Here are my notes from the final session I attended at New Word Alive, except for the bloggers’ session:

Everyone needs a theology. Many people see all kinds of negative connotations to that word, e.g. that it is “heavy.”  It is not doctrine instead of experience. It is not theology instead of how to live life better. We can’t leave theology to the experts. God doesn’t want understanding to be locked away in some ivory tower. We must live in the good of it. Without theology I am at the mercy of the world’s problems. Theology is a friend.

Hope is so critical for us. Theology gives us a hope not based on chance but on the coming of Christ. All of God’s purposes will be seen to have been fulfilled. We need to look at death in the light of Jesus’ return.

We are not agnostics, we can know. We are allowed to grieve in this world. We just don’t grieve in the same way that those do who have no hope. Jesus wept at a tomb. He was weeping for the damage and destruction that death brings, wrenching apart families. Death is not “nothing at all.”  Our hope has room for tears. But we believe that death can be compared to falling asleep.

Jesus’ death and resurrection are unique events that define him, but they have consequences for us! We believe that because of Jesus’ death and resurrection those who fall asleep in him will return with him.

Remember who you are. You are born again because of what Jesus has done for us. You have an eternal hope.

Live alert and be self-controlled in light of Jesus’ coming. It is easy to get sucked into doing things because everyone does it. The Lord will turn the spotlight on every life. “He is coming” is the refrain that will help us live our lives appropriately.

Verse 7 is the opposite of what we are meant to be. There is always something sleazy about what happens in the dark. We belong to the day.

The fact that he is coming changes life and it changes death.

In the third session on Thessalonians, Hugh honed right in on our purity. He urged all of us listening to make a decision to stop playing games with God. He warned us that if we reject the teaching on sexual purity we are not rejecting our preacher, or even Paul, but God himself.

But as Hugh explains, Paul begins by saying, “Be what you have been made by God.” We start with the gospel, but then must live in light of what God has done to us in saving us.

God intends for us to be transformed.  The proper response to the gospel is to please God and avoid sexual immorality.  If we are serious about being God’s people we will be serious about avoiding this.  Some muddle sex and love and blur them, when, in truth, they don’t always go together.

We see another warning and encouragement to love one another.  He says we have been “taught by God” to love.  Paul says he is pleased that they are loving each other, but urges them to do more.  We must learn to live a quiet life and mind our own business.  Not passivity, but that we might win the respect of outsiders.  Some people’s spirituality cuts them off from normal life.  Our faith should not take us away from our normal responsibilities.  God doesn’t want us to be idle. Elsewhere Paul says those who refuse to work should not eat. We must love and care for those in genuine need. But we must also help those who can genuinely help themselves to do so.

We are meant to be developing all the time.  The issue is not where we are, but rather what is the direction of travel.  God wants us to be getting ever closer to the mark of holiness and ultimately to appear before his throne as blameless and holy.

One of the features of New Word Alive is the series of Bible readings which, over the course of each morning, covers a book. This year Hugh Palmer is covering 1 Thessalonians. I missed the opening session which focused on how the word was being twisted and assaulted in Paul’s day.

Hugh began by speaking of the intolerance against Christians happening right now in the UK, the likes of which we would never have imagined. Christianity and British culture have drifted apart. Hugh said that he had been asked in a TV interview about homosexuality, sex before marriage, and Islam. The interviewer asked, “How come your values are so conservative and yet so many young people are coming to your church?” Actually, we are seeing just a small fraction of what it would have been like in the First Century.

2:13 ff. The Ministry of the Word of God, not of men

Any preaching we hear must be judged by the Bible, that is how you know if it really is the word of God you have heard. We must be like the Thessalonians and welcome God’s word into our lives and embrace it. Our ministry should, like the Apostle’s, be a word-centered message. The word is living and active. We do not get to heaven by learning information. We aren’t word-centered because we are academics. We believe this because when personalities have gone, the word remains active in us.

Receiving opposition and persecution is a true mark of those who have received the word of God.

Those who try and gag the gospel are warned. Actually, historically and in the rest of the world today, to live in a culture where it is considered “normal” for people to be Bible-believing Christians is unusual. We tend to think that if someone gets into trouble for their faith it is probably because he has been excessive. The Apostle Paul thinks it’s normal. Paul’s attitude is that if we live, we will continue to share the gospel, if we die we will go to heaven to be with Jesus.

