Carrying on from Mark’s first talk on Spirit-Led Missions he went on to speak about what a Missional church is. Firstly he concluded his 8-point definition of a church:

• Regenerated Church membership
• Qualified Leadership (male eldership)
• Gathers regularly for preaching and worship
• Sacraments ministered correctly (Baptism and Communion)
• Unity in Word and Spirit
• Discipline for holiness
• Loves all people
• Evangelises and makes disciples

He went on expanding on point 8 to talk about all of church being on mission, citing Leslie Newbiggin who spoke of being engaged in mission that understands its culture. Driscoll then gave four examples of churches and how they respond to culture:

• Bombshelter - the fundamentalist church that hides from culture, treating church as a safe haven from it. They preach against the culture in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality, they’re not missional.
• Mirror - the liberal church that is simply a reflection of the culture.
• Parasite - the church that takes all the benefits that a culture provides but does not serve, give to, or love that culture.
• City within a City - the church loves Jesus, believes the Bible and lives differently within the culture, it invites others to join in the distinctive living.

Obviously he’s with the fourth church! Driscoll then went through the 12 aspects of a missional church - he got to 4, having spent about half an hour on the 3rd!

• Church is a missional outpost, it exists to grow, to put on more services, set up new campuses and plant new churches.
• Every Christian is a Missionary. The gospel needs to be preached every week (to encourage inviting friends) and members need to be trained in doctrine and apologetics (so they can answer questions).
• Aware of Local Culture. Mark talked through most forms of media (TV, radio, Internet, blogs, social networking) and how he uses them, he spoke of watching TV missionally - seeing the idols displayed in the media, people’s personal heavens. He also chatted about knowing the places where people socialise and speaking to those in the know about what people get up to.
• Contending and Contextualizing the Gospel. Mark spoke first on 1 Corinthians 9:22 - “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some”. He spoke of having ‘timeless truths and timely methods’, of being ’seeker-sensible’. In conclusion he gave one of the most clear explanations of contextualization I have heard him give - he said…

“you do not need to make the gospel relevent, but you do need to show that the gospel is relevent”

Afterwards it was good to see a little party from UCCF present and I was able to chat with Scott Thomas about Acts29, church planting and the partnership with Steve Timmis culminating in an event at St. James Clerkenwell on Friday night and the Dwell conference on Saturday. And being a geek, I went and got a picture with Mark - he has a really large head…

Day 2. After the seminar stream (I’ll report about that at the end of the week) was the first main session with David Stroud. David is the leader of Christ Church London and head of New Froniters UK. He spoke from 1 Samuel 14:1-23.

His main point was to use Jonathan as an example of a man who had hope in God. He took us to our situation, this side of the cross and gave us 3 reasons to have Hope:

• The Resurrection - confirming the testimony of Jesus
• Jesus is Alive - He works in the world today
• Jesus Reigns - he is in control

David went on to speak about the hope characterised in Jonathan:

• He gathered people to him (his armour bearer)
• He had the basics sorted
• He moved forward, didn’t just do maintenance, ignored the obstacles

The phrase “perhaps the Lord” was used frequently to say that we should take risks, be daring, in hope and faith that God will work.

There are not many notes here, that’s not because it was a short talk, or a boring talk, but because I felt it lacked substance which constitutes good note-taking material. Although David had briefly outlined our reasons for hope at the start (the work of Jesus) it became very man-centred - my hope, my faith, my courage, my work. It was one of those talks where what was said was not unbiblical or wrong, but there was insufficient (not really any) work done on the text to justify what was said. The problem was that the narrative (Jonathan scaling a cliff to attack the Philistines) was used as a principle for us to follow - the classic, ‘What’s your cliff to scale?’ application… to be honest it felt as though David had a message to give about hope and faith, then arrived at 1 Samuel 14 as a related passage.

