Geoff Thomas Dick Lucas

I should have picked this up earlier. It's a (slightly out of date) extract from my father-in-law's 'glog'. See my sidebar for the link. His comments on Dick Lucas are especially interesting.

In mid January we held another Eccentric Ministers’ Conference in South Wales, our second. Two dozen men, most of whom I wouldn’t otherwise meet, gathered in a conference centre. I go to them as the aged seer . . . and the conference is organised by my friend Steve Levy of the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea. They are his contacts; they are almost all ministers working in Wales, most in tough small congregations. The conference is by invitation only and lasts just two days, beginning on a Monday at 10.30 and ending on Tuesday at 3.30. We don’t sing, but we pack meetings in and pray. We had one discussion on theological training, but like all discussions on that theme it didn’t achieve much. I think discussion ought to be on practical themes.
The speaker on the first day was Dick Lucas. The more I know him the greater is my affection for him. He is the retired vicar of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate and the founder and role model of the Proclamation Trust. His stress is on exegesis and the history of redemption as one means of reforming the church. He has an amiable and low-key way of dealing with controversies but is properly disdainful of the modernists; he roundly dismissed women presbyters – the first sign of a man losing his evangelical moorings would be his support for them. I like his civility in conversation and that soon he is asking you for your opinion of verses from the Bible and how you are approaching the books you are dealing with on Sundays. I like the occasional sharpness that appears in his sermons. I like his lack of vanity. I like his sense of humour when he deals in posh drollery with the follies of the world. I would like to be witty like that. I like his disdain of pose and posers. I like his instinct when to ratchet things up or down.
He told us he had been studying the first epistle of John over the last year and shared some conclusions with us over two hours. A commentary on a Bible book describes the sword, he said, but preaching is wielding the sword. He commended as the best book on I John Colin Kruse’s commentary. John’s letter was brought about because of the activities of the anti-christs. They are many, were active when John was writing having gone out from the church. Their leaving revealed that they were not of the church. They denied the Son and were a real danger to unbelievers. In fact they hated the brethren and espoused lawlessness. He quoted the Nicene Creed so well that I wish I knew it by heart, and pointed out that it has 3 statements on the Father, 9 on the Holy Spirit and 16, all the rest, on the person of Christ. That is where the battle is and will always remain.
I led a discussion in the evening which developed into one on the marriage of believers and unbelievers. Then I spoke twice on the Tuesday and the first of those was better than the second, so I judged, but surely some found that the more helpful message – it always goes like that. Who knows what men’s needs are? I spent time with individuals discussing the marriage problems of former students and members of their congregations. What an epidemic divorce is.