Proclaimer Blog
Who’s at the EMA?
Here’s a small snapshot of who is at the EMA. We’re not particularly obsessed with data, but we find it’s useful in terms of planning and thinking through exactly what the EMA looks like each year. I bring you these numbers with one sole purpose – the vast majority of delegates (all except about 100) are from the UK. That means that the death of the church and the end of the cause of Christ are vastly overstated by the doom-mongers. Of course, there are challenges and we are preaching into an increasingly secular world. But, in the grace of God, we’re not dead or finished yet.
– There are about 1,300 people at the EMA, some 70% of who are pastors or assistant pastors. They, in turn, represent about 750 or so churches (some people don’t enter their church association on the booking, so we can’t be entirely sure). That’s a remarkable number of churches where the gospel is being faithfully preached Sunday by Sunday.
– Of these delegates, the Free Church/Anglican split (because people always ask) is just over 50-50 in favour of the Anglicans. In other words, there are gospel works going on in both established and non-conformist churches for which I, as a confirmed non-conformist, give great thanks to God.
– We don’t ask people their ages! But a quick glance around the EMA shows that there are a huge number of younger guys in ministry. We are not an ageing ministry, much as the press would like to convince us we are.
– In total, some 3,000 delegates have attended the EMA in the last five years, broadly reflecting the same statistics above.
No, not dead. Not by a long way. Ministry in the UK is increasingly hard and conducted in a hostile environment. But there’s fruit, and there are workers. God is raising up workers for the harvest field. Now, let’s pray for a harvest.
Proclaimer Blog
Supporting expository ministry in Cuba
The EMA starts today and, as usual since our move to the Barbican, we’ve got an overseas missions project. The gathering of something like 1,300 gospel ministers from across the UK is a tangible reminder of the goodness of God and we believe it is right and fitting to acknowledge this goodness by supporting an overseas work and asking delegates to join us in doing so.
This year, we’re focusing on Cuba and hoping to raise enough money to print 1,000 copies each of Ensenor Efesios (Teaching Ephesians by Simon Austen), Jueces para ti (Judges for you by Tim Keller) and Predicor Marcos (Preaching Mark from the PPP stable). This will be printed in Cuba itself (books cannot be imported) and then distributed by some of our friends to pastors and preachers.
It’s difficult to overstate just how useful resources like these are to a young but growing and vibrant evangelical church. Please join us in praying this will be a successful project, and if you would like to contribute, we’d be very happy to receive any donation here at PT Towers.
Proclaimer Blog
Please pray for the EMA (5)
Finally, may we ask you to pray for the seminars running each day. These are a key element of the EMA and are the place where lessons are reinforced and developed. Pray for those speaking and those listening and contributing.
In the main hall we have three days on three different topics related to humanity: Mike Ovey is speaking on gender, John Wyatt is speaking on beginning and end of life issues and Tim Keller is speaking on connecting. Tim Ward is chairing these important sessions.
Jonathan Griffiths is leading a preaching refresher and Peter Adam is leading a preaching masterclass.
I (Adrian) am leading a seminar on crossing boundaries – breaking down boundaries of class, race and age – with help and input from Efrem Buckle and Ken Brownell.
There is a women in ministry track with Carrie Sandom and Kathleen Nielson, which will carry over into a two day consultation conference on the Thursday and Friday after the EMA, as women in ministry from around the world meet to plan and pray.
Andrew Reid is leading a seminar on teaching Genesis, a key book in understanding humanity.
Bruce Ware is leading a seminar on the preacher and his family – a key topic for many of us.
Thank you, on behalf of all those attending, for your prayers.
Proclaimer Blog
Please pray for the EMA (4)
Today, we’re asking you to pray for the resources that will go out from the EMA. Our Bookstore is – I believe, our strongest yet. We have 1,300 plus titles, all hand picked. Amongst these are several hundred new titles – this has been a good twelve months for books! Pray that people would spend wisely – and not only for them, but to take the opportunity to think through which resources might help the church – we deliberately pick books which not only serve pastors and preachers, but which pastors should be commending to others.
