Sitting watching the Williams’ grunt at each other in Wimbledon from the metropolis that is a place called Surlingham in Norfolk. I’ve been spending the week with my beautiful girlfriend and her lovely family, and am now live-blogging from their sofa!

I’ve had the pleasure of being chauffeured around all week - she’s a good driver, for a girl! On Monday we went to Blakeney for a boat trip to see the seals, the seals were cute, as was the boat’s dog called Titch who was a friendly Jack Russell. On Tuesday we went to Holkham Beach, apparently it’s one of the largest beaches in the UK and was used in the film Shakespeare in Love, but I wouldn’t know I’ve never seen it! This was a beautiful place - could have been in the Med or some tropical Island! On Wednesday we went to Norwich, to see a Norman Castle and Cathedral, saw shops, 4 DVDs for £20 at Zavvi, but sadly didn’t see Susie Fowler-Watt or Stuart White, or any other Look East presenters. I had the privelege of having a personal tour from a former Cathedral chorister (my angel), saw the little hidden bits in the Cathedral and found the pretty old streets.

The G’s little bro is a clever chap, so on Thursday we went with the family for an open day at Cambridge, Raa! I was too tired to hire a punt so we just wandered from shop to cafe to shop to cafe to shop to ice cream van. Friday went to Southwold, made me feel young - cos I remember being there when I was little, also we did bring the average age down considerably! The weather has been really nice, Norfolk is beautiful, the family have welcomed me (with good food!), and the company has been classy - all in all, good times!

So GAFCON have released their statement here, which basically just affirms that which the Anglican church has always believed.

Rowan Williams has responded to it in his own statement.

Firstly, it smacks of arrogance to say this is not ‘colonialism’ but at the same time to assume he has authority to speak on behalf of the whole Communion, and with more authority than African Bishops who have more Anglicans under their oversight.

Second, the quote below highlights the difference between Williams viewpoint and Biblical Christianity:

A ‘Primates’ Council’ which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion. And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties, both theological and practical – theological because of our historic commitments to mutual recognition of ministries in the Communion, practical because of the obvious strain of responsibly exercising episcopal or primatial authority across enormous geographical and cultural divides.

Williams speaks of theological problems, but notice he does not appeal to Scripture, or even to the Creeds or the Articles. He appeals to historic traditon, this is not a theological argument!!

So it seems my post reporting on Jim Packer’s comments while speaking at Holy Trinity Eastbourne have caused a little bit of a stir in the virtual and real-life press. Few people were interested with Packer’s insightful analysis of Liberalism, or his thoughts on the future of the Anglican church, but on one sentence - “I would say with great respect Archbishop, I believe that the way of wisdom is for you to resign.”

The story has been mentioned by Martin Beckford in the Telegraph, Ruth Gledhill in The Times and on the Church Times Blog. It’s also been discussed on Peter Kirk’s blog. Now personally I don’t think it’s a huge story by any means, but it just goes to show how the media has changed, I can blog something which otherwise would go unheard outside its original audience, isn’t technology good?!

You can listen to Dr. Packer’s talk yourself, and the question time.

How he’s been enjoying GAFCON and why he won’t be going to Lambeth…

Video on SydneyAnglicans

There’s loads of other videos there, little snippets from the conference including Vaughan Roberts.

So I won’t be at the rest of EMA, today I’m heading to Haverfordwest for Adam’s wedding, which is a stupid amount of miles from here, really people should get married at Oxford Services or somewhere easy to get to… Best Man’s “speech” has come together, sort-of… my inspiration has come from ‘Have I Got News for You’, hopefully there’ll be no libel cases afterwards!

As you can see there was a day when I had lovely blonde hair, and looked slim standing next to Adam. Mmm custard creams!

Today I went to the first day of a 3 day conference called the Evangelical Ministry Assembly, it’s run by the Proclamation Trust at St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in central London. This is the 25th year of the conference and the theme this year is Preaching - “Him We Proclaim”.

Christopher Ash - Why Preaching?

He gave a defence of preaching, stating that preaching works because it transcends cultural differences - although we can add our own constraints to it. He spoke about the authority of the preacher (a borrowed authority) and the ‘prophetic’ nature of preaching.

Simon Austen - Ephesians

This was an expostion of Ephesians 1 and 2 focusing on the themes of identity and what it means to be Church.

Steve Timmis - ‘Getting in touch with God’s global mission’

This was my choice from the seminar stream, ended up sitting next to the Big Moon Man. Steve started with two underlying principles: Theology - Who is God? and Ecclesiology - What is the Church? He took us to Revelation 4 & 5, revealing that God’s mission is all about his Son. Then to Ephesians, seeing that Christ rules his Church (his body) and that it is called to live as “communities of light”.

He then went through ‘10 Top Tips’ answering questions along the way, here are those tips;

1. Be ravished by Christ
2. Preach, teach and gossip Christ
3. Extend your boundaries of application beyond “read Bible, pray more, tell someone about Jesus”
4. Plant churches among unreached people groups around you
5. Get your church involved in another part of the world
6. Work from a realistic, achievable activity to a transforming one
7. Work from realistic giving, to sacrificial giving
8. Give away your best
9. Recognise mutual benefit
10. Keep it about God’s Kingdom, not yours

John Woodhouse - Colossians

Whoever does the last session has a tough job, it’s pretty stuffy, a lot of people are tired from the day plus travelling to get there… I’ll be gracious and say I was too tired to concentrate.

Last night I went to Holy Trinity Eastbourne to listen to Dr. J.I. Packer speak, the title of his talk was ‘Lessons to be learned from the Canadian Church Experience’. This comes in response to the rumblings in the Anglican church and the personal experiences of Jim Packer and other Canadian ministers in dealing with their liberal Bishop, Michael Ingham. 3 months ago I blogged about these issues, Packers De-licensing and his response to Ingham.

