian missionary explorer David Livingstone, ‘Sympathy is no substitute for action’, as his own personal motto.
Heart change
Sally Orwin Lee
Date posted: 1 Dec 2012
The lyrical opening to Dire Straits’ ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and the melodic refrain of Brothers in Arms resonated in my sound track while coming of age in the early 80s.
Knopfler’s song, ‘Sailing to Philadelphia’, featured in June this year. I didn’t sail to Philadelphia, ‘a world away from the coaly Tyne’ where family roots lie. I flew there to complete the two modules of Biblical Counselling training provided by CCEF, which require on-site attendance: Counselling Observation and Essential Qualities of a Biblical Counsellor.
'We're paratroopers...'
There is a stirring line in |Band of Brothers|.
The TV series tells the story of ‘Easy Company’ led by Dick Winters, part of the 101st US Airborne Division in the months following D-Day.
The German counter-attack came unexpectedly in December 1944 through the Ardennes and the 101st were given the task of holding the area around the strategic town of Bastogne. Short of warm clothing, equipment and ammunition, the soldiers of Easy Company arrive to find fellow Americans in retreat. At this point, Captain Winters is informed that the German panzers are about to cut the road to the South. ‘It looks like you guys are going to be surrounded’, explains Second Lieutenant George Rice. Then comes Winters’ heroic reply: ‘We’re paratroopers, Lieutenant. We’re supposed to be surrounded’.