News

Winter 2020

A familiar Scripture has been on my mind throughout this pandemic: The Great Commission. Whilst the world around us changes and life becomes somewhat unrecognisable from what we are used to, the words of Jesus stand firm.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20)

The Great Commission hasn’t changed. The need remains. The call remains. Therefore, what is our response? In some countries where proclaiming the Gospel is inherently difficult due to persecution, the evangelistic shift required has perhaps been minimal. Our brothers and sisters in such lands already know severe restrictions in sharing the Good News and have adapted accordingly. I am inspired by their tenacity and by their laser focus; “…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

Here at K180, with eyes on Jesus, we have sought to adapt and, indeed, have quickly discovered new and fresh opportunities to preach Christ and to equip others for Gospel ministry. Whilst not all ministry has switched online, there is no doubt that the digital world has pulled back the curtain on new opportunities for our teams across Europe. Naturally, many are already involved with digital evangelism, but here has been the opportunity to bring our hitherto ‘in-person' training to an online audience. I trust you will be encouraged as you read the updates within this newsletter, updates that include regular ministry and exciting new initiatives like the Evangelistic Online Bible Study and our recent 8 week Unashamed course. It has been thrilling to see fruit from such endeavours.

We are grateful to God for new team members, particularly as the workload has grown during these recent months. You can meet Scott Gentry on page 12, who has joined us as an evangelist helping lead street ministry and our work with trainees. We are also grateful for the appointment of Maritza Gonzalez-Mabille in a part-time capacity, particularly helping with ministry support. We’ll feature Maritza in a future newsletter! Our team value your prayer as we head into another year serving our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; the One to whom “All authority is given”. Therefore we “go”. To Him be the glory!

Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel.

Many blessings,

Europe Ablaze with the Gospel...

...has been the God-given vision of K180 since He called the ministry into being.

God continues to bless us with opportunities to serve His work across Europe. The pins on the map show the countries where ministry has taken place in the last 6 months, and the work continues in many more. You can read more about how God has been changing lives in the pages that follow.

All this is made possible by the partnership in the gospel of individuals and churches. We are enormously grateful for this and hope that as you read about what God is doing through the work of K180, you will be encouraged to continue to pray, give and go!

COVID-19 World

The global coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown in many nations presents multiple challenges – particularly for evangelism where so much, prior to COVID-19, was done face to face. The current situation allowed us to reflect and adapt how we as a ministry proclaimed the Gospel and equipped others in their witness.

Firstly, we redeveloped our Junction 316 evangelistic website and set up a sister evangelistic YouTube channel, populated with 1-minute testimonies and 3-minute illustrated Gospel messages.

Who could you share this web link with today?
www.junction316.co.uk

We quickly developed a webpage with different suggestions and resources of ways for Christians to reach out to others in lockdown. This page was subsequently translated into French, Spanish and Italian. We wrote and published a special ‘Unseen Virus’ Gospel flyer, available physically and digitally, which we also had translated into other languages. We uploaded a ‘Digital Evangelism’ training session (based on the History Makers material) to our K180 YouTube channel which many have been able to access.

All our training was brought online (though as things eased, History Makers training in some countries was able to happen in-person), including the first ‘Eight Weeks: Eight Values’ History Makers Online for UK participants. As I write this, History Makers Online training is taking place for Romanian speakers in Europe, those living in Balkan countries, Baltic countries, and in the UK. Please see pages 8 & 9 for more information. We also launched an eight-week online evangelism course called ‘Unashamed’. See page 10 for more on this.

Street Ministry

As a Friday night team on the streets of Ealing Broadway, adapting to a new, COVID-19 world actually brought us many outreach opportunities. Throughout lockdown in particular, we spent time re-evaluating the format through which we share the Gospel, including bringing a lot of elements online. For example, many of the Gospel messages that we deliver on the streets, were filmed and uploaded to our Junction 316 evangelistic YouTube channel, and to our social media. From there, we encouraged those who engage with us digitally, to share them with friends and family, so that the Good News might still make its way out into the world! We also developed a new 'Unseen Virus' Gospel flyer (see previous page).

