This Spring newsletter brings you greetings from C&M Ministries and an update on our plans for the future.
First, we would like to pass on our grateful thanks to all those who attended the Service of Thanksgiving for Monica on Friday 7th March (both those who attended in person and those who watched online). The service can still be viewed on the Bunyan Meeting church YouTube channel by following this link: Memorial Service for Monica Hill.
In this Newsletter
Tributes to Monica
Clifford would like to thank all those who have sent him personal messages of support and memories of Monica. He has been overwhelmed with the response of friends from far and wide who knew and worked with Monica throughout her long ministry.We have now created a special page on our website where you can read some of the tributes: Monica - Tributes, Memories and Condolences. It hasn’t been possible to include all the messages we’ve received but if you would like to add your own tribute please contact Angela via our contact page.
Monica’s Legacy Fund
We would also like to thank all those who have contributed to Monica’s legacy fund. To date we have received gifts of just over £3,000 and the trustees met at the end of April to discuss how best to use this fund to create a permanent legacy for Monica.
Monica had a great gift of communication and developed many teaching courses throughout her ministry. Some of you will no doubt have attended the more recent Webinars that Monica and Clifford ran on Zoom during the pandemic. Others may have heard Monica and Clifford when they spoke at meetings around the country or organised tours of the Holy Land.
Some of you may also remember the earlier courses Monica and Clifford ran at Bawtry Hall, Northampton and Moggerhanger in the 1990s and 2000s. These were mainly in-service training courses for those in leadership, drawing on their experiences of many years of ministry. These courses were developed in the days before ‘modern technology’ so, although we still have much of this early course material in our archives, it is stored on paper or OHPs! The trustees have decided to use Monica’s Legacy Fund to digitalise some of this material so that it can be made available to future generations on our website.
Therefore, we feel that the best tribute we can make to Monica is to digitalise the fascinating, and still relevant, teaching material from the Natural Church Development course that she ran in the late 1990s. This course was based on Christian Schwartz’s research in Germany. Under Monica’s leadership, the British Church Growth Association linked with Christian and his team to develop insightful theories of how churches grow. Monica carried out the UK research and published the British version of the Handbook on Church Growth. She also ran a number of courses for church leaders in Britain and was subsequently asked to lead consultations across the country, advising on how to use the natural gifts of people within the church to grow into ‘healthy churches’.
We feel that the notes and OHPs from these Natural Church Development courses are still very relevant for today. Therefore, using Monica’s Legacy money, we have asked Ben Robinson to help us digitalise this material and make it available on our website. Many of you may remember Ben and his wife, Frances, who worked for Issachar and PT a few years ago so they already have a general understanding of our ministry. We welcome Ben to our team.
New Publications
We are pleased to announce that Clifford’s latest book, ‘Today with Amos, Hosea and Micah’ was published at the beginning of March. This is another in the ‘Today with the Prophets’ series and is a book of daily readings on three Old Testament prophets.
The first half of the eighth century BC was a time of international peace and security for Israel. But by the middle of the century the whole scene was about to erupt.
God sent four of the most fearless prophets to warn his people. Clifford has already covered Isaiah in three volumes. Here he completes the study of the eighth century prophets with Amos, Hosea and Micah – each with a powerful message that speaks into our world today. ‘Today with Amos, Hosea and Micah’ is available to buy for £10.
We are still waiting for a publication date for Clifford and Monica’s book ‘Seeing the Hand of God’ which is being published by Wilberforce Publications. Monica sent this book to the publishers just days before she died. It is a book of short stories about Clifford and Monica’s worldwide ministry and the amazing things that they have seen God doing in their long ministry together. Full purchase details will be added to the news section of our website when available.
Clifford has now started writing a new book, ‘The Day of the Lord’. It will look at lessons that can be learnt from the past, starting with a study of the post exile OT prophets, then the early church, and finally the development of the 20th century charismatic movement, with a special focus on the Toronto Blessing and Kansas City Prophets. We hope this book will be published before Christmas and we will give further details in our next newsletter.
Other News
The trustees have reaffirmed the aims of the ministry to collate and catalogue the archival material relating to the 70 years of Monica and Clifford’s national and international ministry. We aim to make it available digitally where possible, and to ensure that the original material is eventually preserved in an archival library where it can be accessed by future generations.
The C&M website already contains an outline of the wide ministry of Monica and Clifford, ranging from 1960s race relations work and 1970s inner city mission to a national prophetic and teaching ministry. As already mentioned, plans are in place to digitalise much of this archival material. We are also exploring links with some archival libraries who have expressed interest in storing our material in the future. We will update you on the progress of this work in our next newsletter.
There are, however, a couple of ways you may be able to assist the ministry. We now need to make a full list of all the archival material we currently have in storage, so if you could help us do this we would love to hear from you. Also, please do get in touch if you know of any archival groups who may be interested in offering long-term storage for our archive and could make it available for future generations.
Please continue to hold the ministry in your prayers. Our next newsletter will be in September with more news of our on-going work and future plans.
Clifford, Jenny, Alison, Stephen, Angela, Neil, Kathryn and the rest of the team.