Carey Conference 2023 Day 1

What a joy to be back in Swanwick after the break for the Carey Conference. I drove up with Bill James, the principal of London Seminary and his son-in-law, Daniel Norman, a student at the seminary. About a hundred are here with some day visitors.

It is a long tradition to begin with a biographical paper and Ray Trainer spoke first on William Ward (1769–1823) who died two hundred years ago this March. The printer and preacher and one time radical was one of the Serampore trio with Carey and Marshman. Ray ably took us through Ward's historical context, life and character ("In point of zeal he is a Luther and I am Erasmus" wrote Carey) ending with two lessons or challenges - the continuing need to make the gospel known where it is not yet known and the importance of Christian unity (Ward, unlike Carey and Marshman, believed in open not strict communion).

After a cuppa and time to chat we had the first fo three papers by our main speaker Bill James. Bill is to take us through Romans, looking at the subject of rejoicing in hope. We began in Romans 5 looking at the vision, vindication and victory of God. This was very uplifting and encouraging stuff. I enjpyed the reminder from Michael Allen that we must avoid "forgetting that the best news of Christian bliss is not newness but nearness".

After dinner in the evening it was my own great privilege to speak from 2 Kings 5 on Naaman and his wife's servant girl (a rich man with a problem and a poor girl with faith). Luke Jenner chaired. (He was born, it turns out, the year I came to Childs Hill!). We looked at a rich Gentile man called Naaman with everything going for him but for one thing and a nameless poor Jewish girl with nothing going for her but full of faith and used by God. It went quite well I hope. Here's a quotation from Matthew Henry “Every man has some but or other in his character, something that blemishes and diminishes him, some allay to his grandeur, some damp to his joy; he may be very happy, very good, yet, in something or other, not so good ... nor ... happy as he would be. Naaman was as great as the world could make him ... yet ... the basest slave ... would not change skins”.