From July onwards, we were able to resume weekly outreach in Ealing Broadway, heading out onto the streets to engage people in Gospel conversations. Members of the team oversee a table full of Bibles, which are offered out to passers-by. Additionally, we use a felt board with an array of photos on it designed to facilitate conversations about how a person might feel in that moment, and thereby creating an opportunity to offer them the hope of Jesus. We have been greatly encouraged by the variety and quantity of conversations we’ve had upon the streets – including being able to pray for many. Naturally, we still very much want to preach and share the Gospel through music at our Ealing location and we look forward to getting back to that. Please continue to pray for us, asking that God would give us wisdom for the future planning of the outreach, and for open doors for the Gospel, as we continue to go out. Thank you.

EEI - Raising up evangelists across Europe

Encouraging and equipping young evangelists remains a core ministry area for K180. Indeed, we passionately believe that a key strategy for Gospel impact across Europe is the raising up of young evangelists; young evangelists who will unashamedly, boldly “proclaim the mystery of the gospel” (Ephesians 6:19-20). Six European countries are presently using the EEI model for training and whilst the coronavirus has brought some restrictions, it has not dampened the sense of call for our teams around Europe.

Red Timoteo, Spain

As you will likely be aware, Spain has been particularly hard hit by COVID-19 and, as a consequence, the usual weekend retreats in March and September were postponed. However, the team organised a special online training for both graduates and present participants. We found ourselves thankful to God as we explored how to proclaim the Gospel during a global pandemic. With several contributors bringing different perspectives, it was a rich occasion of fresh ideas and inspiration.

An evening with Will Graham

An unplanned event that likely would not have been considered in ’normal’ times, a special Europe-wide training event over Zoom took place in mid-summer. We were delighted that Will Graham (grandson of Billy Graham) was able to join us and bring an instructive, challenging and inspiring word to the 100+ evangelists gathered. Taking 1 Peter 4 as his passage, Will spoke about suffering as part of what it means to bear the Gospel message in a world generally hostile to the things of Christ and, indeed, that this will likely increase.

He also reflected on how we grow in our boldness as we step out and share (it generally doesn’t come before we step out!)

With young evangelists present from many different European countries and with simultaneous interpretation into German, Icelandic, Italian and Spanish, we finished the evening with gratitude to God for the opportunity to meet together and for the privilege of carrying this life-giving message to a sick and dying world. Please pray for these young evangelists as they seek to be faithful to His call upon their lives.

Around Europe

Please pray for the other teams as they engage with online training and as they plan for in-person training during the first half of 2021

Eldhugar (Iceland)
Actively out sharing the Gospel as a group.

Messenger Network (Italy)
Strategy meetings before Christmas. New partnerships forming.

Philippus Netzwerk (Germany)
Monthly online training starts in November.

Academy of Evangelism (Russia)
Online training during the pandemic reaching many young evangelists from across Russia.

EEI (UK)
Next in-person training scheduled for March. Ongoing encouragement and digital equipping in the meantime.

The Evangelist

We have a new monthly email reflection aimed specifically at those who have, or sense, the call to the role of the evangelist. If you are interested in receiving this please click to visit our website's 'Subscribe' page. Here you can select to receive these inspirational thoughts, which will hopefully encourage and equip you as you hold out the word of life.

Training Young Leaders for Gospel Ministry

There is much to be thankful for during the last 6 months as History Makers training eased into a new format as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. Whilst ‘in-person’ training is more dynamic and undoubtedly brings a greater depth of training, it is clear that training online has a unique offering. The switch to predominantly online training has opened new opportunities as geographical boundaries melt and travel implications fall away, not to mention being able to offer the training for free. This is with gratitude to our donors, enabling our team to ‘switch gears’ and plough the necessary time and expertise into the new formats.

HMUK participants being taught by Juan from Colombia

Armenian PowerPoint slide with Paulina teaching

Online training generally takes the form of weekly sessions over a period of anywhere between 1-3 months. Using the ‘Zoom’ platform, participants gather remotely, having the notes sent to them before each session. Each session sees the participants break into small groups. As well as giving opportunity to discuss the topic in hand, this also enables relationships to be built week by week. The other big advantage of hosting the training online is that we can bring in experienced leaders to teach from around the world. This has been a huge bonus with fantastic input from leaders based in Colombia, India, Moldova, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Poland, Romania, Spain, UK and the USA.

Online coaching has also been happening with teams gathering in both Poland and Turkey for a time of digging deeper into the History Makers material, particularly with a view to growing in the understanding of how better to teach the sessions. It has been encouraging to see the eagerness of teams to develop their skills in this way.

