I’ve always wanted to visit Nepal. Mountains, fresh air, stars at night…what could be better? At the start of Feb 2020 I finally made it there. I didn’t see a single mountain or night star and the word I now most associate with the country is ‘dusty’. But I’m fine with that.

I was in Kathmandu with a member of  the PT teaching staff and Mark, a maths teacher and fellow Cornhill student. Each morning after breakfast we would don our face masks and brave the thick dust to pick our way through the street vendors and stray dogs as we headed away from the tourist track and into the side streets near our guest house. Our destination was the unmarked gate of a local Bible College.

Each year, for one week, students and pastors from across Nepal gather together and, with the help of a wonderful Indian guy and a couple of hapless Cornhill students like ourselves, the Bible is opened and the miracle of praying and working hard at the text of the Bible to hear God speak to us is demonstrated and taught. Mark and I were there to attempt to give a couple of ‘model’ talks and to interact with the attendees throughout the training as best we could across the language barrier.

It seemed like exposition was a completely foreign concept for lots of the attendees at the training but, as I chatted to the men and women gathered together, I was struck again and again by the labour and suffering many Nepali Christians are going through to reach their country with the gospel.

Over veggie curry one lunch-time I chatted to a young guy from a poor people group in the mountains who was the first in his family to gain higher education. I asked why he had come to Bible college and if he was going to be a pastor when he finished and how he was going to find money to live after finishing his studies. He explained that he probably wouldn’t be a pastor and that he didn’t know how he was going to live but that he had come to study at Bible college because his people needed to be taught about what the Bible says. Simple.

Another afternoon, over a cup of sweet Nepali tea, I talked to S, a guy from a Hindu family who had become a Christian a few years ago after hearing that Jesus offers life forever. He now works as an evangelist in the mountains where he walks back and forth between the 2 churches that support him. The walk takes 3 hours each way and the terrain is so rough that as we spoke he was still nursing injuries from a recent fall. I asked him why he keeps going given it’s so tough. “Because Jesus gives life,” he replied.

Many of the men and women we met are zealous disciples of the Lord Jesus but as Mark and I chatted and opened the Bible with them throughout the week, we were both were struck by the incredible need they have for training and equipping in Bible handling. There is real sacrifice and service amongst these men and women but little to no training in how to read the Bible and teach it. I don’t mean that they need to be taught how to give a western-style 3-point sermon (though there’s still benefit in that), but that their ministries would be served by being taught Biblical convictions about how God speaks today in the Bible and by being equipped to read in a careful way that helps us pay attention to what God says and why. This is exactly the work this PT staff member is doing internationally.

The further we got through the week, Mark and I remarked more and more on how thankful we were for this ministry in Nepal and other ministries like it in various countries around the world. We were so impressed by the way that the tools for Bible handling that we are taught at Cornhill were also being taught here clearly and simply across language and cultural barriers, and also how all the time this teaching modelled these tools by transparently showing what the Bible says. Alongside the main body of the training students were taken through a Bible overview in four days and it was so exciting to hear students talking afterwards about how they had never seen the Bible as one big story before.

I’ve come back from these few days encouraged and challenged by the zeal for proclamation of the gospel that many of the attendees at the training modelled to us. I have lots to learn from their obedience to Jesus’ command to take up our cross and follow him.

I’ve also come back more convicted than when I left that what the world most needs is proclamation of the Word. The world needs workers who rightly handle the word of truth and who will entrust the gospel to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

We need to be praying for this work and those doing it. In our short time, we saw how this work is often frustrating, disappointing and difficult.

We also need to be praying for our brothers and sisters in who attended this training in Kathmandu. We need to pray that they hold firm to the convictions formed over those few days of training. We need to pray that they would believe it is worth doing the hard work of listening carefully to God’s voice in the Bible and teaching what he says. And we need to pray for fruit in their ministry that God’s church might be built up in Nepal to His praise and glory.

by Nathan Sherwood

We are delighted to announce that the Revd Dr Ben Cooper will join the PT Cornhill teaching staff in September 2020. Since 2010 Ben has been Minister for Training at Christ Church Fulwood, Sheffield, and course director of Fulwood Bible Training (now Bible Training Yorkshire).

