Norman Howard Cliff, 1925-2007
A tribute by his sister, Estelle.
There are hundreds of ageing people all over the world who have a life-long love affair with a beautiful little former Treaty Port formerly called Chefoo, now Yantai. Norman was born there in 1925 of missionary parents and grandparents. There was a school there founded in 1881 for children of missionaries, by Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, who was the uncle of our grandfather.
Our parents, Howard and Mary Cliff, both pharmacists, went with baby Norman into the poverty stricken interior provinces of Henan and Shanxi. Our father was transferred to Hangzhou to be the Principal of the Bible Institute there and we were sent to Chefoo School.
Under construction
John McDonald
Date posted: 1 Feb 2008
Book Review
BUILDING FOR THE GOSPEL
A handbook for the visionary and the terrified
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Don't look back?
Joy Horn
Date posted: 1 Jan 2008
Famous books
John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was published in 1558. This splendid title was an attack on the ‘unnatural rule of women’, namely Mary I of England and Mary of Lorraine, the dowager queen of Scotland.
Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live … from the Living God was published in 1658.
The Third Degree
Mike Reeves
Date posted: 1 Jan 2008
Do you ever find yourself missing the old-fashioned sweetie shop of yore: all those rows of big glass jars that were crammed with toffees, fudges, bonbons, flying saucers?
Well, now there’s something with all of the thrill and none of the sugar — a theological sweetie shop: http://www.theologynetwork.org, UCCF’s new online theological centre. Here you can listen to why Luther’s wife hid in a fish barrel and how Muslims pray; read about the depth of God’s grace and what our resurrection bodies will be like.
Save all you can
Lee McMunn
Date posted: 1 Nov 2007
For many years the mission statement of the American evangelist, D.L. Moody, has been a personal challenge to me.
Why do you get out of bed in the morning? What motivates you from day to day? Moody once replied, ‘I look upon this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a life boat and said to me, “Moody, save all you can”’.
Singapore story
Julian Williams
Date posted: 1 Nov 2007
Situated just north of the equator on a continent which now boasts nearly 60% of the world’s population, Singapore’s four to five million inhabitants (who live on an island uncannily the same shape and size of the Isle of Wight) punch well above their weight in both the regional and global economies.
The current Singapore Church Directory (2001-02) lists nearly 370 churches, but what is striking is the breadth of ministry. Many provide special language ministries for Indonesian, Filipinos, Tamil (S. Indian), Cantonese and Hokkien (both Chinese), and others too, including more discreet ministries in the Muslim community. Some Sunday ministries begin as early as 7.30 am and continue with their multi-lingual services through to early evening.
The Third Degree
Daniel Hames
Date posted: 1 Dec 2007
Today’s university is a dangerous place for young students. In the marketplace of ideas, secular relativism is the unchallenged king, ruling with the strong arm of tolerance.
The gospel is frequently squashed out and silenced, as in the case of the recent ruling against Exeter Christian Union (CU) by Mark Shaw QC, which maintained that an atheist should be allowed to run the CU. The knowledge of the Living God is suppressed, just as we read in Romans 1, and subject to distortions and dubious personal interpretations. Today’s students are a generation without Christ and without hope in the world; taught to ignore him, indoctrinated to deny him.
Do we need doctrine?
Stephen Ridgeway
Date posted: 1 Dec 2007
Picture the scene: it’s 1993 and a fresh-faced art student sits on the floor of his painting studio next to a cross-legged Buddhist.
For the last half-hour they’ve been talking ‘God’. To the outside listener the conversation seems an incoherent ramble. Yet the student knows better. There’s method in his glibness. Unknown to his ‘enlightened’ subject he’s carefully preparing the ground for an evangelistic piéce de resistance.
Building multi-cultural churches
Ken Brownell
Date posted: 1 Jan 2008
One of the great things about London is its ethnic and cultural diversity. It is estimated that a third of Londoners are born outside the UK. Everywhere you see people of different races speaking different languages, eating different food, wearing different clothes and practising different religions.
