Courageous?

Review of the DVD Courageous first released at the end of last year.

If you are familiar with the work of the Kendrick Brothers and Sherwood Pictures (Flywheel, Facing the Giants, Fireproof) then you will know what to expect from their current DVD Courageous. The them this time is fatherhood with the focus on four different fathers, three of whom are in the local police department. Again there is the Albany, Georgia backdrop, the focus on several different characters, the gentle and attractive humour, people praying and getting converted and the positive small town American charm. Perhaps the effort to be multicultural and multisocial is more obvious. As ever, the acting is good, the storyline well written and the production values high. The budget was up fourfold this time, to $2 million dollars (but quickly recouped many times over at the box office). However, the project was, as ever, bathed in prayer, involved many extras from the local church, relied on volunteers and has a credit list that still includes people like babysitters and caterers, again from the local church. The film actually ends with what appears to be a Father's Day service at the Sherwood Baptist church.

So, a film made by Christians with the laudable aim of drawing attention to fatherhood and what a crucial role fathers can have on the rising generation. What's not to like? Well, it was a little long I thought. It is relentlessly didactic and even if you agree with the basic premise you might find it a little irritating. The fathers in the film decide to show what committed fathers they are by signing a pledge and making a public commitment. One father gives his teenager daughter one of those purity rings that have been so popular an controversial in the States. All very American and fair enough for an American film, perhaps. My real fear, however, is that with the title courageous the film is suggesting that all we fathers need to do is to try a little harder, spend a little more time with our kids and everything will be dandy. It is difficult to say whether the problem lies in the Kendrick brothers theology or the medium itself. When you write a story or make a film then you are in a sense acting as God. There is no failure on the part of the writers to introduce conflict or to suggest that being a father is easy. Nevertheless it would be very easy to watch it and even with the closing text in your head (Joshua 24:15) to think that all we need to do is try a bit harder.

When I was at university studying English I wrote essays that chiefly aimed to convert the lecturer. I now see that was a mistake. That is not what an academic essay is intended to do. Watching and making feature films is surely not a sin. However, we must always remember that Christ conquers sin and wins hearts to himself through preaching not through feature films. Perhaps next time the Kendricks, who are undoubtedly good story tellers, will try and be more subtle and aim more at entertainment rather than trying so hard to convert us all.

(An edited version of this piece can be found in the September Evangelical Times)

Cassette 09 Haydn

Haydn wrote over a hundred symphonies and around 40 of them have nicknames. This cassette that I picked up in dearly deaprted Woolies some years ago contains the philopsher, clock and military (22, 100 and 101). Haydn is quite acessible and good fun.

Vlog 4 Micah Thomas

Brave Julie Fowlis

A weekend in Yorkshire

We spent last weekend in Yorkshire, leaving London on Friday morning and returning late Sunday evening. We stayed in a very nice guest house on Whitby itself.

The main reason for going up was to be at a wedding. Eleri's cousin's son was marrying a Whitby girl, the third wedding in three years for that family of five, so we will all be twiddling our thumbs rather next August. The wedding itself was in Whitby Evangelical Church, (see here especially) a former shop on Skinner Street that has been attractively converted. The sermon was given by John Perry the groom's brother-in-law and was a straight UCCF style gospel presentation. With several unbelievers present it was good to focus there. The whole service was God honouring and a joy to be involved with. That can be said  pretty much about the whole day, which continued with a cake reception at the church then a formal meal at the plush nearby Raithwaite Hotel and dancing 'til late (hopefully not too late). The several speeches were of a very high order, Daniel the groom singing unembarrassingly to his new bride and the seriously funny best man (Alex Passmore) making us all laugh but finding time to testify to God's goodness too, before rounding things off by being joined by a male voice choir to give a slightly amended rendition of Danny Boy. I'm not sure if I've been to a wedding where a wedding planner has been involved before but all sorts of things seem to have been thought of to add to the whole thing. We were sat on a table of 5 couples, most of whom, it turned out, were pastor's kids.

The following day we headed on to have lunch with friends in Carlton Minniot, attending the service at Hambleton Evangelical Church. The preacher that morning was David Owens from Milnrow Evangelical church. His sermon was evangelistic like John the day before but the two sermons could not have been more different. David used a score or more of anecdotes to back up his message, a call to repentance and faith. I guess D L Moody would have preached something like that. There was something decidedly old style evangelist in it.
It was goo to catch up with the Davies's but conscious of the long journey ahead we decided to go further south that afternoon and attend Wycliffe Independent Church, Sheffield. I have never been there before though I know one or two in the church, including the minister Ed Collier. Ed was preaching from James 1 on profiting from suffering. Not evangelistic this time, this was a careful and clear exposition of the passage and theme and for the third time a privilege to hear.
All three of these churches would be similar in that they are evangelical churches in the Lloyd-Jones tradition. They have all had Presbyterian ministers but are probably mostly made up of Baptists. Sheffield (founded 1908) is the oldest and largest with a nice airy building put up in 1994 and set in a busy part of the city. They currently have one minister and would like to increase their staffing back to the two they had until Spencer Cunnah headed this way. Hambleton (begun in 1969) is much smaller and is in the countryside. They have recently called Richard Wigham from Llantrisant, who will be inducted next month. The church in the seaside town of Whitby (formed in 1973) with its extensive refurbished property is probably somewhere in between size wise and is currently without a minister.
My knowledge of the Yorkshire Reformed scene is quite limited but it was good to get this little taste.

