Dear Praying Friends of C and M Heritage
Welcome to the January heritage mailing with an update on what is happening on the heritage front of C and M Ministries from the start of 2022. We are so grateful to you for your interest in this ministry: this is a special update at the beginning of a significant year of change.
Our main emphasis will continue to be ‘building on the past to envision the future’. We are hoping that we will be able to give much more prominence to the Envisioning, Enabling and Empowering aspects and build up our resources to help equip the body.
If you want to navigate quickly to a particular section, you can click on the hyperlink here; otherwise, just scroll down the email.
Bless you for standing with us as we start this new venture.
Cliff and Monica, Roy and Angela plus all those sharing to create this changing face of C and M Ministries.
The Current Situation
Angela, Roy and Neil were officially welcomed and took over as C and M Ministries trustees on 7 December 2021 when Vanessa and Aggy resigned to activate the new Issachar Ministries CIO and were joined by Nick Szkiler as their new chairman. Issachar Ministries have already been in touch with supporters and they will be sharing their findings from their recent two-day retreat. Virginia also resigned as chair of C and M Ministries but is very active still as chair of Prophecy Today which seems to be going from strength to strength.
Roy Smith is now the chairman of C and M Ministries, with Angela Isbister as secretary and Neil Harvey as treasurer. They have already met a number of times and have good plans for the future as more historic aspects of the ministry are investigated for their relevance for today. This is an important part of the ongoing work of C and M Ministries today for which we need your prayer support. They will be joined as trustees by Jenny, Alison and Stephen from Cliff and Monica’s family at their next trustees meeting on 7 February.
Jacqueline is continuing to be the central communication point as office manager for C& M Ministries, Prophecy Today and Issachar Ministries – which is not an easy task. We are grateful for your prayer support for Jacqueline and each of our trustees, as well as the team.
Thematic Communications
We are specifically responding to needs as they arise, and our first MailChimp in November shared with you links to information and recordings which were requested on initiatives from both our race relations and inner-city years of 50 years or more ago. Our records have proved invaluable in providing reports for those still involved in the work, who have asked us for information about their foundation and early days. The MailChimp with links is available on request and once our new website is established there will be permanent access to these resources.
We hope to continue sending you thematic regular bimonthly MailChimp communications, containing similar news from distinct eras in our long ministry and, God willing, these will come to you in February, April, June, August, October and December and will alternate with live Zoom meetings when we will be happy to meet informally with you online, giving you more personal information and building up relationships.
Current Theme – Evangelism
Cliff and Monica were expecting to start the year by contributing to the annual Evangelists Conference in person, sharing some of our history of organising the 1980 National Congress which heralded a Decade of Evangelism, but this was cancelled at the last moment due to Covid restrictions.
Monica had delved back in the records, and our dear friend Jock Stein of Handsel Press very kindly rapidly produced a limited edition of a new book ‘Reaching Out – a fresh look at Need Oriented Evangelism’ which is available from the office or website. It also appears on our website joint resources page as a downloadable PDF – as a special offer to heritage supporters, a complimentary link will be available until the end of February – especially if, having read it, they are willing to help produce a fuller edition in the summer.
Together with the Issachar Ministries team, we gave by Zoom what we would have given to the conference led by J John, showing the relevance for today of the principles of evangelism that we have successfully used. The feedback has been remarkably encouraging. Prophecy Today carried a link to the 1975 highly significant ‘Call to the Nation’ by Archbishop Donald Coggan, the like of which is once more needed today. We will be sharing more of this and specific links to this event in a MailChimp next month.
Two other major areas of heritage are rapidly becoming a priority alongside other things – the record of PWM’s work with Issachar groups in the 1990s, which is part of a book which will be out during the summer months ‘Becoming an Issachar People’. Next year the Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group will have been active for 50 years, starting with the ‘Video Nasties’ campaign in 1983. Both of these will be thematic subjects in the near future.
