August 2022
Talking Jesus
with Rachael Heffer
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m Rachael Heffer, and I’m Head of Mission for the Evangelical Alliance (EA), overseeing our UK mission team to encourage and equip EA’s members and partners in their mission and evangelism and develop a greater confidence to make Jesus known around the UK.
What’s your connection with Ridley?
My contact with Ridley started around 2014 when I was a Youth Adviser for the Diocese of Ely, and a number of us with a passion for Christian youth ministry gathered regularly to look at how we could best resource, train, and equip all those investing in young people across our region. This led to various ecumenical projects, creating youth ministry training tools and forming a network of youth leaders who met regularly for support and training.
What’s the most recent project at Ridley you have been involved with?
Since moving to the EA my relationship with Ridley has continued mainly around input into the Ridley Awards. There is much shared heart between us around training and equipping churches in developing a culture of evangelism, encouraging effective and brave individual Christian witness, and seeing people trained and equipped to step out into new ministries such as sports ministry and chaplaincy, meeting people with the good news where they are at.
I was delighted to recently record a Ridley podcast unpacking some of the Talking Jesus research, digesting some of the headline findings and dissecting how this can further inform our ministry and bring confidence to the UK church in this season.
Can you say a little more about the Talking Jesus research?
The research maps the current landscape of faith and evangelism across the UK. Many across Christian media have already been sharing the encouraging findings that 45% of the UK population believe in the resurrection, 20% of the UK population believe that Jesus is God, and that one in three non-Christians, after a conversation with a Christian, want to know more about Jesus Christ — up from one in five in 2015. We hope that this wave of encouragement and challenge will help to spur the church and individuals on to greater confidence and boldness in sharing the gospel with their friends and communities.
Download the full report at talkingjesus.org. For further information about the report or to share more widely within in your networks, email Rachael on r.heffer@eauk.org.
