This report is a result of a six-month research project undertaken by Tearfund and CCCW in collaboration. Fieldwork was conducted in 2019 in South Sudan, Syria and Lebanon. The role of the church in seven fragile countries with protracted conflicts is reviewed – Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, Burundi Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

To read the report please click here.

Marietta van der Tol

Marietta is the new  International Encounter Scheme at the Centre from October 2019.
She is a PhD-candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Before she came to Cambridge, she studied History of Christianity at Yale Divinity School (USA) and Constitutional law and Socio-political history at Utrecht University (The Netherlands). For more information on her research and publications, click here, and for information on the Protestant Political Thought grant, click here.

To find out more about the Encounter Scheme click here.

Download the new CCCW seminar card here

Topics range from Palestinian Evangelicals to Reflections on Mission inspired by John V Taylor, one of the greatest missionaries of his generation.

We look forward to seeing you!

Intercultural Encounter Programme Coordinator

The Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide (CCCW) is looking for a creative, well-organised person to manage our intercultural placement scheme for young adults, and build relations with churches, colleges and student groups.  This position begins on or after October 1 2019 and is offered for one year in the first instance while the scheme is reviewed by the Trustee Board.

Pay:     6 hours a week (average) at £12.50 an hour.

Click here to download job description.

A complete application consists of a cover letter, CV, and the names of two references.  Applications should be sent to Polly Keen at centre@cccw.cam.ac.uk or at CCCW, Westminster College, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0AA, 01223 330640.

Closing date for applications:   6 September 2019

Interviews during the week beginning:  16 September 2019

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Job Description

The Intercultural Encounter programme offers bursaries to young adults and students with a Cambridge connection, in order to experience sustained exposure to a Christian community in a culture other than their own.  Bursary recipients attend an induction before departure and a debriefing on return.   The placements are intended to encourage reflective practice which informs and coheres with the teaching and research sponsored by CCCW on mission and Christianity.

Working with the Director of CCCW and the volunteer Trustees engaged with the programme, the co-ordinator is responsible for all aspects of the programme including publicity, encouraging applicants, directing applicants to appropriate contacts, collaboration with churches and organizations, facilitating the induction and debriefing and generally encouraging interest in Christian mission worldwide.  The shape of the Scheme is subject to annual review by the Trustees.

Specific responsibilities include:

• ·         Coordinate two application rounds per year.
• ·         Help applicants to find suitable opportunities and to write applications.
• ·         Organize two induction and debriefing sessions a year.
• ·         Publicize the Encounter programme through appropriate contacts in Cambridge.
• ·         Plan, with the Director, public presentations of reports on placements and organising events (workshops, seminars, etc.) involving past and present bursary recipients.
• ·         Maintain the Encounter section of the CCCW website.
• ·         Work with other Centre staff running the Centre and Library.
• ·         Attend three meetings a year of the Board of Trustees.
• ·         Co-operate with Trustees in making amendments to the Scheme as required.
• ·         Work-load varies throughout the year

Person Specification

The successful candidate will:

•  Manage the Scheme; seek new openings for intercultural engagement; promote the scheme in Cambridge; be adept with email and the Microsoft office suite of programmes.
• Work closely with bursary recipients and be pastorally sensitive to their hopes and fears.
• Build good relationships with student groups, mission agencies, placement organisations/churches and other networks; encourage a deeper understanding of Christian mission worldwide.
• Draw on their personal experience of Christian commitment in a different culture; have some theological and educational awareness. An understanding of Christian theology and missiology is desirable.
• Work with colleagues in the Centre under the line-management of the Director.

The Co-ordinator has a desk in the Centre.  The Centre is based in Westminster College and is the operating name of the Henry Martyn Trust which has been promoting the study of and engagement with mission since 1881.  It is an associate member of the Cambridge Theological Federation.

Informal enquiries about the position may be addressed to the Director, Dr Muthuraj Swamy, director@cccw.cam.ac.uk or 01223 330641.

Canon Sarah Snyder, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advisor on Reconciliation gave a talk for the CCCW at the Divinity Faculty on Tuesday 4 June, ‘The Church as a Reconciling Present in the Midst of Conflict.’