I find this very exciting. I love shopping at our local street market in Hackney on Ridley Road where something from almost everywhere in the world – African snails, Jewish bagels, Asian fruit, Turkish delicacies – seems to be present. But it is not only ethnic diversity that is striking in London. There is also an amazing social diversity, with rich and poor, young and old and everyone in between living often in close proximity.
Ernest Walton-Lewsey, 1914-2007
Alan Vogt
Date posted: 1 Nov 2007
It is not given to many men to have two spheres of missionary service during their lifetime, but it was given to Ernest Walton-Lewsey.
Born on January 27 1914 in NW London, he was an only child and remained all his life a ‘lone ranger’. He never married. He did not come from a Christian home, but came under the influence of a godly grandmother. ‘I set out to know for myself the God she so deeply loved’, he wrote. At 12 years old he gave his life to Christ at a meeting at Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, saying, ‘I will serve you, Lord, never wanting anything for myself’.
Stacey Woods
Donald Macleod
Date posted: 1 Nov 2007
We have recently seen intense debates in the UK and the US about whether a student organisation may legitimately demand of members and speakers an adherence to a statement of faith.
C. Stacey Woods, a name not widely known, set in place the vital importance of credal definition for an evangelical university movement.
Brethren missions
David Smith
Date posted: 1 Nov 2005
Book Review
FATHER OF FAITH MISSIONS
The life and times of Anthony Norris Groves
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God's border crossing
Ed Beavan
Date posted: 1 Dec 2007
As The God Delusion continues to ride high in best-selling booklists globally, many Christians find this rising tide of hostility towards the gospel deeply discouraging.
But one Scottish minister has grabbed the opportunity created by this anti-God literary phenomenon to take the good news of Jesus back to the nation.
A trembling light on a stand
Natalie Tunbridge
Date posted: 1 Dec 2007
Raymond woke from his broken sleep with a dull ache in the pit of his stomach and an overpowering sense of fear that made his heart beat loudly in his chest. Today was the day he was to voyage to the northern shores of Africa. His passage on board the vessel had been secured for weeks, and his missionary articles were stowed ready. The vessel only waited upon him.
From the open window, the town of Genoa seemed to buzz with public anticipation of his bold ambitions to share Jesus Christ with those of the faith that Europe fought in the on-going Crusades. Picking up his quill pen, he wrote. ‘I am overwhelmed with terror at the thought of what might befall me in the country whither I am going. . .’ The quill shook uncontrollably in his hand. ‘. . . The idea of enduring torture or lifelong imprisonment presents itself with such force that I cannot control my emotions.’
Why join a small church?
John Benton
Date posted: 1 Dec 2007
A Christian married couple I know of had to move out of London and leave their church to go north with the husband’s job.
Much to the surprise of some of their long-term Christian pals they began attending the little and very local Anglican church in the village to which they had moved. The friends of the couple had concerns. The church was small, the teaching was not heretical but it was not great, and there was nothing there for their four children.
The Third Degree
Becci Brown
Date posted: 1 Oct 2007
‘My desire is for students to renew their confidence in the gospel and their commitment to passing it on’, enthused Hugh Palmer, one of the keynote speakers at UCCF’s national CU leaders’ training conference, Forum, in early September at the Quinta Centre in Shropshire.
Engaging with God’s Word, so that CU leaders return to their universities better equipped to speak the gospel out, has always been the objective of Forum. This year’s conference, entitled Trans-mission, pursued that vision in a number of ways.
Father of the Korean Church
Mike Harris
Date posted: 1 Sep 2007
A few years ago, I planned to work as a TESOL teacher in my retirement.
Having obtained the certificate, I waited. My first enquirer was a Korean who went on to get his PhD and is now on a pastoral team back in his own country. He was the first of many Christian brothers I met doing theology or defence studies at Aberdeen University.
Sinfully monochrome
Christopher Bennett
Date posted: 1 Nov 2007
Book Review
DYNAMIC DIVERSITY
The new humanity church for today and tomorrow
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