Shall we Sing a Song for you?

With Senior Camp 2007 less than 7 months away, there are still a few vital things to be sorted out. With Gregg Somerville retiring from duty as an officer (but still coming for a well deserved lap of honour), the obvious dilemma that presents itself is what the committee are to do with the institution that is Gregg’s Games. Gregg’s Games have become one of the greatest events in the world ever, but with no Gregg, what will happen to his games? One option might be to retire the games altogether, like Brazil did with Pelé’s number 10 shirt – however the thought of camp without the slippery slope etc would be too much to bear for anyone with a soul. They could of course just keep Gregg’s Games as Gregg’s Games forever -I think this probably would be best. Or else they could try and rename the games to something else, which would in all probability be a complete disaster. The worst scenario of all would probably be an act of sacrilege in attempting some other sort of alliteration, such as ‘George’s Games’ – however an upstanding member of society such as ‘John-George’ would hardly stand for that sort of thing. Anyway – to resolve the difficulty, please vote in the poll below. The result will be morally binding on the camp committee according to the laws of the Medes and the Persians etc etc:

At the end of August, Ted Donnelly preached 3 sermons on Justification at the annual Glenmanus Summer Bible Readings (different from these ones). They are now available to download, at around 10MB each:

Its Importance
Its Meaning and Ground
Its Source and Instrument

Last year, he preached a series of 6 sermons on Baptism at Trinity which are now available on SermonAudio. I’d just like to draw attention to them as it’s probably the greatest series on Baptism ever preached (ok I haven’t actually listened to any others, but still). They are done throughout in a totally gracious way, and the first one is more of a lecture, debunking popular misconceptions such as that Baptists eat their children (or indeed ‘treat them as little heathen’) etc.

Incidentally, it’s good to see that Trinity 560 are putting mere mortals on SermonAudio, such as SWS reader Deco Thomas.

In other news: Ken Ham will be returning to the Waterfront for two dates in 2008, so that will be good (if we’re not all boycotting AiG by then).

They’re big into Evangelism Explosion on RP Missions teams, so it caught my eye when I read about the Doctor giving it death. Obviously, I don’t know how much EE has changed since 1978, but I’m sure it can’t have changed that much. Iain Murray briefly got away from the men that followed him to write these words:

Occasionally in these later years [at the Westminster Fellowship], instead of depending on a spontaneous question, addresses might be given by one or even two speakers. This happened on March 8, 1978 when two members of the fellowship spoke on the advantages of training church members in the Evangelism Explosion methods of Dr Kennedy of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. ML-J listened patiently and then surprised a number by the strength of criticism he offered. He was not satisfied to hear the course commended by Calvinists (‘Many Calvinists today behave and act like Arminians’). What he wanted to know was the biblical evidence for the special training of ordinary members of churches. ‘It is certainly not in Acts 8:4.’ He objected to people being made to feel unhappy because they were not doing this, but his main concern was over how the Kennedy method stopped short in diagnosis. ‘We all agree that people are not acting as witnesses as they should but instead of asking, Why are things as they are, we are being given a patent, cut-and-dried remedy which says we must train the people.’ The first need was for change at a deeper level and the danger of this proposal was the same as the danger in large organised evangelism: ‘Eyes are being taken off the ultimate need of spiritual awakening. Anything that prevents people from realising that the only answer is revival is dangerous.’ Referring to his own experience at Sandfields he said:

Conversions came slowly, then the converts were known and they talked. I never trained a single convert how to approach others but they did so…If our people cannot explain the way of salvation to unconverted men we are deplorably bad preachers…
Two days before Ebenezer Morris died two young preachers visited him to whom he said, ‘If you two will live long enough you will see a time when no one will come to the Society meeting. At such a time do not try to drag unconverted people into the church but wait on the Lord and seek Him. Don’t repeat the error of Abraham and Sarah (Gen. 16:1-3). Wait on God’s promise instead of going after the flesh.’

Iain H Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1938-1981, pp 706-7.

Is he right? Do we require a biblical basis to train ordinary church members in evangelism? (And if so do we have one?) And what about that quote at the end – is he just saying don’t try and trick people into coming to church? Obviously he wouldn’t be saying don’t bring your unconverted friends to church, but how far do we go? Derek?!!

Last week’s Sunday Sequence on Radio Ulster was a live, extended ‘Creation Wars’ version of the programme. It came just a few weeks after Sunday Sequence had featured ‘the 4 main Church leaders’ (Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, Methodist & Catholic). None of them believed in Creation, and none of them were prepared to say that the Catholic ‘church’ wasn’t a church.

The most recent programme was done with a panel featuring Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s most famous atheists, and others, before an invited audience at Broadcasting House, Belfast. The best bit about the programme was that it featured RP newboy Andrew Kerr in the audience, and he asked Dawkins a question about his vitriolic caricature of God (the most blasphemous thing I’ve ever heard, don’t even listen to it) that was played in the opening sequence to the programme. However, Dawkins, running scared, didn’t answer him. 1-0 Kerrser. There was also an appearance (in the audio sense) from Robert Beckett of the EPs, who Dawkins did answer but basically just called him a liar. Then there was some eejit from Belfast Bible College (we should have known really) arguing that Creationists are misreading the Bible. On the Creationist side, there was some boy from Leeds University called Andy McIntosh, but he didn’t really help his cause by refusing to answer direct questions and talking over the host. Must have been because he’s English like.

Andrew ‘The man’ Kerr

You can listen to the whole show on the internet – it’s available here broken down into segments. The Kerrser is on about 24 minutes into the Dawkins bit, and Beckett is on about 14 minutes into ‘Intelligent Design Theory’.

You can read more about the debate on presenter William Crawley’s blog – a good site for keeping up to date with the sad goings on in Northern Irish ‘Christianity’.