How are you preparing your children for what their faith might cost them? Who knows, but maybe your children will end up in prison for believing God’s word. A Christianity for which no one would die is no Christianity.

For Paul, seeing his readers in glory will be the best moment of his life. Paul looks for faith in them, and rejoices when he sees it. He is really living because of them standing firm. There is a godly discontent. Paul is always wanting more for them. He doesn’t settle for merely someone becoming a believer, wanting instead to see them grow to maturity and be blameless and holy. We are not meant to be individualistic, but committed to the well-being of others.

You cannot understand this Apostle without understanding two things: (1) Paul’s huge love for God’s word, which explains why he has so many enemies. (2) Pauls huge and costly love for God’s people, which explains why he has so many friends. His life is a challenge to us to follow his example.

There are obvious traces of Jesus’ own story here. It is not an entirely original account, however. It is likely that it was loosely based on something that would be very familiar to Jesus’ hearers. Herod had gone to Rome to persuade the emperor to make him King. The Jews had send a delegation to protest. He had returned as king and massacred hundreds at the first Passover. This is a tale with lessons for the return of the King.

1. How to be a looser in the long run: Be a rebel in the short run. There are still a few people are polite about Christianity, trying to stay on the fence. Some wouldn’t dream of actively rejecting Christ, but don’t want to follow him. Times have changed and there is an aggression about the new atheists. Jesus will be declared and revealed as king, and although he will not be an evil dictator, his enemies will not be forgotten. To want Jesus as our king is not to be out of date but its to be ahead of the times.

2. When wise investors get their bonus. Eternal rewards are available from Jesus. The benefits are out of all proportion ot the effort and will inolve greater responsibility, not being bored with nothing to do. The “well done” will be the greatest reward.

3. Why playing safe is bad business. The man hadn’t been asked to play it safe, he had been told to put it to work. If you don’t use it you loose it. Jesus wasn’t a hard man. He left heaven to die for us. This is not a gospel to play safe with.. One day we will be asked to give account for what we did with it.

Hugh Palmer was kind enough to record the following interview with me and Tope Koleoso while he was with us last Sunday. It was a lot of fun, and we spoke about how he felt folowing in John Stott’s shoes, the similarities and differences between All Souls and Jubilee Church, and how it is the gospel that allows us to unite. You can watch it online here or download the mp3.

Yesterday, the Rector of All Souls (who follows in John Stott’s shoes) joined us at Jubilee Church, London, my home church. His sermon was greatly enjoyed by our church, again demonstrating the unity that is ours around the gospel.

The video is now available below in four parts, or you can download the mp3 or video files.

Well, this blogger is back, and as you can tell from the title of this post having an identity crisis. In fact, I should warn you that I am still not in fact fully back blogging. Until my book is actually ready to submit to my publishers, I plan on continuing to mostly limit my posting to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and this post like the following was written a while back.

I have been thinking for some while about definitions. I have always been happy to first of all label myself as a Christian. There is of course a lot of confusion about how we can define what is a Christian. With Billions of people holding to that name, it has loosely come to mean any “follower of Jesus”. As much as I might want to resist that and instill all kinds of content into my personal definition of Christianity, I live in a world that has defined the word very very broadly. As a result, for a form of shorthand it is helpful to use other words to define what we believe.

For most of my life, the words I have used most to describe my set of beliefs have been “Charismatic” and “Evangelical”. The meaning of “charismatic” is fairly straightforward, ie a belief in the continuation of spiritual gifts, though I do not hesitate to say that much of what happens under that label fills me with dread and revulsion. I especially resist the tendency of many charismatics to devalue the word of God, instead I really do “want it all“!

The word “evangelical” , however, seems to rapidly be becoming less clear. It was once used as a clear alternative to “liberal”. I remember meeting people in years gone by who were dismissive of us “evangelicals” and much happier to use the label “liberal” of themselves. Liberals were seen as more culturally relevant, as thinkers, as modern, and as somehow “fairer” and less “bigotted”.

