We have had an excellent day here in Swanwick. In the morning we were in the hands of Dr John Hall who passionately called on us to stick with our Baptist principles. He reminded us of the elegance and simplicity of the Baptist position, which has never been seriously argued against. Rather, taking other positions merely leads to other expedients not found in Scripture. There was plenty of time for discussion and that proved quite useful.
In the afternoon we had our business session. We were told that a record 148 people have been at the conference (including six day visitors) from 72 churches. Some 62 churches have registered for assembly, some 39 of them represented by a total of 56 messengers. We discussed a statement of Christian ethical standards that may be adopted. We agreed to meet next year May 24-26 here in Swanwick.
Later in the day we had one of the best sessions of assembly, the news time. Jeyakanth spoke about Sri Lanka, Trevor Routley about Argentina and Will Niven about Albania, all of whom had encouraging things to say though not without qualification (Buddhist thuggery and charismania). We then had six reports from different men in Britain, again mostly encouraging though not without a downside. The areas covered were Basildon, Highbury, Leyton, Halifax, Gloucester and Hyde Heath.
Nick Needham preached in the evening session. Another fine exposition of the cross, this time in terms of sacrifice. Such a blessing to hear. Beforehand he spoke of Reformed Baptist work in Scotland, where there are several small churches (Inverness, Perth, Dundee, Penicuik and two in Glasgow as well as some BU churches).
REcordings of the messages should already be up on the GBA website here.
No comments:
Post a Comment