Displaying items by tag: United Kingdom

On 26 January 3,000 people gathered for a day of prayer for Britain in the Wembley Arena. A further 100,000+ joined from every ethnic, racial, social, cultural, and church divide around the world on YouTube, Facebook, GOD TV and Revelation TV. They asked God to change the nations’ destiny and to align the UK with God’s purposes. We can praise God, knowing that prayers and declarations bring positive changes in the land. They usher kingdom values into our politics, businesses, education, arts, media, families and the church, building a defence wall against Satan’s influence and receiving grace for a United Kingdom under God’s authority.

The charity Place2Be says, ‘At least three children in every classroom have a diagnosable mental health issue, and even more worry about everyday things such as school work, family life and friendships’. In Northern Ireland one in ten school children have a diagnosable mental illness, and in 2018 some 35,000 children were treated by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Across the UK schools are in the front line dealing with day-to-day anxiety manifesting itself in children. Many are developing programmes and offering counselling services. Body image, exam stress and bullying are the main topics they cover. In spite of financial and working time pressures for families, parents have an important role to play: quality time is the most important investment to be made in children’s future emotional health. See

Evangelism will be the ‘clear theme’ of the CofE General Synod, which meets from 20 to 23 February. A new evangelism report states that ‘focused efforts will be needed to multiply and replicate confident disciples who are equipped and released to live out their faith in the whole of their lives’. The report quotes Dr Michael Jinkins, of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, on baptism: ‘We are soaked to the skin in the death of Christ. We trail wet footprints of the drenching wherever we go.’ It concludes, ‘We need to prioritise how we help people drip their wet footprints into the people and places of their lives, spreading the aroma of the knowledge of Christ everywhere.’ There is an aim to fulfil the vision to motivate and enable worshippers to move from church attendees to advocates and apprentices who are outward-looking and confident in their faith and church.

Birmingham Mail recently reported clashes between parents and Parkfield Community School over a pilot curriculum challenging homophobia in primary schools. The deputy head of Parkfield, Andrew Moffat, who is openly gay, created the programme. The parents’ objection was not his sexuality, but the curriculum, called ‘No Outsiders’. They feel it goes against their religious beliefs regarding homosexual relationships. The school is mainly attended by Muslim children. Moffat has a lot of support in local government, and was given an MBE for services to education equality and diversity. Tristan Chatfield, the cabinet member for social inclusion, has suggested the parents are simply misinformed about what the school is trying to do. On 7 February dozens of parents gathered outside the school gates to object to transsexualism being taught to primary-age children. See

Fracking company Cuadrilla has requested an urgent review of existing earthquake safety levels, hoping that the permission to generate larger tremors will allow them to extract greater quantities of shale gas from Lancashire. Currently they must suspend drilling when quakes measuring over 0.5 magnitude are detected. Although numerous legal challenges and protests were not enough to prevent the company from beginning exploratory drilling at Preston last year, it is now the government’s ‘traffic light system’ for seismic activity which the industry appears to consider the greatest threat to its survival. There is a ‘rich reservoir of recoverable high quality natural gas present’, but the seismic operating limit remains a barrier to developing its potential. David Attenborough and others believe that the Government should stop wasting time on this polluting industry and back the clean energy infrastructure needed to tackle climate change.

We hear doomsday predictions for what life after Brexit could look like. Pray for God to replace fear and confusion with appropriate preparations for the March deadline. Currently people must show their passports when crossing into or out of the UK, but commercial goods do not need to be checked if they are going to or coming from the EU. Britain needs to secure a free trade agreement with Brussels so that there is no need to harden and slow down the current border set-up, particularly between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Pray for Arlene Foster, whose ten MPs prop up Theresa May's minority government. Ask God to help negotiators to replace the current backstop with a workable solution. May the Brexit brains in the Government have imaginative and flexible thinking to work out a unique solution. See also Europe article 1.

Wycliffe Associates is advancing Bible translation and has received requests to launch 619 translation projects worldwide, including groups in DRC, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Nigeria. ‘When they hear that the entire New Testament can now be translated in just months through ground-breaking technology, they are astonished, and they plead for a chance,’ said Wycliffe’s CEO. Traditionally, translations of the New Testament into another language have taken as long as 25 to 30 years. Pray for God's protection over Bible translation workshops for mother-tongue speakers, and for adequate funding for technology resources. Pray for God to keep translators safe when working discreetly in places where Christians face intense persecution. To date, the organisation has installed 90 print-on-demand units in 31 countries. By God’s grace they have distributed 5,485 tablets in 67 countries so far.

The Science and Technology Committee has decided to monitor reporting of clinical trials by universities, and will question those that don’t improve. Clinical trials are the best way to test whether a medicine is safe and effective. They can involve thousands of people, patients and healthy volunteers, and take years to complete. Results from around half of all clinical trials remain hidden. Trials with negative results are twice as likely to remain unreported as those with positive results. This means that people who make decisions about medicines do not have full information about the benefits and risks of treatments we use every day and can dramatically alter how a drug is perceived, leading to unnecessary spending in the NHS. See

On 7 February, following a ‘robust but constructive’ meeting between Jean-Claude Juncker and Theresa May, who was seeking changes to her Brexit deal, Mr Juncker stressed that the withdrawal agreement would not be redrawn, but he held open the possibility of adding ‘more ambitious’ wording to set out plans for the future relationship. Despite the challenges, the two leaders agreed that their teams should hold talks as to whether a way through can be found that would gain the broadest possible support in the UK parliament and respect the guidelines agreed by the European Council.

Theresa May was handed a two-week deadline to resuscitate her Brexit deal last night and pledged to go back to Brussels to demand changes to the Irish backstop, with only 59 days to go until exit day. But within minutes of the Commons result, the European council president, Donald Tusk, announced that the EU was not prepared to reopen the deal. Steve Baker, the deputy chair of the backbench European Research Group, announced that its members could still reject any renegotiated deal she brought back. ‘A vote for the Brady amendment is a vote to see if the PM can land a deal that will work. If not then we are not committed,’ he said. Pray for the swirl of media comments around Brexit to be free from conjectures and distressing summaries.