Day Off Week 44 2025

Managed to fit in a day off this week, mostly reading but I alos watched some Alan Partridge, which is funny enough but for me, only ever mildly so.

Grove Chapel Bicentenary

It was good to be at the bicentenary celebration in Grove Chapel, Camberwell, this afternoon, part of a weekend of meetings. We have no particular connection with the chapel but it is a bastion of Reformed preaching and there were many people present who we know (as well as many we don't). There have been ten ministers over the 200 years. I know the five still living to speak to and know the names of others like Joseph Irons, the founder pastor and Henry Atherton. Those still living with the dates when they served are Iain Murray (1961-69), Hywel Jones (1970-80), David N Jones (1981-93), Mark Johnston (1994-2010) and Paul Yeulett (from 2014). (Do note the celtic flavour that persists over the years). This afternoon Paul preached on God the Father (although it was really on all three persons). Reuel Abrahams, one of the elders chaired. Nice tea to follow and plenty of chats. We skipped the Q&A.

London Seminary 40th

The London Seminary started in 1977. In 40 years, over 400 men have been trained for pastoral and preaching ministry, the bulk of whom are ministering today. They are all over the country, from Scotland to the south coast, from Wales to East Anglia and in nations the world over. Other ventures, such as the John Owen Centre and the newly announced Flourish course for women have also been alongside.

It was appropriate that at the seminary's annual service last Saturday the chairman (fresh back from Singapore) was former principal Philip Eveson. He took opportunity to remind us of the work's beginnings and represented the Board in giving a big thank you to our secretary for 39 of the 40 years, Brian Stevens. He also publicly thanked Robert and Sarah Strivens, helped by Board chairman Spencer Cunnah, on the Seminary's behalf.

Dr Strivens gave the annualreport, his last in his present capacity. We also heard from principal elect, Bill James, who begins in January reading and praying.

We also heard from six leaving students – Chris Durrant, John Kerr, Philip Lievesley, Pedro Real, Manuel Redondo and Chris Statter. Five are about to begin ministry – in Bournemouth, Gloucester, Frinton-on-sea, Brazil and Salford. Manuel hopes to do further study before returning to Spain.

It was a great opportunity to hear Al Mohler again. He preached on John 15:18-27 where Christ the General warns his untried soldiers what is ahead. Under the heading, What do you expect? he warned of what lies ahead and gave reasons to continue

1. Because we belong to Christ

2. Because we have the Holy Spirit alongside us

3. Because we have Christ praying for us, Christ who has overcome the world.

There was a good number there, perhaps more than usual. Tea and discussion on the lawn (se epic above from the Seminary Twitter accoount) is a tradition on this occasion and that was kept despite periodic attempts by the overcast skies to send rain.

Funeral of Graham Harrison

I was in South Wales yesterday for the funeral of Graham Harrison at Emmanuel Church, Newport. I stayed at my sister's in Cwmbran the night before and she accompanied me to the funeral. She was a member of the congregation there for six months many years ago. I was surprised that Emmanuel was big enough to accommodate everyone but there is extra room available and so the 200-250 filled the place but not to overflowing. I was not able to stay for refreshments but it was good to be at the service in the church sat next to Mark Thomas and at the committal at St Woolo's cemetery. Bernard Lewis, the present minister, led the service. It was good to see him and his wife Linda and Ken Brownell and John Palmer present. We were all exact contemporaries at LTS. Robert Strivens read, Wyn Hughes prayed, Trevor McMillen, an elder, gave thanks and Stephen Clark preached. It was all very helpful. Geoff and Iola, my in-laws, gave us a lift to the grave, where, in the sunshine, Neville Rees read, Hywel Jones prayed and Bernard did the committal to the grave where Mr Harrison's father had been buried in 1989. There is something solemn and reassuring about a Christian burial.