The second area of concern I had was with the meeting as a whole (going back to my sceptism of New Frontiers). This concern is to do with the use of ‘Prophecy’ - I do not think New Frontiers have fallen into a Charismatic pitfall of elevating prophecy to be equal or near to Scripture, but I fear there are still issues. So a guy from Canada gives a word to say in effect, a time of blessing is coming to the UK, favour in mission, and specifically favour from government. There are five questions I have:

• Haven’t prophecies like this been many times before and not come to pass - does that make the givers false prophets?
• If prophecies are from God, why are they always so vague?
• How often do you hear someone give a prophecy that thing are going to be bad, that God s judging or withdrawing favour?
• Does this particular prophecy fit with reality? - I realise that God is sovereign and can change anything, but the reality is that Christians are having less and less favour with the Government.
• Does this particular prophecy fit with Scripture? - we are not promised favour from government, in fact surely if anything the opposite is true…

There are admittedly very few preachers who would have made me come to the New Frontiers conference - perhaps Piper or Mahaney might, but Driscoll certainly sold it for me.

Driscoll opened up with his customary auto-biographical sketch along with some of the background to Mars Hill. The Catholic jokes were particularly good in speaking of his conception (’Papal Roulette’) and his mother’s experience of Charismatic Catholicism - praying in tongues to Mary!

He went on to praise the work of the New Frontiers movement saying that he had lots to learn, but also to say that he wanted to serve by where necessary correcting. So he began by giving 5 traps which those who hold to Charismatic theology can fall into - he thought New Froniters may be falling into the 5th trap (not the others though):

• Too heavy a focus on the person of the Spirit rather than on the One to whom He points, the person of Jesus
• Pentecost becomes the main event at the expense of the Cross and the Resurrection
• Health and Wealth become focuses
• Leaders are held up as examples of being Spirit-filled and led as opposed to Jesus the best example
• Mission is not viewed correctly (can’t remember his exact explanation)

So from there Driscoll went on to talk about what Spirit-filled mission is all about. He took us through loads of verses in the first few chapters of Luke’s gospel about the Spirit (1:15, 1:35, 1:41, 1:67, 2:11, 2:25, 3:16, 3:22… and more). He then talked about Jesus’ Baptism, why he had to be annointed by the Holy Spirit, he got into a big theological tangent explaining the Trinity, the 1 Person and 2 Natures of Jesus, the Hypostatic Union…

He came back to the question - How did Jesus live his life? - answer, By the Power of the Holy Spirit. He described Jesus as a missionary, leaving the ‘culture’ of Heaven to come to a sinful world… so the Spirit empowers missionaries. He spoke of two empowering ministries of the Holy Spirit - an active one for service, and a contemplative one for solitude, study and prayer - the active service is preceeded by time for contemplation.

By this point we’d moved from Luke to Acts, picking up on Pentecost and the Spirit empowering the Church as with Christ. He highlighted repentence as the first mark of the Spirit-filled believer (Acts 2:38) and then picked out 3 points of what the Spirit-filled life looks like from Acts 2:42-47:

1. Devotion to apostles’ teaching
2. Love for one another
3. Awe at the Gospel

Driscoll then concluded with his definition of what a church is, stressing that it was important for movements like New Frontiers to keep these definitions to stay on mission. There were 8 points, he only made it to the first:

• Regeneration - he stated that often we fight too much to defend the doctrine of Justification at the neglect of the place of regeneration in the believer and in the church community

I presume he will pick up the next 7 points tomorrow - maybe. As well as this I will be reporting from a Mark Driscoll seminar on Planting Radical Churches and on a main session talk by David Stroud.

Hey. I’m at the Together on a Mission, New Frontiers conference in Brighton. There have been two sessions so far today, and an evening session later, but I’m not going to be going to the evening sessions, they don’t look as good as the rest.

So this morning kicked off with Stephen Van Ryhn, the leader of Jubilee Church in Capetown - he started with the easy job of trying to persuade the conference to have the event in Capetown in 2010, it looked like an amazing place!

