This article was written by David Binder. According to Pew Research (USA) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Christianity in the 21st century is declining. Whilst, broadly speaking, fewer seem willing to identify themselves as Christiansas in the past, leading commentators such as Ed Stetzer have argued that Evangelical Christian numbers are stable, or […]

A couple of weeks ago I went to New Word Alive to deliver a couple of seminars on poverty in the UK and reaching the lost on council estates (and schemes). My only previous experience of NWA had been two years prior when a couple of us had gone with a stand to publicise the […]

Listen to Paul speaking to a church dividing on ethnic and social lines in Ephesians 2:14–17: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was […]

“It doesn't look as bad as I thought.” “I’ve seen worse.” “I thought it would be rougher than this.” “I don’t know what I was expecting but this looks OK.” Just some of the comments I have been noticing more and more from overseas visitors to the schemes (specifically Niddrie). It’s fascinating, to me anyway, […]

London is a cosmopolitan city. It is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. It’s a whole swirl of colours and people and nations. It’s almost the very definition of cultural diversity. We find this to be the case even in its housing estates too (although there are always exceptions!). Birmingham is similar, but with a higher Muslim population […]

With the explosion of interest in mercy ministry in evangelical churches has come a lot of well-intentioned people with a lot of poorly-thought-out theology. So, it’s not uncommon to hear people refer to evangelism in the following terms: Preach the gospel and use words if necessary. Evangelism is as much about what we do as […]

I get to travel and talk to a lot of churches about the work of 20schemes. Given the demographics of evangelical churches in the UK and the culture within which it (largely) operates, a lot of the young people that talk to me are well educated and middle class. Almost always, their first question is: […]

So, the critique of 20schemes gathers apace in some parts of the Scottish church. “Over reliant on American money”,“going to swamp our country with ghastly Americans”, “an unnecessary organisation given that every scheme has a Parish church”,“they suppress women”, “they're going to ride roughshod over existing church initiatives”. When we launched 20schemes last November, nobody […]