It wasn’t easy to find the Barbican Centre for this year’s Evangelical Ministry Assembly (EMA) amid London’s burgeoning road and building works. But it was worth the tricky navigation for Tuesday – Thursday, 27–29 June.
The conference theme was ‘Bearing Fruit and Growing’, with the morning Bible readings coming from Ephesians. These were given by Andy Gemmill of the Cornhill Training Course in Scotland and reminded those there that, amid the spiritual battle, ‘your church is what Christ’s rule looks like now.’ We need to ‘do church’ (I’m not sure I like that phrase) by faith, not by sight, because for all its present flaws the church displays God’s wisdom to the astonishment of the heavenly powers.
Luther’s sufferings
But, in this anniversary year, a distinct Reformation flavour was provided on the first day as Dr Garry Williams of London Seminary sketched a ‘pen portrait of Martin Luther’. His focus was on Luther’s anfechtung – there is no direct English equivalent for the German word. It may be a trial sent by God to test man, or an assault from the devil. It stands for all the doubt, turmoil, panic, desolation and despair with which a Christian has to contend. Often, in his sovereignty, God even uses the devil to bring about his purposes in our lives. Ministers would do well to train their congregations for such conflict. A Cornhill student told me that she found this message especially encouraging.
Kevin DeYoung
The headline speaker this year was Kevin DeYoung from the USA, who has recently moved to become senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. He spoke on Wednesday morning on the doctrine of sin and the direction of ministry. After unpacking the biblical teaching on sin’s essence, origin and transmission, he challenged the recent tendency to ‘dumb down’ sin and to speak about it in terms of ‘brokenness’ (we are its victims) rather than ‘rebellion’ (we are responsible). We ‘medicalise’ sin and this mutes any call to proper repentance and so does not serve the true spiritual health of the church.
How do gospel proclamation and ministries of mercy relate to each other in the mission of the church? On the Thursday, Pastor DeYoung took on that question and directed us to the ministry of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel. Christ ministered to bodies as well as souls in healing and exorcisms, but his first priority was always preaching the message so that sinners might see his true identity and follow in faith. Compassion is not shown only by meeting physical needs, but by telling those who are as sheep without a shepherd how to be saved (Mark 6.34). It was an immensely helpful talk. Churches must not neglect kind deeds, but need to keep proclamation at the centre.
How God builds
There were three afternoon messages, too, on The God Who Saves, The God Who Gathers and The God Who Sends. Denesh Divyanatha, who has grown a church of 700 in seven years in Singapore, spoke on John 3. He is involved in the Evangelical Theological College of Asia, which was due to be launched at the end of July. Graham Beynon spoke from 1 Peter 2 and took the ‘homogenous unit principle’ task. Aiming at people of a similar age and social class in our evangelism militates against the Spirit’s desire to build a diverse church which shows God’s glory.
Among the many seminars, I found Justin Mote’s session on application in preaching absolutely terrific – worth the price of the conference on its own.
