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.

You may well be in the middle of exams, you may have finished, either way I need to let you know about a great little resource from the Good Book Company called ‘Don’t Panic!‘. DP is written by Martin Cole and Andrew Roycroft and is essentially a 4-week Bible study guide to help you through exams.

The main ‘feature’ of the booklet is 4 weeks of very short Bible study / devotional times, with the aim of helping us to focus and trust in Christ at difficult times. The studies are simple and help to get our priorities sorted. We start in Nehemiah, go to the Gospels, Psalms, 1 Peter, Colossians and a few other passages here and there. They’re not deep studies going through whole books or chapters, but simple thoughts to get us to put God at the centre when there’s plenty of stressful things competing for our attention.

Each week also includes both a revision timetable and prayer diary to fill in. The booklet is very easy to keep with you during your revision and easy to turn to at any time. There’s also 3 Su Doku, and some word puzzles, the latter were too difficult for me, but it makes for a better revision break than Facebook! There’s also some short articles about how to revise and how to cope with the stress that exams bring, and an interview with a real student, particularly helpful because it’s so honest and down to earth!

Criticisms - I think the cover looks silly, and it would be nice to have the Bible passages printed in the booklet so you can be out revising and not have to carry a big Bible as well. But these are minor things, basically this is a great idea, not one that’s been done before to my knowledge, and it’s been done really well - clear, simple, biblical and God-focused. If you’re a student get it! If you’re a parent, get it for your kids! If you’re a teacher buy it for Christian students you know! If you’re a youth leader, get copies for everyone in your youth group! If you’re involved in running a CU, why not invest in a few copies for your members?

It’s a real bargain at £2.50, and the usual discounts are available if you’re buying in bulk for a group or if you have a UCCF Student Card. I’m hoping there’ll be a new edition out for next year, with new studies perhaps, new puzzles, new articles? News coming soon about some new Bible reading notes from the Good Book Company…

So chapter 1 of Reason for God, following the introduction, Keller addresses the issue that he says he hears frequently in his ministry, he sums it up with the word ‘exclusivity’. That is people taking issue with religions that make truth claims and then who try to persuade others of those claims and who refute the truth claims of other religions. The argument put against religions making truth claims is to say, firstly that all religions are basically the same - equally true (or equally false), and also to say that the divisiveness between these exclusive claims is what causes so much of the war and violence in the world.

Keller talks through the 3 main responses to the problem of religion: to outlaw religion, to condemn religion, or to keep religion private. He then goes on to explain why these responses don’t work, and are inconsistent.

Outlaw Religion - take the 20th Century, the regimes that claim religions cause war and violence have suppressed those beliefs with more brutal violence. The belief that as we advance technologically we would evolve out of religious beliefs has been proved untrue. Those countries that have tried to outlaw Christianity have failed, China being the obvious example.

Condemn Religion - that is by argument and education to make religious belief socially unacceptable. There are several objections raised in this section, “All religions are essentially the same“, “Each religion only sees part of the truth“, “Religious beliefs are culturally and historically conditioned“, and that “Religious beliefs are arrogant“. Keller in essence argues that all these criticisms find their root in unprovable, exclusive claims, and in making the objections reveal their own arrogance, and therefore hypocrisy.

Keep Religion Private - I guess this is a big thing at the moment with all the news about voting on embryo research… Keller argues that we all have religious beliefs (a set of beliefs formed to answer life’s big questions), and that whether we’d call ourselves religious or secular these ‘religious beliefs’ affect all areas of our life - the secularist still makes decisions based on religious beliefs.

There are a number of things I like about Keller’s approach here… firstly he doesn’t assume too much, he’s not specifically talking about Christianity or referencing the Bible, he’s dealing with more basic issues, yet at a level which is intellectually and philosophically robust. Secondly he’s well researched, quoting both secular and Christian academics, using the secular philosophers writings to prove his points - clever! Thirdly, he’s gracious, he exposes the folly and hypocrisy of some arguments, but does not then become proud in his writing, but urges engagement with the big questions. Finally, he’s honest, he doesn’t try and get out of the facts, mainly that religions are divisive and do cause problems!

Keller concludes with a well worked in (not just crowbarred in) explanation of the Gospel of Grace, of Jesus Christ the sacrifice for sinful humans, and the example of unity and peace in truth.

You can listen to the talk on Exclusivity from Redeemer.