We are also supporting an overseas missions project in Cuba. We believe it is really important to share with others from the riches that God gives and this year we’ll be raising money to print three books in Spanish in Cuba itself to serve pastors there in the work of expository preaching. Delegates will hear about this on the first day and we hope that this may be our best yet of serving brothers in difficult circumstances overseas. We would love to be able to print 1,000 copies of Jueces para ti (Judges for you), Predicor Marco (Preaching Mark) and Ensenor Efesios (Teaching Ephesians). Please do pray we might hit this target and so serve well.
Thank you for praying.
Proclaimer Blog
Please pray for the EMA (3)
Today, we want to ask you to pray for the admin team. My small team has worked very hard to make the EMA a reality and I want to ask you to pray that we would be sustained as we serve you over the next three days. Please pray particularly for Rachel Olajide, our conference manager, and her team of helpers. The Barbican staff are also a great help and it has been interesting to see how some of the door staff, intrigued by our singing and listening, have sat in on sessions. Pray that there might be unexpected fruit there.
We have a team of others who are helping – projection, recording, music, reading, and so on. Please pray that we would remember all that needs to be done and that the EMA would serve effectively and our team of workers would have good and noble hearts.
Thank you for praying.
Proclaimer Blog
Please pray for the EMA (2)
Today we’re asking if you would pray for those attending. We’ve yet to crunch the numbers, but we have something like 1,300 people attending from some 750 or so churches. We have youth workers, elders, lay preachers, students and church staff – all very welcome. However, the vast majority (something like 75%) are ministers or assistant ministers of churches. They will be coming from a great variety of backgrounds, circumstances, struggles and joys.
Some will be feeling on top of things, others overwhelmed by the calling they have. Some will need encouragement; others perhaps conviction. Please pray that the Lord will use the conference so that everyone receives what they need from him. Please pray in particular for those divine appointments – a conversation here, a word there – which can be so strategic in building up.
And do give thanks for the evangelical unity the EMA displays. We don’t press this, but if recent years are anything to go by, we have about 50% Anglicans and 50% from non-conformist churches. Preaching is one of the topics that evangelicals of many stripes can gather around. We’re not trying to engineer unity; but we recognise that gathering together in this way is a display to the ‘powers and authorities’ of the great work Christ is doing.
And remember to pray for those who are not coming. Sadly, there have been stories in the last twelve months of regulars who have given up on ministry, fallen into sin, or even turned their back on the Lord completely. We’re desperately sad to hear those stories and please pray for mercy – and keeping grace for all of us.
Thank you for praying.
Proclaimer Blog
Please pray for the EMA (1)
Next week is the annual Evangelical Ministry Assembly. For many this is a significant three days in their annual calendar: recharging flat spiritual batteries; catching up with friends; stretching our minds and hearts; allowing God’s word to minister to us. Even if you’re not one of the 1,200 or so coming this year, we’d like to ask whether you would pray for us this week? Over the next five days, I’ll be posting some prayer points – but above all please pray that these three days together would strengthen ministers of the New Covenant so that churches might be built and the name of Christ honoured.
Today, please pray for our main session speakers. Each morning, Christopher Ash is preaching from John 8. Our overall subject this year is humanity and these messages are key to our own walks with Christ and also to the overall subject.
On Monday and Tuesday, Bruce Ware will be speaking on the doctrine of humanity – I’ve seen the notes and it looks great: stretching and helpful! Please pray for Bruce who is arriving on Sunday. This is first time at the EMA so please pray he will get the tone, pace and depth just right. On Wednesday Tim Keller is speaking at this session on connecting preaching and the doctrine of humanity; we need our doctrine to be practically applied to preaching, so please do pray for Tim.
The last session is a closing exposition so please pray that we will end the day well. We are thinking of three aspects of Jesus’ own humanity: Reuben Hunter is preaching on Philippians 2, Andrew Reid on Hebrews 2 and Vaughan Roberts on Revelation 1. Pray that these sessions will stir our hearts and cause us to look to Christ, the perfect man.
Thank you for praying.
