On the Tuesday evening Alun McNabb gave his second and final message. In what was no doubt not the first outing for this material he gave us six or seven reasons why Jeremiah would probably find it difficult to secure a pastorate these days. He instanced his God-centredness, his failure to be "seeker friendly", his seriousness, the way he exposed sin, the fact he was emotional and too repetitive and finally his lack of "musicalness". This was good old fashioned stuff.
On our final day we had a fascinating session first on the document "We believe" one of the two standards of the assembly, the other being the Confession of 1689. It being 40 years since the publication of the Affirmation it was good to hear Peter Day recount the origins of the document. Stephen Rees then compared the 1689 and 1966 documents showing how the latter is a shorter more relevant document in modern language. I have never looked seriously at the 1966 Affirmation as it includes a strict view of communion, not my position. However, that is a mistake on my part as there are many good things in it clearly.
That fist session ran over slightly but we were able to get back on track for the final session when Jonathan Chell of Ramsey preached very helpfully from Psalm 23 to close the conference and bringing us back eventually to where we started off.
Assembly plans to gather again in the same place (Hayes Centre, Swanwick) next year, May 9-11. More here.
1 comment:
Very helpful conference assembly & teaching, with some useful questions answered & discussed over mealtimes too.
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