Nativity!
Holly Price
Date posted: 1 Dec 2009
None Review
Primary issue NATIVITY! Director: Debbie Isitt Cert. U Teachers lurk anxiously behind tinsel-covered curtains; excited children wait for their big moment; and nervous parents hope that their child won’t be the one who it’s all too much for. Delightfully enchanting or toe-curlingly embarrassing, nativity plays are often memorable affairs. More to the point, whether it’s a traditional retelling or a politically correct revamp, the power of the original is easily lost.
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Music
Recipe for an evangelistic music event
Richard Simpkin
Date posted: 1 Jan 2010
I’ve been very encouraged that churches are planning to use music events as part of A Passion for Life.
I’m off to Morden in South London on Saturday to be interviewed at a concert which in past years has been simply that — a concert. The event has proved very popular, so I’m pleased that the organisers have wanted to include some gospel content to challenge the audience to think about Jesus. An evening like this is pretty easy to prepare and doesn’t create a lot of mess, so for those who thought they could never organise a musical bash, here’s a simple recipe for putting on a top gig.
The Third Degree
Charlotte Petra
Date posted: 1 Jan 2010
I went to talk to Josh who was a student at Loughborough University and is now a UCCF Relay worker there. I wanted to find out a bit more about the Relay programme from a Relay worker’s point of view.
CP: What is Relay?
Josh: Relay is a year of discipleship training in a student context. There’s a lot of training, input from Staff Workers and others involved in UCCF. It involves a lot of study, but also you get to learn by doing and you get chucked in at the deep end. At the same time you’re really supported as well, there’s great teaching and it’s a lot of fun.
Monthly arts and media column
Eleanor Margesson
Date posted: 1 Jan 2010
If you’re not sure who Michael McIntyre is or what he does then you’re either abroad or refusing to switch on your TV.
He is a 33-year-old stand-up comedian who has experienced a meteoric rise to fame over the last couple of years. He’s come from literally nowhere, largely because of the decision by Prince Charles to put him into his own 60th birthday celebrations as well as a Royal Variety Performance in 2006.
Whole gospel, whole church, whole world
Chris Wright
Date posted: 1 Oct 2009
The Lausanne Covenant, substantially crafted by John Stott, includes the phrase: ‘Evangelisation requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world’.
One might argue that the three wholes embodied in this ringing phrase are hardly new, and go back to the Apostle Paul, if not to the patriarch Abraham himself. Let us look at what each means.
View from the Hill
EN: What’s the point of theological college?
MO: For me, a theological college exists to serve local churches, working in partnership with them to carry out the great commission of Jesus to make disciples of all nations. Everything we do has to be seen in the context of that big picture — we’re here to help churches do what Jesus calls us to do.
One idea which is guiding Oak Hill a great deal just now is that our task is to train the equivalent of GPs, rather than specialists. A good GP has the breadth and depth of medical training to deal with whatever medical problem next walks through the door. They can’t say, ‘I’m only going to treat people who’ve injured their left elbows, but I won’t treat anyone who’s got ingrowing toenails’. The same is true of church pastors. They can’t pick and choose the situations and problems which arise in their churches, but have to offer biblical care and teaching to their people wherever they are in life.
Top drawer
Ray Porter
Date posted: 1 Oct 2009
Book Review
PAUL THE MISSIONARY
Realities, Strategies and Methods
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Cornerstone
In September, Cornerstone Evangelical Church, Nottingham celebrated the 40th anniversary of Peter and Valerie Lewis’s ministry there.
The story of Cornerstone tells how God can have plans for a small, back-street church in a Midland city which has touched thousands of lives and reached to the ends of the earth. No one should underestimate the potential of small churches, but we can also rejoice in the strategic role of larger churches in Britain today.
The Third Degree
Dan Hames
Date posted: 1 Sep 2009
UCCF’s mission is to the university. We exist to proclaim the message of Jesus in the student world and see young people becoming his disciples.
To that end, we produce an array of resources to equip Christian students for their mission — tooling them up for the work of mission. A happy by-product of this is that many of our resources can be put to good use in the local church as well: in youth groups, for training, for church-based student work.
The Third Degree
Charlotte Petra
Date posted: 1 Nov 2009
A university freshers’ week is typified by hordes of people doing exactly what they want; enjoying their new-found freedom, spending their student loan and often consuming vast amounts of alcohol. During this time everyone is trying to find their place, to make new friends and to get off on the right foot.
Imagine, or maybe you have been there yourself, a Christian trying to get by in this. For some it’s exciting, full of opportunities to get involved and have fun, but to stand tall for Jesus. For some it’s terrifying, being dragged to clubs and bars every night and having to explain over and over again why they aren’t getting drunk.
Youth Leaders
Keeping up with the youth
Dave Fenton
Date posted: 1 Nov 2009
This may not seem like a very spiritual article but it has come to me with real force in recent weeks.
Accurate record keeping is not on most youth leaders’ agendas as it is a bit of a pain taking registers of young people and there are many more exciting things to do in an evening of youth ministry. At a recent Root 66 training session (no plug intended!!), I asked the leaders to write down the names of five of their group and asked them to estimate how often each of these students came to the group. The usual response to that question is something like, ‘I suppose it’s about half the meetings this term’.
Will you join The Lausanne Global Conversation?
Julia Cameron
Date posted: 1 Oct 2009
The past 20 years have been like no other in history. Everything about the way we think and live has changed.
The under-25s entered education when the concept of Truth had already become historical, even quaint. And the last quarter century has, as a result, proved fertile ground for amoral pragmatism, which, not surprisingly, gained easy acceptance in many areas of life. The church needs leaders who can discern the times, leaders like the men of Issachar (1 Chronicles 12.32).
Baraka ya Roho Mutakatifu
Helen Roseveare
Date posted: 1 Oct 2009
It used to be the Belgian Congo, it later became Zaire, and today it’s back as the Democratic Republic of Congo. I want to tell you as best I can of what God most wonderfully did for our church in the NE corner of the country back in the 1950s.
God sent a wonderful visitation of the Holy Spirit to us. In the Congo-Swahili language that we used, we called this visitation Baraka ya Roho Mutakatifu (the blessing of the Holy Spirit).
A charity case?
Caroline Eade
Date posted: 1 Oct 2009
Churches and Christian charities are now subject to closer scrutiny by the Charity Commission. Although this gives rise to some concerns, the new obligations also give opportunities for the gospel.
The legal landscape within which churches and Christian charities operate has changed radically in recent years. The Charities Act 2006 contained two particularly important provisions. The first is that all churches with an annual income of more than £100,000 must now register with the Charity Commission. The second is that all charities are required to demonstrate and report on the way in which their activities benefit the public.
'There's a church in my life'
During November the European Union’s Lisbon treaty was finally ratified. Without any kind of public referendum on this in the UK, a great deal more power has been ceded to Brussels.
But beyond the politics, what kind of entity is the EU spiritually? Some have warned us of the power of Roman Catholicism behind it all. But if a recent trip to Paris is anything to go by it is far worse than that. The same spiritual deadness of secularism, which manipulates all public life here (from government, through education and the media), seems to hold an even greater sway there. Catholicism in France’s capital shows every sign of being in decline. A poster outside many of the churches of a smiling woman declaring ‘There is a church in my life’ turned out to be nothing more than an appeal to the French public for money. The campaign said that anyone baptised as an infant in an RC church belongs to the church and is responsible to meet the church’s needs. It all looked a bit desperate.