It is hard to know what the 1875 founders of the Keswick Convention, the wonderfully-named Canon T.D. Harford-Battersby and his more ordinarily-nomenclatured friend, Robert Wilson, would make of it today.
Hopefully they would see a very great deal to encourage them. They would observe, among other things, wholehearted singing. They might marvel at the ethnic diversity of those speaking. They might be amazed at the newly-purchased Pencil Factory and its ongoing transformation into a permanent home for the event (and all its newer year-round activities).
Above all else they would see the word of God continuing to be faithfully expounded. And since 1965, when John Stott preached on Romans 5 to 8, and departed from the convention’s earlier ‘higher life’ teaching, the Scriptural clarity has perhaps been even more sharply focused. Harford-Battersby and Wilson might find they wanted to reflect on one or two things they might, just possibly, have not been quite right about!
But in many ways the Convention is a glowing example of the unchanging gospel presented in changing ways from generation to generation. From Handley Moule to Hudson Taylor, and F.B. Meyer to E.J.H. Nash; from John Stott to Dick Lucas and Alec Motyer and George Verwer; and now from Jonathan Lamb to James Robson, Jeremy McQuoid to Jason Roach, and Rico Tice to Gavin Calver, the light of faithful Biblical teaching is presented in ever-accessible ways from decade to decade.
The organisers are to be congratulated on being the first major Christian event on this scale to be held since the start of the pandemic. The diversity of speakers and the Derwent Project building scheme are just two indicators of the longer-term ongoing renaissance of this great movement of blessing.
And, oh yes, finally: let it also be recorded for posterity that the crêpes available in the grounds were sublime.