Proclaimer Blog
PT international director
Crosslinks and The Proclamation Trust (“PT”) are delighted to announce the appointment of Neil Watkinson as International Director of The Proclamation Trust from the 1st September 2015. Neil was a Crosslinks Mission Partner in Singapore from 2008 to the end of 2014, and was involved in training expository preachers in Asia as well as working part-time on the staff of St George’s Church, Singapore. Neil will continue as a Crosslinks Mission Partner, but his responsibilities will now include planning and leading the international work of the Trust. The role represents a natural partnership between Crosslinks and PT as we seek to train men and women for expository preaching around the world.
The Proclamation Trust has influenced many international ministries and start-up initiatives, not least through the offering of bursary places to overseas students for the Cornhill training course and for preaching conferences. However, PT now want to approach this area of ministry in a more strategic way, and Crosslinks is well placed to assist with their varied and long-standing mission experience. The Crosslinks Council see this role as a natural one for both Neil and Crosslinks itself and believe it is important for Neil to continue as a Crosslinks Mission Partner, seconded to PT.
Neil is an active member of St Mary’s Church in Maidenhead. He will join the senior management team of the Trust and, from a UK base, continue with many of the Asian training programmes he has been instrumental in setting up, as well as initiating new ones both in Asia and in other parts of the world. Please join the Crosslinks Council and PT trustees in praying for Neil and this new role at this important time.
Proclaimer Blog
Baptism and all that
Tim and I are doing a double-header this week on baptism, for the Cornhillers (note the judicious use of the comma; for the purposes of clarification, we’re not baptizing any Cornhillers). It’s been good to think through the issue again and work out not just what we think about it theologically but where the weaknesses in each other’s arguments are. Our plan is to do half the session on theology and then half on what that means practically in the life of the church. We’ve each of us fed one another what we think are our weak points and strengths. No surprises, really.
Much of the argument, of course, comes down to precisely the nature of the relationships between covenants and the precise amount of continuity/discontinuity (although I also have an issue with making circumcision and baptism analogous). In these theological arguments, I believe the burden of proof lies on the paedobaptist, as there is so little to support the case in the New Testament (as far as I can see, every one of the 3,500 odd people baptised in Acts are believers). Perhaps I would say that. Please don’t write in!
But – and this is the purpose of this post – I can also see (and have been helped to see) the weaknesses in my own argument, both those that are poorly expressed in terms of basic English, and those where I have simply not made the case from the text. Moreover, and this is a crucial point for credo-baptists like me, there are plenty of practical outworkings where you would think that those who practise believers’ baptism are in fact guilty of imposing a paedo-baptist (covenant children) practical theology upon something that cannot bear it.
All of which is to say, talking these things through in a measured, careful, thoughtful and humble way does us the power of good. You should perhaps try it.
Oh, and of course there are always nuggets to discover along the way. Like the fact that first/second century baptisms (ahem, of believers – smiley face) were conducted in the nude. I’m rather glad some things have changed. As, no doubt, are my congregation.
PS, there are some good books around on baptism, but here are three of the best I have read: Believers Baptism edited by Tom Schreiner; Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism edited by Gregg Strawbridge. These two are multi author contributions and whilst there are plenty of other books on the topic around, these I found the most comprehensive and helpful for understanding positions. They’re the two I lend to students who want to understand the two positions. In terms of single volume, there is a three way book including contributions from Bruce Ware and Sinclair Ferguson called Baptism: three views (the third is dual practice). All highly recommended.
Proclaimer Blog
EMA clock ticking, but look at the space!
The Barbican is a big venue. It’s one of the main reasons we’re there. It means there’s been room for growth which is important as, over the last 5 years, we’ve welcomed to the EMA some 2,800 different people in word ministry. Yet again, this week, the church in the UK has been written off as finished. But here is one piece of evidence – at least – that such a verdict is extremely premature. Quite the opposite in fact! Praise be to God!
Last year almost 150 people booked in the last three weeks leading up to the EMA. The year before that the number was nearer 250. You’ll be glad to know we’ve still got plenty of room and we’re hoping to see you at this year’s conference. Now is the time to get organised and book, if you haven’t already! And if you have booked, why not join our Facebook event? We’re very conscious that we’d love to extend the EMA invitation to ministers not in our network, and perhaps you can help with that? We believe it’s a really important (if secondary) purpose of the EMA that it expresses something of the unity we enjoy together as those who love Christ and preach his word. Whom could you invite too? The booking link is here.