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Thursday, October 17, 2024
Can You Offer Support To Creation Research?
A Small Number of Inefficient Quangos.
https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/10_times_quangos_got_it_wrong
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Reform UK On The Up.
Key moments
Updated 4 minutes ago- 12:49pm
- Assisted dying bill presented before Parliament
- 12:44pm
- Lammy calls urgent UN Security Council meeting on Gaza
- 12:08pm
- Starmer: Lammy will use China visit to challenge Beijing
- 11:00am
- Jenrick: I’ll reduce economic inactivity to pre-Covid levels
- 10:22am
- Labour hires 200 civil service ‘cronies’ without competition
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Voters now feel more positively about Reform UK than they do about Labour, new polling shows.
A poll of 2,000 adults by JL Partners found 28 per cent of voters have a very or quite positive view of Nigel Farage’s party, compared to 27 per cent who feel the same way about Labour.
Forty-one per cent have a very or quite negative opinion of Reform, compared to 47 per cent who feel very or quite negatively about Labour.
The JL Partners polling found Labour are polling at 29 per cent, ahead of the Conservatives on 25 per cent and Reform UK on 19 per cent.
Labour is now winning just over one in 10 voters aged 65 or over having previously won more than a quarter of this age group amid its winter fuel allowance raid. DT.
Mercy.
Mercy's tragedy turns to hope
Mercy fled Fulani militants who killed her mum and sister and abducted her dad. She's one of millions of Christians living in displacement camps across Nigeria. But today she has hope - thanks to God using your gifts and prayers to provide her and many others with much-needed food aid.
"Your outreach has been the biggest aid anyone in this world has given me," she says. "I'm still surprised, and very grateful. I'm grateful for all you're doing."
Follow the link below to see a video of your support and prayers turning into vital parcels of food for our thankful brothers and sisters.
Voice.
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Dr Berhane Asmelash (pictured) will be joining us in person at the National Supporter and Volunteers' Conference on 
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
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Reform UK On The Attack.
NEW: Reform MPs have written to the Home Secretary about two tier justice in Britain. If the CPS do not charge the Manchester Airport assailants, we will organise a private criminal prosecution against them. Police officers cannot work in fear of being thrown under the bus. Express.
We Must Get Evangelism 'Right'.
4 reasons why 'evangelism' is often misunderstood in churches.
(Photo: The Christian Post)It’s Chuck Lawless’ fault.
Okay, the previous sentence is tongue-in-cheek. My friend and co-laborer in ministry, Chuck Lawless, has cited 2 Corinthians 2:4 so many times that I often get it stuck in my mind.
To be clear, getting it stuck in my mind is a good thing. Look at the verse:
Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God (2 Corinthians 2:4, NLT).
This one verse is so rich in its depth that I could spend hours trying to understand its full import. But for simplicity’s sake, we can say unhesitatingly that Satan does not want people to become followers of Christ. He blinds them to the Gospel until the Holy Spirit removes the scales from their eyes, often through our personal evangelism.
While I grasp the fundamental issue of Satan blinding unbelievers, I have given my life in ministry to attempt to understand why believers don’t evangelize on a regular basis. Satan is pleased to blind unbelievers, and I know he is pleased when believers don’t evangelize. Concurrently, he is pleased with non-evangelistic churches.
It is that previous sentence that has compelled me to study both evangelistic churches and non-evangelistic churches. Why are some churches evangelistic and others are not?
There are many paths I could take to attempt to answer that question. For now, one of my research-based answers is that many church members are confused about the meaning of church-based evangelism. The confusion often lies in understanding what constitutes an evangelistic ministry in a church. Here are four examples of the confusion.
Misunderstanding #1: Community ministries are not typically evangelistic
Please hear me clearly. Community ministries are vitally important to the communities churches serve and to the churches themselves. Jesus commands us powerfully and clearly that we are to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, visit those in prisons, provide clothing to those who have none, and care for the sick (Matthew 25: 34-40).
But churches can use their community ministries as a substitute for sharing their faith. Our consulting team at Church Answers frequently hears from members who think their church is evangelistic because it has a food or clothes ministry. For sure, members can share the Gospel with those who receive these ministries. But it is rare to hear about a church that actually reports conversions and assimilation into the congregation.