The Evangelical movement once seemed to be a small minority within the church, but one that clearly stood for something. There was obviously disagreement within the movement – you could have charismatic and non-charismatic, baptist and pedobaptist, anglican and free-church, calvinist and arminians. But we all stood together and saw ourselves consciously as one movement. We read the same books, we sometimes even attended the same conferences.

The liberal movement I knew of in my youth basically died and faded away. Evangelicalism rose and became ascendent. The churches that beleived in the gospel in a dogmatic and clear way were growing. Those that rejected traditional teachings shrunk to almost nothing so that the old liberal majority suddenly seemed to have practically disappeared. For a while it almost seemed as if evangelicalism had won the day, at least in England. Evangelicals had the biggest churches, the biggest conferences, the biggest book and music sales, and even started radio and TV stations. Evangelicalism became big business.

Now, however, a new insidious tendency has arisen within this broad family. It seems to have really begun only in the last few years. Within the camp people are challenging doctrines we once all held dear and assumed were part of the definition of being evangelical. Interestingly most of the time these people only challenge one such aspect, and are very reluctant to accept the label “liberal”. I call them the neo-liberals, because at root I do not see any difference between their thinking and that of the old liberals. We might argue that liberalism was about the accomodation of theology to modern thinking. Neoliberalism is about the accomodation of theology to post modern thought. One of its key distinctives, however, is a reluctance to accept previously accepted definitions of terms and instead to redefine them to be more inclusive. So for example, rather than Steve Chalke derriding evangelicalism and separating from its institutions on the grounds they are outmoded for believing in Penal Substitution, he is working from within to redefine evangelicalism to include people who hold to his perspective. The real shame falls upon those who still claim to be orthodox and yet do not believe that doctrine is important enough to take a stand over. Are we expected to simply roll over and accept that Evangelicalism is now so broad a concept it is no longer meaningful?

The following passasge on Parableman demonstrates the problem exactly. He is trying to explain exactly what are the boundaries to modern day evangelicalism and is clearly struggling!

[Those who have some liberal views but can still be defined as evangelical] would include people who reject the substitutionary element of the atonement but retain a penal element … who support open theism but insist that God has a plan and will win in the end. . ., who are universalists of the sort that they’re convinced everyone who goes to hell will eventually repent and follow Christ once they see the consequences of not doing so, and thus evangelism is still urgent, and hell is still real but just not eternally populated . . .who are inclusivists of the sort where Christ’s sacrifice in fact atones for some in other religions because general revelation teaches them that God must provide a solution to the sin problem and trust him to do so (e.g. the C.S. Lewis view), that a homosexual lifestyle is morally ok but who feel the need to reinterpret scripture to defend such a view . . .rather than saying the Bible includes an immoral prohibition. . .

I think actual denial of inerrancy is harder to maintain while being an evangelical. The Fuller Theological Seminary model makes an effort by still insisting that scripture is infallible on any moral teaching or theology within its pages. (Some at Fuller don’t actually follow this. I know of one who thinks Paul was a complementarian but insists that we shouldn’t be, and I think that moves out of the range of evangelicalism.) But I think you can say that there are errors in dates and place names in the Bible and still count as being within evangelicalism, just on the fringes. Once you start explicitly questioning the plain moral and theological teaching of scripture without trying to reinterpret it so that you at least believe scripture teaches your view, it’s hard for me to see that as even on the fringes of evangelicalism. That’s just theological liberalism in its most plain form.

So I’m certainly open to finding liberalizing tendencies within evangelicalism. . . one can be an evangelical and hold such views. It’s a separate matter whether someone is a Christian but not an evangelical. I’m not saying here that one must be an evangelical to be a Christian. I know plenty of people whom I would not consider evangelicals but who do lay claim to being more broadly Christian. . . Some evangelicals want to restrict the term ‘Christian’ so that it only applies to evangelicals, but it’s linguistically inappropriate to do that given what the term has come to mean. READ MORE

If we accept Jeremy’s perspective (and it does seem to be rather becomming mainstream) then maybe we need another word to identify ourselves with. “Reformed” is really too restrictive as it tends to mean “Calvinist” and so excludes evangelical arminians such as Wesley. One could try and stress the five solas rather than the five points, but that probably wont do for our Arminian brothers. So, what word then? It seems to me we have only two viable alternatives short of creating a new word or concept. The term “born again” is one, but since that is more about a religious conversion experience and less about certain theological content as useful as that word is, I am not sure it is helpful in bringing definition to the movement that is rapidly emerging. That is not to say that I don’t value the concept incredibly highly. In fact, I think Piper’s book on this subject, Finally Alive is his most important volume yet!

