Jim Sayers writes: How do we equip Christians for works of service?
That is the core role of every local church, but an association of churches can also help to support those churches and give them the resources they need. The Association of Grace Baptist Churches (South East), exists to do that for a group of 70 churches in and around London. We gathered for our annual day on 1 October, (hastily moved out of London to Guildford to escape a train strike!), focused on ‘Equipping the Saints’. Phil Heaps led a session on Christ in the Old Testament, and David Skull from Grace Church Brighton, a newly launched church plant, preached from Acts 3:19-20 on the need for a time of refreshing. Five churches joined the AGBC (SE), three of them newly constituted church plants, and plans were announced for a new church-based training initiative.
In the main morning session, Paul Harrison from Christian Safeguarding Services led a session exploring the Biblical basis for safeguarding, bringing Biblical principles to bear at a time when such issues have been making the headlines. Local churches should not be doing only their legal duty, or best practice, but striving to be above reproach.
The stand-out session of the day was by John Benton on handling gender confusion. He charted the decline in social cohesion over three generations, and how in a secular society, feeling good trumps common sense. Charting the history of gender confusion through oppression narratives, going back to Marx and Freud, and the steady nationalisation of childcare, he explained how a huge social change took place, while most churches were silent on these issues. He explored the psychology of gender confusion that plays on teenage anxiety, and the way that gender dysphoria now seems to spread like an epidemic in the way that anorexia and self-harm did in the past. John called all churches to teach on these issues with compassion and Biblical faithfulness, quoting Carl Trueman: ‘We engage the culture when we present it with another culture.’