Misunderstanding #2: Big church events are not typically evangelistic
Our team hears a similar conversation almost every week when we ask church members what their church does evangelistically. One of the common responses describes their annual Christmas event or production with hundreds, perhaps thousands, attending. To be clear again, a big event can be evangelistic, but that is the exception and not the rule.
Most big events are services and ministries for the community, and many of them are attended by both non-believers and members from other churches. However, very few churches see conversions and assimilation from these events. Sadly, in some churches, the big event provides church members cover or excuses not to be evangelistic themselves.
Misunderstanding #3: Transfer growth is not evangelism
When we ask church members if their churches are evangelistic, we often get a common response like, “Oh, yes, our church is really growing.” However, most of the growth in churches is transfer growth. The person has moved from another church in the community, so the church has grown by adding Christians at the expense of other churches.
Another example of transfer growth takes place when someone joins a church after they have moved from another location. Sam Rainer calls this growth “demographic growth,” but it is still non-evangelistic growth unless a person has been reached with the Gospel and assimilated into the church. I am grateful that my church, The Church at Spring Hill, has grown by many people becoming followers of Christ. But we’ve seen a number of California Christians decide that they wanted to move to the Nashville area. That’s not evangelistic growth, though we love our California (and New York) transplants.
Misunderstanding #4: 'Outreach' is not necessarily evangelistic
Some churches describe their attempts to reach people not currently attending church as “outreach.” While outreach can certainly be evangelistic when it focuses on the unchurched, it usually includes ministries to reach Christians moving to the community and to believers who have been out of church for a while (typically called the dechurched).
Again, the word “outreach” might include church-based evangelism. But many of the church activities might not be evangelistic.
Steps toward an understanding of effective evangelism
After many years of research and church consultations, our team is getting closer to understanding how effective evangelism can take place in and through a local church. I know that this effective evangelism can neither be created nor contrived. It is the work of the Holy Spirit.
But we can seek to understand how the Holy Spirit works in these churches. If that gets us one step toward obedience to the Great Commission, our efforts will not be in vain.
We hope to unveil this research in 2025. In the meantime, let me know if your church or a church you know is reaching people with the Gospel and assimilating them into the life of the church. I can’t wait to hear from you.
Originally published at Church Answers.
Thom S. Rainer is the founder and CEO of Church Answers, an online community and resource for church leaders. Prior to founding Church Answers, Rainer served as president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources.
Rainer has written over 30 books, including three that reached number one bestseller: I Am a Church Member, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, and Simple Church. His new book, The Post-Quarantine Church: Six Urgent Challenges and Opportunities That Will Determine the Future of Your Congregation, is available now.
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Ill Served By Labour - Has Put Fear Into The Hearts of Falkland Islanders and Gibraltarians.
‘We want to stay British’: The Chagos islanders sold out by Starmer.
The Prime Minister says the UK-Mauritius agreement will ‘address the wrongs of the past’. Many Chagossians aren’t so sure
Quangos May Have A Function But They Have Gradually Turned Into Something Oppressive.
The Quangocracy now governs Britain – it's time Westminster took back control.
The expectation that the first 100 days of an administration will determine the rest of its lifespan is something of a contrivance. Why have governments become fixated on the figure? I once thought it had something to do with Napoleon Bonaparte, whose return from exile on Elba to his defeat at Waterloo and the restoration of Louis XVIII to the French throne was known as the Hundred Days (it was actually 110).
But the real culprit was America’s President Franklin D Roosevelt, who first used the 100-day gambit to persuade voters that he was the man with the required energy and decisiveness to tackle the Great Depression. Later, President John F Kennedy deployed it to great effect. Since then “the first 100 days” has become the yardstick by which to measure presidential effectiveness and, like many Americanisms, it has crept over here.
This weekend marks the first 100 days of the new Labour government and if a coherent agenda was supposed seamlessly to unfold during that time we have yet to see it. For a party that claimed to have a plan for running the country it has made a pretty poor fist of it so far, with in-fighting leading to the defenestration of the Downing Street chief of staff Sue Gray. Since she was meant to be the interface between the politicians and officialdom, this is a pretty serious loss. As a former senior civil servant, she was expected to know which levers to pull in Whitehall to get the right results.
