UCCF press release

Word Alive – the past and the future

Since the recent Word Alive event in partnership with Spring Harvest, there has been much print given to the reasons for the split and these have unfortunately led to a range of complexities, distortions and disputes about the issues. In the meantime, UCCF, Keswick Ministries and Spring Harvest were approached with an offer of independent, formal mediation with a view to producing a joint, clarifying statement. UCCF and Keswick both accepted this offer but Spring Harvest unfortunately declined.

Since there is now no prospect of a formal objective procedure to clear up some of the details, we see no point in perpetuating this dispute any further. We admit that we have unwittingly contributed to it by giving the impression that the Word Alive committee rejected a specific request to allow Steve Chalke on the Word Alive platform in 2007. A request for Steve Chalke to be acceptable to Word Alive (following his signing of the updated EA Doctrinal Basis) actually had been made in general but not in specific terms to the Word Alive committee on 17^th May 2006. We apologise for unintentionally being misleading about this.

While there had been niggles with Spring Harvest on other matters over the years, all parties had managed to live with them. It was made quite clear to us by Spring Harvest that the decisive issue, which caused them to end the partnership now, was our refusal to allow Steve Chalke to share our platform because of his unorthodox views on the atonement and the way he expresses them.

Other statements, which we previously made, have been disputed but on reviewing those matters, we see no good reason to change them, but we will not rehearse them again here. Others are responsible for their own statements, and although they may have emerged out of genuine misunderstandings, we feel they have not helped. (We note that not everyone was in attendance at every relevant meeting.) Since we cannot achieve the all round clarity we desire, we do not want to look backwards any longer on this unhappy episode but press on towards the future, which is a new Word Alive event in partnership between UCCF and Keswick. Furthermore, we want to wish Spring Harvest well and thank them for all they have done to make Word Alive the great success it has been.

The new Word Alive event will take place at Phwhelli in North Wales (it is pronounced something like “Porth – helly”) from 7-11 April 2008. Confirmed speakers include Don Carson, John Piper and Terry Virgo. A full programme for all the family, including crèche facilities, children and teens groups as well as our vibrant student track, is currently being arranged. We are greatly looking forward to the new event and the opportunity it gives us to develop the Word Alive conference.
End.

living is a problem

Q3. In your opinion, why do many Christians view the Gospel as only for unbelievers?
I would guess because we are all slow of heart to see the Gospel clearly. Luther said we have to remind ourselves of it all the time and beat it into our heads continually. I am so deeply self-righteous and self-reliant that it takes effort to remind myself of the grace of God. Take that tendency in all of us and mix it with lack of reading the Bible where we see the Gospel everywhere, and you have all that you need to have a "front door to salvation" view of the Gospel. I also think God is doing this work of making us Gospel centered in a new way in our day

Dave Cruver interviews Mark Lauterbach, who's book, 'The Transforming Community' i'm very much enjoying and being challenged by at the moment. How much do i view my work, my leisure, my study, even my blogging through the Redeemer? It would seem not enough so it's great to read books by men as gentle and yet Gospel focussed as Mark is. You can read is also excellent blog here: Gospel Driven Life

the worst day ever

Frankly apalling news reaches me on the wires...the BBC have dropped Neighbours from next spring.

Response: Ed will watch the cup final on Sky Sports for the first time ever tomorrow. That'll teach 'em.

Dan Roger, at breakfast: 'i am neither a calvinist, nor a coffee drinker'

Response: Ed will boycott the drinking of tea, and mention the word 'election' every time he can when he next sees Dan. Every little helps.

dwys

John Piper writes this about summer:

Don’t let summer make your soul shrivel. God made summer as a foretaste of heaven, not a substitute. If the mailman brings you a love letter from your fiancé, don’t fall in love with the mailman. That’s what summer is: God’s messenger with a sun-soaked, tree-green, flower-blooming, lake-glistening letter of love to show us what he is planning for us in the age to come—“things which eye has notseen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Don’t fall in love with the video preview, and find yourself unable to love the coming reality.

and summer itself may seem a long way off at the moment, especially given the heavy grey clouds currently hanging over Guildford, but if you're a student, then summer, whether heralded by the end of exams or the end of term at Uni, is more or less already starting. so what can we do this summer to set our minds, and keep our minds on the things above?


