On Wednesday I caught a train up to Northampton for the Affinity Study Conference. About eighty of us have been gathered over three days to look at the subject of A form foundation: priorities for the rising generation. The conference is unique in that all the papers (five altogether) are written and printed beforehand. The speakers then briefly present their papers before we break for group and then plenary discussion. So on the first day we had an introductory sort of paper from pastor and teacher Peter Sanlon on identity and worldview, the current scene. We then had a second paper on genuine conversion by Robin Gray, a Free church man from Aberdeenshire. The paper drew chiefly on Jonathan Edwards. This was a great start. We were then free for the evening. There was an impromptu quiz, which is one of my great loves, so that was fun.
On day 2 we had the rest of the papers - Phil Heaps, the London based Baptist, on sanctification; Mark Thomas from Wrexham, on pastoring; Dr Patrick Fung, leader of the OMF based in Singapore, on persecution. We were free in the afternoon - time to take advantage of the excellent bookstall here, provided by the Evangelical Bookshop, Belfast. All this was very interesting and stimulating. I had hoped that there would be more cohesion to the papers but that was not conspicuous. In the evening, we had a prayer meeting, first a plenary one then in our groups. Two men were quite emotional as we prayed for the rising generation.
For the last day, we had all five speakers on the platform under the chairmanship of Paul Yeulett, pastor in South London. People asked their questions. Then after a cuppa Pete Campbell from Penrhyndeudraeth in North Wales preached on Ephesians 3:14-21. Through most of the conference, it was snowing or there was snow on the ground, which is a nice thing to look out on.
No comments:
Post a Comment