Memories and Testimonies
In Rev 12:11 it says “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,…”. So we are expected to have a testimony. In Rev 19:10 it says, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”. There are several interpretations of this passage, but given that prophecy is God speaking to man, one possibility is that your testimony of Jesus is God speaking to the person to whom you are giving your testimony.
Let us therefore make every effort to share our stories with our children and grandchildren (and others). How we came to hear about God and what He has done over the years. As memory can grow dim, I have found it helpful to ask God to remind me. He never forgets the good stuff!
If you would like the opportunity of speaking into another’s life with your memories and testimonies, particularly if there is anything that Cliff or Monica said or did that helped your walk with God, any truth you discovered, or teaching that was made more clear, then we would love to hear from you. When the website is up and running, your contribution can be there for all to see and can be anonymous if you prefer. If you have old photos or pictures please do send them in, they also can be uploaded.
So if you have been helped by Cliff’s and Monica’s teaching, tapes or CDs, or been to a Conference, visited Moggerhanger or even travelled to far flung places, such as Israel, Greece or China with them, please get in touch.
Angela Isbister
Email: heritage@candmministries.org.uk or post to: Heritage, C and M Ministries, Bedford Heights, Brickhill Drive, MK41 7PH.
More Prayer Needs
Last year we introduced the heritage ministry by putting up an introductory landing page to a new website – the development of this has been delayed as the aftermath of Covid has struck our website constructor, but we are making efforts to make this active as soon as possible. This will then become the central ‘window to the world of this ministry’ but will also give us a storage space for much-needed archives. But your prayers are needed as it will need dedicated effort and insights.
Although the two designated rooms in Cliff and Monica's home are overflowing with much-needed hardcopy resources (much of which hails from a pre-computer age and needs digitalising) we are having to think laterally on getting these memorabilia sorted and into order as we have not yet found a local person to give assistance. Please pray this in. Jenny is giving valued help and we have just about got the garage and the overflow stock into manageable order. Please have these essential aspects in your prayers.
Help Needed at This Time
We have been so grateful to all those who have offered their help in so many different ways and assure you that we have not forgotten you or your willingness. There have been delays in getting the right equipment and materials to you; many of the older resources need cataloguing and registering before we can think of getting hard copy materials to you along with some deeper thinking on what we would like to be done with it so that it can be presented in the right way to be the most helpful today. We are facing the fact that this is not helped as we are all spread out in different locations.
Many of the more recent resources just need locating – and gathering together. A number of you have sent us sufficient of your old copies of the printed Prophecy Today – but if you have any other hard copies or photographs of other relevant visits etc – even to scanning them in where possible so that they can be sent by e-mail before posting – that could be so helpful. Or you could have been blessed by an old cassette or CD, or have access to a website other than our own which is displaying relevant material or information. If you can let us know, we can follow this up.
Quite a number of you have offered to proof-read new books and other resources and we do have quite a number of these in the pipeline. Fresh versions will continue to go out over several stages – and there may be some help needed on allied matters (and do let us know if you think of anything you could help with).
But if you can continue to hold fast and keep praying, we will keep in touch and keep you updated on needs as they come up.
A Final Note from our Treasurer about Finances
Having transferred to Issachar Ministries a large portion of our reserves, as they will continue to manage and oversee all existing staff and will need to have sufficient in their accounts to guarantee all the salaries for the whole of 2022, each of the ministries will be setting their budgets for this coming year. C & M Ministries will be setting ours at our February/March meetings. Can you please pray about this? We are a faith ministry, and we like to ensure that the funding received each year is spent wisely.
We would also like to undertake a number of new ventures, but as we are no longer engaging in income generating activities (these will in future provide income for Issachar Ministries and include the sale of any resources we are able to provide them with) the main guarantee of income for our heritage work is from those who have opted to take out regular standing orders to C and M Ministries. If you would like to support some of our ongoing heritage work regularly please do request a C and M Ministries standing order form from Jacqueline in the office. If a specific project attracts your attention and you would like to make a one-off gift, please make any cheques payable to C and M Ministries and identify the project.
Once again, thank you for your support and prayers - you are much appreciated.