Brave

We went as a family last week to see the new Pixar movie Brave (see here). I was partly persuaded to go as the film features two songs (in English) sung by Julie Fowlis. Pixar always put on a good show anyway. The film was beautifully drawn and held interest right through. It could have done with a few more jokes, I guess. On the whole it was average for Pixar but Pixar are always above average. The story was quite fresh though as outlandish as ever. It deals with that age old question of fate or divine predestination as against free will or human responsibility. The world is unable to deal with this adequately, of course, and so the basic message here was that you have to make your own fate, which is about as close as a worldly view will get. Biblical Christians simply have to live with the tension between God's predestination and our human responsibility as typified in Newton's statement about preparing sermons as if there were no Holy Spirit and preaching as though all depended on him regardless.

Odd things in Whitby

We are in Whitby for a wedding. We had a little walk around yesterday and we saw three strange things.

1. An abandoned pair of decent black daps or plimsolls

2. Children smoking fake cigarettes (fooled me)

3. Minstrels here for some sort of folk music festival with blacked faces

[I assumed the latter two were illegal. Apparently the Morris men black face is about hiding not race.]

Today is the day

Today is the day 350 years ago when 2000 or so were ejected from the national church in England and Wales for the sake of conscience. It is right that we should give thanks for their noble stand and pray that we too may be men and women willing to follow conscience and to do what we believe is according to the Word of God regardless of what it costs.

Pretend it's not an advert

This great almost to the very end.

Ernest Kevan

I have just finished reading the new Banner of Truth biography of the London Bible College principal Ernest Kevan by Paul Brown. It is very well written and is both a challenge in that Kevan was clearly a dedicated and godly man and informative about a period which is really just before my time (Kevan died a little prematurely in 1965) but part of the whole renaissance of Calvinism in the UK in the forties and fifties.

Far from looking for controversy, Paul Brown nevertheless doesn't duck issues such as Lloyd-Jones perceived attack on LBC in 1958 (see the chapter headed BD or not BD). He has done his best too to trace the development of the Strict Baptist Kevan's thinking over the years as he passed from Walthamstow to New Cross to Tooting to LBC in an ever changing situation. A very balanced portrait, it includes not only Kevan's leading of the college but his children's works, social involvement and, perhaps unexpectedly, his sense of fun. An appendix usefully summarises his PhD on the Law.  We really are in Paul Brown's debt.

Vlog 3 Forest of Dean

I recorded this last week

Silly puns on nations 4

1. Can Ada help us to get to Canada?

2. There's a queue ba every shop in Cuba said the Yorkshire man

3. Trinni, Dad and Toby go to Tobago

4. You is a good guy, come to USA with me

5. He was a jam maker in Jamaica

6. I saw Dom in a car in Dominica

7. Don't you just 'ate tea when its served in Haiti?

8. You're a guy I'm a girl, that's what they say in Uruguay

9. It's a little chilly in Chile

10. I'm in Peru as per usual

Aber Conference '12 Evening 5 Brian Edwards

As Brian Edwards himself observed, it might have been better if the conference had ended with Conrad Mbewe's address. Brian did his best, however, taking us to Revelation 22 but the message was somehow dissipated in a long and interesting but somewhat difficult introduction looking at God's light coming into the world. The decision to choose two hymns that the congregation did not know for the final ones was probably not wise either, as good as both were (one by Chris Idle, one by Charles Wesley). One feature this year is that we have sung nearly all 20th or 21st century hymns, apart from the Charles Wesley ones.

So another year over. Not a vintage one perhaps with numbers down and the preaching variable but full of plenty of good things. Evangelistic appeal was rather at a premium, sad to say. The conference is always more than the preaching.

Next year it's Alistair Begg and in the evenings Iain D Campbell, Vaughan Roberts, Ian Parry and Bernard Lewis.

Aber Conference '12 Conrad Mbewe 02

Conrad finished off on the second two mornings by looking at the final phrases in 1 Timothy 3:16 (was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory). Once again using a God exalting style illustrating chiefly from Scripture itself, it was fine preaching of the Word. He took the seeing by angels as taking place in heaven after the ascension and the taking up in glory as referring to the final consummation and so we ended on a very high note in what I thought was the best of the four mornings.

Aber Conference '12 Evening 4 Art Azurdia

This second time Art took us to being the salt of the earth and why we should live conspicuously Christian lives in a culture that despises Christians. The sermon on the mount demands engagement from believers in this world, we are indeed indispensable to to the world's highest welfare.

His three points included a negative insinuation (earth is decomposing), a positive declaration (seemingly insignificant we are to preserve the earth) and a devastating evaluation (if we deny our function we will lose our invalidate ourselves). Under the second heading he spoke of the tension between gospel effectiveness through intimate engagement and remaining distinct and not allowing the salt to lose its flavour.

I think this is what he was trying to get over when he was the main speaker here some years back. The devil, of course, is in the detailed working out.