London Seminary

Readers of this blog may well be interested to see the newly revamped website of the London Seminary. The relaunch has been made in the interests of clarity and connecting with the Christian public.

LTS Annual Service 2016

It was the LTS Annual Thanksgiving in Finchley last Saturday. A large crowd gathered. It was my privilege to chair and it was good to hear the Principal's report and the testimonies of the leaving students, including my son Rhodri and Sihle Xulu from South Africa who has also been placed with us during his time in LTS. Rhodri is off to Aberystwyth and Sihle to South Africa. Some of the students are staying on for a third year. The preacher was Paul Mallard who preached clearly and helpfully from the letter to Smyrna in Revelation. It was a bit wet during the tea that followed, which is unusual. Some of us were keen to be away for the Wales game anyway.

End of year service at LTS 1983/2016

Gary Brady 1983/Rhodri Brady 2016

Preaching at LTS

I was preaching at LTS on Friday afternoon. As well as daily morning devotions they have someone to preach most weeks (usually from the faculty). About twenty gathered and I preached on Ehud as an example of what preachers should be (I hope the message sunk in). My son was amused that after making a point about not making sermons too long I said "seventhly". It was good to be there. A nice lunch followed. Good old Giovanni. It is encouraging to think that there is a small but rising generation of preaches being prepared at the seminary.

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

 

John Owen Centre Annual Conference 2015 Day 2

Our second day of conference has been refreshing again. We were around 60 or so once more - a slightly different 60 from yesterday.

Garry Williams started us off with a paper arguing against the everything is ordinary approach that suggests that everything inimalized so that the divinely different in Christian worship is removed. “God does not indwell a place as he is always in us by his Spirit" goes the argument "and our whole lives are worship so someone should be able to move from mowing the lawn into public worship without setting off any alarm, until the single moment of preaching the cross.”

Garry countered with a theology of the divine presence of God, who fills all things - not circumscriptively or definitively but repletively (He added three clarifications - Creation is 'contained' by him, not him by it; God is everywhere but in a non-physical manner [not by mixture, division, multiplication, extension or diffusion]. There are different types of divine presence. He is present everywhere by essence. He is distinctively present by visibility and activity, by operational omnipresence. In heaven is “the court of his majestical presence, but not the prison of his essence” (Charnock). With his people he is present graciously and covenantally. In hell, by essence and wrath. He leaves and attends - “he departs from us when he leaves us to the frowns of his justice; he comes to us when he encircles us in the arms of his mercy” (Charnock)

His essential presence is foundational. Examples of applying the distinctions would include the presence of God in corporate worship and especially preaching, the Lord's Supper and prayer. Ethos and habit is the thing here. The question is not How would you behave if Jesus was here (bodily) but what are the practical implications of the fact Christ is here to do this? It is not A speaking to B about C but C to B in the words of A. This leads to fear and joy. How should we conduct ourselves in public worship? In sum, in a way that is appropriate to what God is doing.

Discussion followed. After lunch Bill James spoke helpfully on the means of grace as identified by Garry beforehand and again said helpful things. I chaired that one (hence no photo of Bill, sorry). Gerard Hemmings brought things together to close giving us boast important principles from Matthew 13 and some pragmatic suggestions for growing conservative churches.

John Owen Centre Annual Conference 2015 Day 1

It was good to at the John Owen Centre today for the first of two days on Putting Theology into Practice. There were three speakers.

Colin Burcombe from Northern Ireland took us helpfully to Genesis 26 and the Patriarch Isaac as an example of a man of principle attracted to pragmatism who makes a principled withdrawal and a return to first principles.

Two nice quotations:

“The promise given to Isaac was searching; to refuse the immediate plenty of Egypt for mostly unseen and distant blessings demanded the kind of faith praise in Hebrews 11, verses 9 and 10 and proved Isaac a true son of his father, even though, like Abraham, he was to mar his obedience at once.” (Kidner)

". . . this account of Isaac's dealings with the Philistines portrays Isaac as very much walking in his father's footsteps. He receives similar promises, faces similar tests, fails similarly, but eventually triumphs in like fashion. Indeed, in certain respects he is given more in the promises and achieves more. He is promised 'all these lands [v. 4],' and by the end of the story he is securely settled in Beersheba and has a treaty with the Philistines in which they acknowledge his superiority." (Wenham)

Then came another speaker new to me Alistair Wilson from Scotland who looked at the Apostle Paul, looking mostly at 1 Corinthians and seeking to articulate where Paul was driven by principle and where he was pragmatic. As before, good discussion followed.