Remember I said about Tim Keller doing a talk at a Google Authors event… well here’s the video from that…

The good people at the Good Book Company sent me a copy of this little new book produced by the Christianity Explored guys. It’s designed to be an accompaniment to the course but can stand alone. Until now I’d only skimmed through it, we ordered 25 copies for the events week at Sussex - 5 lunchbars, 5 people each day interested enough to read a book, seemed reasonable… they were all gone by the Wednesday, I think because they look interesting and contemporary, and they cover a broad range of questions.

The book goes through 13 common questions, that seekers, and for that matter Christians will ask about the Christian faith. It’s a small book, about 100 pages, so there’s not a huge amount of detail to the answers - the authors have suggested further reading of a more technical nature.

First thing I guess to say is that this book is not a ‘Reason for God’, ‘Mere Christianity’ kindof book, it doesn’t deal with the big philosophical questions about God, nor does it deal with the complex Science and Evolution questions, and the questions it does deal with, well it only has 10 pages for each, but to go deeper there is the further reading list already mentioned. I suppose also it’s not really apologetics in the ‘be-thinking’ style, although the style of the questions might give that impression. The methodology of the book is more like simply pointing people to the Scriptures and using stories and illustrations to explain the words of Jesus - a good approach!

So who is the book for? Well, it’s aimed at anyone who’s already interested in thinking about God, someone who has genuine questions (so it’s the perfect accompaniment to a Christianity Explored course), and the questions it deals with are more of the moral and spiritual questions about God. I guess it’s fair to say that just in the style of writing and illustrations used that it’s aimed at a younger generation, well under 40, not that young then!

Here are the 13 questions:

1. If you’re really there, God, why on earth don’t you prove it?
2. Isn’t the Bible just a bunch of made up stories?
3. All good people go to heaven, right?
4. If you’re a God of love, why send anyone to Hell?
5. If Jesus really was your Son, how come He got killed?
6. If I can be forgiven everything, doesn’t that mean I can do whatever I like?
7. How can anyone be sure there’s life after death?
8. What about followers of other religions?
9. Isn’t faith just a psychological crutch?
10. Why do you allow suffering?
11. Why do you hate sex?
12. Why don’t you just do a miracle?
13. So, God, if You could ask me one question, what would it be?

I very much enjoyed the laid back style of the book, there’s lots of good, contemporary illustrations that are both funny and personal which I think helps the reader to warm to the book and to what the author has to say. It’s also very Biblical, which I guess may not be great if that’s the reader’s big obstacle to faith, but it’s good that the question about the reliability of the Bible is addressed at the start, and of course I thoroughly believe in Biblical Evangelism - after all the book is about asking God questions, so God’s word must be where we look for the answers!

One part I particularly enjoyed was from question 3, author Paul Williams recounts his time working at the Bedfordshire Times, a newspaper I have read on at least one occasion. He explains the time when he got an opportunity to sit at the bosses desk… great little story, amusing, and a great illustration of Sin, our dethronement of God. It’s also good that the book ends by directly addressing the reader, what would God ask us? We are taken to the parable of the rich farmer… what good is it if we gain the world, but forfeit our soul?!

You can get this book from the Good Book Company for the bargain price of £5, yep you worked it out, that’s £3.75 if you are the proud owner of a UCCF Student Card! Consider getting some copies especially if you’re running lunchbar talks or hosting a Christianity Explored course.

As these shouts and screams from the mob grow in volume, what’s it like for our Lord to look out upon these people? Even if you can’t recognize yourself among the angry face, or distinguish your own strident voice… He can. And in response to those sinful shouts and curses from you and me, Jesus yields to the sentence of death……
When we begin to grasp that we joined that mockery - that we are to blame for the Saviour’s death - we start to understand the seriousness of our sin.
But convicting you of sin is not my ultimate purpose here; rather, I want to convince you of grace. For when you’re deeply aware of your sin, and of what an affront it is to God’s holiness, and of how impossible it is for Him to respond with anything other than furious wrath - you can only be overwhelmed with how amazing grace is.

Only those who are truly aware of their sin can truly cherish grace.

CJ Mahaney, Living the Cross Centered Life (page 88)

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!

With Easter approaching I wanted to read a book on the cross, but with the pressures of work I didn’t have time to pick up a ‘big one’, but this little CJ Mahaney book packs a big punch, it’s short but meaty.