There must have been around fifty ministers present all told. It was not possible to speak to everyone I would like to have. It was good to be reminded of Mr Harrison's faithfulness (he was referred to as Mr Harrison throughout). We were reminded of his lack of small talk, his preaching, his sense of humour, his pastoral abilities, his very practical bent and his solidity in a crisis. Digby Williams and John Edmonds, both ministers, grew up at different times in the church. John recalled the day when the old Alma Street was being knocked down and they were meeting in the YMCA. Great days they sounded.

I always find a trip to Newport strange. I was born there but I do not know my way around well. I noticed my Auntie Mavis's grave among the hundreds there in that cemetery. I don't know where the graves of other family members are found.

LTS Conference 6 Hywel Jones

Former LTS Principal Hywel Jones gave the closing paper. He began with the phrase "ministry to the whole person" and spoke of the two parts of that phrase.

1. Ministry has had a long history (The cure of souls, being physicians of souls) from Chrysostom and Gregory through Bucer and Van Maastricht to today. It is important to keep theology central in ministry not psychology, etc.

2. As for the whole person there has been an increased emphasis on the oneness of the human person. Dr Jones noted the impact of science here and then noted several influential books including J A T Robinson The body and Berkouwer Man the image of God which attempts to re-focus on man as the image of God in concrete terms. Also Anthony Hoekema Created in God's Image who helpfully prefers to speak of "sides" rather than dichotomies or trichotomies in man. In his Systematic Theology Robert Reymond says Berkouwer is talking nonsense and reverts to more traditional terms.

There is the possibility that the contrast between parts and the whole person is being exaggerated. In the end it is man in the presence of God that needs to be considered. He went on to argue, following Gordon Wenham,  for a difference between being in the image and like the image. This is like P E Hughes (1989) who said that man and the divine image are not identical. John Murray and Sinclair Ferguson are similar. Murray says man is a body not that he has a body.

All this is relevant because if we over-emphasise the parts over the whole person in a wrong way it will make a difference as will the opposite error. We must preach that in Christ the image of God is seen perfectly and that every man who is in Christ is being restored to the image.

In conclusion he suggested an alternative approach, that advocated in 2 Corinthians 4:16, preaching to the conscience. This was a welcome emphasis as the conscience is a subject we had pretty much avoided throughout the conference. There was a lot more but if you weren't one of the fifty or sixty at this conference then you need to get hold of the recording from the John Owen Centre.

Reaching the human heart

I hope to be at the 2011 Conference of the John Owen Centre next week. Details below

Reaching the Human Heart:

Understanding, Will, and Affections in Scripture, History, and Contemporary Ministry

Christian ministry needs to nurture the whole person in Christ, not just some aspects of who we are. But if we are to reflect on how it can do this then we must ask a number of other questions: What is a human person according to the Bible? What is the heart? How do mind, will, and affections relate? What can we see of their perfect relationship in the Lord Jesus himself? What of the central place of love in the Christian life? These are the kinds of questions that the 2011 John Owen Centre conference will seek to address, with a view to strengthening the faithful ministry of under-shepherds charged with caring for the Lord’s sheep. The conference will be held at London Theological Seminary.

Speakers and topics:

Monday 12th September
Garry Millar
The nature of the human person in the Old Testament 11.00am
Philip Eveson
The Lord Jesus Christ as the Proper Man 2.00pm
Robert Strivens
The nature of the human person in the New Testament 4.00pm
Michael Haykin
‘Sweet sensibility': Andrew Fuller’s defence of religious affections 7.30pm (Martyn Lloyd-Jones Memorial Lecture)

Tuesday 13th September
Garry Williams
Puritan accounts of the human person 11.00am
Graham Beynon
The central place of love in the Christian life 1.30pm
Hywel Jones
Ministry to the whole person: the difference all of this makes 3.30pm

Registration and coffee will be at 10.30am and the first lecture will start at 11.00am. The last lecture should finish around 5.00pm.

