A light on the hill

On Monday we met at the Pastors Acadmy for our book group. This time the book was a local church history by a man called Caleb Morrell. Phil Heaps kindly provided with two sets of questions and a helpful outline.

1. “What Shall the Harvest Be?”: 1867–1878

2. “A Helper of the Downtrodden and Lowly”: 1878–1882  Joseph W. Parker – 1879-82 ~3yrs

3. “With Conscience Void of Offence toward God and Man”: 1882–1884 Wilbur M. Ingersoll – 1882-84 ~2yrs

4. “We Do Our Own Thinking in This Church”: 1885–1889 William H. Young – 1885-90 ~5yrs

5. “We Have a Leader of National Reputation”: 1890–1895 Green Clay Smith – 1890-95 ~5yrs

6. “The Future Is Bright with Promise”: 1896–1912 Granville S. Williams – 1895–1903 ~8yrs

7. “War, Fuel Famine, and Influenza Epidemics”: 1913–1918 John Compton Ball – 1903-44 ~41yrs

8. “No Modernism Will Be Tolerated at All in This Church”: 1919–1943 9. “Holding Forth the Word of Life”: 1944–1955 K. Owen White – 1944-49 ~5yrs Walter Carpenter – 1949-55 ~6yrs

10. “A Beachhead for Evangelical Christianity”: 1956–1960 Walter A. Pegg – 1956-61 ~5yrs

11. “Jesus Doesn’t Need a Parking Lot”: 1961–1980 R.B. Culbreth – 1961-66 ~5yrs John Stuckey – 1967-71 ~5yrs C. Wade Freeman Jr. – 1971-81 ~10yrs

12. “When a Christian Leader Falls”: 1981–1993 Walt Tomme Jr. – 1982-88 ~6yrs

Harry Kilbride – 1990-93 ~3yrs

13. “Preach, Pray, Love, and Stay”: 1994–2000 Mark Dever – 1994-present ~31yrs

14. “Doing Nothing and Church Planting”: 2001–Present

We all found the book helpful and interesting and there was a good discussion among the seven present on this occasion. Blaise Pascal next in May.

Example questions

1. What did you think of the book? Strengths / weaknesses?

2. Are there any incidents or characters that particularly lodged in your mind?

3. ch.1: What were Thomas Ustick Walter’s strengths & weaknesses, p10f? Do these things often go together? Have you ever had to change any strongly held and loudly trumpeted views, p16?

4. ch.3: What did Walter Ingersoll do wrong, and what can we learn from this episode, p59,62,65?

5. ch.4: How important are “youth, energy and enthusiasm”, p70 and “unyielding determination to succeed”, p73?

6. ch.5: Does it always feel like we are in a time of social decay and moral regress”, p82? (p90,95; p168)

7. In the early 1890s, 65% of MBC’s members were women, p98. How does that compare with our churches? etc.

London Seminary End of Year 2018

Alexander Roks

Thapelo Mpai

It was great once again to be in sunny Finchley for the Seminary end of year service. Seven students were leaving. We were particularly interested in the two shown above (with Vice-principal David Green, who perhaps could have given them a little more time) as they have been part of the congregation here since they arrived in London and it has been great to get to know them and benefit from their fellowship. Alexander from The Netherlands has been here with his family and Thepelo from South Africa on his own and so that with their very different backgrounds (they have tested how close Dutch and Afikaans and found it's not enough when English is ready available).

It is a great thing for a pastor to have ministerial students in the congregation as even when the numbers seem low and the progress non-existent one is at the very least modelling ministry . One can lean too heavily on that, of course, but it is a great encouragement, year after year, to have these men with us.

David Earl chaired and the preacher was Mark Dever from Washington DC. He preached a well tailored sermon, brief and to the point, which managed (from Mark 4) to address the students and everyone else (including any unbelievers present). It was nice to speak to him briefly after the service and to his assistant Jason Rivette bfore heading out on to the lawn for the traditional tea in glorious sunshine. It is always good to see old friends. There were about 14 of us present from Childs Hill which is also encouraging in its own way.

EMA 2013 Day 1

This year's Proclamation Trust Evangelical Ministry Assembly is in the Barbican for the first time. There are some disadvantages to the venue besides its unfamiliarity but the idea of getting 1250 people in one room is attractive and as we get used to it I'm sure it will grow on us. The EMA tried to break out a few years ago to Westminster Central Hall but then retrenched to St Helen's where only 850 can be catered for.

Day 1 included three plenary sessions and an afternoon seminar stream. Vaughan Roberts was the token Anglican for the day (how things change) kicking us off with  the first 12 verses of 1 Peter.

Dan Strange then took us to the strange world of cultural studies and how we engage with m modern man. One sometimes fears a lot of work is being done to get to some fairly obvious points but it overall it is pretty stimulating. His enter, explore, expose, evangelise paradigm is good and the need for subversion and fulfilment in preaching was most interesting.

