What do you think of when ‘mission’ is mentioned?
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 6 Feb 2026
Growing up in the UK church, when the word “mission” was mentioned, I’d instinctively picture overseas work. The phrase “mission field” conjured up images of far-away countries with people I perceived as different from myself. Was I correct in my definition?
David Baldwin, CEO of 2:19 Teach to Reach – which exists to help local churches share the gospel cross-culturally – maintains that there is a difference between evangelism and mission: “Whereas evangelism means sharing the gospel with those in our usual circles, mission always involves movement across some kind of boundary; geographical, cultural, ethnic or other.”
Jellyfish sting girl given urgent MAF flight
Gary Clayton
Date posted: 3 Jan 2026
A teenager who received an excruciatingly painful sting from the poisonous, transparent tentacles of a box jellyfish, was flown to hospital from a remote part of Arnhem Land, Australia in just 25 minutes – thanks to the Mission Aviation Fellowship.
By road, the tortuous journey from Nyinykay homeland to Gove would have taken about three hours – assuming that the rough bush tracks could be traversed without trouble or, during the rainy season, flooding.
From bird migration to Biblical mission
Karen Soole
Date posted: 28 Feb 2026
March is the month when flocks of overwintering birds begin to leave the UK. Bird migration is an incredible natural phenomenon that occurs around us, yet many of us do not notice it.
But each year, as many birds leave our relatively mild winters behind to breed further north, birders and conservationists wonder how many will return. Those who dedicate their lives to this work are acutely aware that all is not well. The decline in numbers of once-common garden birds, such as sparrows and starlings, is drastic. It is easy to miss until someone tells you: “House sparrow populations in the UK have declined by approximately 60 –70% since the 1970s, with nearly 30 million vanishing from the countryside and cities.” The biggest problems most declining species face are habitat destruction, food availability, and disease.
First City Mission marks 200 years
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 21 Feb 2026
The world’s first official City Mission, Glasgow City Mission, is celebrating 200 years of service in Scotland’s largest city.
Established in 1826, Glasgow City Mission was founded by young Glaswegian David Naismith at just 26 years old. Moved by the poverty he witnessed in Glasgow, Naismith put the gospel into action by caring for people’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs.
Churches gear up for Life ’26 nationwide mission
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 1 Jan 2026
Churches across the country are preparing for a focused period of evangelism. Life ’26 is a nationwide gospel mission, starting in March, where church fellowships will share the gospel with their communities. A Passion for Life (APFL) oversees the mission. This year, the theme is a question: “Ever feel like something’s missing?”
Alex Hillman, APFL’s Communications and Operations Lead, told en: “Over 250 churches, from Thurso in the North of Scotland to St Helier in Jersey, will be joining together to share the gospel with friends, family, neighbours and people in their communities, under a common banner [and] with a shared mission campaign identity.”
Two complementary models of planting
Andy Lines
Date posted: 10 Mar 2026
As I look back on five years since the official launch of the Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE), it has been fascinating to reflect on the way our ministry has developed under the Lord’s guidance. In particular I’ve been able to discern two complementary models of mission through church planting.
In 2017 I was appointed as “Missionary Bishop to Europe” by GAFCON, to promote a Biblically-faithful Anglican movement in our region as an alternative to alignment with Canterbury. What is a “missionary bishop”? To summarise, we could say that it is a leader who gathers faithful individuals and emerging congregations into an Anglican fellowship and polity in a designated area. And it is to actively instigate the establishment of the church, ordaining and pastoring clergy, linking the new local movement with orthodox Anglicans globally, under the leadership of the GAFCON senior archbishops.
Caffeine and Kingdom?
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 25 Mar 2026
Can coffee fuel evangelism? If it’s Tommy’s Coffee, then “yes!” say directors Luke Porter and Joel Barwick, who founded the kingdom-building coffee ministry last year.
The coffee cart, based in St Thomas’ Church, Newcastle, first started serving customers in May with a mission to simultaneously caffeinate and connect with the city’s residents.
A Passion for Life ignites church outreach
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 23 Mar 2026
More than 340 churches are taking part in a nationwide evangelistic mission around the Easter period.