Ben is the author of a number of books including most recently The Economics of the Hebrew Scriptures and Positive Complementarianism: The Key Biblical Texts. He has a DPhil in Economics and a PhD in Biblical Studies, and has been a member of the Theological Working Group of The Latimer Trust since 2005.

We look forward to welcoming Ben, with his wife Catherine and their three children, when they move to London.

This weekend [4-6th October] we are running our second Belgium Bible Convention in Brussels. This initiative aims to equip and help people handle their Bibles well and enjoy their Bibles more.

It starts on Friday evening and runs during the day on Saturday. We are running the conference in partnership with International Baptist Church Brussels, there are a wide variety of different churches represented and we are praying for a really encouraging time.

We would love you to pray with us:

• Give thanks for this opportunity.
• Pray for great fellowship together.
• Pray the Bible teaching would be clear and helpful.
• Please pray for Andrew, Nigel, Jon & Amy as they teach.
• Pray also for Nigel as he preaches on Sunday morning at iBC.

Here is the programme we are running and thank you so much for your partnership.

Friday 4th October
19:00-19:10	Welcome
19:10-20:00	1 Peter [1]
20:00-20:20	Refreshments
20:20-21:15	Lessons from the life of Isaac Watts [JG]
21:15-21:30	Prayer & Close
Saturday 5th October
10:00-10:10	Welcome
10:10-11:10	Daniel [1]
11:10-11:30	Refreshments
11:30-12:30	Daniel [2]
12:30-13:30	Lunch
13:30-15:00	Workshops: 1-2-1’s Small Group Bible Study Writing a Bible Talk Evangelism
15:00-15:15	Refreshments
15:15-16:15	1 Peter [2]
16:15-16:30	Prayer & Close

Thank you so much for your continued partnership in the gospel. If you had some time this week either individually or as churches would you pray for us at PT?

Here are some specific prayer points:

• Please give thanks for a blessed year of great encouragement and fresh appreciation of God’s faithfulness to us at PT.
• Please pray for the current Cornhill applications that are currently being processed and student interviews. Pray we would be wise in offering places especially to the international students who will most benefit from doing Cornhill with us.
• Pray for the students soon to finish with us at Cornhill, pray they would know God’s faithfulness and leading as to what the next steps might look like. Pray they would continue to be dangerous for the Lord Jesus as they continue to handle God’s Word faithfully.
• Pray for the Minister’s conferences coming up at the end of April, beginning of May. We have David Helm and Johnny Juckes speaking. Pray it would be an encouraging, equipping and engaging time for the 160 ministers coming.
• Pray also for the EMA at the end of June. Our conference is called Lifted Up: Preaching the Cross. Pray we would have good numbers of people glorying in the cross together as we sit under God’s Word. Pray as we move to the new venue at Westminster Chapel that things would run smoothly and not distract from the content of the conference.
• Pray also for preaching conferences that we are endeavouring to run in Greece and Belgium in the coming months.

Thank you so much for your continued support.

Subtitle: How the Love of Christ Frees Us from Self-Focus 

In the age of “self-help” and “self-care”, Lydia Brownback’s latest book is definitely not one of them.  Although, it kind of is, in that the aim of the book is ultimately to help you find happiness and live a more fulfilling life… to “flourish”. 

The main difference is that you’re not going to accomplish that by trying to look within to unleash your inner strength. In fact, Brownback would advise that you choose the better option. Forget about yourself entirely and look to Christ instead!

She sets the tone at the beginning of her book by reminding the reader of what Paul tells Timothy in II Timothy, chapter 3:

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 

For people will be lovers of self…” (verses 1-2)

And how does Paul go on to warn Timothy?