The final paper by Ian Hamilton (currently in Cambridge but set to return to Scotland next year) was more anecdotal, reflecting on the Church of Scotland and other developments in church history. He closed by saying

1. God's Word is not a systematic theology

2. Godly men have differed down the years

3. Principled pragmatists have often had a high view of the church

4.  Always think the best of others

Some more quotations:

"... quietness and patience and persuasion are no less Christian virtues than is the heroic sacrifice of stipends on high principle." (Owen Chadwick)

“Among the chief evils of our time is that the churches are so divided, that human fellowship is scarcely now in any repute among us. Thus it is that [as] the members of the church [are] being severed, the body lies bleeding. If I could be of any service, I would not grudge to cross even ten seas on account of it.” (Calvin to Cranmer)

Some of us LTS alumni had a nice get together with the Principal and a short time of prayer after the day's proceedings.

LTS Annual Service 2015

The annual LTS service when the students come to the end of their course is always a special occasion and we try to get along. This year some nine students had finished the two year course and were going on to further studies or pastoral ministry. Three are UK students and six from elsewhere. In the Principal's report he reminded us that one of the factors for deciding on membership of the EU is the present ease with which such students can come and study here. He also mentioned the many books currently coming out by those connected with the seminary on one way or another. The visiting preacher was to have been Sinclair Ferguson but he could not come and so his place was taken by Mark Johnston who preached from 1 Thessalonians 2. Tea on the lawn and a chat with friends old and new is always an added bonus.

Meetings, TV Shows, etc

I've been meaning to a sort of general update for a while now. Various things have been taking up my time as well as the regular Sunday and midweek meetings and reading, etc. About 12 days ago I had an ultra-sound scan. I'm still waiting for the results from that.

The day after that I had an officers meeting (which went on a little long) followed a week later by a church members meeting where people were reporting back on no less than four potential new members - two by profession and two coming from other churches. I welcomed in the latter two the following Sunday but the other two will need to be baptised first so we will be arranging that soon.

Then there was a Grace Magazine Trustees meeting at the chapel as we discuss whether and online attempt is feasible. I also have an LTS Board meeting tomorrow.

On Saturday we were giving out tracts in Golders Green. It was rather wet for that sort of activity. I met an old man who claimed to be an atheist. He was quite convinced this was because he knew so much but when I told him he was sadly deluded and asked him if he knew everything he got quite irate. Atheism seems quite fashionable at present. it is difficult for an atheist to show humility, which makes them immediately suspect to anyone who has thought much about these things.

As for TV shows, we have been watching Wolf Hall, of course. I thought the first one was stunning, the second less so but the series looks set to be a classic. I have also been enjoying some BBC4 documentaries - the one on Mike Oldfield and Tubular Bells, the three on recording popular music by Neil Brand (Sound of Song), one on early rock 'n' roll, and the anniversary re-recording of Please Please Me. We also enjoyed the documentary on The secret world of Lewis Carroll fronted by Martha Kearney on BBC 2.
In the midst of all this it was nice to have Dylan around for his birthday. He was in town for an interview.

Bruce Ware at LTS

Southern Baptist professor Bruce Ware has been lecturing at LTS this week and yesterday afternoon there was an open meeting where he very helpfully presented material on the debate over what is now known as complementarian and egalitarian thinking on men and women. His summary of the two positions can be seen here. What I cannot find on the net is the excellent diagram that he gave us setting it all out for us. I have it in a notebook but no time to set it out here. I did bowl Dr Ware a googly in the question time but it was a genuine question (on women reading Scripture in public). I hope to meet him soon and we can talk further perhaps. Some of us met in fraternal for lunch before the event and that was good. I also spoke briefly to Gavin Peacock, currently over from Canada, who was in Cardiff last week giving much the same sort of material I guess (see here). My two Wales based sons were at that.

(PS If you think my pictures are improving I'm afraid not. I'm getting them here)

Abraham Conference at John Owen Centre

I spent yesterday at the John Owen Centre here in London, with about 50 others, at the Abraham Conference they have organised. Garry Williams, Director of the centre, began by outlining the work of the centre and then we were into the first session in which former LTS principal Philip Eveson helpfully outlined what we have in Genesis about Abraham, using diagrams to show the various chiasms and drawing out some interesting points about the careful way the Book of Genesis appears to be constructed. We had more of that sort of thing in the session after lunch when LTS Vice-principal David Green took us through the text showing us the significance of the word Ra'ah to see and its cognates and sometimes homonyms too. Again this was very interesting and helpful.

