Dear Praying Friends of C and M Heritage
Summer is now with us and spirits are lifting, but we still find ourselves once again living through difficult times. We, personally, are thriving and we are finding it doubly rewarding to be able to look back and see so many of our past ministries and projects being relived in a new setting. Heritage is proving to be not just one project but a variety of projects all under the same banner. Our links with colleagues from the past grow every week and we are so grateful to have others working with us on specific aspects and as a team, stimulating us to reminisce and helping bring it all into some God-given whole.
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 discover that so much of the past has continuing relevance for today – do let us know your own thinking on all of this.
Cliff and Monica, Roy, Angela, Jenny plus all those sharing in creating this changing face of C and M Ministries.
This Month’s Theme – Revivals and 1986 in Israel
We have a number of links to Heritage papers to give you which will appear on our website as soon as it is fully up and running. In April last, we promised to give you progress on two fresh aspects. Revivals and Expectation of Revivals have given Christians hope for generations and we do have some unique recordings from our heritage as well as other more contemporary links to share with you.
Monica was fortunate enough to know J Edwin Orr well, often referred to as the ultimate authority on Revivals. She organised a visit to the UK for him in 1984 (his last overseas visit before he passed away). She was working with him on expanding a synopsis and commentary on revivals from 1727 until the 1970s which he never completed, although his widow wanted us to publish what he had started. We thought we had lost all traces of this, but we have just renewed a contact with John Hayward who has given us this link to this 16 page publication which is also available as a downloadable pdf, and these links will all eventually be on the Church Growth section on the website.
At the turn of the century the Church Growth Digest in its 21st year gave over a whole issue to Revivals Past and Present and we include Monica’s Editorial on ‘Do Revivals Last’ – Should they? Could they? And if they don’t, why not?
We also have on our team a more recent authority on Revivals in Tom Lennie, the recently installed Executive Editor of Prophecy Today. Tom has engaged in copious research on evangelical revivals across the world, and has published three sturdies documenting the history of revivals in Scotland – ‘Land of Many Revivals’, ‘Glory in the Glen’ and ‘Scotland Ablaze’.
We had also promised to sort out the original recordings from the Carmel/ Jerusalem Gatherings and share them with you as MP3s. There are 41 already upgraded to MP3s from CDs, and 11 are listed on this link for you to listen to at your leisure. More will be uploaded as the site expands. Prophecy Today at that time was carrying regular updates and the first of these was in Volume 2 no 3 (May / June issue 1986) accessed here. This report of the gathering at Mount Carmel of 153 international leaders eager to listen to the Lord, was prior to them all going up to Jerusalem to celebrate Easter and report to 5,000 who had travelled in especially eager for news. We will be including further reports and details of the teaching given in Jerusalem and as the PWM Team travelled round the nation, carrying the message forward, next time!
Future Expectations – Church Growth and PWM
As promised, we will be unearthing and sharing more from our records of our ministries in the 1980s at a time when the church in the UK was battling to combat decline and church growth thinking was expanding and filling a real need with church leaders. At the same time PWM was emphasising an understanding of Prophecy as being the unchanging word of God to a hungry nation. These two ministries each spanned over 20 years and were the basis for launching many more charities and projects.
More News Updates
Issachar Ministries Summer 2022 Newsletter
The Summer mailing of Issachar Ministries is being prepared for printing as we write this and if you are on IM’s mailing list you will receive copies by post. Heritage now have a ‘stand-alone’ paper with it and we will have extra copies printed so that we can send a hard copy to those who do not do e-mail and a digital copy for those who do, which will in future become available to heritage members twice a year.
Becoming an Issachar People
We have completed the first run through of the book on the heritage behind Issachar Ministries and Nick Szkiler and the IM Trustees have contributed to the final section entitled ‘Crossing Over’ giving their vision for the future. The office is taking advance orders for this book with a 10% discount for pre-publication orders.
New chair – Jenny and Roy
We were not expecting to need to make changes in our trustees so quickly as we moved into this new phase, but Roy has had consistent health problems and will hand over the chair of C&M Ministries to Jenny Cooper at our July meeting. Roy continues to be involved but taking much more of a back seat. We do though want to thank him for all the stimulation and vision he gave us as we took those momentous decisions in the early years. The AGM on 5 July will agree the report and accounts for 2021, our last joint year for accounts, and the Trustees will also agree a new structure for the way forward.
Website and Sharepoint progress
Unfortunately, we have not made the progress in the last couple of months that we were expecting, and we are still waiting for the right structures to be set fully in place. Please pray for Kevin and Andy that all the IT and internet problems will be surmounted soon and we will be fully in business with plenty of viable on-line working space for all our records.
Access to folders/pictures
Looking ahead more positively, we are gradually making plans for the vast amount of material files and folders and especially all the pictures, that will need to be manually transported so that they can be available to work on by a large number of people as well as being correctly and usefully located and prepared for the website.
Books overseas update
We have recently posted on our old website a link to a full report from Uganda of the large number of books that we donated via one of our prayer partners – and in the very near future, we will be delivering more books and resources to Richard for his next visit. It seems unlikely that this will be an outlet for the older cassettes and videos of which we have a number of teaching treasures, so if you know of anyone who can use them do let us know. And if you too have good and useful books and resources, surplus to your requirements, especially teaching materials, please feel free to offer them directly to Richard in Hastings at Legacy Trust – contact details on the report mentioned above.
Tottenham archives
Next week will be our first visit to the Bruce Castle Museum to build on the new links being established there with our Tottenham years in the 1960s. We hope the archivist will agree to holding a number of our resources from that era and making any digitalised ones still available to us for our internet use. We are hoping too to see a good archiving system in action – and learning from it!
BCGA reunion possible
Reminiscing on the church growth years and making some resources available, has stimulated interest from leaders who were involved with the desire possibly to meet on Zoom. Might there be some lessons they learned towards the end of the last century that might be of continued relevance and help today. The number of those who were involved is sadly decreasing as more are ‘called home’, and we have been remembering old colleagues with whom we had lost touch and regretting that they could no longer share their wisdom. If you were involved at any level – or know of someone who was – please be in touch.
Shades of Black launch
We are excited to be able to announce a pre presentation of ‘Shades of Black’ in East London on July 18th and invite anyone in the area, interested or willing to be involved, to be in touch through heritage@candmministries.org.uk. Pray for the right structures as C&M Ministries is no longer equipped to run events! This new book on colour consciousness to which both Nigel Pocock and Alton Bell have added significant sections to Cliff’s original 1960s research will be launched officially in central London in October Black History month. Pre-publication copies will only be available (at a discount) from Issachar Ministries) prior to that date.
Help and Prayer Needed – Volunteer Opportunities
Volunteer involvement has unfortunately decreased as we have had to provide the right structures professionally to link on-line working with those who have offered their services. We were not expecting this to take so long, but new skills need to be learned in a new field – on-line archiving – and all without a central office location where volunteers could meet and learn from each other! But hopefully we are nearing the time when we enter a more active and fulfilling phase.
July Interaction
We have been experimenting with offering opportunities to discuss issues on line and May’s interactivity was very useful. Do let us know through heritage@candmministries.org.uk if you have any questions or would like to follow up any particular issues. There will be a further opportunity to meet with individual members online via Zoom on Monday the 25th July at 7.30 pm or Tuesday the 26th July at 2.00 pm. A personal link will be sent to any we hear from who might find this helpful on the Monday morning of that week with others copied in. This does not rule out any further Zoom meetings - and if another time and date would suit you better, please let us know. We value our contact with you.
Once again, thank you for your support and prayers – you are all very much appreciated.