The London Men’s Convention 2008 is in two weeks time, bad planning on my part has meant that I can’t go this year, gutted. They have a nice new website as of a few months ago, better than the last one and brings the 4 ‘Christian Conventions’ together, which is good if perpetuating the North/South divide. I had hoped to go, particularly I wanted to hear Al Stewart speak, I’d never heard of him before, but he’s sounds good, a proper Aussie - see interview below…

If you are going, make sure you do ‘The Deal‘, 3 books for £10; Vaughan Roberts - ‘Missing the Point’, Al Stewart - ‘Men’, and Paul Williams and Barry Cooper - ‘If you could ask God one question’ (I’ll be reviewing this at the end of the week)… Bargain!

Terry Virgo (well his son, Joel) is currently interviewing Mark Driscoll in the run up to his visit to the Brighton Conference in July, there’s a few parts coming slowly.

Also, I put the wrong link down for the Text and Context talks… click the image below. Still waiting for the Q&A sessions.

You can now download the most of the audio and video from the Text and Context Resurgence conference. I didn’t stay up till stupid-o-clock every night to watch them live, so this is good! I’m looking forward to watching the Q&A with John Piper which is reported to be excellent…

Podcast page… Vodcast page…

The Resurgence conference starts today in Seattle (probably about 8000 miles away, maybe not quite that far… a long way anyway!)… would have been fun to go, but know matter, because of the wonders of technology I can sit at home and watch the sessions streamed live! Which means in theory I could live-blog about them… just one snag, we’re 8 hours ahead, which means I would have to stay up till 3am to catch the final session… maybe not.

I have a feeling that Jonathan Thomas of proGnosis is there and making a video diary which you can see on their Youtube page… so look out for those if they appear.

Next week is the Resurgence conference, Text and Context - Driscoll, Piper, Mahaney etc. hopefully there’ll be some audio to discuss then… but for now here’s MD on preparing to preach…

What does the scripture say?

What does the scripture mean?

How or why do we resist the word?

How does it apply to our mission - personal and corporate application?

Firstly, New Word Alive - which I am very excited about is a 7-hour car journey away, or an 8-hour LDV minibus journey! But the States is where it’s at for conferences really Resurgence, Desiring God, Gospel Coalition, New Attitude, Band of Bloggers, Together for the Gospel, Ligonier Ministries… and the latest one I came across is called Dwell, an urban church planting conference with Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller and CJ Mahaney (described as having more hair than pride!). Redeemer church and Mars Hill are the most ’successful’ church planting churches in the States.

I do have a little pipe-dream to spend a month travelling round North America checking out some churches and conferences… maybe next year! However, I shouldn’t moan too much, the New Frontiers conference with Mark Driscoll this year is only a 20 minute walk from my house

I made it to the first three London Men’s conventions, but sadly missed the last two. However, it is in the Easter holidays for me this year so may be able to make it…

Two conferences happened recently, I would have loved to have been at both… sadly on was several thousand miles away, and the other, well I had to resit some exams instead

Anyway the audio and video is now available…

Forum 2007 Talks - I’m told Kath Arnold is worth listening to…

Desiring God 2007 - my sister is a Dr. Helen groupie

A couple of weeks ago I went to Keswick week1 (with mother and father). As week1 is still in term time for some schools, it seems to be rather dominated by those of a latter generation, those who think Steve James is a young and trendy worship leader, who reminisce about old hymns and Scripture Union songs, and who laugh at the lamest of jokes and Dave Fenton’s pink shirts.

Anyhow, the theme of the week was Grace. Highlights were John Stott’s last preach, on Christlikeness, and Simon Manchester on Jonah. Alec Motyer gave the morning bible readings, an overview of Exodus which was superb. And I went to a couple of afternoon seminars looking at Hebrews with Jonathan Lamb and Simon Manchester.

The weather was a bit rubbish so I spent more time in cafes than at the top of mountains, but the lunches and the cakes were very good in the tea rooms. I think I’m turning into a bit of a conference junkie, it’s great to combine a bit of a holiday with some great Bible teaching and time to chat with folks - sadly I can’t make it to Forum but we’re all booked in to New Word Alive - on the subject of NWA, us Sussex students made it to the promo video (see at 1:25).

So this week I’ve been at the Evangelical Ministry Assembly (EMA) at St. Helens in London. Was a good time to meet some friends, do some networking, and hear wise old men expound the scriptures and give their thoughts on evangelical ministry today.

Tim Keller - What is an Evangelical?

1. High view of scripture - full, final, and supreme authority of the Bible
2. Trust in the ‘old’ gospel - salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in the substitutionary work of Christ alone
3. Repentant (Luther - “all of life is repentance”)

Tim was very good. He graciously challenged UK evangelicals, particularly on being too middle class and not being engaging beyond that - hard to hear at a ProcTrust conference! He talked about the challenges we face both within and outside of the church… while our doctrine is right, some of our methods may rightly be criticised.

He concluded by looking at what an evangelical ministry would look like:

1. Reflects the balance of love and wrath in the cross - grace vs. truth, law vs. licence
2. Reflects the balance of the incarnation in contextualising the gospel
3. Ministry based on grace not gifts

Dick Lucas - Philippians

I found Dick hard work. He wasn’t doing straight, sequential expositions from the book, but rather took what seemed to me a series of random thoughts from the book about the church and Paul. I decided I could forgive him for this, after all he is 82. But anyway he was talking a lot about persecution and being prepared to stand and suffer for Christ - Philippians 1:29

Vaughan Roberts - Daniel

This was really good I thought. Two 45-minute sessions and Vaughan gave a clear overview of Daniel 1-6 and then 7-12. The latter was particularly good, an overview allows you to see the big picture, the key themes and how it points to Christ and God’s people. So Daniel 7-12, which once was a no go area of weird and wonderful dreams, now, having taken a step back looks almost comprehendable!

Richard Cunningham - Persuasive Preaching

Something I’d thought and discussed with others in the past is whether we need to be persuasive in the way we present the gospel… Do we simply faithfully preach the gospel and trust the Spirit will work? Or do we need to adapt to our audience? Present rational arguments? Is there a role for apologetics?? Richard showed us, mainly from Paul’s ministry in Acts (17 especially) for the need to adapt, to contextualise and to present rational, persuasive arguments.

There were a few other sessions, David Jackman spoke about training (advertised 9:38 and Cornhill), there were some seminars - I went to one by Jason Clarke on the Emerging Church, and a Q&A session with TK, VR and RC.