The Martyn Lloyd-Jones Memorial Lecture, which is open to everyone - free of charge - will be at 7.30pm on Monday 12th September.

Costs - (including light refreshments, lunch and tea) booking after 2nd September the two-day conference -£60. Day one only - £40; Day two only - £35
Book now by emailing johnowen@ltslondon.org

Affinity Conference 6

Hywel Jones with Stephen Clark in the chair

The final paper of the conference was from Hywel Jones on that old chestnut Word and Spirit. Hywel is always avuncular and now in his seventies increasingly statesmanlike. Dealing with the views of Hodge, Bavinck and John Woodhouse, we were given the typical non-Lutheran, anti-Prc Trust, pro-Lloyd-Jones line that wants to avoid an ex opere operato view of  Scripture and preaching and emphasise the work of the Spirit. Always worth discussing.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Most of the papers have now arrived for The Affinity Theological Study Conference 2-4 February at High Leigh Conference Centre in Hoddesdon, Herts. The programme is

DAY ONE

We arrive by 11.30 and after lunch and a welcome we have

14.15 Paper 1: Is the Princeton View of Scripture an Enlightenment Innovation?

Carl R Trueman (Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia) Interview with Trueman here.

Then after tea at 16.15

16.45 Paper 2: Lost on the Old Testament? Literary Genres and Evangelical Hermeneutics

Peter Naylor (Minister, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Cardiff)

DAY TWO

9.15 Paper 3: Right doctrine, wrong texts. Can we follow the apostles’ doctrine but not their hermeneutics?

Greg Beale (Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia)

11.00 Coffee Break

11.30 Paper 4: Every heretic has his text: the use and abuse of the Bible in the church

Stephen Clark (Minister, Freeschool Court Evangelical Church, Bridgend and Tutor at London Theological Seminary). This I understand is Martin Downes' paper. He can't be there because of the continuing situation at home.

We're free after lunch until

17.00 Paper 5: The Sufficiency of Scripture for Public Theology

Dan Strange (Lecturer in Culture, Religion and Public Theology at Oak Hill College, London)

Followed by Dinner and 20.30-21.30 Corporate Prayer

DAY THREE

9.15 Paper 6: Preaching the Word in the Power of the Spirit: biblical, historical and practical reflections

Hywel R Jones (Visiting Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Seminary, California)

After a coffee break at 11 there's

11.30 Panel Discussion

Followed by lunch and depart (though I'll have to make a quicker getaway as I'm hoping to see my son in  a play in Aber that night).

Aber 2010 02

The first evening session was on Monday night. The preacher was Gareth Williams from Bala and he took us to Colossians for a message that was chiefly evangelistic. Gareth is a similar age to myself. He was in Cardiff when I was in Aber. The second evening it was our friend Martin Downes on Acts 24, more consistently evangelistic but with a similar clear, calm and deliberate style. I am missing Bill James tonight as it's my turn to babysit. I'll also be missing Steve Brady and Stuart Olyott on subsequent nights as we have to leave early for a wedding.

I also missed Hywel Jones on the Christian mind yesterday afternoon but was able to hear Dale Ralph Davis the main speaker at a seminar this afternoon. I'll say something about his main addresses and this one in another post. I also managed a nice coffee with my friend Robert Strivens.

I missed Dr Jones as we were all on the beach in Borth (the whole wider family and friends, including one cousin of Eleri's over from the States) chatting and playing cricket. It's been remarkably good weather since we got here more or less. On the Monday afternoon I made my annual visit to the Christian Bookshop here in Aber and made a number of purchases. I sat down on the seafront to peruse them and got chatting with a young Estonian student. I don't think she had met a Christian really before so she was keen to talk. She proved sceptical and was sure that simply doing good deeds to please herself was enough. I told her she was blind and needed a "Copernican revolution" in her whole way of thinking - from a me-centred outlook to a God-centred one. I hope she meets other Christians this week. There are plenty about.

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.