With that background in mind Packer set out to define 4 terms involved in the current debates:

1. Orthodoxy - Packer sees this as a synonym for Evangelicalism which focuses on the teaching of the Bible (because it acknowledges the authority of the Bible) and on the message of the Gospel (being based on Faith and Repentance).
2. Anglicanism - He highlighted two different views, those who saw Anglicanism as being bound up with historical practises (defined by traditions) and those who saw it as being defined by principles, as contained in the Creeds, Prayer Book, 39 Articles etc. Packer made it clear he stood in the 2nd camp - Anglicanism is based on principles. He also stated that he believed Anglicanism is “the richest version of Evangelicalism that the world has seen”.
3. Liberalism - Dr. Packer used 4 S’s to define liberalism…
   • Subordinates Scripture to the culture and individualistic Christian experience
   • Sanctifies the Secular
   • Scales down the Supernatural
   • Sweeps away Biblical Standards
4. Homosexuality - He basically made it clear that he was talking about the practise and not the temptation. Packer gave examples of temptations and how we should not yield to them and included homosexual temptations in this - we should not yield to the temptations because the actions are defined as sin by the Bible.

Dr. Packer went on to give the basic facts about his situation in the Canadian church, the history, how it happened and how things stand now. He highlighted the changing situation, that Bishops are no longer just theoretical heretics but are heretics in what the practise. He referred to Acts 27:27, Paul in the storm and used this as a metaphor to speak of being faithful through the storm in the hope of reaching land.

Big Jim then addressed 4 questions in conclusion…

1. What is God doing to the Anglican Communion?
   • Purging of liberalism
   • Preparing faithful Anglicans for counter-cultural and enterprising mission
2. What is the pattern of ‘alternative oversight’ doing to the Anglican Communion?
   • Drawing together a fellowship of the Orthodox
   • Parallel jurisdictions are disrupting the traditional diocese/province model
3. What are those who have ‘realigned’ to do now?
   • Pioneer faithful Christian outreach
   • Renewal of teaching, mission and discipleship
4. How should English Evangelicals react?
   • Watch and Pray

The question-time that followed came up with the usual questions from slightly ‘un-balanced’ folk, and a few good ones - “Dr. Packer, if you could have 5 minutes with the Archbishop of Cantebury, what would you say?”…

Packer stated that Rowan Williams’ views about homosexuality (documented before becoming A of C, and not changed since) mean that he is not qualified to lead the Anglican Communion and enforce rules layed down at Lambeth in 1998. Big Jim was clear, “Rowan Williams should resign”!

It so happened that earlier in the day I’d done some computer training with the Holy Trinity office staff, so as payment I got 3 free Packer books - God has Spoken, 18 Words, and Growing in Christ… good times.

The future of the Anglican church is uncertain, but it seems inevitable that in the coming months things will start to move… the Lambeth Conference happens next month, but happening right now is GAFCON - Global Anglican Future Conference! This is essentially an ‘alternative Lambeth’, for 300 orthodox Bishops from the Anglican Communion.

Colin Slee (Liberal, gay-agenda-pushing, Very Revd.) described GAFCON on Radio 4 as a “a very small group” - Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Southern Cone, Sydney, plus others - this represents at least half of the Anglicans worldwide.

Wallace Benn, Bishop of Lewes, and Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester are members of the GAFCON leadership team and are there in Jerusalem now. You can watch events unfolding at GAFCON as they are streamed live, see below…

In other news Wallace Benn has been very rude to me, he said in reference to my lovely girlfriend, and I quote - “It’s obvious that God must have given her to you… there’s no way you could have got her yourself!”

Final day interview with Hugh Palmer, Richard Cunningham and Don Carson talking about New Word Alive and the future…

Click here to download as an MP3

Here’s a little outline from the talk I did at Medical Christian Union at Sussex 2 weeks ago…

Isn’t the Bible full of errors?

The short answer is NO!

If the Bible is God’s word as it says (2 Tim 3:16), then it will be true.

That is a massive circular argument, BUT it has to be - just like the American Constitution!

God’s word must be ’self-authenticating’, but we can look to other evidence to expand this circle of argument.

Expanding the Circle

Textual Errors?

• Eyewitnesses still around when words are committed to paper
• Huge number of copies to compare with one another for errors (see manuscript table)

Factual Errors?

• Written when eyewitnesses were around, starting around 15 years after Christ
• Early Church and historians have no problems with so-called errors
• Eyewitnesses are named (Mark 15:21), 500 at one time (1 Cor 15)
• Secular history is not 100% accurate - see Hittite example where the Bible was right from the start
• If the Bible is fabricated then it’s a bad job - women witness the resurrection, first church leader denies Jesus, and the movement is based on a crucified leader

Social / Cultural Errors?

• Different cultures are offended by different bits of the Bible (see Mark 14, example from Tim Keller - Reason for God)
• We are arrogant when we assume our culture is more progressive than others!
• The Bible should contradict us (see Keller, ‘Stepford God’)

4 Main Points of Christianity

We shouldn’t ignore possible errors in the Bible, we need to think, discuss and research.

But we shouldn’t use possible errors to dismiss the Bible completely or to avoid addressing the central claims of the Bible…

1. We were created by God, for God
2. We’ve been happy to live in God’s creation, but without God, we deserve to die because of this rebellion
3. Jesus Christ, God-as-man, died. His death acts as a substitution, he dies where we should have died.
4. When we face God in judgement, we can take the punishment for our rebellion on ourselves or trust in Jesus that his death in our place restores a right relationship with God.