The only other term I can come up with is “Conservative Evangelical“. For me this is ironic, as throughout most of my Christian life I was defined as clearly not belonging to that group. Conservatives were by definition it seemed not charismatic, and I would have held them in as much suspicion as they would no doubt have held me. But, as the bridges have been built, and the neoliberal assaults have unfolded, I do think that bible-believing people from many different backgrounds have been finding that we have more in common with each other than we previously realised. The internet and conferences such as Together For The Gospel, The Gospel Coalition, and New Word Alive have all been a major force for that discovery. As a result, for example, yesterday, we had Hugh Palmer of All Souls preach for us at Jubilee Church. 

The following interview with Hugh Palmer took place at New Word Alive 2008. I have already published the audio version, which is available here.

Adrian
I’m here with Hugh Palmer.

Hugh
Hello!

Adrian
So, Hugh, can I just say first of all what a fantastic week this has been—to go from a standing start to . . . how many people are here?

Hugh
Pretty much 4,000.

Adrian
And it was all sold out within a matter of weeks, wasn’t it?

Hugh
Yes. The site was sold out, and then we sold the best part of a thousand event passes on top of that.

Adrian
Wonderful—that’s amazing! So, what are we going to do next year then?

Hugh
Well, next year we’re heading to Prestatyn, and we’ve got two weeks back-to-back in the run-up to Easter. It’s a similar size site—it takes about 3,000. So we need even more people there.

Adrian
What kinds of people should come? It’s not just for students, is it?

Hugh
No, it’s anyone and everyone! The first week is during university holidays, but not during school holidays, so obviously that will be one where the student track will run, but where anyone who isn’t limited by school holidays is welcome. There will be plenty for all who are there. Then, in the second week (the week running up to Easter itself), we’ll have the full children and youth program and all the usual range of Bible teaching.

Adrian
There are lots of different conferences that run. What would you say is unique about this one? Well . . . not so much unique, but what is the vision of this conference?

Hugh
Well, the vision of this conference is to understand firmly and clearly the biblical gospel of Jesus, and yet we want to include anyone who wants to stand with us. It’s been very exciting this year to see the huge range of churches represented here. It’s been an encouraging thing for us. Our vision is not just that it will be a good holiday week and that there will be good Bible teaching, but that this really would be a time that does serve the churches; that it equips and trains us; and also, sends us out with a vision for and ability to start to reach the world.

Adrian
That sounds pretty great. So, you really are looking for Christians from all sorts of persuasions and colors and backgrounds, are you?

Hugh
Anyone who wants to stand firmly on the biblical gospel of Jesus, we want to welcome to come with us, join with us, train and grow with us.

Adrian
That’s fantastic. And we’ve had people from as far a field as Newfrontiers and the Anglican church, like yourself, and all sorts of other different groupings as well, haven’t we this year—in the speakers and also in the participants?

Hugh
Yes, and there are people who still seem to be talking to each other at the end of the week!

Adrian
Yes. I don’t think I’ve seen any fisticuffs!

Hugh
No, we try to keep those out of sight! (Laughter)

Adrian
Well, Hugh, I’m sure you’re busy and need to get on with other things. Thanks for walking with me and just sharing a few thoughts. It’s been great. Possibly we’ll do this in more detail at some point in the future when we can do a proper Adrian Warnock interview with you. But for right now, thanks loads for these few minutes. I’ll let you get on with what you’re doing.

Hugh
Thanks, Adrian. Take care.

UPDATE
The full text of this interview can be read here.

One of the busiest men on site is Hugh Palmer, who is the host this week and the chair of New Word Alive. I was able to grab him for just a few minutes walking from one part of the site to another.

Hugh is the minister of All Souls Langham Place where John Stott was based. Hugh shares his vision for this conference, and speaks about what will happen next year. You can download the audio here.