Personally, I found the third paper from James Mulrooney, an Edinburgh PhD candidate, who will be lecturing at LTS from this term, the most stimulating even though he used the phrase iconic mimesis at one point. He took us through Genesis 22 arguing for a nuanced typology that helpfully understood Abraham, Isaac and the ram in specific bounded terms. The paper generated a good discussion, most people being favourable to what was proposed while others were more sceptical.

In the evening we had the Lloyd-Jones Memorial Lecture, which was open to the public. Peter Law, a local pastor who regularly lectures in the middle east, was given the subject The great Abrahamic faiths? and he gave us some of the background to this phrase then argued, leaning on Daniel Strange, for a subversive fulfilment, that is a balanced acceptance of commonalities while seeking to expose and challenge differences.

Looking forward to day two.

Dr D M Lloyd-Jones

https://www.monergism.com/effectual-calling-and-regeneration

I've been doing these rehabilitation classes at the Royal Free, which are helpful. One funny thing has been the presence of a Lloyd-Jones lookalike. He's not a dead ringer and certainly no soundalike but reminiscent of and he dresses the part regardless of the fact the first hour is exercise.

My Sabbatical is drawing to a close and I spent a good deal of yesterday doing one of the things I had promised myself to do - sitting in the Lloyd-Jones Library at LTS and perusing the contents. No major surprises but worth doing I hope. I need to write it up now.

LTS End of Year

It was good to be at the end of year service of the London Theological Seminary once again as leaving students spoke and there was a report on the year just gone. Spencer Cunnah who is the pastor of the church that meets where we were assembled chaired. Vice-Principal David Green gave the report this year and interviewed the students because the Principal Robert Strivens is on Sabbatical. Students were leaving for Germany, South Africa and other places, some not being clear exactly what was next, as ever. The preacher was my father-in -law, Geoff Thomas, who took us to Isaiah 6, very powerfully. Now entering his fiftieth year in ministry, he mentioned with pleasure the fact that I had studied at LTS and that my son and his grandson starts there next term. Unusually, the weather kept us off the lawn for tea in the main but it began to brighten up, chiming in with the good prospects next year when several new UK students join the seminary. David Green also drew attention to the new church planting course that begins in October. See more on the LTS website. There were about 160 present.

Lord's Day May 11 2014

By God's grace I was able to get along to church again last Lord's Day. All the novelty of the previous week was gone and so it was  something of an effort. I slept all afternoon to make sure I was up for the evening service. Robert was preaching in Bradford and Andrew in Cambridgeshire but Garry Williams (Director of the John Owen Centre) kindly came in the morning and in the evening Adrian Diaper (former LTS student now pastoring in Rickstones, Essex). Both had interesting things to say - Garry on Christ the Shepherd (from Mark 6:6b-44) and Adrian on the resurrection focusing on the opening of Revelation (and 1 Peter). Neither was keen on firstly, secondly, thirdly, which I love but they were easy to listen to and made challenging and apt points to believer and unbeliever alike. One of our deacons led in the morning. We were slightly down on numbers perhaps but not noticeably. One unusual feature of the day was the arrival, morning and evening (and at our tea together at 5 pm), of 10 Romanians (Roma may be). They have hardly any English and have come in search of work, having nowhere to live or anything much more than the clothes they stand in. They appear to be Pentecostal Christians of some sort. Free movement of persons may all sound very dandy on paper but it creates a host of problems. It is hard to see what we can do to help them. Thankfully a Romanian speaker in the congregation was able with Garry to get across the gist of the sermon at the end of the morning meeting.

Lord's Day March 2 2014

Quite behind with this but it was good to be back in Childs Hill last Sunday. We started with communion. We were rather few for that but numbers picked up. Still quite a few away, however. I covered the end of Matthew 4 with what proved to be a relatively long sermon. Briefer in the evening looking at that fundamental text in Hebrews 11.6 on faith. I have an LTS student on placement with me so I asked him to read Proverbs 8 in the morning and to pray in the evening, which he did well. So a good day rather than a great day. Good to be there though.

Catch up 22

It's been so busy lately that I haven't been able to blog a few things. I really enjoyed being at The John Owen Centre in LTS the other week with David Green and a group of others looking at chapters from Proverbs in Hebrew. There is nothing quite like getting down to the original text. That same week I was in LTS for a meeting about the mentoring scheme they run and which I am involved in, which was useful. Then on Saturday November 9 I had another opportunity with others to preach in Trafalgar Square. It was a little wet at times but the Square was as busy as I've ever seen it and there were lots of good opportunities.

