Wimbledon, strawberries and the EMA… it must be summer!
The 39th Evangelical Ministry Assembly has taken place in the Emmanuel Centre at the heart of London. This was a return to a face-to-face conference after two years of Covid-restricted online conferences. More than 400 people gathered over the three days, with attendees from over 20 countries.
The morning sessions followed a pattern set in the online conferences of the past two years: Exegesis, Exposition and Explanation. Three of the Proclamation Trust (PT) staff invited us to look over their shoulders to see the process of moving from text to sermon. The texts were from Deuteronomy 32, 1 Samuel 2 and Luke 1. This format is intended to showcase what is distinctive about EMA, presenting its values of focusing on faithfully preaching God’s word.
The afternoon sessions were a set of three explorations of the word at work in the world, the ministry of every member in the church and in tackling the sensitive issue of complementarity. The latter was for me one of the standout sessions of EMA this year.
Led by Nigel Styles, Cornhill Director and PT Staff Team Leader, and Carrie Sandom, who is the Director of Women’s Ministry at PT, this session was both an example of how to deal with the content of such a hotly contested issue in a clear yet generous way, and a model of how to present the issue in an engaging and practical manner.
The final session each afternoon was a conference sermon by Angus MacLeay on the Letter to the Hebrews. In these sermons, encouragement was given to those who through the past two years might have been discouraged, distracted or tempted to drift. The encouragement was an exhortation to take a fresh look at Christ’s uniqueness and sufficiency.
