Looking around my local supermarket, it occurred to me that you can’t get much for a fiver these days!
But for value for money, the Equipped 317 Conference, held on the 10 July in Northfleet, Kent, could not be beaten. For the princely sum of £5 we were treated to three immensely relevant messages from Glen Scrivener and one from John Benton.
Trinitarian gospel
The annual conference is arranged for Christians in the large county of Kent to access good Bible teaching without having to resort to travelling to London. This year the talks from Glen, who heads up the evangelistic organisation ‘Speak Life’, focussed on communicating the glory of the gospel to our non-Christian friends. Glen was informative and inspiring in his presentation, with the added challenge that our sharing of the gospel should always be Trinitarian in content. He asked those present to think about how to talk about ‘What I most love about Jesus’; ‘I couldn’t have got through… without Jesus’ and ‘What I most love about my church.’
The final talk by John Benton, ‘Against the tide in the power of weakness’, was a wake-up call for the church. John told us that in the West the church is facing a cultural tsunami which is coming straight for us! Christians are now viewed as the ‘nasty guys’ by society. The situation we are facing is perhaps unprecedented in the history of the Christian church. It would seem that secular culture now ‘holds all the cards’!
The power of weakness
But, as John explained, it is astonishing how so often throughout the biblical narrative, God’s power is demonstrated in weakness. So let’s get down to earnest prayer and seek God’s direction for the church for the future. As the title of the conference said, we need to have ‘A Confident Identity.’