Then the following Monday I was at Westminster Chapel for the Westminster Fellowship. We did a little bit of naval gazing and agreed to carry on, though our next meeting (which is in February) is planned to be held in Westminster Baptist Church, (my McAfee didn't like that link for some reason but I'm sure it's fine) not a venue I am at all familiar with. We are only around 20 at the fraternal these days but it is good to meet and frankly discuss with men who I am pretty much on a wavelength with.

The next day there was another fraternal, the North London one in Finchley. Trevor Archer FIEC Training Director spoke. It was billed as being on leadership but was really about the advantages of one to one work. This was not new to me. I remember hearing quite a bit of this at early Proclamation Trust meetings and doing what I could to implement it. Like all panaceas, it can be over-rated and should really be seen as just one optional tool. My fear is that an over emphasis on this may downgrade preaching.

Apart from a church officers meeting and the arrival of the book on the Dutch rock band Focus that I edited I think that's all I want to report this time. I'm at the Evangelical Library today and the Westminster Conference is fast approaching. Do book if you haven't already.

Busy Past Week

Last week was so busy that there was no time to make note of it all. On Monday morning I got myself over to the LTS where I had planned to meet with one of the students (Paolo Patuelli, who is from Italy). We are so glad to be mentoring someone again this year, especially a family man. Then it was on to the Evangelical Library to hear a very good lunch time lecture on the Pentateuch from Dr Ian Densham. This was a helpful look at some of the issues and included helpful pointers on preaching from that part of the Word. I was only sorry that we didn't have more people there. I picked up a couple of books on Jansenism which I have begun to read. I then drove to a home in Wembley to visit the oldest member of my church. It's always good to see Lilian. In the evening I was over in Ashford for a Bible Preaching Trust committee. The Bible Preaching Trust makes small grants to ministers in financial need. It was good to agree on grants for men in Scotland, the north of England and Spain this time.

Then on Tuesday I was supposed to be involved in a prison Bible study but that was not possible so I went over to Highbury and Andrew King very kindly helped me get my forms sorted out for getting into this work more thoroughly with CPR. I then went on to the Royal Free Hospital to visit my longest standing church member. It's always good to see Ken too.

Wednesday began with attendance at a funeral at Golders Green Crematorium. I got to know South African David Strauss when he moved in next door to the church and started attending. The place burned down a few years later and he ended up in the north of the borough and keeping contact was difficult, although we would see him from time to time and he would phone fairly often. David was a most interesting character and not always the easiest to deal with, very much an Afrikaaner I guess he was a professing Christian. I then headed down to Clerkenwell to meet up with Tom and Donna Drion (like the Kings, home schoolers I discover) for lunch in the chapel there where Tom is heading up the GraceLife work with Ross Orgil. Tom studied in John Macarthur's Master's Seminary. They seem to be making real progress with a multi-national congregation,. It was good to meet. From there I went on to a regular appointment speaking at a BUPA home in Golders Green. In the evening it was our midweek meeting on Providence, making further use of John Flavel's excellent Mystery of Providence.

The rest of the week was less busy in some ways but with a regular meeting with my fellow elder, sermons to prepare and a newsletter plus two short talks for the Friday night clubs I was not twiddling my thumbs and appreciated the extra hour.

Noah Conference at the John Owen Centre

I haven't been able to report until now on the John Owen Centre conference on Noah, partly because I have been suffering with toothache (I actually missed Stephen Clark's Lloyd-Jones lecture on Noah and the future on the Monday night, though I hear it was good).

On day one we had Steffen Jenkins and Garry Williams looking at Noah in a biblical theological way. Steffen simply looked at the text in Genesis 6-9 and spoke of the context in Genesis 1-5, the ruin of creation while God remained steadfast in purpose (6:1-8), Noah the new Adam and Noah's new world the global foundation of all future salvation. Garry looked at the Noahic Covenant dissenting from VanDrunen (see elsewhere on this blog) and arguing that it is redemptive.

On day two we had Ian Hamilton on the faith of Noah, Mark Garcia in America (by the wonders of modern technology) on Noah, the church and the sacraments (on ravens, doves and rainbows) and Geoff Gobbett on Noah the preacher for preachers.

It was all very interesting and stimulating. I'm sure most of us are not as well thougt through as we ought to be on Noah and his covenant. Steffen Jenkins (a new name to me) was perhaps the most stimulating with his very thorough exegesis of the Scriptures in Genesis regarding Noah. Garry Williams and Mark Garcia were also very interesting. The conference as whole was a blessing and the discussion of a good standard. Around fifty were there. The recordings are worth looking out for.

