John Owen Centre Annual Conference 2015 Day 2

Our second day of conference has been refreshing again. We were around 60 or so once more - a slightly different 60 from yesterday.

Garry Williams started us off with a paper arguing against the everything is ordinary approach that suggests that everything inimalized so that the divinely different in Christian worship is removed. “God does not indwell a place as he is always in us by his Spirit" goes the argument "and our whole lives are worship so someone should be able to move from mowing the lawn into public worship without setting off any alarm, until the single moment of preaching the cross.”

Garry countered with a theology of the divine presence of God, who fills all things - not circumscriptively or definitively but repletively (He added three clarifications - Creation is 'contained' by him, not him by it; God is everywhere but in a non-physical manner [not by mixture, division, multiplication, extension or diffusion]. There are different types of divine presence. He is present everywhere by essence. He is distinctively present by visibility and activity, by operational omnipresence. In heaven is “the court of his majestical presence, but not the prison of his essence” (Charnock). With his people he is present graciously and covenantally. In hell, by essence and wrath. He leaves and attends - “he departs from us when he leaves us to the frowns of his justice; he comes to us when he encircles us in the arms of his mercy” (Charnock)

His essential presence is foundational. Examples of applying the distinctions would include the presence of God in corporate worship and especially preaching, the Lord's Supper and prayer. Ethos and habit is the thing here. The question is not How would you behave if Jesus was here (bodily) but what are the practical implications of the fact Christ is here to do this? It is not A speaking to B about C but C to B in the words of A. This leads to fear and joy. How should we conduct ourselves in public worship? In sum, in a way that is appropriate to what God is doing.

Discussion followed. After lunch Bill James spoke helpfully on the means of grace as identified by Garry beforehand and again said helpful things. I chaired that one (hence no photo of Bill, sorry). Gerard Hemmings brought things together to close giving us boast important principles from Matthew 13 and some pragmatic suggestions for growing conservative churches.

LTS Annual Meeting

It was great to be once again at the LTS this afternoon for the annual end of year service. Some 17 students were leaving (including 3 or 4  who had stayed on to do the optional third year). It was good to hear from them all briefly and to hear Gerard Hemmings of Amyand Park preach an interesting sermon on Elijah and Obadiah. Robert Strivens also gave a report and Jeremy Marshall chaired. A number of us from Childs Hill were there and it was good to meet other old friends too. We were especially interested in hearing from Christien who heads soon back to Madagascar and Andreas who, with his family, heads back to Germany very shortly. The rain pretty much kept off until the very end of the afternoon, which was good too.

Grace Assembly 2010 07

Our evening session was again taken by Gerard Hemmings. He took us to the passage following the one we looked at last night - 2 Kings 6:24-7:20 (the siege of Jerusalem in the time of Elisha). Again his method was to work through the narrative and then make some applications but beginning with the questions of whether we should ever take things into our own hands instead of waiting. He made the point that the Lord is there throughout but only reveals something of his army to the Arameans near the end - thus linking it with the previous section. God as he does so often uses unclean lepers to bring the good news. The application there is obvious.
The promise of divine deliverance - does God keep his Word? Can we wait for the Lord? Three people here take things into their own hands - the mother, the king, the officer - if only they'd waited. The promise is fulfilled but they are shut out of the blessing because they would not wait. Just at the last minute the answer comes. He will always do what he says. Under siege we are often tempted to take things into our own hands but we must rather remember the promises of God's Word and listen to it.
Again this was encouraging and helpful.
Following this session we had a question time to close the day.

Grace Assembly 2010 03

This evening our preacher was Gerard Hemmings, the pastor of Amyand Park Chapel. I was chairing. He preached on that striking incident in 2 Kings 6:8-23. He took us through the narrative and then drew out these two lessons.
1. Remember God's grace. There is a lesson here about showing mercy. What a contrast between the King of Israel and God himself the King. It points us forward to the grace of God enabling people to sit down with him at his table. Gerard drew an interesting connection with what happened many, many years later just outside Damascus (in Aramaic of Syrian territory) when another blinded man was led by the hand. The story in 2 Kings 6 is the trailer for the main feature that is the New Testament period. He gave some modern examples of God saving his enemies - Spies at a Chinese church (see D Ralph Davies), persecutors in Sri Lanka, a militant atheist friend, all of us who believe, etc. We are so few and they are so many and they have one thing in mind but the Lord of hosts is with us so why be ashamed of the gospel? Why be afraid? Why flee? So I will pray for Richard Dawkins and others like him.
2. Do not fear. The problem that afflicted Elisha's servant was that he could not see the spiritual reality. That is why he was so afraid. If we see things as we should then we will be confident. We are forgiven, we have a future hope. Our labour in the Lord is never in vain. Those with us are more than those with them. We know that we will triumph in him. But then again the Syrians are all too real. We can faint or we can pray - as Elisha did. We need to pray for ourselves and for one another. We don't need to send for help. It is there.
Never forget from whom these blessings flow - the one who has all power and yet who laid down his life on the cross that we may know his protection and love.

