letter from Kyrgyzstan
A Kyrgyz Bible for Kyrgyz people
Slavic Gospel Association
Date posted: 29 Jul 2025
Exciting developments are taking place in relation to the Slavic Gospel Association’s (SGA) support of the production and distribution of the Scriptures in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. We have a day of opportunity to advance the cause of the gospel in this predominantly Muslim country through the provision of God’s word in the Kyrgyz language. A Kyrgyz Bible for Kyrgyz people!
Bible ‘sets’ have been prepared and distributed – a specially designed Bible story book along with a full copy of the Scriptures. The Bible story book will appeal to children and also to Kyrgyz parents who love storytelling – it is an ingrained feature of Central Asian culture. By God’s grace, it will also provide an introduction to the reading and study of the Scriptures themselves. We know that the entrance of God’s word brings spiritual light and life.
'Bold' vision for new churches in Ireland
Mark Smith
Date posted: 28 Jul 2025
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) is planning at least ten new congregations and ten new church-planting projects over the next decade. The “bold vision” for mission was approved at this year’s General Assembly in Belfast.
Referencing a major PCI report, Church Planting – The Next Decade (or ‘10+10 in 10’), Council secretary Rick Hill, pointed to the growth and positive developments of projects and congregations in Balbriggan, Belfast, Wexford, Carrigart, and Kilkenny. Ben Walker, minister at Saintfield Road Presbyterian Church, said the PCI is “seeking to enable and encourage the creation of Christ-centred, worshipping communities throughout Ireland”.
Gaza: ‘Unique witness’ as believers make a difference
Luke Randall
Date posted: 20 Jun 2025
The contribution of Gaza’s shrinking Christian community to the relief effort in Gaza is acting as a unique witness to its locals, according to a mission worker.
In an exclusive interview with en, Hanna Massad, head of Christian Mission to Gaza (CMG), spoke of how Gaza’s believers are working to make a difference as the war between Hamas and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) rages on.
Considering singleness
Date posted: 16 Jun 2025
Dear Editor,
Thank you to Ann Culley (May en) for her moving letter on singleness and life after mission work. Her words resonated deeply with me. As a child, I felt called to mission, believing it meant overseas service. Instead, I’ve served in the NHS since 2011.
Brother Andrew’s Open Doors at 70: Smuggling Bibles and seeing miracles
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 18 Jul 2025
Smuggling Bibles to believers in communist countries – that’s how Open Doors UK & Ireland began. 70 years on, the organisation has become an international ministry working for the good of the persecuted church.
In 1955, Dutch missionary Brother Andrew set off for Poland with a suitcase containing his Bible and hundreds of tracts entitled “The Way of Salvation”. Behind the Iron Curtain (the divide between Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe and the West during the Cold War) he discovered churches desperately in need of Bibles, support, and prayer.
Keswick draws delegates from 90 conventions
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 16 Jul 2025
Delegates from 16 countries representing 90 different Bible-teaching events and almost 50,000 believers are attending the 150th celebrations at the Keswick Convention.
They are participating in a special track – the Keswick Fellowship International Consultation.
Keswick Convention's McQuoids moving to Canada
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 16 Jul 2025
Jeremy and Elizabeth McQuoid, who have been heavily involved with the Keswick Convention for many years, are set to move to Canada.
Jeremy has served as Teaching Pastor at Deeside Christian Fellowship Church in Aberdeen, Scotland for the past 21 years. He also serves as Chair of Trustees, Keswick Ministries. Elizabeth is Commissioning Editor at Keswick Ministries, and is behind the widely-acclaimed Food for the Journey daily Bible devotions.
‘But for here, I’d be dying of a broken heart’: help for rough sleepers
Rebekah Carter
Date posted: 6 Jun 2025
A Christian beacon of hope for rough sleepers and homeless people which helps more than 10,000 people a year has a fresh lease of life after renovation work.
Webber Street, London City Mission’s (LCM) Day Centre has been at the forefront of offering practical care and compassion with gospel hope for more than 60 years.
everyday theology
Mistakes in the Bible?
Michael Reeves
Date posted: 7 Jul 2025
We can submit to Scripture with confidence because of our Lord. Jesus was consistently clear that what Scripture says, God says.
For example, conversing with the Pharisees, he said: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matt. 19:4–6)
When shame closes doors, love opens them
Jason Roach
Date posted: 5 Jul 2025
For years, Eleanor slipped into our church services late and left early. She always sat in the back row, always turned down invitations to coffee and her attendance was sporadic at best. When she did come, she kept her head down, rarely making eye contact - many assumed she was just shy or private.
What none of us knew was that Eleanor was carrying a burden of profound shame. Her flat had gradually become overwhelmed with possessions: piles of magazines, bags of clothes, stacks of boxes - until there were only narrow pathways between mountains of items. The situation had deteriorated to the point where it posed genuine health risks, but her shame kept her locked in silence. She felt that if people saw how she lived, they would judge her and think something was wrong with her.
everyday evangelism
The shameless audacity – of two men called John!