But over the past 25 years or so, these levers have had nothing on the other end. The powers of the government and of parliament have been given away to outside bodies. Foremost among these, of course, was the European Union, and, since we have left, sovereignty should have been restored in full.
However, in a number of crucial areas this has been proxied out. The first act of the new Labour Government in 1997 was to hand full control of monetary policy to the Bank of England and a committee of faceless economists.
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Supporters say it ushered in a long period of interest rate stability, though, as the cost of borrowing was close to zero for many years, that is a questionable claim. We also do not know the counterfactual – what would have happened had there been no change during what was a fairly benign era of low inflation until recently. The Bank made serious errors as inflationary pressures grew, but it is Government ministers who get it in the neck, not the governor. If you are going to be blamed, why not have control?
The same is true of the Office for Budget Responsibility, set up in 2010 ostensibly to offer an independent and authoritative analysis of the UK’s public finances. The OBR has become less of an auditor than a straitjacket constraining the Chancellor’s room for manouevre. A good thing, too, you might say – except that the Chancellor should be accountable to parliament and ultimately to the electorate for decisions. How many people know the name of the OBR chief?
The most powerful of these anonymous bodies is arguably the Climate Change Committee, which has the statutory power to make sure the Government sticks to an increasingly improbable net zero timetable.
Then there is the Supreme Court, 15 years old this week and another innovation that constrains governance because it can overturn the law of the land. In 2009, Tony Blair’s government decided to dismantle what had been a perfectly workable, if somewhat haphazard, constitutional settlement.
In doing so, it shifted the balance of powers within the British system, establishing a European style constitutional court which sits uneasily within a common law jurisdiction without a written constitutional code.
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We have uprooted centuries of ad hoc but effective arrangements in order to bow before the phoney gods of modernisation. Even the terminology has changed. Around the turn of the century, political discourse began to refer less to “government” and more to “the executive”, counterposed with the concept of “the judiciary”. People no longer spoke of a “balance of powers”, the long-standing British constitutional dispensation, but to a “separation of powers”, along US lines.
To that end, Labour abolished the Law Lords and set up a Supreme Court physically removed from parliament, transforming its outlook and priorities. The growing use of judicial review and the rise of so-called judicial activism has upended the relationship between the three interlocking pillars of our constitution: the legislature, the government and the courts.
Few politicians appear fully to understand the scale of this change. Kemi Badenoch is one who does, having identified the restraints imposed by arm’s-length bodies as factors in the failure to carry out a properly conservative programme in government.
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But the Tories were complicit in giving away these powers, and wresting them back now is virtually impossible. Nor can the bodies that wield them be ignored. When Liz Truss brought forward an emergency Budget and froze the OBR out of the process the results were calamitous.
These constraints apply not just to the Tories. Labour, too, will find decisions dictated to them by committees beyond their control, setting impossible targets, hemmed in by rules reinforced by the courts. Just look at the Rwanda policy for an example of a government unable to get its own way despite the support of parliament.
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Since the OBR was a Tory construct, a new Labour government had the opportunity to dispense with it; and yet Ms Reeves is planning to give it even more power by introducing a statutory “fiscal lock” so the body cannot be sidelined, as it was in 2022. If ever a politician has created a rod for her own back, here it is.
What is the point of being in government if your decisions are always being second-guessed by unaccountable organisations? Sir Keir Starmer may have a majority of 165, but as he approaches his 100 days he has about as much chance of deciding his own fate as Napoleon did on the road to Waterloo.
Can You Offer Support To Creation Research?
Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually. 1Chronicles16:11 OCTOBER HAS BEEN A MONTH OF BLESSING THROUGH HARDSHIP as Anne M...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-__pY6Dp5M FRAUD! Nothing less. EXPOSED!
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Between spooky Dracula and a saintly woman who helped found Christianity in England: contradictions and contrasts at the seaside town of Whi...
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Populist parties surged as the hubris of the European political establishment was exposed in 2023 and the failures of the open borders agend...