Focus etc

Tuesday was a good full day. In the morning I drove over to Amyand Park for a fraternal with Gerard Hemmings, Robin Asgher, Peter Law, Paul Levy and others. We discussed the blind spots of our age. We solved little I guess but we aired some issues usefully. I noticed that those fresh to the ministry in London have similar gripes and concerns to those I had as a younger man (eg the way younger people are hived off to Central London churches, how to cohere as a witness to the community, etc). You learn to live with certain things.

After getting back home I headed down to Stanfords Maps where I met up with my good old friend Paul Pease, pastor at Hook Evangelical. We had a good old chinwag over some maps and a coffee. What a tonic fellowship is.

Then after returning home I headed off in the car again down to Epsom Playhouse where I saw the inimitable Focus. This was again one of these Classic Rock packages. Instead of the Groundhogs we started with the Strawbs this time. I liked the acoustic guitars but the singing didn't do too much for me. Loved "Lay Down" at the end though. Then we had (Martin Turner's) Wishbone Ash working their way through Argus. Just fine. Then into overdrive. Focus could only squeeze in an hour - a bit from the first album, a fairly long and jazzy Eruption, three more recent tracks plus the obligatory Sylvia and Hocus Pocus. Got the CD and DVD, which they willingly signed - something to look forward to come Christmas! Took an age to find where I'd parked the car but got home fairly quickly straight through London.

Evangelistic preaching 01

We were all at Gerard Hemmings' again for a Monday morning fraternal today in Amyand Park (about 12 or so were there). This time he'd arranged for Suart Olyott to address us. Stuart took opportunity to speak to us on evangelistic preaching as he fears there is not enough of it about. He warned us against Lutheran Amyraldianism then made six good points from Acts 2. This was followed by a nice time of discussion followed by lunch for those who could stay.

1. EP is not a different species of preaching

2. EP aims at seeing every person converted now

3. EP sets about accomplishing its aim by establishing guilt. It does this in a variety of ways but is always 'collision evangelism' (not "crematorium evangelism or pipette evangelism")

4. EP answers the question that a guilty heart will ask

5. EP seeks to accomplish its ends by means of persuasion

6. EP concludes with the preacher having personal dealings with those who are concerned

Stuart Olyott is always stimulating and we all found this helpful. I wanted some clarification on "collision evangelism" and was assured that it is not the same as being nasty. He does have his own take on Acts 17 as a hard sell rather than a soft sell, which was interesting.

Stuart Olyott sermons available here.

Also check here for Olyott and Hemmings stuff

Great Weekend 03

The final element of the great weekend (yes, I know it's Wednesday by now!) was Geoff speaking at a ministers fraternal in West London. For the last few years I have been involved in a fraternal made up of Reformed men from West and North West London meeting in Gunnersbury. Our convener thought we were getting too large but some are still keen and so for the first time we met at Gerard Hemmings house in Amyand Park on Monday. One of us four Welshmen present (not me) had spotted that Geoff was due to be in London and so asked him to speak.
About 12 of us were treated to a lovely morning as Geoff reminisced about Lloyd-Jones - recalling meetings and confessing failures to appreciate him in his time. He spoke of an eight-fold legacy.
1. The example of his devotional life 2. His reading of the big books (though there were some gaps like Spurgeon) 3. His preaching 4. His controversies (with Graham, Packer and Schaeffer) 5. His pastoral work 6. Lloyd-Jones churches all over Wales and beyond 7. Iain Murray 8. His failures - such as not speaking out against abortion.
Geoff himself is 70 and so it was a very special morning, one on which it felt good to be alive. It prompted me to start reading Iain Murray's new book on Lloyd-Jones, which is excellent.
PS I notice that you can download the text of John Peters biography of Lloyd-Jones here.