Last week I was in Aber with my family for the Evangelical Movement of Wales annual English conference. Around 1200 people decend on my favorite seaside town of Aberystwyth for a feast of hymn singing and long sermons.
This year the main speaker was Joel Beeke. Joel is a Puritan expert. In essence he is a local church pastor who loves the good things that the Puritans stood for, and is seeking to live a proper Calvinistic life (before you go mad over that statement and comment your ignorance of true Calvinism, please wait for a series of blogs I will write in the coming weeks…). When you listened to him preach you realised the following:
- he truly believes God is sovereign
- he loves Jesus and the gospel
- he believes in the power of the Spirit
- he sees that we need to live a radical Christian life
He preached on ‘contagious Christian living‘ by looking at contagious Christians in the Bible and noting what it was that made them so – like obedience and trust. He was very challenging and there were a few moments when I just wanted to crawl under my chair. However, he always brought it back to the finished work of Christ.
There was a motley crew in the evening – and it was a rather strange mix:
- Monday: me (not sure how that happened)
- Tuesday and Wednesday: Richard Bewes.
I’ll be honest, Richard was great. He was extremely English and eccentric, but brilliantly gripping and challenging. It was great to see an English Anglican in a Welsh Evangelical conference give the clearest and most passionate defense of the cross… awesome.
- Thursday: Peter Baker
It was so good to see Peter being welcomed to the stage and so warmly received. He probably has one of the most influential ministries in Conservative Wales and is a very able preacher.
- Friday: Andrew Davies…. not sure, I went for a curry with Becca (Can’t skip a date night… not even on a conference!)
A final note. I did a question panel with Joel Beeke and Mrs Milson for the young people on the Thursday evening. It was a bit intimidating standing next to Joel, and I had the heads up that the ‘culture‘ question was going to come up. I had used a few film illustrations on the Monday night, not realising how many people there disagreed with going to the cinema (don’t ask!), and so someone put a question in about it. This was the only question me and Joel clashed on and he was VERY gracious. Now, I am convinced that we can go to the cinema to watch films that are not blatantly immoral, but Joel believes there is a better use of time. Indeed, he said something that you cannot argue against, ‘I know between 1 and 2 THOUSAND scriptures becuase I didn’t fill my mind with films’ (my emphasis added). How could I respond to that? ‘Well, I can quote the Matrix in evangelism’….hmmmm… he has made me think.
After that they asked me a question about pastors and gluttony (not sure why they asked me!). I made a quip about ministers comfort eating as it is the only sin they can get away with and that I ‘sometimes eat a chinese late at night and cry‘ (it was honestly a joke). Anyway, on the way down just before midnight my brother in law and I decided to have a chinese… probably a stupid decision. We walked into the take away and it was full of people from the meeting! They cheered and took photos of the offending, over-weight pastor. Gutted!
Maybe I did cry myself to sleep that night.
In all, a great week.
August 16, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I think you should certainly go to the cinema! If we are to communicate the gospel, it will be so much more effective if we know the culture that the people we want to reach out to are in. That’s what Jesus did – isn’t it?
August 16, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Yeah, sure. THAT’S why I go to the cinema…and i watch big brother *just* so I can tell the gospel to my work colleagues the next day.
Do you believe me?
August 16, 2009 at 10:14 pm
JT with that post you have shown some real integrity. Joel would be proud. What I mean is that although you clearly have a different opinion on engaging with culture to Mr Beeke you are seriously thinking about those things which he said that challenged you and you are obviously impressed with him as a person.
I loved the conference this year. It was the third time for me to hear Joel and the third time for me to be incredibly impressed with his own devotion to the Lord and commitment to living a godly life. I’m sure he is a wonderful pastor. Joel was very honest about his own shortcomings this week. In the interview on Monday night Mark asked him what some of his biggest struggles are in life. He said that his biggest struggles are with prayer. He said sometimes he prays for 10 minutes and is satisfied. Throughout the week he told stories of people who pray(ed) for 1 or 2 hours or more (4 or 5 for Luther) because of their love of the Lord. It was clear that he held prayer up as essential to godly living and so it was even more remarkable that he was willing to honestly state his own struggles. The man often seems to have more points in his sermons than there are hours in the day and my flat often discussed the intricacies of some of his points but overall I was very blessed and challenged by it all.
August 16, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Thanks Gruff – I couldn’t agree more!
August 18, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I enjoyed your preaching, Jonathan, including the film refs. See my report here:
http://exiledpreacher.blogspot.com/2009/08/aber-2009-evening-meetings-1.html
August 26, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Haha, it was funny seeing you in the Chinese afterwards! Don’t worry we didn’t judge you(!) But thanks for the Monday evening, it was encouraging and challenging, but most importantly, you pointed us to glorifying God and his Son – more important than anything else.