Guest speaker Peter waiting to teach at HM Balkans

And we had one ‘in-person’ training in the Czech Republic! 25 participants gathered from different parts of the Czech Republic to spend 6 days together exploring the 8 biblical core values for leadership. As team leader Tom Kolman says; this was the “biggest HM journey in the Czech Republic so far.” Plans are already underway to multiply the training in parts of the country.

“The topics that you, as speakers, passed on in a great way made me think about what I need to change in my life, in my approach to the ministry and in the practical ministry itself. It gave me space to exhale, to recharge, to surrender to God everything that awaits me in the ministry and to think about what to do next.”
(Participant, HM Czech Republic)

Unashamed Online and Unashamed+

Many who regularly read our newsletters will be familiar with ‘Unashamed’, an evangelism training morning we run a couple of times a year. We took many of the key components and sessions we’d taught before and reshaped them as an 8-week online course, which we hope will help participants become more effective in sharing the Good News with others. The course gives participants practical evangelism teaching and weekly challenges, which they’re encouraged to implement within their daily, evangelistic lifestyle. Since the course concluded in October, we’ve been delighted to hear of how participants put what they learnt into practice and had encouraging Gospel conversations.

Alongside this, we wanted to continue running regular ‘one-off’ evangelism training events to complement the online course. In July, we had a session exploring how we could use film as a bridge to share the Gospel with others. These events were rebranded in September as ‘Unashamed+’, and the first under the new name took place at the beginning of October. We were pleased to welcome our guest speaker, Roger Chilvers, who led our session on discipleship, exploring its importance in evangelism. Roger shared from his own experience on the ’nuts and bolts’ of what it means to make disciples.

Evangelistic Bible Study

Alongside all of the online training has also been the launch of a men’s evangelistic online Bible study (first run June/July, then in September/October). The idea of the Bible study is a five-week journey through Luke’s gospel, clearly presenting the Gospel and giving times for discussion on deep spiritual questions in small ‘Breakout’ rooms. Each Christian involved invites a Guest (a friend who is not yet a Christian) to journey alongside. Through running the Bible study, we’ve been reminded again of the power of God’s Word and rejoice as we have seen some of the men pray prayers of commitment to Christ as a result of the studies.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
(Hebrews 4:12)

In future, we hope to run an Evangelistic Bible Study for women and are making plans for this. It may be that the format could work well face-to-face, but for now we are enjoying seeing how God is using it online. Please pray for those who responded to the Gospel through the studies and are being discipled now.

Introducing Scott

In April, about a month after things were locked down, we welcomed new team member and evangelist, Scott, into the K180 family. Scott joins us after working with Scripture Union for four years in his native Essex. Alongside this, Scott studied theology at St. Mellitus College in London. Scott has been called by God as an evangelist and we’re delighted to add Scott’s giftings and passions to the work God has called us to. Scott has previously served on short-term mission with K180 in Tbilisi, Georgia and Elgin, Scotland.

Scott has a passion for sharing the Gospel using films as a bridge to talk about spiritual things. You can read more about Scott’s ‘Faith & Film’ blog in the next section.

One of Scott's favourite Bible verses is:

For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed, but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past. And I trust that my life will bring honour to Christ, whether I live or die.
(Philippians 1:20)

Faith & Film

Following his appointment in April 2020, team member Scott has sought to continue merging his passion for reaching the lost with the Good News, with popular film. Seeing the current state of affairs wouldn’t allow Scott to pioneer in-person, evangelistic film discussion groups, as he normally would, he set about creating the new Faith & Film blog – a series of weekly articles which seek to engage with a film’s links to the Gospel message. In doing so, Scott has highlighted the Gospel comparisons in films such as The Mission (1986) and even the blockbuster juggernaut Tenet (2020).

It’s Scott’s hope that Christians who read these articles would seek to use them as a helpful guide to faithfully watch films with our non-Christian friends and family, especially with a view to pointing out Gospel links and creating evangelistic dialogue with them. In this way, evangelism is made culturally relevant, reaching those who might not respond to other methods of evangelism, without compromising on sharing the Gospel message.

Why not click here to check out the blog for yourself?

And perhaps as you watch your next film, would you consider praying that God would help you to see the bridges to the Gospel message, for use in His evangelistic purposes?

