It is hard to know what the 1875 founders of the Keswick Convention, the wonderfully-named Canon T.D. Harford-Battersby and his more ordinarily-nomenclatured friend, Robert Wilson, would make of it today.
Hopefully they would see a very great deal to encourage them. They would observe, among other things, wholehearted singing. They might marvel at the ethnic diversity of those speaking. They might be amazed at the newly-purchased Pencil Factory and its ongoing transformation into a permanent home for the event (and all its newer year-round activities).
Above all else they would see the word of God continuing to be faithfully expounded. And since 1965, when John Stott preached on Romans 5 to 8, and departed from the convention’s earlier ‘higher life’ teaching, the Scriptural clarity has perhaps been even more sharply focused. Harford-Battersby and Wilson might find they wanted to reflect on one or two things they might, just possibly, have not been quite right about!