“Avoid such people.” (verse 5)

Brownback tells the reader that we too are now living in these last days before Jesus’ return. 

Rather than trying to hammer in her reader’s head that they ought to think more about Christ and less about themselves, the author is a bit more ambitious. She wants to use this book to train the reader to think and come to this conclusion for themselves. 

Not only that, she wants the reader to learn the necessary tools to be able to make discerning decisions going forward based on biblical understanding to differentiate between these two mentalities. 

The way she goes about doing this is by using a 3-part structure in each of the 6 chapters. 

Each chapter focuses on a common area where people may be tempted to focus too much on the self:

1. 1. Self-Consciousness
2. 2. Self-Improvement
3. 3. Self-Analysis
4. 4. Self-Indulgence
5. 5. Self-Condemnation
6. 6. Self-Victimisation

Within each chapter, Brownback then goes on to divide the content into 3 smaller sub-sections:

1. i. Dig (going deeper into the heart of the issue)
2. ii. Discern (gaining clarity on the biblical mindset required to tackle the issue)
3. iii. Flourish (conclusion of the matter and what it looks like to embrace Christ over self)

With this simple formula, she proceeds to walk the reader through various examples of what each mentality might look like in everyday life. What the author does extremely well is show the reader how the solution to each of these problems is to think more of Christ rather than self, through specific biblical passages. That’s where true freedom from the bondage of self is found — in Christ.

This is a short book, quite light, and a relatively easy read. That said, it has real substance and is structured in a very helpful way to equip the reader to think for themselves going forward. 

Even in the title (using trendy buzzwords/phrases like “flourish” and “free us from…”), I think this book effectively draws in people who need to read this most — those who may find themselves drawn to the self-help trend. 

I also really enjoyed how she didn’t limit herself to providing obviously silly examples of first world problems so that she can easily debunk them. In the chapter on self-victimisation, Brownback shares the story of a woman who was forced into marrying a Taliban fighter when she was a child and suffered much abuse as a result. The author doesn’t shy away from addressing tough things and deep pain. 

Brownback does an excellent job of listing countless everyday examples throughout the book to illustrate her points. She also embeds various passages from the Bible throughout to support her argument. I think at times the book is a bit example-heavy and Bible light. That said, I think the balance she strikes is still adequate in encouraging her reader to think more biblically when it comes to the struggle of finding freedom from self in Christ. 

I’d recommend this book for Christians who have gone down (or have been tempted to go down) the self-help book route. 

by Michelle Cheng

We are so excited that our Teaching Ephesians book has just been published in Indonesia. We are so thankful to our friends at UFM and also Langham for making this possible. As always we want to thank Christian Focus for their continued partnership in this project.

Please do pray with us that this volume might be greatly used to equip pastors and build up churches in the region.

Not another book on Women! You may exclaim? But this one is well worth reading; even if you are a man! Kathleen is a very able Bible teacher who loves God’s word and is passionate about explaining and applying it well. In this book she tackles the relationship of Women with God by taking a journey from Eden to Eternity. God’s unfolding good purposes for women from beginning to end, in the fallen state that we find ourselves and through the rescue that is found in Christ.

This book beautifully affirms women by faithfully extolling God’s goodness in His word and His grace in the Lord Jesus. This is a book that refreshingly refutes the unhelpful stereotypes of women as ‘trampled doormats,’ as well as correcting skewed interpretations that diminish the distinctive differences between men and women. Kathleen simply and clearly explains some of the trickiest passages in the wider context in which they are written and graciously tackles the challenging questions that are raised. God’s beautiful truth is shown to speak relevantly and affirmingly about and to women.

Kathleen avoids unhelpful labels, heady jargon and unnecessary theological debate making this an accessible read. I will be highly recommending this book to all the women in my church family. It tackles many of the usual topics and more: Fallen Women; Strong Women; Women and Sex; Women’s Bodies; Marriage; The Church.