We went to Daniel 1 for his talk entitled ‘Prevailing Under Pressure’ - there were 3 main points:

• God is in Control (v.2)

1. God reigns, He is unchanging - therefore we can be confident in hard circumstances, in mission and in prayer

• God is our Redeemer

1. Israel is under God’s judgement, 15 years before it’s destruction God places 4 men in Babylon to work out His plan of redemption

• Be in the world, but not of the world

“It is comparatively easy to be faithful if we don’t care about being contemporary. It is also easy to be contemporary if you don’t care about being faithful. It is the search for the combination of truth and relevance which is exacting.” - John Stott

1. Moral Integrity - Daniel didn’t defile himself with food offered to idols
2. Theological Integrity - Daniel praised God for his gifts, he didn’t revel in his own wisdom
3. Spiritual Integrity - Daniel prays, he longed for communion with God

Stephen concluded with a challenging call not to compromise, asking us what our price was. He challenged us to be faithful by sharing the testimonies of Eric Liddell and Marie Durand.

Matt Chandler from the Village Church is currently on sabbatical, but I need to let you know about some recent good sermons. He’s got to about chapter 9 of a big series on Luke (20 sermons so far), it’s awesome stuff!

Back in May, Matt finished a 5-part topical series on the church core-values which is well worth a listen to:

What is Truth?

What is Christian Spirituality? -  really good, what true Spirit-filled churches should be like!

What is Community?

What is Foot-Washing?

What is Missional Living?

These sermons and others will go into my good sermons database page - it’s just a bit of fun for me but hopefully as I keep updating it, it will be a great resource to find good sermons in one place!

Also, Matt Chandler’s church, The Village are doing a building project and have launched a new website for that including some video testimonies from some members - here’s an example…

Tim Keller has a new book coming out in October called ‘The Prodigal God‘, it’s an exposition of the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Sons’ and I get the impression that like ‘Reason for God’ it will be accessible for both Christians and non-Christians alike. It’s released on the 30th and you can currently pre-order from Amazon for around £9, I’m hoping that the Good Book Company might have it in stock at a similar price nearer the time, I’ll let you know.

Here’s a short interview with Keller about the book, and a response from Keller about the use of the word ‘Prodigal’ in relation to God.

Also, Mark Driscoll has lots of books coming out this year which has prompted the launch of Resurgence Literature publishing (ReLit). The first book was Vintage Jesus, I’ve finally got round to reading that so I’ll review it soon.

The latest books out (released last week) are a series of 4 books - ‘A Book You’ll Actually Read‘ - they’re less than 100 pages on ‘The Old Testament’, ‘The New Testament’, ‘Church Leadership’ and ‘Who is God?’. These are the square shaped ones (left). At the end of July there’s a book called ‘Practical Theology for Women’ coming out by Wendy Alsup, a deacon at Mars Hill. ‘Death by Love‘ (right) is coming out at the end of September, from what I gather it is based on Driscoll’s ‘Christ on the Cross’ series and then put in to a letter format. Finally in January 2009 ‘Vintage Church‘ (middle) is being released, subtitled ‘Timeless Truths and Timely Methods’ - it’s in the style of the Vintage Jesus book and I’m guessing will be similar to the Radical Reformission, probably with more of a focus on some of his sermon series (1 Corinthians, Nehemiah) and some practical suggestions. One more thing, they’re also publishing other non-Mars-Hill books, so far just Total Church by Timmis and Chester.

Last week I picked up some books for myself at EMA - Total Church (Timmis and Chester), Why we’re not Emergent (some American guys), and The Gospel and Personal Evangelism (Dever)… will give some thoughts when I get round to reading.

Next week I’m going to be semi-live blogging from the New Frontiers conference in Brighton and the Dwell Conference in London on the Saturday. I say semi-live-blogging, I’ll be at the main events but will be there to soak everything up and will file a report blog at the end of the day… the main talks will be by Mark Driscoll, I suspect something from Terry Virgo too, and then on the Saturday Driscoll will be joined by Scott Thomas of Acts 29, and Steve Timmis.

So if you’re not going to be at Brighton and you want to know what’s going on then I’ll be providing an ‘outsiders’ perspective of a New Frontiers conference, in fact I’d go further and say a skeptics view of New Frontiers (but that’s another story), but I’m a self confessed ‘Driscoll geek’ so there’s no skeptical view there I’m afraid, well depends what he says!

I’m sure the likes of Adrian Warnock, Bish, and other New Frontiers bloggers will be there and sharing their thoughts, I shall be trying to fit in for a week, pretending to be a New-Frontierser!

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, 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.