Churches as far north as Thurso, Scotland and as far south as Jersey (plus a church in France, en has been told!) are participating in Life’26 – facilitated by outreach organisation A Passion for Life (APFL) and covered in detail in both the January and February print editions of en.
New memorial
en staff
Date posted: 5 Apr 2026
A memorial plaque was set to be unveiled in Norwich Cathedral in late March, in memory of noted evangelical bishop and hymn writer Timothy Dudley-Smith. He died in 2024.
He is best known as a writer of hymns, and the memorial stone being unveiled in Norwich Cathedral bears the line: “Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord.” The unveiling and dedication of the stone was set to take place at the Cathedral’s Evensong on 22 March at 3:30pm. Timothy Dudley-Smith was greatly involved with the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS), Billy Graham’s Mission England (1984) and the Evangelical Alliance from 1987 to 1992. He was Archdeacon of Norwich and Bishop of Thetford.
AI’s assault on the press
Jenny Taylor
Date posted: 2 Apr 2026
My father had a saying, an old Suffolk “saw”: “While fools go prating far and wide, we stops at ’ome, my dog and I.”
There is a certain truth in that. The world seems to be getting more “foolish”, and I am less convinced that prating far and wide – a public life of activism for its own sake, be it political or journalistic – makes much difference to the betterment of the human condition. And anything with “global” in its name makes me run for the hills.
Leading evangelical missiologist Andrew Kirk dies
Daniel Kirk
Date posted: 1 Feb 2026
J. Andrew Kirk died on the first of January, at the age of 88, from an unexpected heart attack.
Kirk, an ordained Anglican minister for over 60 years, was a leading Evangelical missiologist in the second half of the 20th century, who was a co-founder of the influential Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL in Spanish) as well as the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity (LICC). He wrote over 20 books, co-authored many more and wrote hundreds of journal articles; firstly as a New Testament scholar and then as a missiologist. His most important books were Liberation Theology: an Evangelical View from the Third World (1979), What is Mission? Theological Explorations (1999) and Being Human: An Historical Enquiry Into Who We Are (2019). Kirk visited and lectured in over a hundred countries and supervised postgraduate students from all the world’s continents.
en's 40th: Thanking God
en staff
Date posted: 30 Mar 2026
Evangelicals Now was first published in July 1986 and so, from Easter for the rest of this year, we will be celebrating the paper’s 40th anniversary with a series of events to mark the occasion.
It’s an excellent opportunity for regular readers to thank God for sustaining the publication for so long, to take stock of en’s current situation and assess future plans. You might say that this article is about Evangelicals Then, Evangelicals Now and Evangelicals to Come.
Martin Goldsmith: Much-loved Jewish disciple of Jesus
Charles Gardner
Date posted: 21 Feb 2026
One of Britain’s most well-known Jewish disciples of Jesus, Martin Goldsmith, has died peacefully, aged 91, after an extraordinary life of service to Christ.
After ten colourful years as a missionary in South East Asia with the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), he served for over 50 years as a gifted teacher at All Nations Christian College in Hertfordshire.
Saudi Arabia: Is a door opening for the gospel?
Luke Randall
Date posted: 28 Mar 2026
Gospel opportunities are on the rise amidst surging investment in tourism in Saudi Arabia.
The Middle Eastern nation has invested almost £600 million in its tourism sector as it aims to become a key global competitor in the industry by 2030. Platform 67, an organisation which liaises with missionaries around the world, says opportunities to share the gospel on the ground have increased as tourism booms.
Iran: ‘Streets smell of blood’
Luke Randall
Date posted: 20 Feb 2026
Christians in Iran continue to meet to grieve and pray amidst ongoing unrest and state brutality, with one person on the ground revealing that “the streets smell of blood”.
Early 2026 has seen Iran plagued by mass demonstrations, fuelled by economic hardship, against the nation’s brutal Islamic regime, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
10,000 mile journey to proclaim gospel in Glasgow
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 27 Mar 2026
Scottish band The Proclaimers famously sang that they would “walk 500 miles” and indeed “walk 500 more”.
But Tim Scoular and his family have moved their lives more than 10,000 miles from Sydney to Scotland – all for the sake of sharing the gospel in Glasgow.
Tom Muir
Sarah Robinson
Date posted: 25 Mar 2026
Tom Muir has been inducted into the role of Church Planting Director in the Free Church of Scotland.