In the afternoon I chose to hear Mark Dever on ministry in  changing world. That was very good. He gave us the option of Q & A or coffee next. I was one of only two who voted for coffee and so we had an okay bit of interaction to close.

The final session was Paul Mallard on Colossians 1:9-14, which like the rest of the day was okay. Indeed okay sums it up for me. Being a grumpy old man, lots of things annoyed me (having a singer with a microphone to lead the singing, out of sync videos, students reading the Scriptures badly instead of letting the man who was about to preach on it, the lack of EP books on the bookstall, etc) but I am wise enough to let those go.

What is sad, however, is firstly the way conferences lose their edge. I remember the early days of EMA when you had Dick Lucas, Australians we had never heard and, above all, an eagerness to carefully expound Scripture. Obviously things move on but one can't help feeling that, like most conferences, it is now a matter of filling slots with good material rather than anything more inspired.

More disturbing is the whole matter of preaching. There was a moment at the end of Vaughan Roberts address where a strange thing happened. First, he quoted Lloyd-Jones (that's rare enough at EMA). Then, he actually preached (from the heart as he would say). I have heard him say before that he is unhappy with being called a Bible teacher. He wants to preach. And for those few minutes, and to some extent before,  that is what he did. As the Lloyd-Jones quote goes, the man gave me an idea of the glory of God and that was worth the whole of the rest of the day.

I should add that a conference is always more then the sessions. It was good to see many people. With some there was time for just a wave but it was good to chat at some length with others, including two people in particular who have faced recent deaths in the family.

So we'll see what we get today and hopefully I'll share it later.

Solid Ground

Someone gave me a copy of Solid Ground edited by Gabriel Fluhrer and consisting of nine addresses given at The Philadelphia Conference for Reformed Theology. This third collection (the others are on the atonement and history) came out about a year ago and looks at matters to do with God's Word, its inerrncy and sufficiency, etc. With contribuitons by Packer, Dever, Sproul, etc it's the usual crowd giving very helpful addresses on important subjects and is very stimulating. I particualry liked the way that the point about the Word producing the people of God as seen all the way through came out more than once. Well worth getting hold of. It would have been worth including a small amount of biographical material as even though these names are familiar in Reformed circles not all will know that James Montgomery Boice died in 200 and Edmund Clowney in 2005. Even I was oblivious to the existence of Richard D Phillips who I discover is senior minister of Second Presbyterian Church, Greenville, S.C. (previously having been a pastor in Florida and minister of preaching at Tenth in Philadelphia). He also serves on the council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and as chairman of the Philadelphia Conference for whom these collected addresses are something of an advert. Next time, Mr Fluhrer, eh?

Banner and Lloyd-Jones

The new Banner mag for March is just out. The cover draws attention to the fact that march 2011 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The issue contains and article on "The Influence of Dr Lloyd-Jones on My Life and Ministry" by Leo De Vos, "The Doctor in Spanish" by Jose de Segovia Barrón and an article based on an address by the Doctor on preaching, as well as one other article and News and Comment and Book Reviews.

"Martyn Lloyd-Jones is one of the men I admire most from the twentieth century, and the longer time goes on, my admiration for him increases. He had a more profound spiritual vision than anyone else I know."

Mark Dever, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington DC

"I have often reached for one of those volumes on that great chapter of Paul’s Epistle when feeling attacked by Satan. For the tempted believer there is no better help that I know of, than Ephesians 6 as expounded by ML-J!" Leo De Vos

 

"As a young pastor I started each new week by reading a sermon of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In those years I ‘heard’ him preach through Ephesians, Romans, the Sermon on the Mount, and his lectures on the Puritans. What a blessing it was! I always looked forward to such moments because it was like eating fresh and healthy bread for myself. My spiritual life was shaped in various ways through the Doctor’s ministry: I learned to be exegetically honest, I learned to respect church history, I experienced what it means that first the mind needs to be enlightened and that consequently the heart and the will will react. So my horizon was widened, my way to carefully examine the modern and contemporary way of thinking was sharpened, my love for God’s people grew, and my joy in the Lord and in his blessings in Jesus grew deeper, and changed the way I looked at the church and the world around me. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is one of the first ten people whom I would like to meet in heaven, and I will be so pleased if I can thank him personally for his faithful ministry which has, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so blessed and enriched my life and helped me in my ministry."

Rainer Klinner, Principal of Fritzlar Bible College, Chairman of the Ministers’ Assembly of the Church of God, Fritzlar, Germany

Book Buys June

In June I made two major purchases on the internet and also bought some smaller volumes at the (slightly unimpressive) EMA bookstall. My big purchases were 2 distinctive STs
The four volume Christian's Reasonable Service by Wilhelmus A Brakel
A new Systematic Theology (Baptist!) by Robert Culver

I also got
Martin Downes' book Risking the Truth
Selderhuis's biography of Calvin which I am very much enjoying
A book on The Westminster Directory of Public Worship by Dever and Ferguson
A book on the Pharisees called Extreme Righteousness by Tom Hovestol