Keep reading the Bible.
I know this sounds like an obvious point, but once there is little work to be done, there is little routine to be kept to...and i need routine to keep me reading the Bible. last year my Graduand period (the bit in between finishing your finals and getting to wear a motarboard) passed in a haze of barbeques, football and bucky 'o hare. And none of that is bad in itself, we need refreshing after working hard, but to seek refreshment away from the Bible, away from Christ is only to turn your back on what will refresh you. Sit in the sun, read slowly, read lots, read Galatians over and over again. Enjoy the birdsong, enjoy the Word.

Read good books.
I don't think i'm ever going to have as much time on my hands as i did last summer. What a great oppotunity to read and read well. Reading Christian books must never become a substitute for reading the Bible, and it must never start to become a dry intellectual fact collecting exercise. But good books can make you long for more of Christ in your life, drive you back to the Bible to bathe in things you hadn't noticed before. Good books can strengthen your faith and your love for the Lord. Take time to read them and think about them and apply them.

Make the most of time with your friends.
especially if you're graduating, and all being flung accross the four corners of the country. Spend time with people, enjoy time with people, sit in a beer garden, lie on the grass outside mojos. enjoy the fellowship of your Christian mates, but seek out and don't waste time with your non Christian mates. Use this time to explode for Christ in your house or hall. Use this time to be braver than you've been before. Use this time to live with your non Christian friends to demonstrate that Christ is the greatest, best and most fulfilling reality there is. Pray for them lots.

Prepare for whats next.
Leaving uni is really hard. Going back home for a long time is really hard. Starting a job, even one that you love is really hard. So get ready for it. Pray into it. Think about how you're going to work for Christ next year, or study even better for Christ next year, and delight in Christ with your family. Don't waste time wishing you were back at uni, enjoy the time you've got the prepare for what's happening next...doing the other things in this list should help a bit.

It's terribly easy to waste summer. When the sun comes out i really struggle to remember the eterbal battle we're all in, to keep my eyes focussed on Heaven and not on the earthly pleasures summer brings us. Use free time wisely for Christ...don't waste your summer.

How does the Holy Sprit enable and empower me to live as a Christian?

[I don't always enjoy writing my relay study responses. I alwaus enjoy the study, but taking what Wayne put into my head and getting it onto a screen is often not easy. which is why i often enjoy the personal responses the most. and here's my latest one]

I think it was CS Lewis who said that if it wasn’t for the Trinity he would still be an atheist. Slightly changing that for my own purposes I think it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for the real and active work of the Holy Spirit in my life and on my heart, I wouldn’t be a Christian. I wouldn’t have been saved in the first place, and I certainly wouldn’t be here five years later writing this!

I believe that the Bible teaches that from birth we are all sinful, we are all born with Adam as our federal head and counted to have sinned with him because of that. Even if that’s not totally how it works it’s clear pretty early on that we’re not good people who sometimes do bad things, we are just bad people. The same is obviously true of me. I spent seventeen years actively and passively rejecting God, and then I became a Christian, not quite ‘over night’ because my salvation was, from my point of view, the result of six months and discussion and argument with my then girlfriend, but more or less. I remember about a week or so before I was saved thinking about Christians that they were a dangerous bunch, and should be locked up. So how come so quickly I believed the Gospel.

The Holy Spirit.

It was the Holy Spirit that convicted me and convinced me that all the arguments in favour of the Gospel were real and true. It was the Holy Spirit that convicted and convinced me that I wasn’t a good person but that I was a bad person, and that apart from Jesus I was going to Hell. It was the Holy Spirit that made my heart feel and know it was alive for the first time in the days and weeks after I asked Jesus to come into my life. The Holy Spirit working to show me the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). The absoluteness of His glory and the horror of my sin. That’s how the Holy Spirit enabled me as Christian…He convinced me I needed to be one!