The induction took place at a meeting of the Edinburgh and Perth Presbytery. The Free Church is seeking to strengthen church planting across the denomination and support the development of new gospel communities in the years ahead.
Foreign aid: An open letter to David Lammy
James Burnett
Date posted: 21 Mar 2026
Dear David, I trust you are well. I am writing to you about foreign aid cuts.
Red Nose Day, 2019
In response to Stacy Dooley’s visit to Uganda in 2019, you sought to redress the Red Nose Day narrative which, in your words, promoted a “white saviour” colonial attitude to Africa. You opined on the Victoria Derbyshire show: “Comic Relief is a 20-year-old formula that asks comedians to perform and sends celebrities – most often white – out to Africa, and that image evokes for lots of ethnic minorities in Britain a colonial image of a white beautiful heroine holding a black child, with no agency, no parents in sight.”
Evangelical alarm over Baptist vote
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 19 Mar 2026
Evangelicals in the Baptist Union say voting “none of the above” in this year’s presidential elections for the denomination may be the best option.
They say the choice of candidates on offer does not reflect the Biblical truth they wish to stand for.
Ten Questions with Steffan Job
en staff
Date posted: 8 Mar 2026
Steffan Job is the Ministry Director of the Evangelical Movement of Wales, and an elder at Capel y Ffynnon, Bangor.
1. How did you become a Christian?
letter from Kenya
My great-grandfather was a murderer
Kip’ Chelashaw
Date posted: 7 Mar 2026
Do you know who was the first Christian in your family tree? My great-grandfather was a murderer. Shocking, and even today many traditional cattle herders in Northern Kenya kill and are killed in violent cattle raids.
After some time in prison, this murderer started attending church and was baptised with the name Noah. His son, Laban, walked 60km to find a school where he could learn to read and write. He was sent away, being too old for school, but found a mission station where he learnt to read the Bible. Laban was sent back home to start a school and a church, and he was the first in his family to reject the practice of polygamy.
DRC: People ‘hungrier than ever’ for truth
Luke Randall
Date posted: 2 Mar 2026
People in Goma are “hungrier than ever for the basic truths of the Christian faith” a year on from attacks by M23 rebels on Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The Rwandan-backed force invaded the city in January 2025, leaving around 3,000 dead and 700,000 displaced. However, Martin Gordo, the Bishop of Goma, has revealed to the Church Mission Society (CMS) that a spiritual awakening has captured the area amidst the negative headlines, with thousands exploring matters of faith and becoming Christians.
Middle East: Growth brings fears of ‘discipleship gap’
Luke Randall
Date posted: 2 Mar 2026
Despite much turmoil across the Middle East, reports indicate that the gospel is advancing rapidly throughout the region, so much so that a “discipleship gap” could be looming if more church leaders are not found.
Local church leaders say that this “spiritual awakening”, which kick-started during the Covid pandemic, is growing at such a rate that positive problems are appearing, including the need for more spiritual leaders, as people increasingly search for meaning amidst the difficulties facing the region, according to the Church Mission Society (CMS).
Andrew Anderson: FIEC President with zest for life
Mike Hitchings
Date posted: 24 Feb 2026
Andrew Anderson was called home on 1 November 2025. FIEC President in 1987, Andrew was the first to serve a longer term, becoming President again from 1992 to 1995.
Born on 2 June 1935 in Mill Hill, London, Andrew was converted at an early age. He was married to Pearl, who survives him; they had two daughters, Fiona and Colleen. He attended LSE and led the Christian Union there and went on to train at London Bible College.
From bird migration to Biblical mission
March is the month when flocks of overwintering birds begin to leave the UK. Bird migration is an incredible natural phenomenon that occurs around us, yet many of us do not notice it.
But each year, as many birds leave our relatively mild winters behind to breed further north, birders and conservationists wonder how many will return. Those who dedicate their lives to this work are acutely aware that all is not well. The decline in numbers of once-common garden birds, such as sparrows and starlings, is drastic. It is easy to miss until someone tells you: “House sparrow populations in the UK have declined by approximately 60 –70% since the 1970s, with nearly 30 million vanishing from the countryside and cities.” The biggest problems most declining species face are habitat destruction, food availability, and disease.