Good Friday at Highgate Road Chapel

Good Friday is not a special day for us but we do like to attend a service if we can. We son't have one in Childs Hill because so many (often ourselves included) go away. I was aware of three services nearby and so we plumped for Highgate Road Chapel, where a young man from St Giles Mission spoke, chiefly giving his testimony but drawing attention to  Isaiah 53. It was good to see Gerge Platt the pastor again and others we know. They are small like us but quite young on the whole. They wer emeeting in their dowstairs room, problems with the roof upstairs. 

Day Off Week 3 2025

More of a traditional day off this week after holidays and Carey in the first two weeks. It was unsual in that I have agreed to lead a discussion at the Pastors Academy on January 27 so I needed to finish the book and draw uo a set of questions which took up my morning. The book is by Leonardo de Chirico and is an introduction to Thomas Aquinas for evangelicals. This meant I had to postpone my walk on the Heath until the afternoon but I managed to get it done by sundown. Bumped into George Platt pastor of neighbouring Highgate Road Chapel with his new baby, Teddy. In the evening we watched the first two Silent Witnesses of the new season. It's an odd programme, quite pro-life in its own way.

Conference on Singleness

George Chris
Keith Andrew

Saturday's conference at Highgate Road Chapel on singleness was a worthwhile effort. Some 90 people gathered (60 women and 30 men) - mostly singles I guess but not exclusively by any means. It was good for singles to meet and for all of us to look at the subject and simply to meet other Christians. Most present were fairly local but some had travelled a little distance (Southport, Wolverhampton,  Portsmouth, etc). We are grateful to the organisers for putting this on.

George Platt from Highgate Road started us off with a biblical theology of singleness.

There probably isn't a biblical theology of singleness but there may be one of marriage and so one is able to extrapolate. George, a good Baptist, appeared to want to emphasise discontinuity between the Testaments more than most of us. It is difficult to be positive about singleness (which we should be) without sounding slightly negative towards marriage.

Chris Bennett spoke on the gift of singleness taking the view that not all people who are single have this gift. Chris is very persuasive (from Matthew 19 if not from 1 Corinthians 7) but the view is fraught with difficulties. One wonders what married people who lack the gift of being married are to do, for example. We would prefer the view that sees singleness itself (like marriage) as a gift from God.

We men had a good session with Peter Law and Neil Richardson (while the women had a session with Vicki Gardner and Christine Sherwood). I liked Peter's frankness about his singleness. This session could have been longer. There was no real time for discussion. Keith Berry was also very helpful from Philippines as was Andrew King on singles in the church.

We finished with a question panel. Again, all very helpful.

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Jam packed two days

This last Saturday and Sunday has been jam packed and would normally take up at least five posts in their own right so what I'll do is give you the highlights and then we'll see what else I get round to doing.

Saturday began nice and early with a trip to Tesco's for breakfast items. Five of us gathered in the chapel at 8.30 am for a men's breakfast and a discussion of Chapter 6 of Disciplines of a godly man by Kent Hughes. It was good to discuss reading and related issues.

My wife then gave me a lift over to Highgate Road Chapel for their day conference on singleness. Some 90 people were there for what was a useful day of teaching and sharing.

That finished around 4 and I was back for tea around 5. I then headed into town and meandered through the rain to a the home of a good ministerial friend in Soho. Providentially I arrived just as the Wales match was coming to a close and so I saw Australia draw level with a kick and then Wales take them in the end with a final penalty. So 9-6 and o far so good for Wales. The game I think was a tense but grim battle.

We then headed out the the 100 Club on Oxford Street. There we heard a Finnish vocalist and blues guitarist Erja Lyytinen who was worth hearing but nothing compared with the mighty Focus who once again blew us all away (including my friend who I was glad to see suitably impressed).

Seeing Focus is always a joy but as an added bonus they also chose to release their new album that day and so I now have a signed copy (the first really in six years).

It was midnight before I was home but I got off to sleep quickly enough. I don't like late Saturday nights as I am always afraid it will interfere with the Lord's Day but I had prepared well in the week and things went fine - although I did doze in the afternoon. It was Remembrance Day, of course, and we had lunch in the church - more on that anon.

I kept the new Fous album for today. It's sounding very good.

Opportunities for intake last week

Gavin Peacock, Highgate Rd Chapel

The opportunities to hear others ministering last week were so many that it has taken me until now to write things up.

We started off last Monday (4th) in Westminster Baptist Church listening to Paul Yeulett from Grove Chapel speaking to the fellowship on Stress in the ministry. He began with some more general remarks on the subject of stress before narrowing down to stress in the ministry going to the Psalm and 2 Corinthians before finishing with some practical suggestions such as the importance of things such as rest, variety and delegation. It was a helpful paper and although our chairman was rather disappointed by the number present (about 16) it seemed none to bad given the subject and the day. I must say that although the folk at Westminster Baptist Church are extremely welcoming and kind, the building is not a great draw aesthetically. Such relatively superficial considerations do weigh with some.

The Westminster Fellowship was originally the brainchild of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones and on Tuesday evening it was the Dr Lloyd-Jones Memorial Lecture that I went off to at the LTS. This normally takes place during the annual John Owen Centre Conference but as the lecture is intended not to be only for ministers a shift of timing was felt desirable. A good number attended this year's lecture which was from Old Testament specialist Dr Iain Duguid. He spoke on The Song of Songs, on what love is and on marriage and singleness. He helpfully argued that marriage involves  a threefold bond - legal, affectionate and sexual. He spoke of marriage as friendship on fire. He closed with an appropriate focus on Christ and the cross. See here for a similar paper given at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Besides this public lecture Dr Duguid lectured to the seminary students on the Song. On the Wednesday afternoon  there was an opportunity for others to be present when we turned to another of the wisdom books Proverbs and how to preach it. Dr D made some helpful remarks on the subject and gave an example or two of how to go about it. It was good to be present for that too.