And now He empowers me as a Christian. Probably my absolute favourite single verse in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 3:18. It is the Holy Spirit who helps me to see the Lord, and it’s seeing the Lord that empowers me as a Christian. That keeps me as a Christian. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit alone that convinces me that reading the Bible first thing in the morning is a more urgent concern than checking my facebook. It’s the Holy Spirit that gets my heart excited when I see things about Jesus in the Bible that I hadn’t seen before. It’s the Holy Spirit alone who makes me want to read good books about church, or theology, or good biographies. It’s the Holy Spirit alone who gives me that sick feeling in my stomach when I’ve sinned, that feeling of disquiet when I’m sinning and the Holy Spirit alone who makes me want to do good to and for the people around me.

How can I be so sure? The Bible leaves me with little alternative. Genesis 6:5 says that the only desire of man’s heart is only evil continually. That’s pretty damning. So damning in fact that God is moved to wipe man about, except Noah, and start again after the flood. Even in the middle of explaining a parable, Jesus almost incidentally describes man as ‘evil’ in Luke 11:12. When Nicodemas comes to meet Jesus in John 3, he is told that the only answer is for man to be ‘born again’ And Nicodemas very fairly points out that man can not enter for a second time into his mother’s womb. But this is not the birth that Jesus is talking about, He is talking about being born of the Spirit. That it is by the Spirit that we are born into the new life that we need to be saved. The way the Holy Spirit worked in my salvation, in salvation itself to secure that, and now work’s in my life to make me hate sin and desire God is evidence of His work in my life and fruit of His mercy. Praise the Lord!

carousel

I think CS Lewis might have said something like 'the one who has everything and God has nothing more than the one who has nothing and God'. That really struck me reading Isaiah 21 and Psalm 73 this morning.

Isaiah 21 is taken up with oracles against Babylon, Dumah and Arabia. There's real fear and uncertainty that surrounds all three oracles, especially at the start. 'it comes in from the wilderness, from a terrible land'...my loins are seized with anguish...pangs have seized me'. For a while it's unclear who this terror is aimed at, so that even Isaiah is suffering from a 'staggering heart.' The tension fear and uncertainty grow, with watchmen and riders coming to and fro...and then suddenly, relief. Fallen is Babylon. Her idols are shattered to the ground. Isaiah hears from the Lord, and delivers this news. Dumah and Arabia are also targetted. Again there is uncertainty and tension (v12,15), again they will 'come to an end'. The Lord will do this.

This might seem like good new for Judah, especially since it turns out that it was not her to face the wrath of God (yet), but history gives us a slightly different story. Judah was always looking to make alliances with people to help her fight Assyria, and Babylon, who were in more or less constant rebellion against Assyria were top of their list at this time. The same was true of the more nomadic peoples of Dumah and Arabia. Judah would have been keen to enlist their help as well. So why was God going to wipe them out? Why does He give Isaiah this message?

Precisly because Judah, God's people to whom He had promised to be faithful, was looking to them for help, rather than to Him. They relied not on the Lord, but instead on some of His creation for help. They could have had real, spiritual help, but instead they went for temporal, physical help, which was to spell their disaster. Judah's end was to be Babylon's and vice versa.

Psalm 73 sees Asaph totally beaten down with woe. He sees his enemies, he sees those who disobey and don't know the Lord, and he envies them. They don't seem to be filled with care as he is, they seem to prosper. They make themselves look good by their arrogance. They lift themselves up, they out themselves down. Asaph despairs. But then...then he sees God in His sanctuary, the God for whom we have no categories, the God who was so holy that the Hebrew language had to be rewritten. Asaph sees Him, and that changes everthing (v17). He discerns the end of the proud and the arrogant and the wicked, and he envies them no more. If only Judah had done that years later. If only we'd do that more now.

It was easy for Judah to whore after Assyria, they were a bigger power, they could help them, give them freedom, surely there was nothing wrong with that. It would have been easy for Asaph to long for the apparent ease of life for those who were not involved in a struggle against sin, it's easy for us to look at people who aren't saved, and envy them. Envy the apparent care-free nature of their lives, envy their pride and their success. Only the Lord has the answer.

