‘I have been to many, many conferences but I have never heard anything like that!’ This was one man’s expression of appreciation of the talk given by Mez McConnell on the subject of ‘Reaching the Poorest’ at this year’s Carey Conference at the Hayes, Swanwick, on January 7-9.
Mez McConnell has been used by God to plant a Bible church in Niddrie, one of the roughest housing estates in Scotland, where unemployment is five generations old and grandma is often the local drug dealer. In the last year they have seen 20 people saved and baptised and making headway for Christ. Listening middle-class pastors were given a roasting and para-church Christian organisations which engage in hit-and-run evangelism in such areas were given an equally bad time as, in Mez’s estimation, they do more harm than good. Soup kitchens which have more to do with salving the church’s conscience than actually helping anyone should be closed. What is needed is the gospel, commitment to such areas by living there and the planting of vibrant local churches. Mez is sharp, theolog-ically aware and articulate as well as streetwise, and the gathering felt both humbled and encouraged by what they heard. Mez is heading up ‘20 schemes’ which seeks to further this work (see EN, November 2013).
The doctrine of the church
Dr. Greg Allison of Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, was the main speaker and left no doubt that the New Testament gives a very clear template for the church. Defining the church as ‘the people of God who have been saved by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and incorporated into his body by baptism in the Holy Spirit’, he gave three sessions based on his recent book Sojourners and Strangers, all of which were weighty and well received. The greatest appreciation probably was for his last talk, on the subject of church government, explaining that Christ is the only head of each local congregation and that the terms elder, overseer, pastor and bishop are interchangeable in the New Testament. Leadership in the church always involves a group of men, never a single leader. There was much stimulating material, including the idea of a church covenant between the members of a church.
