Bible by the Beach is a new Bible-teaching conference that begins in May 2009. The event runs over the bank-holiday weekend, 1st-4th May 2009, and is held at the Congress Theatre complex in Eastbourne. It is best compared to Keswick - you come to Eastbourne, find your own accommodation and then come along to as many or as few sessions as you like. The cost of an adult delegate pass is just £50, with children (under 16) just £1!!

The conference is the initiative of the Bishop of Lewes, Wallace Benn and has been organised by a number of local ministers from different denominational backgrounds, including my dad. In the first year there is already a strong line up of speakers including;

• Wallace Benn, Bishop of Lewes
• Terry Virgo, New Frontiers
• Paul Williams, Christ Church Fulwood
• Kent & Barbara Hughes, Wheaton College Church
• Mike Ovey, Principal of Oak Hill
• Simon Vibert, Vice-Principal of Wycliffe
• Andrew Baughen, St. James’ Clerkenwell

And some more… plus Stuart Townend will be leading the music, and performing a concert.

For more information and to book in please visit the 85% complete website (nearly there) at: http://www.biblebythebeach.org

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

In Mark Driscoll’s final main address at the Together on a Mission conference he spoke about ‘Movements’ (or networks of churches, like New Frontiers). In introduction he took us to Acts 1:1-11 to the beginning of the movement, with Jesus as the head and the Spirit at work. He spoke about Paul’s church planting strategy of establishing churches in cities and commented on the strategic significance of cities - they have more people, and culture flows from a city.

Driscoll talked a little about some historic movements and described them by 6 marks of movements:

1. Young people, young leaders
2. Conversions
3. Church Planting
4. Unaware of extending influence
5. Supporting organisations (production of resources)
6. New Technology

Mark then went on to discuss the rather depressing cycle of a movement:

1. Simple Organisation
2. Growth (becomes a movement)
3. Institution - founders and friends are the leaders (young leaders leave), guarding previous innovation, stop listening to outsiders (need humility and discernment)
4. Museum

Driscoll then went on to talk about ‘going off course’, 7 ways that movements can turn into institutions, he credited these points to Larry Osbourne:

1. Theologically off course - either too tight (fundamentalist) or too loose (liberal - used Vineyard as an example)
2. Relationships become too close to accommodate new leaders and members
3. Organisationally not adjusted for growth
4. Pride - “not invented here syndrome”, a willingness to listen to others with humility and discernment is needed
5. Pursuing potential over calling - prayerfully consider what to do
6. Lack Resourcing
7. Honouring the founder and the future

Points 2, 3, 5 and 7 were specifically aimed at the New Frontiers movement, point 7 in particular. Driscoll basically said that soon Terry Virgo will have to hand over New Frontiers to a new leader (he is quite old after all!) and that new leaders need to respect Terry and the founding vision, but also respect the future and new opporunities that open. I understand that people in New Frontiers love and respect Terry, while Driscoll saw this as a great thing I think he also saw it as a danger for growth, changing structure and a clear vision for the future. Mark was very gracious to what is clearly a delicate and emotional subject.

In conclusion, Mark gave 6 phases of renewal (from Rick Warrren):

1. Personal - Spirit enabled passion for Jesus
2. Relational - love and compassion
3. Missional - overflow of relational love into sharing faith and church planting
4. Cultural - church culture infects the city
5. Structural - more systems, more policies, more churches
6. Institutional - breathe life into dead churches

Afterwards Mark received a standing ovation for his time with us, his honesty and his ability to clearly speak into the New Frontiers situation. Terry Virgo came up briefly afterwards to speak about momentous times at the Brighton Conference (this being one), and to give an emotional thanks to Mark. Exciting times for New Frontiers, for a vision of 1000 churches.

PJ Smyth started planting churches in Zimbabwe, and now leads a New Frontiers church in Johanesburg, South Africa. His address was taken from 1 Chronicles 11-12…

Start of the Army

• David’s army starts in a cave - in distress, discontent, and debt

Conscience of the Army (11:1-3)

The army followed David because:

1. He was ‘flesh and bone’
2. He was a leader
3. God appointed him

PJ went on to speak about Paul and his uses of the phrase “a clear conscience”

Devotion of the Army (11:16-19)

• PJ bought verses for application about being a leader and a follower

Structure of the Army

• PJ went through chapter 11 speaking about teams and roles for leaders and followers

Leader of the Army (11:4-9)

• Lead Inclusive (bring people together)
• Lead Strong

1. Guard what has been entrusted
2. Spot opportunities
3. Don’t take no for an answer
4. Be committed to forward motion

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.

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!

So here’s the latest news on New Word Alive 2009…

A new website has been launched with all the info on.

First, a correction on what I said a few weeks ago, New Word Alive 2009 will be in Pwhelli, NOT Prestatyn, as far as I know the Pwhelli site wanted us back and made a better offer than Prestatyn, which is annoying because Pwhelli is sooo far away!

There are still two weeks:

30th March - 4th April… mainly for students and adults without children (there is a crèche I believe)

4th April - 9th April… mainly for adults, families, young people

In week 1, the main speaker will be Vaughan Roberts. In week 2 it will be Liam Golligher.

Also, because they obviously loved it so much Don Carson and Terry Virgo will be back, proving the rumour that Richard Cunningham has a crush on Terry Virgo… or not.

Booking lines open on the 16th June for week 1, and on the 23rd June for week 2.

See you there!!

Currently going up online are a series of video interviews between Adrian Warnock, and Don Carson, John Piper and presumably Terry Virgo. You can see them on the Youtube UCCFMedia page. Here’s my favourite little bit, last part of Piper, there’s a question in here that I submitted to Adrian, all about longevity in ministry…