Only by constant, intentional time spent looking, thinking, considering Jesus in His glory will change our hearts towards Him and away from longing for the world. Away from the fear of self suffciency and toward the freedom of trusting Him for everything. We must seek and thirst for God in His sanctuary. We must pray for it, read the Bible and ask to see it, read good Christian books that will soften and warm our hearts. Thats the only remedy for the weakness and jealousy of our hearts to those who don't know the Lord, to have their end discerned, and to delight in God, and all that He is for us in Jesus Christ.

Theology for all

I've been in my car a lot today, which has given me the chance to listen to Carl Truman's talks from last year's 'Theology for all' conference:

• Theology and everyday life. The Reformation and beyond
• Contemporary challenges to theology and everyday life
• What should a theological church look like

I've found them really helpful and thought provoking. The second talk in particular made me think more about how to pastorally apply theology. Carl's point was that the biggest theological problem for someone on a sunday morning is probably not something like the new perspective on Paul, or open theism, and there you can pretty much substitute any debate you like, especially perhaps the attack on penal substitution or our post modern society, but is more likely to be whether they love shopping more than Christ. Or that they work so hard during the week they don't get the chance to open the Bible from one sunday to the next. So churches need to talk to those problems, to the problems in the congregation. They need to talk to their congregation rather than over their heads.

Now that's not for one moment to dimish the importance of tackling things like the controversy over penal substitution and the like. They are problems which are serious and deadly and need to be fought by men in the church, and i hope i am among them, but they must be fought in a way that applies to people who have lives that are empty apart from shopping. And praise God that's what the Gospel can do.

Also a year ago today, i knew i was really really a calvinist. Hey, you can't blame me, i didn't have a choice!

atonement delight

One of Bish's questions was 'how does it (penal substitutionary atonement) delight you?' As an unapologetic Piperan, whose dialogue is sprinkled with words like 'delight', 'joy' and 'treasure' i thought i'd think about what it is about PSA that makes me delighted. What is it that makes me want to defend this doctrine and makes me want other people to believe it as well?

You can't read very much of the Bible very well without seeing that God is a God who does not like sin. He hates sin. He hates it because of His jealousy for His own name, because it is legally and morally wrong. It's legally wrong because God Word is law and to rebel against His Word is to break that law. It's morally wrong because we were made to worship God, designed to worship God, and God is the highest moral reality there is. God is worthy of all the glory the world can offer Him...more in fact. So not to worship Him and not to give the glory in your life to Him is morally wrong. And God does not like that. And because God is perfectly just He can't simply 'forgive' sin. That would compromise His character in a way that would make Him no longer God. So God hates sin, His wrath against sin must be satisfied.

So does this make me delighted? Yes and no. Yes, because what good news it is. What God news that the King of the universe is good. And not just a bit good, not just that he has good days, but that He is morally perfect. Jesus is so pure and so perfect that when John saw Him in His glory he fell down as if dead. That's some serious holiness. How good to know, how reassuring to know that the King, the Judge is perfect, and has a perfect standard that no one will be just let off. With a flow of injustice in the world that is seemingly unstoppable, it is good news, great news, to know that the One in charge of it all is sovereign and good and just.

But there's a big problem here. And the bad news is the same as the good news. That God is perfect and just and holy. That Jesus sits on His throne judging with perfect righteousness. I've spent time reading Numbers and Isaiah recently, and it's impossible to read those books in particular without noticing the penalty for sin. The generation that The LORD rescued from Egypt with such power and glory will none of them, with a couple of notable exceptions, see the promised land. The vast majority of them suffer God's punishment of wandering in the wilderness with a (un)healthy dose of plague mixed in. God's judgement on their sin, their idolatry and murmuring was not pleasant. But it was deserved. The inhabitants of the political Israel will be judged by occupation and exile. We know for how long, but they didn't. Was this the end of God's promises to Israel? The end of His commitment to Himself and His people? Chapter forty answers those questions to a large extent, but they must have weighed heavy on the minds of the exiles as the judged away from their homes.