It is concise and yet thorough and different to other books tackling similar issues. I am struggling to think of a weakness or reason not to read this book. This book will enrich your understanding of Women and their relationship with God and renew your love of God and His Word.

This would be a great read for any Christian woman (or man) in your church.

Buy your copy now at at great price from The Good Book Company: https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/women-and-god

ISBN: 9781784982799

By Rebekah Brown

Nigel Styles (Cornhill Director) and Neil Watkinson (International Director) are away on an adventure, please pray for them. They are away this week in a majority-Muslim country running a preaching conference for 60 enthusiastic church planters, training them in preaching. These pastors have had no preacher training whatsoever so this is an amazing opportunity for us to help them in the task that God has called them to.

Please do join with us in praying for this conference, specifically:

• Pray for safety as the country is volatile
• Pray for helpful translators at all of the sessions who communicate well and clearly
• Pray for a willingness in all the delegates to work hard in the workshops
• Pray for excitement and understanding of Mark and Titus as they are taught
• Pray for Long-term fruit and gospel advance in this country and surrounding region

Good news, great joy (Evangelistic Christmas Booklet) by William Taylor

This is a short and clear gospel explanation which expounds the message of Christmas from Luke 2:10-11. William has three clear points: Firstly, Christmas and History�- Christmas was a real historical event about the real historical person; Jesus Christ. Secondly, Christmas and God’ – The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ – the divine royal ruler; God himself. And thirdly, Christmas and Rescue – Jesus Christ is God’s eternal rescue plan for those who trust in Him and submit to His rule; receiving His forgiveness and life forever.

This is a great little booklet that is clear, engaging and accessible for someone who is not a Christian. It is also a useful explanation that will help the Christian to appreciate afresh the good news of the Christmas message. Equally, this is an equipping little resource that models a short evangelistic Christmas talk from a couple of verses that draws on the wider context of Luke�™s gospel. There is no fudging of sin and judgement and yet it is full of grace and hope.

It includes personal testimony, plenty of illustrations and a call to respond at the end. It takes 15 minutes to read and communicates the good news of the gospel clearly and concisely. It is certainly worth gifting away to friends, family and guests at those Christmas services. At 50p each you can afford to give it away abundantly.

https://www.10ofthose.com/uk/products/24420/good-news-great-joy

Christmas Jackpot – How to get really rich this Christmas (Evangelistic Christmas Book) by Adrian Reynolds

In this highly illustrative, ‘Rags to Riches�™ evangelistic booklet, Adrian uses 2 Corinthians 8:9 as a springboard to explain the gospel. He takes a staged approach to unpacking this, under seven punchy sections:

1. Christmas is expensive but this book will give you “a sure-fire way to get rich”

2. If God is God, then He owns it all – He�™s rich beyond imaging

3. Riches to Rags – God becomes human

4. You are poorer than you can imagine

5. Rags to Riches – Jesus takes our poverty (sin and death) to make us really, really rich (eternal life)

6. His gift for you – Grace guaranteed

7. Claim your gift now! – Call to respond with an example prayer

Adrian has a very easy to read style that makes this very accessible to someone who is not used to engaging with the bible. The gospel is explained clearly and compellingly. The book is teeming with illustrations and there is lots of humour contained in its 48 pages. It is also a roller coaster for the reader, at points it is humorous, at others incisive and at others hard hitting and serious. 

I think put into the hands of the right person it is a terrific resource though probably worth reading yourself before giving away. At £1 each if you buy over 100, it is certainly well worth utilising at carol services, baby and toddler groups and nativity services for the many guests we pray might join in church activities this Christmas and hear the gospel.

https://www.10ofthose.com/uk/products/24421/christmas-jackpot

At our Autumn Ministers Conference 2018 at the beginning of this month we were great blessed by two talks from Andy Mason on the subject of Love and Joy in pastoral ministry.

They were challenging, heart warming, encouraging and real and if you had a spare hour it would be very worth your while tuning in.

You can find the link to the two talks here:

The Pastor’s Love

The Pastor’s Joy