“Finally, I worry that a movement built on megachurches, megaconferences, and megaleaders, does the church a disservice in one very important way that is often missed amid all the pizzazz and excitement: it creates the idea that church life is always going to be big, loud, and exhilarating and thus gives church members and ministerial candidates unrealistic expectations of the normal Christian life.  In the real world, many, perhaps most,  of us worship and work in churches of 100 people or less; life is not loud and exciting; big things do not happen every Sunday;  budgets are incredibly tight and barely provide enough for a pastor’s modest salary; each Lord’s Day we go through the same routines of worship services, of hearing the gospel proclaimed, of taking the Lord’s Supper, of teaching Sunday School; perhaps several times a year we do leaflet drops in the neighbourhood with very few results; at Christmas time we carol sing in the high street and hand out invitations to church and maybe two or three people actually come along as a result; but no matter — we keep going, giving, and praying as we can; we try to be faithful in the little entrusted to us.  It’s boring, it’s routine, and it’s the same, year in, year out.   Therefore, in a world where excitement, celebrity, and cultural power are the ideal, it is tempting amidst the circumstances of ordinary church life to forget that this, the routine of the ordinary, the boring, the plodding, is actually the norm for church life and has been so throughout most places for most of the history of the church; that mega-whatevers are the exception, not the rule; and that the church has survived throughout the ages not just – or even primarily – because of the high profile firework displays of the great and the good, but because of the day to day faithfulness of the mundane, anonymous, non-descript  people who constitute most of the church, and who do the grunt work and the tedious jobs that need to be done.   History does not generally record their names; but the likelihood is that you worship in a church which owes everything, humanly speaking, to such people.”

Ten bucks to the person who can spot the sentence which made me laugh out loud! (Clue: it’s not in the above paragraph)

1. Christians who know what they believe in a world which believes nothing
2. Confessing Christ in context
3. Confessing Christ in the future

These are some of the key points I thought Carl made during his lectures (it’s a little random, but worth putting down!):

- Contra today’s emphasis on progress, and the future, Christians know that 1) Truth is verbally formulated, 2) There are bodies which do the formulation, and 3) Truth can, to some extent, cross time and space.
- God does Church, we don’t! And Church is a doctrinal entity (not purely experiential), which presupposes knowledge and experience, which in turn presupposes office (Heb 14:7-9, 1 Tim 5:17,  Romans 10:9, Titus 1:5, James 3).  Thus, training and age are important.
- The order of Calvin’s institutes cannot be read up into his theology. Crucial.
- There are two types of Christian: One who writes their creeds down in order to be open with what they believe, and the other who prefers to keep them in the background
- The fact that Calvin and Luther didn’t reject the perpetual virginity of Mary shows how they valued tradition.
- The proof-texts of the Westminster Confession of Faith point you to traditions in the commentaries – they aren’t crude and brute proofs in and of themselves.  They urge you to pick up the 30 or 40 commentaries on that verse to see why the point was made.
- Confessions are necessary for corporate unity.  Eg: the Emerging Church is correct to point out the individualism of current evangelicalism, but hasn’t solved the problem since they haven’t produced any confession of belief.  Thus, they have a rubbery, non-existent corporate unity.
- Confessions demonstrate our integrity.  Eg, Luther and Zwingli and their disagreement on the Lord’s Supper: [it] “was a tragedy, but would have been an even greater tragedy if they had agreed.”
- Confessions require catechisms.  They are vital to the communication of the faith.  Carl agrees with Jaroslav Pelikan: “any movement that is based around personal salvation in Jesus but is divorced from creeds and confessions is doomed.”
- Confessions relativise the present.  Since they stand the test of time, but they be used to measure how significant current issues are.
- Carl made an interesting suggestion of preaching through confessions.  Morning worship with expository sermons, then a church family lunch, then afternoon worship with a sermon based around the week’s confessional point.
- Confessions must not simply be used as a test of orthodoxy, but they should ultimately bring us back to doxology – since of course, that was in the mind of the framers!

Personally, I’ve been challenged to think about my doctrine of baptism, and the importance of this for my future ministry in the Anglican Church. I think I’ve been taking this doctrine quite lightly, but actually should reconsider this, in light of upholding the 39 artictles.  And also, I’d be keen to think about preaching through the 39 articles at some point also (bar the one on the Queen!).

So, all in all – a great conference and a great guy.  I’m looking forward to Wednesday night’s lecture back at the PTC.  It’s on BB Warfield’s theology.  Info here.

But here’s a great video to check out. It’s Carl Trueman speaking about John Owen, who was described by John Webster as the greatest ever english speaking theologian! Check it out! And if you’re free over the weekend, come down to the Confess or Die conference!

“Thus, stuffy and archaic as some would see it, the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed is potentially the most dangerously subversive act of cultural terrorism one might engage in on a Sunday. Far from being a hidebound exercise in dusty conservatism, it is potentially an act of absolute rebellion and revolution against the system, the man, the company, the establishment, the corporation or simply ‘them’—however one wishes to characterize those who hold the levers of cultural power.”