We're not like them though are we? We're safe from God's judgement. The Jesus of the 21st century is far more cuddly and inoffensive than the God of the old testament isn't He? Well no, that's incorrect. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He still views sin with the same seriousness. I'm not directly mentioned in the Bible, obviously, but i am there by implication. I was by nature and object of wrath, fully deserving of eternal punishment for my eternally offensive sins, fully deserving of all that Israel suffered and more. And apart from the power and grace of God, fully deserving of it. Not much delight here so far is there. The good thing of God's holiness and justice leads to the bad thing of my eternal suffering away from the goodness and grace of the Lord, away from any relationship, away from any happiness. In Hell.

So where does Penal Substitutionary Atonement come into this? I believe that it upholds both God's holiness and justice, and His goodness and love, and yet means i can know Him and enjoy Him and be in relationship with Him. How? How can God possibly be true to both His holiness and justice, but at the same time love sinners and work everything together for their good? I believe the answers lies in penal subsitutionary atonement.

The doctrine that holds that on the cross Christ was made to be sin, and that God poured out hour after hour of holy, righteous, pure wrath, what we deserved onto Him. And that He eventually died under the weight of the Father's wrath. And that this was no error, that this was the plan from the beginning. That is was Christ who was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, and that this chastisement brings us peace (Is 53). What wonderful news. Christ became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. Isn't that good news? And what are you left with if you take away Penal substitutionary Atonement? If the cross just says 'God loves you' (and in part it certainly does) then we are left wondering where the punishment for sins has gone. The same as if the cross just tells us that Christ sympathises with us in our pain (and in part it certainly does) then we are left with the same questions. I don't believe there is any other doctrine that relates to atonement that secures both God's holiness and justice and hatred of sin, as well as His great love for us, in having His Son die under the weight of it. There is nothing else out there that so secures both those truths.

That's why i delight in propitiation...it tells me great, great, great things about the God i worship and about my security in Him. Why would you want anything else?

Blame Canada

Steven Lawson's new book 'The expositiory genius of John Calvin' popped through my door this week. It's really good. Lawson pastors a church in Mobile, Alabama, a place i like probably only because it's mentioned in 'to kill a mockingbird'. Lawson is writing a series called 'along line of Godly men' which in five volumes is charting the history of the church from 1400BC until now. Thats an undertaking in itself, but as a spin off from this series he's also writing 'a long line of Godly men' profiles, of which this is the first. Among the others to be written about by Lawson will be Spurgeon, Whitefield, Edwards and Luther. Are you excited yet?

Lawson says his objective in this series is to 'raise the bar for a new generation of Biblie expositors', that is, people who will preach the Bible through verse by verse and book by book. Calvin, whatever else you make of him is an excellent example of this. On one occasion when he was forced away from his Geneva church by exile, he returned three years later, and continued his preaching on the next verse! After three years! Calvin spent years preaching verse by verse through nearly every book of the Bible. Here clearly is the example of a great man to follow.

It's probably because of the Biblical truth that he pumped out month after month from his pulpit in Geneva that the Reformation had the impact it did. Persecuted protestants from all over Europe, particularly France and Britian fled to Geneva to sit under this man's teaching. Many then turned right around again, convinced that despite the hardship and suffering they would face, the Jesus that Calvin had showed them needed to be known everywhere. Calvin didn't shy away from teaching the truth because of controversy. He saw himself as a pastor first, and to him the best way of pastoring was to teach the truth from the Bible, sometimes as often as three times a day, to counter the anti-protestant forces all over Europe. We can learn something from him here as well.

you can buy the book here.
see also: arguments for expository preaching

winning in the rain

Kaka' is probably the best footballer in the world at the moment, but alongside that:

Kaká is a member of the "Athletes of Christ" organization.

Since November 2004, Kaká has been an Ambassador Against Hunger for the United Nations World Food Programme. He was the youngest ambassador at the time of his appointment

Kaká's favourite music is gospel music.

Kaká's motto in life is "I belong to Jesus" and "God is faithful", which he has stitched onto the tongue of his Adidas boots.

Kaká's favourite book is the Bible.

In his freetime he likes to be in church, read the bible, and be with his family, particularly his younger brother Digão.