It’ll now be led by Mike Andrea who will serve as CEO.

24-7 Prayer is an international, interdenominational movement of prayer.

It equips people to pray in churches, schools, nightclubs and various other places.

Announcing the move on Facebook, Greig said: “Sammy (wife) and I are entering a new season having celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary while our sons turned 21 and 18, I turned 50, and 24-7 turned 20 all in the last year. We sense that this is meant to be a time of jubilee!

“Of course, we will continue to bring leadership to the 24-7 movement – speaking, writing and offering hospitality, mentoring and convening key leaders, supporting the worldwide family of 24-7 communities, shaping culture and vision at a high level. We will also continue to lead and be deeply rooted in our Christian family at Emmaus Rd Church, serve on the Wildfires Festival team and Sammy will continue to train as a Counsellor. There’s plenty to do!

“Meanwhile, the church and the movement continue to grow which means that the pressures on my schedule have been increasing unsustainably for quite some time. Candidly, I need to slow down without slowing the movement down. This means relinquishing position, power and control – something that leaders aren’t always very good at – but by God’s grace we find ourselves simply overwhelmed with joy.”

Greig will continue to serve the organisation…

Fewer people might have died in the Grenfell Tower fire had residents been evacuated while it was still possible an official report into the tragedy said.

The public inquiry’s first report into the blaze, due to be published on Wednesday but seen by the PA news agency, identified “systemic” failures by the London Fire Brigade (LFB).

Inquiry chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick criticised the London Fire Brigade for its “stay-put” strategy when residents were told to remain in their flats by firefighters and 999 operators for nearly two hours after the blaze broke out just before 1am. The strategy was rescinded at 2.47am.

Rt Rev Graham Nichols, Bishop of Kensington, who was part of response and relief efforts, told Premier he was filled with ‘admiration for the fire service and the way they responded, but on the other hand, he said there’s been a feeling that if policy had been changed earlier, more people would have escaped from the fire.

“I think it illustrates something about the way we run our institutions,” he said.

“Do you follow the rule of regulations write the way down to the last minute? Or do you respond to the needs of the time? 

“It seems to be obvious in some ways emergency services were overwhelmed by what happened with Grenfell Tower. Nothing had happened of that scale in London for years and they were rather woefully unprepared for it.”

“And that’s a great regret for them looking back on it.”

Sir Martin also said “the LFB’s…

New contactless donations points have been set up in shops, cafés and public buildings in the city centre to benefit Leicester’s Homelessness Charter.

The diocese of Leicester set up the charter last year, uniting agencies, council, business and faith groups all with a goal to tackle homelessness.

Leicester Homelessness Charter Chair, Canon Pastor at Leicester Cathedral, Rev Canon Alison Adams, commented: “I am delighted that two core Charter members, BID Leicester and Leicester City Council, have together given the public a really practical way of supporting initiatives to reduce homelessness.

“Many people are concerned but unsure about how to respond. In raising awareness, Give Leicester and the online directory we are also launching will begin to address this.”

The ‘Give Leicester’ donation points are small, contactless terminals, which will enable people to make a £3 donation simply by tapping their card.

Donations collected over the first six months of the scheme will go towards the One Roof Night Shelter operated by local charity One Roof Leicester. The shelter provides additional emergency accommodation and food for those in need.

Stay up to date with the latest news stories from a Christian perspective. Sign up to our daily newsletter and receive more stories like this straight to your inbox every morning.

The listed places of worship grants scheme (LPWGS) is to be extended by the Treasury for a further year until March 2021.

Although churches and cathedrals are responsible for fundraising for their own repairs, the scheme will pay grants to cover the VAT incurred on urgent structural work and new roofs in a bid to reduce the burden on congregations to raise funds.

According to the Church of England’s 2016 Statistics for Mission, churches and cathedrals collectively run some 33,000 social action projects and contribute £22m a year to the UK economy.

A government commissioned report published in 2017 called for measures to ensure the upkeep and use of church buildings after finding them to play a ‘vital role’ for community identity and public service.