K180 Music update

Gareth released a new single in September called “I’m Gonna Miss You”, a song written during lockdown about the recent death of a Christian friend. The song is available on all online streaming platforms. Since the single’s release, we’ve had 25 more monthly listeners on Spotify alone. Christian music blog Never For Nothing called the song “a poignant and beautiful tribute” and gave it 8/10. The live music video has been watched over 1000 times on Facebook.

Our prayer is that the song can minister to those going through a bereavement or loss and that they can hear something of the hope of the Gospel.

Looking ahead...

Gareth is working on some new evangelistic songs and hopes to release some new material early in the new year. He’s also slowly working on an evangelistic musical based on the life of American hymn-writer Philip Bliss (writer of many Gospel hymns including “Hallelujah, What a Saviour!”, “Jesus Loves Even Me”, and composer of the music for “It is Well With My Soul”).

Photo by H.B. Hall & Sons

Where are they now?

We first met Marc Randall back in 2004. He came on to the streets with us during an event in Canada. His first time on the streets and it changed his life. Since that time, Marc has been a trainee with K180 here in London and joined several short-term K180 mission teams, including a few visits to Zambia. Then Marc heard God calling. In his own words...

“In 2014, God spoke to me in a clear way – leading me to go to Zambia. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, just that it was bigger than myself. In Zambia, the ministry I am doing is national and international. I am using my computer skills, from before I was born again, to set up Wi-Fi points which contain an internal hard drive and share thousands of resources to Pastors and church members. It is a full digital library, offering a solution to the resource problem in Africa. Micro SD Cards and tablets are also given to Pastors with training containing a full theological library. The Wi-Fi points are being set up in every district across the country. Pastors are being trained district by district with the resources.

Additionally, citywide crusades are being organized with an upcoming one with the Luis Palau organization. A group of 30 (many evangelists) are planning to come in April where we are targeting two large cities in Zambia. I am equipping denominations, churches, and regions with training in evangelism, pastoral leadership, and also in technology. I programmed a system for denominations which offers a website (sermons, and other information) and a full administration system for member management. Hundreds of churches are already signed up. I am preaching at crusades and seeing people become born again, and also seeing people get physically healed. Pastor training centers and orphanages are also being planned to be set up across the country. We are looking to train and send out Zambians as missionaries to closed countries, with the first missionaries hopefully being sent out in the coming year.” Marc Randall

This is a glimpse of how the Lord is working His purposes out through Marc’s life. Please can I encourage you to pray for Marc and maybe the Lord is prompting you to make a financial contribution. This is a sound investment indeed.

For more information on this, please contact Marc at marc@africaevangelism.org

Looking Ahead...

So what will 2021 look like? Planning is difficult so we are grateful that we know the Author of Life! We are tentatively agreeing ministry dates with partners, planning for trainees to be with us in the summer and have a couple of exciting new projects on the horizon. One of these is London-based and is a commitment to work alongside a church for a year to help them develop their evangelistic culture. We are particularly excited about the potential this project carries. More details to come.

We press on, sticking close to Jesus. We don’t want to stray to the left or the right. Eyes fixed on Him. The vision is clear, the route misty, but the immediate steps always in view as He leads. I don’t need to tell you that the need is great and therefore the opportunities are more than we can handle. So we focus on those things He directs us to. He is Sovereign and His commission remains; “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

How to Partner

Thank you for standing with us as we seek to be faithful to His call to make Jesus known. We are thankful to all those who are praying, giving and joining us ‘on the ground’ as we exercise ministry. We are thankful for your partnership in this precious, life-giving Gospel. As you pray, give, and go, you are on the front line with us. We are thankful to God for such partnership.

We are looking for more partners to join us as we pursue the vision He has given: Europe ablaze with the Gospel. These past months have only accelerated the work and as we look ahead, the opportunities are myriad. We continue to pray as we seek to add team members to our core team as we try to make the most of every moment, every Gospel opportunity. Resources are needed for this and we look to Him who owns everything. If you would like to know more about how you can support us financially, please see www.k180.org/donate or click the button below.

Running the race with you!

and the K180 team

If you would like to partner K180 financially, please click here, or the button below, which will take you to the donate page of our website. Every gift makes a difference and enables us to take the many gospel opportunities before us. Thank you for your interest and support.

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