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 5 Jul 2025
John always prayed for his unbelieving son – regardless of what people thought. His prayers involved tears, and his voice would tremble as he implored God to intervene. Yet sometimes I could detect something of an unspoken “tut” in the prayer meeting.
For some people such persistence in prayer showed a lack of trust in the Lord, while for others such demonstrations of emotion were unseemly, and certainly slightly awkward for us British!
More UK adults exploring Christianity? New report reveals why
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 2 Jul 2025
Amid recent reports of a “quiet revival” and renewed exploration of Christianity in the UK, the question remains: Why the growing interest? A new report from the Evangelical Alliance has helped reveal the answer.
The Evangelical Alliance’s (EA) “Finding Jesus” research, conducted in 2024 and released this June, found that UK adults are investigating Christianity primarily due to a need for meaning and hope – often prompted by a personal crisis.
Is our apologetics ‘frightfully early 2000s, darling’?
Jon Barrett
Date posted: 27 May 2025
Controversial opinion: much of our evangelism and apologetics fails to scratch where non-believers are itching, because it seeks to answer questions they’re not asking.
Or, perhaps more accurately, we remain methodologically committed to answering questions they once were, but are now no longer, asking. With the exception of that old chestnut of theodicy (the ‘why suffering’ question) much of our apologetics output still seems to be looking to undercut the objections born out of the Enlightenment or the era of scientism, and I’m less than convinced that those once-pressing issues now represent the focus of the emerging generation’s attention and curiosity.
a Jewish Christian perspective
How odd of God...
Joseph Steinberg
Date posted: 2 May 2025
British journalist W.N. Ewer wrote: “How odd of God to choose the Jews” and in response are the words: “But not as odd as those who choose a Jewish God and hate the Jew.”
Christian antisemitism is confounding. It is a terrible self-harm on the part of the church. In Genesis 12 the Lord chose Abraham and cut a covenant with him (Gen. 15) so that “through your offspring all the nations on earth shall be blessed.” (Gen. 22:18) What does God’s intended blessing to the nations via the Jewish people look like? It looks like the days of the early church!
His Royal Flyness?
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 24 May 2025
The King has helped the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) mark its 80th anniversary by unveiling the organisation’s latest aircraft.
Pressing a button, His Majesty – who learned to fly with the RAF – raised the hangar doors at RAF Northolt, London, to reveal the latest addition to MAF’s fleet – a new Cessna 208 Caravan. The Christian organisation, which has a worldwide fleet of about 115 light aircraft, will now have 11 planes serving Papua New Guinea’s people.
Crackdown on Christians in China
Luke Randall
Date posted: 27 Jun 2025
The Chinese authorities have increased restrictions on Christianity by effectively outlawing the presence of foreign mission workers, but not much will change about the way the church operates in the country, according to an Open Doors Persecution Analyst.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has taken stronger steps to ensure foreign missionaries cannot work in the country, with revised “Implementation Rules for the Administration of Religious Activities of Foreigners” dictating that they must receive state approval to perform basic Christian activities such as preaching, leading services, and the use of unauthorised Bibles in a public setting.
Great Western Railway project manager: "My faith is central"
en staff
Date posted: 28 Apr 2025
The Railway Mission is appointing Mameri Ese as a new Trustee.
Mameri is a senior project manager at Great Western Railway (GWR), with extensive expertise in finance, project delivery, and strategic leadership.
Ongoing investigation into alleged ‘harm’ at OMF school
en staff
Date posted: 25 Jun 2025
Amid OMF’s anniversary celebrations, “harm caused by several alleged perpetrators” at a school run by the organisation is being investigated.
The OMF website says: “Complaints have been received by OMF UK relating to harm caused to former Chefoo School pupils by a number of alleged perpetrators.
Parliamentary reception celebrates gospel movement
National Day of Prayer & Worship
Date posted: 18 May 2025
More than 100 Christian leaders from over 60 denominations and networks have gathered at Portcullis House, Westminster to celebrate a nationwide evangelistic movement.
The Parliamentary Reception celebrated Shine Your Light, a nationwide evangelistic movement taking the gospel onto streets and marketplaces across the UK. It was hosted by Jim Shannon MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the International Freedom of Religion and Belief and organised by the National Day of Prayer and Worship (NDOPW).
Ivory Coast drillers bring water of life
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 22 Jun 2025
Combining social action and gospel proclamation: that’s what an evangelical missionary organisation is seeking to do in Sub-Saharan West Africa.
In Golikoro, Ivory Coast, a group of Christians set to work drilling wells for those without water. But it wasn’t just drinking water they were seeking to bring, it was living water, too, through the sharing of the gospel.
How do we reach postgraduates with the gospel?
With a long history of undergraduate Christian Unions in the UK, it is rather less difficult to start a workplace Christian group in a university setting than it might be elsewhere.
After two years as a prayer meeting, the Christian Postgraduate and Staff Network (CPS) was formed back in 2016 and puts on events appropriate to university culture, to reach colleagues and encourage Christians.