As if all that was not enough, there were three further opportunities for intake on the Saturday. The LTS was having an elders day with Garry Williams, Robert Strivens and Ian Fry (a minister and Director of Youth and Children’s Ministry Training at Oak Hill Theological College) [LTS here] and next door the Kensit church had a morning conference on reaching Muslims with Amjad Mahand. We opted for Gavin Peacock with is wife Amanda at Highgate Road Chapel, following up the Song of Songs work with a well attended day conference on biblical manhood and womanhood. There are difficulties when a group focusses only on one matter but it was good to look at the subject again with some very clear messages and an opportunity for questions at the end. More from cbmw here.

Duguid/Yeulett

 

Lord's Day June 22 2014

This Sunday morning I went over the hill to Highgate Road Chapel. Their very old building was transformed some years ago and they have quite attractive modern facilities. The auditorium is upstairs.

Things are a little transitional there at present as the present pastor, Andrew Hill, is leaving to work with SASRA next month. As it turned out Artur Piotrowski, his assistant, led and the preacher was George Platt (on 1 Thessalonians 1:9, 10). The format of the service involved several leading and included a testimony from George, an open time of prayer and some more liturgical elements. The hymns were projected on to the wall and seemed to be drawn from different sources. Their youth pastor Simon played the piano and Andrew played a soprano sax from the front. We were around 30, a third being under-10s who had their own programme - a good range of people.

There was coffee to follow and a barbecue was also arranged. They have no evening service as such (though there was a 4 pm meeting) so I was glad to go along to Childs Hill where Robert Strivens was preaching on Abraham from Genesis 12. Excellent stuff. We were around 26 I think.

Calvin all the way

No-one can argue that Calvin's five hundredth birthday has not been well and truly marked in this year. Another three Calvin things for you to digest.

1. Last Sunday we were invited to join Andrew Hill and the folk over the hill at Highgate Road Chapel to hear Garry Williams on the subject "Is the world out of control?". I think we were about twenty. With consummate skill Garry eschewed and academic consideration of suffering and ploughed a practical apologetic furrow, drawing on Calvin's life (being a refugee, an oft hated man, a widower, at death's door, etc) and labours as well as his writings (about the sovereign God who is also a Father to all in need adn who is seen best in Jesus Christ) to say that God is in control although it does not seem so at times. An excellent time of questions followed. We were only sorry not to be able to stay for tea. (Garry drew partly on his paper at the Banner this year. See here).

2. On Monday we were at the Westminster Fellowship where Hywel Jones, recently returned from the USA, was the speaker. He preached first and then spoke on Calvin and his preaching - especially whether he preached Christ enough. After lunch we spent the time in discussion of the paper. The sermon was on John 16:23, 24 and specifically Christian prayer, prayer in Christ's name. Dr Jones's preaching does have a certain Chinese food quality (in that when he speaks he seems to open up vistas but when you try to describe what he has said it can sound rather ordinary).

The paper and the discussion was stimulating. He suggested that Calvin often didn't preach Christ as much as we would have expected. The factors here he suggested (I think) were

1. Human factors - he preached as appropriate to the situation

2. Use of terms - we can't assume a failure to mention the word Christ means not preaching him

3. The covenantal structure of Scripture so that when preaching on the Old Testament the mention of Christ is minimised

4. The very fact that he preached Old Testament sermons to a more convionced audience

5. The reality of there beuibf but one olive tree

He also had interesting things to say about Calvin preaching the Vox Dei as well as the Verbum Dei and the actual tones of God's voice. Also, declaring a trinitarian authroite, vivacite, familiere. He used an interesting quotation from T H L Parker who suggests that Calvin's commentaries are charactarised by abrupt moves from one end of the exegetical continuum to the other:

"For page after page he can look like Calvinus Judaeus (something he was called not long after his death) and then suddenly show that, in his voluntary exile among the men of the Old Covenant, living with them in shades and shadows, he has not forgotten the Sun of righteousness who, as he himself already knows, will in their future rise with healing in his wings."

(Calvin's Old Testament Commentaries, 1986).

3. The third thing I want to do is to draw attention to what may be the last conference of the year with dose of Calvin (from Garry Williams again and Don Carson) - The Westminster Conference here in London in December. More here.

Induction

We were over at an induction today for Andrew Hill in the newly refurbished premises at Highgate Road Chapel in Kentish Town (an FIEC church for many years I believe but formerly Baptist). The preacher was John Nicholls, now director of LCM but for many years pastor of Cole Abbey Presbyterian Church. We had mostly redemptive historical insights from 1 Chronicles 28 and Scots quotes and anecdotes. Also taking part were Robert Strivens, the new LTS Principal; Gwynn Evans, pastor at Hayes Town Chapel where Andrew was mentored while at LTS and the Highgate Road elder Wiltshire bred Tim Collier. Over a hundred were present and there was a lovely spread after. Nice to chat with people. Conducting a teaching ministry in London these days is no easy task but the service seemed to strike the right note of cautious optimism. We pray God's blessing on the work.

Andrew can be seen with Lanu form Burma our LTS student

in a publicity shot for the Seminary.