To listen to it, click here

Encompassing 70 million people in over 165 countries, the Anglican Communion extends into tens of thousands of local communities, faced with extensive and daily reconciliation needs, working alongside peoples who are marginalised and oppressed.

This seminar explores the unique role of the Church to speak authoritatively into the conflicts experienced, to be a reconciling presence at both a local and international level.

Dr Ian Randall’s new book, ‘Cambridge Students and Christianity Worldwide: Insights from the 1960s‘, is now on sale at the CCCW for the price of £4. (£6 inclu p/p in the UK)

TO ORDER PLEASE EMAIL CCCW ADMINISTRATOR

We can accept cash and cheques.

This book is the new (2019) CCCW I Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide Occasional Paper, just published. In the words of Dr Chris Wright, International Ministries Director, Langham Partnership:

“[In this book] Ian Randall traces the impact on global mission made by some of those whose faith and zeal were shaped and motivated through the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union in the 1960s. Those of us then in CICCU could scarcely have realised at the time what a remarkable decade that would turn out to be.” — back cover.

Dr Randall is also author of the (2016) CCCW Occasional Paper: “The Cambridge Seventy: a missionary movement in twentieth-century Britain.”

Go to our seminar page and read Prof Brian Stanley’s excellent paper on three Cambridge Evangelicals, Henry Martyn, Joe Church, & Derek Prince, and their significance to World Christianity.

The seminar was held on Tuesday 12 March at the Divinity Faculty, Cambridge.

Appointment of Chairperson

The Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, the operating name of The Henry Martyn Trust, is looking to appoint a new Chairperson in the near future. The present Chair, Revd Roger Bowen, is stepping down after 10 years. It is required that the Chair lives within easy reach of Cambridge.

Appointment of Chair:

The Henry Martyn Trust is engaged in expanding and developing the activities of the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide in education and research. It has a well-respected Library and Archive, and a well-established programme of inter-cultural encounter bursaries. As well as developing courses of its own, the Centre also works in partnership with the Cambridge Theological Federation and the Universities of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin. The Chair will serve as a Trustee in developing the Centre to meet the needs of the 21st century. The Chair should have a personal vision for the Mission of God in today’s world.

Profile: Essential Qualifications:

• Has experience of Christian ministry and mission.
• Has experience of serving in cross-cultural situations.
• Theologically and missiologically articulate.
• Able to chair the three Trustees’ meetings held every year.
• Has time available to meet with the Director at least one day a month.
• Regularly contactable by email.
• Equipped to support the Director pastorally and professionally.
• Ready to share in supporting the five part-time staff.
• Ready to serve as a Trustee leading a team of fellow-Trustees.

Remuneration: The position is unpaid.

To respond to this vacancy, you are invited to notify the CCCW Administrator, Polly Keen, in confidence at Westminster College, Cambridge CB3 0AA or at centre@cccw.cam.ac.uk. Appointment will be subject to appropriate exploratory conversations, followed by approval by the Board of Trustees.

CCCW seminar – Tues 12 March, at 4.30pm, Lightfoot Rm, Divinity Faculty, West Rd, Cambridge.

Speaker: Prof Brian Stanley is Professor in World Christianity, at University of Edinburgh, and has written several books on world mission.

These three prominent figures in the story of the global diffusion of evangelical Christianity differed widely in their theological emphases, but shared a common debt to the University of Cambridge for their spiritual and intellectual formation. In this talk, Brian will focus on one aspect of the career of each of
these three that has particular significance for contemporary world Christianity.

Henry Martyn’s achievements in biblical translation were founded on a conviction that God revealed himself both in Scripture and in the principles of order apparent in human languages. The liberating cultural significance of biblical translation has been a major theme of modern scholarship. Joe Church’s application of the Keswick holiness message in the East African Revival called for the creation of spiritually renewed Christian fellowships that would transcend the hierarchical divisions of ethnicity and colonialism.  The Rwandan genocide of 1994 raises the question of just how effective that vision was.  Former Philosophy Fellow of King’s, Derek Prince, transposed Platonism into a Pentecostal theology of deliverance from unseen spiritual powers that has proved extraordinarily influential, especially in Africa.  Though it highlights the reality of spiritual warfare for large sections of the global Christian community, it raises the question whether a preoccupation with demon possession magnifies or diminishes the power of Christ.

ALL WELCOME