CJ starts off with some basic foundational points; Paul describes the Gospel as of “first importance” (1 Cor 15), it should be the main thing in our lives and we need to keep it the main thing. But he points out there’s 3 other beliefs that draw us away from the Gospel:

1. Subjectivism - basing our view of God on our changing feelings and emotions
2. Legalism - basing our view of God on our own performance
3. Condemnation - being more focused on our sin than on God’s grace

The book goes on to deconstruct these errors and to put our focus back on God’s grace given to us at the cross. One of the things I love about this book is that CJ is so good at taking complex theological words and the different facets of the cross making them easy to understand, and thoroughly practical: love, justice, penal substitution, justification, redemption, sacrifice, wrath, ransom, expiation, judgement, imputed righteousness, suffering… all this great doctrine is interwoven into simple exultation of the cross, and the call to live life with the cross at the centre of all things.

The book is worth reading if only for chapter six and seven; they are powerful and emotive, bringing the truth of the cross to the reader with great clarity and conviction. Chapter six explains what’s going on in Gethsemane, Jesus is taking the cup of God’s wrath, his soul is “sorrowful”, he falls down and prays that God would take the cup away… CJ shows the pain caused, the anguish and agony when God’s wrath is placed upon someone, the spiritual separation from God is great, Jesus feels this pain. But, this is my cup that Jesus takes, “He took the cup that was reserved for me”, the sorrow that we see in Jesus in the garden should be what we experience now.

Chapter seven is called “Your Face in the Crowd”, who do we identify most with in the crucifiction accounts; the disciples, Pilate, Judas, the women, the crowd? Martin Povey spoke at BH last night and made it clear why we can all identify with Judas, we’ve all betrayed our saviour. The lyrics to a Mars Hill song, can’t remember the song or the exact words, but it was along the lines of “Judas sold you for 30 pieces, I’d have done it for less.” CJ puts us in the crowd above other places, we’re the ones calling for Jesus to be crucified, it’s our sin that sent him there!

You can get a book called “The Cross Centred Life” for the bargain price of £6 from the Good Book Company, that’s £4.50 with a UCCF Student Card… although it is a reduced version, my book is called “Living the Cross Centered Life” and has a white cover, the book on GBC is called “The Cross Centered Life” and has an orange cover… according to Matthew, my one is two books brought together- “The Cross Centered Life” and “Christ our mediator”… anyway, whichever book you find, buy it and read it! Will have to read Humility soon, another highly rated book by CJ.

How do you spell Centered? I would have spelt it “Centred”… am I being stupid, or is it one of those silly American spelling mistakes?

So anyway, a few updates on Tim Keller’s new book, ‘The Reason for God’…

Firstly, TK is on a book tour and he got to speak at Google… they run an event called Authors@Google where authors come in and plug their books… this was supposed to be the best attended ever, with around 150 Google employees coming to listen to TK and do a Q&A. A guy called Justin Buzzard was also there and blogged about it…

Secondly, you can now buy the book in the UK, possibly this is the only, or at least one of the few places that you can get it… and that is from the Good Book Company. It’s the bargain price of £12, or if you have a UCCF Student Card, that’ll be £9! I’m going to get a copy, although I’m secretly hoping this plug along with a little business proposition will persuade GBC to send me a free copy - hey if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?

UPDATE

…also, Tim Challies, ‘The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment‘ is available, same price.

…and Bish thinks I should get a free copy of the book, review copies for bloggers - a good idea!

A lot of people don’t like Mark Driscoll - shock horror! But most of the flack doesn’t come from non-Christians, emergents or liberals, but rather from reformed evangelicals (of which he is one). Basically, many people don’t like his use of language, he doesn’t swear but does use words and phrases that if we’re all honest we may not use in front of our mothers.

Some would take the line that his use of risque language should disqualify him from ministry, on the basis of verses like Ephesians 5:4 - “Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.”

I think there’s always a balance, when you preach the gospel you should be relevant and contextualise to best communicate the truths of the gospel to the audience. For Driscoll in his demographic, his cool, informal, slang style is entirely appropriate. There is certainly a danger he can go too far, and I’m sure he has.

Tim Challies is never overly enthusiastic about Mark Driscoll, but he has written a fair and well-balanced critique in the midst of many unhelpful and self-righteous comments from others. TC seems quite discerning… might have to read his book “The Discipline of Spirtual Discernment”