Tim Chilvers is associate minister at Christ Church Surbiton. Like me, he’s from an Anglican church, like me, he went to the Brighton New Frontiers conference, and like me he’s just been interviewed about his experiences of the conference by David Capener.

Good interview. Sounds like we both had a similar overwhelmingly positive experience there (with a few little niggles).

Now quite why anyone would want to interview me I don’t know, frankly I am dull and unworthy of having my life or thoughts shared with anyone! But, a guy called David Capener (blogs at thebroadcast.org.uk), who is a New Frontierser from Norfolk is doing a series of interviews with non-NewFrontiersers about their experiences of New Frontiers. So there’s a little bit of background on who I am and some of my thoughts shared in light of attending the Brighton Conference. Check out the interview here.

Adrian Warnock interviews Mark Driscoll – videos here

Mark Driscoll reflects on his time in the UK here and here

My posts on Together on a Mission 2008

My posts on the Dwell London conference

Mark Driscoll’s pastors training track (audio) – Be Radical Plant Radical Churches

Together on a Mission 2008 (audio) – Main Sessions

Off to CYFA camp in Colwyn Bay (sunny North Wales tomorrow) – 10 days of fun, hard work and learning lots about Jesus from John’s Gospel.

In the final session Terry Virgo spoke about Philip from Acts 8:4-19, 26-40. I was shattered at this point so was practically falling asleep, but the main point was to ask the question – What kind of Christ? – what Christ do we preach?

• Rooted in Old Testament revelations
• Rooted in the Cross, in Penal Substitutionary Atonement
• Jesus who reigns and brings good news of a Kingdom
• Jesus who heals
• Expects a whole-hearted response (baptism)
• Brings Joy to a city

During this time I started to collect my thoughts about New Frontiers and the Together on a Mission 2008 conference. With the one exception of what I thought was a bad talk, and some genuine unresolved questions on the place and use of prophecy and tongues, I was incredible impressed with and very much enjoyed the conference. Here’s some things I loved:

• Excellent music (lots of home grown song writers) and passionate congregational singing
• A genuine international movement – Christians from 52 nations
• Long preaches – conference preaches are longer anyway, but I know NF guys will generally be 45mins+
• A vision to plant churches (1000)
• Around 4000 people produced an offering of over £1M to support the mission

Over the week at New Frontiers I’ve been going along to a series of 3 morning seminars led by Mark Driscoll entitled “Be Radical, Plant Radical Churches”. The structure of these have been for Mark to speak for around 15 minutes, drawing out a few issues, then that was followed by around 45 minutes of Q&A. Obviously because of the structure of the sessions I didn’t take extensive notes, but here’s a few little bits:

Session 1 – Mark spoke about family life, wives, elders and deacons

Session 2 – Mark spoke about the practicalities of church growth, starting new services, campuses and plants

Session 3 – Mark spoke again about elders, leadership and everything else

Here’s something I did write down, ‘a week in the life of Mark Driscoll’. Now it wasn’t always like this, there was a time when he did everything; finance, admin, visiting etc. But now, as Preaching Pastor he has a much more focused role:

Sunday – Preaching (live) 4 times a day, up at 6am, bed at 3am

Monday – Half day, time to exercise, a few meetings, time to plan week with Grace (his wife)

Tuesday – Breakfast with kids, Meetings all day

Wednesday – Goes off to a Christian retreat centre for silence, solitude, prayer and fasting

Thursday – Writing

Friday – Emails, Sermon preparation, Date night with Grace

Saturday – ‘Jammy day’ time to spend together as a family