EMA 2011 Afternoon sessions 01

So after a wet lunch hour we proceeded to oru seminars. I'm not sure what else was on offer but I

ended up in the main one in St Helens itself with David Robertson, author of the Darwin Letters. Robertson has a rather strange accent (Scots but occasionally Aussie or London is it?) is a Free Church minister in Dundee at the church where M'Cheyne was once the pastor (he has written a biography of his predecessor). He kept assuring us he was an ordinary pator as he told us anecdote after anecdote mostly of debates in secular bookshops. I would say, rathe he is a gifted communicator who has worked hard and seen soem blessing and his session was useful for provoking thought about reaching people today in perhaps less orthodox ways. He mentioned the free church website but his big thing is Solas. Ian Rees commended his "fleabytes" to me.

Our final session of the day was with Tim Keller who spoke on preaching that connects. He also said several helpful though familiar things about communicating the gospel as he looked at this whole controversial area of contextualisation. He quoted David Wells and Don Carson (“No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way– but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.”) and took us to 1 Corinthians 9 and 1 and Romans 1 and 2. I thought his idea that all cultures exhibit good and bad traits and sometimes both at the same time was helpful. His main example was the way Hispanics will wait until everyone is present  whereas the average WASP says it starts when the time stated says it starts.