Tim Keller, who died a few days ago, is now experiencing the truth he articulated – that ‘all death can do to Christians is make their lives infinitely better’!

He was a good friend of the Proclamation Trust, speaking here in the UK, at the annual Evangelical Ministry Assembly, on five different occasions between 2005 and 2015 – our most frequent and popular visiting speaker of the 21st century.  Our back catalogue shows that thousands around the world have listened – and re-listened – to those talks.

Indulge me for a moment with two very personal memories of his influence.  In one of his early visits, he exploded open the category of ‘idolatry’, and many of us then became more thoughtful in our preaching about contemporary idols, moving from the simplistic (‘what are our idols today?’) to explore the subtle motivations and desires that lie behind (as Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5 suggest). 

Secondly, Tim impacted my preaching.  He thoroughly championed expository preaching, of course: if it provides the main diet of preaching for a Christian community, then God is setting the agenda (Preaching [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2015] p.27-46).  We want, he said, a ‘pulpit-centred, not pulpit-restricted’ word ministry.  But his expository preaching had a strikingly different style: he sounded like a preacher for a new generation.  He was always engaging, his talks were packed with exegetical insights and stimulating ideas, but it was all delivered in a way that sounded so chatty and, well, normal.  I don’t think I ever had a one-to-one conversation with him.  But the way in which he preached genuinely made me feel he was in dialogue with me.  And that’s why his influence on me felt so personal.

Amongst the many tweets of his pithy aphorisms in the last few days, here’s a good one for preachers everywhere: ‘a good sermon is not like a club that beats upon the will but like a sword that cuts to the heart’.  We will miss his skilled pulpit surgery as we mourn with Kathy and his family.

SPECIAL OFFER: £40 off when you book both a residential conference and a three-day EMA ticket on or before Tuesday 29th November.

Our residential conferences are held in comfortable surroundings in which to relax and recharge batteries, spritually and physically. We have an exciting programme of four conferences over the coming months

Upcoming Residential Conferences in 2023

• Women in Ministry: 16th-19th Jan
• Men in Ministry: 6-9th Feb (Swindon), 20th-23rd Mar (Swanick)
• Recharge: for Ministry Wives: 2nd-4th May

For more details about the EMA and all of our conferences (including bookings), please visit https://www.proctrust.org.uk/conferences/

To take advantage of the £40 discount offer, book a three-day EMA ticket and pay the deposit for any residential conference on or before Tuesday 29th November. £40 will then be deducted from the final balance due for your residential conference.

We hope to see you next year!

For the last seventy years, at 3pm on Christmas Day, millions of us have stopped our festivities for ‘The Queen’. Year after year, we listened as she spoke out bravely to millions about her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ: ‘history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general (important though they are) – but a Saviour, with the power to forgive’ (in 2011).

We are so thankful to God for the Sovereign he appointed, and who dedicated her whole life – long as it was – to serve us because she knew she had been served. Today, she kneels in humble adoration before Him, her Prince and King. She meets her Saviour face to face, and gladly casts down her crown before Him.

We pray for King Charles III, that, under his rule, we may enjoy ongoing stability and peace in our nation, that the truth of Bible may be proclaimed and that the gospel – the anchor in his mother’s life – may advance.

We have taken the decision that PT Cornhill will take place entirely online, for the coming academic year (2020-21).

We know that this is a period of great uncertainty about the future, not least in knowing when the current lockdown regulations and guidance may be relaxed. Some people have contacted us to ask us what Cornhill might look like next year, and even wondering whether they should apply at all. To give some clarity now for applicants and for their churches, we have made the decision that the whole course will be provided online for the whole of the academic year 2020-21.

By committing now to this course of action (rather than continuing with an temporary plan that extends the uncertainty), we can give confidence to those who will be studying with us, and also offer a ‘this year only’ opportunity to those who geographically couldn’t otherwise join us.

As well as providing this clarity for the whole year, factors behind our decision include:

• our building, Willcox House, is not well set for social distancing. We couldn’t safely accommodate half a year group, let alone a whole year group, within our facilities. We did trial hybrid teaching, with some students online and some in the building, but we found it the least satisfactory option.
• we anticipate that travel into central London will be disrupted for many months. There’s no easy way to vary our start and end times to be well away from rush hour, and the government continue to request that we should work from home if at all possible.

We’ve been running Cornhill online this year since before full lockdown began and the feedback from current students has generally been good. We’ve been able to deliver all our content this year as we would have done without the pandemic – none of the various elements that make up Cornhill has been lost – and we’ve been learning lots about how to make it work better.

Of course, at its heart ministry is relational, so we have no intention of making the unusual situation of this next year any kind of precedent for succeeding years. And we are actively exploring options to enable people to physically come together at some point during this year. We don’t yet know what this might look like, and can’t guarantee it will happen. But it might be, for example, that a year group meets once or twice in a large church building at the start of the year, probably for a shorter time in the middle of the day so they can travel outside rush hour, just to start to build relationships. That wouldn’t be possible under current guidance, but might be at some point.

As a result of this decision, Cornhill Foundation Year 1 will be live on a Monday while, on a Tuesday (for those unable to be free on a Monday), a recording of the Monday lectures will be available. Teaching practice groups will take place live by Zoom on both Monday and Tuesday afternoons. These teaching practice sessions will be the only part of F1 which takes place live on a Tuesday.

F2 (Wednesdays) and Core (Thursdays and Fridays) will all be live.

Whilst this wasn’t what we had initially planned, we are really excited about this unique opportunity to equip men and women from all around the world to unashamedly preach and teach God’s word. Please pray for us as we adapt to these challenging circumstances.

We are delighted to announce that the Revd Dr Ben Cooper will join the PT Cornhill teaching staff in September 2020. Since 2010 Ben has been Minister for Training at Christ Church Fulwood, Sheffield, and course director of Fulwood Bible Training (now Bible Training Yorkshire).

Ben is the author of a number of books including most recently The Economics of the Hebrew Scriptures and Positive Complementarianism: The Key Biblical Texts. He has a DPhil in Economics and a PhD in Biblical Studies, and has been a member of the Theological Working Group of The Latimer Trust since 2005.

We look forward to welcoming Ben, with his wife Catherine and their three children, when they move to London.

Details of our plans for the future of Cornhill are now online.

At the thanksgiving service for 25 years of Cornhill I outlined the plans and the thinking behind them – you can watch the video below.

The Cornhill pages of our website have now also been updated to reflect the new structure of the course (details particularly in the Content section). And applications for next year are also now open.

Here’s Christopher Ash’s short exposition from the Cornhill 25 and Counting thanksgiving service.

Another excerpt from the Cornhill 25 and Counting celebration last week. David Jackman interviews some previous students, together with some videos from former students who are now overseas.

Over the next few days we’ll be posting video highlights from the service of thanksgiving for the 25th anniversary of the Cornhill Training Course, held last week.

First, here’s a brief interview with Dick Lucas on how it all began.