The decision to extend the grant comes in direct support of the Taylor Review: Sustainability of English Churches and Cathedrals and its recommendations to support the care and maintenance of such buildings to ensure their sustainability for the future.

The LPWGS funding will be guaranteed until 31st March 2021 under the new extended plans, to the benefit of hundreds of additional churches.

Dr David Knight, Senior Church Buildings Officer, said: “We want to thank the Government for their continuing support for churches through the Taylor Pilots and the extension of this scheme.

“It will be a welcome reassurance to many churches with plans for the next year or two…

It wasn’t long before clergy and parishioners who know their history picked up on the error, with Lloyd Llewellen-Jones professor of ancient history at Cardiff University and an Anglian tweeted: “I think that we can trace the roots of the established Church in England to at least 664CE, if not earlier. 485 years? Pah!”

The 664 date refers to the Synod of Whitby, when the kingdom of Northumbria chose to follow Roman rather than Celtic church practices.

Some members of clergy commented an earlier start date to the CofE was accurate. One of Anglican chaplain responded to the tweet: “That’s funny, I thought my diocesan cathedral dated to the mid-4th century as a site of Christian worship? Are we simply one of many protestant sects, or Ecclesia Anglican, the Church of England? Please delete this and read the history page of the CofE website.”

As the historians came out of the Twitter woodwork, not to be outdone, a canon in the south of England said that “coming originally from the diocese of St Albans” he regarded the Church’s starting point to be around 209AD, the date traditionally given for the martyrdom of the British saint.

The CofE’s tweet was welcomed by at least one Roman Catholic, however, who described its claim of a 16th-century origin for Anglicanism as a “very revealing slip-up”.

A spokesperson for the CofE told The Times newspaper, that the CofE “derives many of its distinctive features from the events of the 16th and 17th centuries. Of course,…

New contactless donations points have been set up in shops, cafés and public buildings in the city centre to benefit Leicester’s Homelessness Charter.

The diocese of Leicester set up the charter last year, uniting agencies, council, business and faith groups all with a goal to tackle homelessness.

Leicester Homelessness Charter Chair, Canon Pastor at Leicester Cathedral, Rev Canon Alison Adams, commented: “I am delighted that two core Charter members, BID Leicester and Leicester City Council, have together given the public a really practical way of supporting initiatives to reduce homelessness.

“Many people are concerned but unsure about how to respond. In raising awareness, Give Leicester and the online directory we are also launching will begin to address this.”

The ‘Give Leicester’ donation points are small, contactless terminals, which will enable people to make a £3 donation simply by tapping their card.

Donations collected over the first six months of the scheme will go towards the One Roof Night Shelter operated by local charity One Roof Leicester. The shelter provides additional emergency accommodation and food for those in need.

Stay up to date with the latest news stories from a Christian perspective. Sign up to our daily newsletter and receive more stories like this straight to your inbox every morning.

The organisation said that amounts to 3,969 languages that are yet to reach the Bible.

James Poole, executive director of Wycliffe, said this shows there’s still much work to do.

“That’s why Wycliffe continues to work with urgency to translate God’s word into all these languages.”

Despite this, Wycliffe’s annual figures show a lot of progress.

Among the highlights are that 698 languages now have the complete Bible (up from 683 in 2018), and that 1,548 languages have a complete New Testament (up from 1,534).

A further 1,138 have some translated portions of the Bible (up from 1,133).

Peter Brassington, who compiles the statistics said: “These are encouraging figures, and represent the tremendous work that translation teams are doing across the world.

“Changes year to year don’t always look dramatic on the surface, but Bible translation requires dedicated, long-term effort, and the translations finished now often started many years ago. I joined Wycliffe in 1996: the number of languages in which there is a complete Bible has doubled in that time.”

Wycliffe said there is also active translation or preparatory work going on in 2,617 languages in 161 countries.

Poole said every time a translation is competed is momentous occasion.

“Yet again, we have seen that when people get their New Testament or Bible in their language, it makes such a difference,” he said.

“Seeing the…