Here are some quotations that struck me

Steffen Jenkins quoted Gordon Wenham saying "The call of Abraham is the answer to the problems of the world" (See Theological Interpretation of the Old Testament: A Book-by-Book Survey)

Ian Hamilton quoted Bavinck saying, in his Dogmatics (III) “common grace and special grace…flow in a single channel” and Calvin on Romans 4:20 " Let us also remember, that the condition of us all is the same with that of Abraham. All things around us are in opposition to the promises of God: He promises immortality; we are surrounded with mortality and corruption: He declares that he counts us just; we are covered with sins: He testifies that he is propitious and kind to us; outward judgements threaten his wrath. What then is to be done? We must with closed eyes pass by ourselves and all things connected with us, that nothing may hinder or prevent us from believing that God is true."

Geoff Gobbett quoted George Orwell (in the novel 1984) "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." and Boris Johnson writing several years ago in response to a horrible crime

"Bourgeois Britain is going through a bit of a panic about the role of God in society, largely fuelled by nervousness of Islam. Attacks are made on faith schools, or on BA staff who wear the cross, and the idea seems to be that we can only voice reservations about one religion if we bash them all impartially.

That is why Richard Dawkins is having such a soaraway success with an atheist tract called The God Delusion, ...

Alert readers of this column will know that my own faith is a very feeble tinsel object. I sometimes think there might be some kind of celestial radio signal, but it is about as intelligible as Radio Tirana. ... My only thought, as I stare at the faces of Carty and Brown, is that, if we throw out religion, then we lose a useful tool in changing lives. You and I lead comfortable existences, full of pleasure and interest, and generally so heavily regulated that we do not face that many moral challenges. We may feel that we do not have much of a spiritual void to fill.

But look at these creeps, the shambles of "sperm fathers" and gang warfare and violence. It's not so much that they have been deprived of love, but that they have been deprived of authority of any kind, and our feminised paedophile-obsessed culture means there is less and less chance that they will find a male role model in the classroom.

However ludicrous it may seem, religion sets boundaries; it suggests to bad and loveless people that they are loved. It provides a framework.

Of course it would be nice if Carty and Brown were not recruited to some militant Islamic group; it would be nice if they turned to the good old milquetoast Church of England. But it doesn't really matter. We can't just string these people up. We can't flog them. We are forced to incarcerate and hope for the best.

Before we go all the way with Dawkins and chuck out religion, we should look at the savage and remorseless faces of Carty and Brown, and reflect that, if we are to have any hope of changing them for the better, then God is a useful card for society to keep up its sleeve." (See article here)

Noah Conference

Hoping to be at the Noah Conference at the John Owen Centre Monday and Tuesday. More here. A little bird told me one of the sessions will be on Skype.

Annual Thanksgiving LTS 2013

Somehow a whole week has slipped away and I have found not time to mention last Saturday's event in Finchley. It was an excellent time with good chairmanship from South Africa based Irving Steggles, chairman of the board and a streamlined service that is still on the long side but is done very well. The Principal's report From Robert Strivens is kept short, with names of visiting lectures now on a hand out. The sheet with all the students pictures and names is a good innovation, although I seem to have lost mine somewhere. David Green interviews each man in turn. The men leaving this term were as diverse a bunch as ever.

We were particularly interested in Karl Gilliham who with his wife Rebekah, who is Korean, will be off to Korea this next week. Exactly what lies ahead is not clear. Karl and Rebekah (whose father is a famous sculptor in Korea) were placed with us for the two years and we have enjoyed getting to know them. Karl and I would not see eye to eye on several points but a more gracious Christian I have yet to meet. Similarly, Andrew Lolley from Leeds with his wife Jill have been with us over these two years. We have got even closer to them as they live in our church buildings and have actually become members of the church. Andrew is working with me for the next couple of months and may be more as the future begins to shape up.

We also got to know a little young Emediong Samuel from Port Harcourt in Nigeria, on placement with us earlier in the year, and another London based Nigerian Kehinde Omotoye from Hackney who we know, I guess, from the Aberystwyth Conference.

The other men were all interesting too (Canadian, British, Korean, etc). We also had an excellent sermon from Rupert Bentley-Taylor from Bath from 2 Timothy 4. Taking the second part was a pleasant and refreshing change. Tea on the lawn in the sunshine and chatting with old friends is always a joy, of course. LTS is a real blessing.
I should have added that time was also found to make presentations to retiring lecturers Robert Oliver and Basil Howlett. Basil has lectured on pastoralia for several years and Robert on church history for even longer.