| STEVE CLIFFORD has been appointed the new general director of the Evangelical Alliance (EA), succeeding the Revd Joel Edwards as head of the interdenominational network.
Mr Clifford, aged 54, is married and has two children. He was chairman of both the Hope 08 mission initiative and the leadership team of the Soul Survivor festivals, and believes his new job is a “fantastic opportunity” to encourage Christians to “unite and change society”. But he acknowledges that he takes over at a time of “instability and change”.
“The world is being shaken by the financial crisis, the credit squeeze, and spiralling unemployment, but that creates us with all kinds of opportunities. I would like to see the EA engaging with these issues, and asking the question: What kind of society do we want to live in?
“What about relationships and what about kindness, and what does it look like in the society and communities we live in?”
He picked out for praise those Christian groups “getting their hands dirty” in community work across the country, and highlighted the work of the Street Pastors scheme, in which Christians take to the streets of towns and cities on Friday and Saturday nights, and assist revellers.
“There’s so much we can see that’s fantastic among local churches engaging with their communities, with kids’ clubs, and the homeless, but we’re not always very good at telling these stories.”
He acknowledged that the Evangelical wing in the UK was a “broad family”, but that it should not be “frightened of disagreement” and should “disagree agreeably”.
Mr Clifford comes from Bradford, where his father was a Church of England priest. He trained as a teacher before going into full-time church work in 1985.
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