The Third Degree
Forum 2005 - essential
Pod Bhogal
Date posted: 1 Oct 2005
September is an important time for students! It marks the end of summer and for many it’s the beginning of a new journey as they leave home — often for the first time.
It was also a key time for CU leaders across the UK as they gathered together for Forum 2005 — UCCF’s national CU leaders’ training conference. Over 400 CU leaders, 60 CU Staff Workers and 50 Relay volunteers attended this year’s event at the Quinta Conference Centre, Oswestry, from September 5 to 9. From Bangor to Bognor they were all united in heart and mind with a common purpose and vision — the evangelisation of our universities and colleges.
A sacrifice too far?
Stephen Timmis
Date posted: 1 Oct 2005
‘Jesus’s instruction for us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for the harvest tells us that the need of the day is to get as many young men and women as possible into full-time paid gospel ministry’ reflects a prevailing culture among ‘our kind of evangelicals’.
Our emphasis on getting ‘good people’ into our apprenticeships, ministry training schemes and equivalents, and in turn sending them to theological college and into ‘ministry’, speaks volumes about our priorities — for our churches and for the individuals concerned.
Treasures of darkness
Roger Carswell
Date posted: 1 Oct 2005
I am not a doctor, a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I have been a patient. What I share is simply one person’s journey with depression.
I do not pretend to be a medical expert or to understand the working of the mind. However, like every other individual, including medical workers themselves, I battle against human frailty of one sort or another. For some people that may mean the limitation of physical weakness, for others it can be emotional or mental hurdles that may seem insurmountable.
Monthly media and arts column
Eleanor Margesson
Date posted: 1 Nov 2005
I’ve got about an hour before my husband returns from work and we can watch the next episode in the fourth series of the hit serial ‘24’.
The first three episodes have set in place a nail-biting hostage scenario that only the mighty Jack Bauer of the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit could cope with, and I’m desperate to know how it all plays out.
Strangely optimistic
It’s 100 years since Korean revival prayer meetings began. Of all places, its roots are found deep inside North Korea. One of AsiaLink’s staff went inside this most persecuted of countries.
Sinuiju doesn’t have much to commend it. This once bubbly logging town turned industrial community now has few signs of life. Its buildings are colourless, its people exhausted. Our train crawled alongside rolling stock that looked like it had been bombed.
Digging ditches
Dr Helen Roseveare
Date posted: 1 Sep 2005
Dr. Helen Roseveare, now in her 80th year worked with the Heart of Africa Mission during the 1950s and 60s. Her autobiography Give me this Mountain is a Christian missionary classic. With the publication of her new book Digging Ditches, EN was able to get an interview with her.
EN: What part of Africa did you serve in as a missionary?
Where there are Chinese...
God has been at work in the South East of England. Over the last two years the Chinese Christian Fellowship in the town of Guildford has seen around 40 people come to Christ. One of the leaders tells their story …
God has a purpose for the Chinese people. We have a dream, that one day the land of China will not only be filled with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also be a place of mission to the whole world.
What's your strategy?
Roger Carswell
Date posted: 1 Aug 2005
Evangelist Roger Carswell sees many churches in his work. Here he tells of a recent mission and some of its lessons.
One of the changes in evangelistic approach over recent years is the development of event-based, and targeted evangelistic meetings.
Friction between church leaders?
Graham Heaps
Date posted: 1 Oct 2005
So much of the book of Acts is so encouraging that it comes as quite a shock to see Luke including the closing verses of chapter 15, where we read of a heated dispute between Paul and Barnabas.
Yet we need a realistic appreciation of how easy it is for the closest of friends in the leadership of a local church not only to disagree and fall out, but to divide with bitterness and go their own separate ways. And the Holy Spirit does so much more than show us the dangers of such division. He shows us the underlying attitudes that can cause divisions to arise over such practical issues as the suitability of a young man like John Mark for responsibility in an outreach venture.
Long and short of it
Nick Cole
Date posted: 1 Jul 2005
Book Review
A GUIDE TO SHORT TERM MISSIONS
A comprehensive manual for planning an effective mission trip
Read review
Making history?
Iain Murray
Date posted: 1 Sep 2005
Book Review
THE DOMINANCE OF EVANGELICALISM
The Age of Spurgeon and Moody
Read review
Watching the web
Stephen Doggett
Date posted: 1 Sep 2005
Web Review
Ten years ago the computer gaming industry was primarily aimed at the younger generation. But as that generation has grown up and technology has increased, the content of mainstream games has become ever more ‘adult’. These days family games are not good business; the biggest games are marketed as if they were movies and carry age restrictions like videos.
Read review
But one aim
Norman Cliff
Date posted: 1 Jun 2005
100 years ago this month, the great missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, went to be with the Lord . . .
On June 3 1905, 30 guests from six missionary societies attended a reception at the mission house of the China Inland Mission in Changsha.
The Third Degree
Jonathan Carswell
Date posted: 1 Jun 2005
?I wish I?d known it would be like this; I would have brought a bus load!? This was just one comment from a student after attending the recent missions conference for university students at New Tribes Mission, North Cotes.
Students gathered from universities all over the UK and indeed Europe, to be part of it. Until they arrived they were not quite sure what they were letting themselves in for, as it was the first conference of its kind ? but a pleasant surprise for waiting ? it was a super weekend.
Ambassadors for Christ
Have you ever had the experience of feeling that God has guided you only for everything to seemingly go wrong? If you have been, this article from the pen of a missionary of the 1930s, Mildred Cable, might help.
‘It was well that it was in thine heart’.
‘We have carefully considered your case and have very regretfully reached the conclusion that we cannot accept you for foreign service.’
The Third Degree
Jonathan Carswell
Date posted: 1 Aug 2005
The radio was still on when I opened my bleary eyes. I must have dropped off to sleep the night before without turning it off. The last few weeks of term had been hard work. I rolled over, giving myself ten more minutes under the duvet. Then it hit me ? ten more minutes wasn?t an option.
