Evangelical Futures: Seven needful qualities
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 May 2022
An ancient Chinese proverb reminds us that ‘to prophesy is extremely difficult, especially with regard to the future’.
This is certainly the case as we try to anticipate the future of evangelicalism, and is heightened still further by the fact that we live in a context of considerable social and political volatility, confront a rising and more aggressive secularism, and live within communities with growing non-Christian religious affiliation. But most of all, humility is called for because of the most significant reality of all – God’s sovereign engagement in the life of the church and in the realities of our world. In the midst of so many unknowns, we trust His good purposes.
Major developments at Keswick
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Apr 2017
Cumbria
is an English county known
worldwide, not least for having at its heart
the beautiful Lake District National Park,
nominated to become a World Heritage site.
Then there’s the Keswick Convention, a
name which has also rippled around
the
world. And yet another famous export are
Derwent Pencils.
Knowing God Better
Depending on God’s Spirit
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Feb 2017
‘I believe in the Holy Ghost,
I believe in the Holy Ghost.’
It was apparently the habit of the great
Baptist preacher, C. H. Spurgeon, to say this
quietly under his breath every
time he
mounted
the
steps of
the pulpit at
the
Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Even if
the story is apocryphal, Spurgeon’s ministry
affirmed the importance of the Spirit’s work:
‘Men might be poor and uneducated, their
words might be broken and ungrammatical;
but if the might of the Spirit attended them,
the humblest evangelist would be more
successful than the most learned divine
or the most eloquent of preachers.’
Knowing God Better
Uniting God’s people
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
Social commentators frequently remind us of a paradox of our age.
Alongside the integration and cohesion of globalisation, there has been an accompanying and more troubling trend – the rise of nationalism and tribalism. Fracture lines are seen across nations, communities and eth-nicities. As Christians we joyfully affirm the counter-cultural unity which the gospel brings. But often we do not see this working as it should. A pastor was once asked if he had an active congregation. ‘Oh yes’, he replied. ‘Half of them are working with me, and half of them working against me’.
Knowing God Better
Hearing God’s Word
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Aug 2016
It was similar to working on the mains electricity of a house, but doing so with the electricity still switched on!
This was how the scholar-clergyman J.B. Phillips explained the experience of working on a paraphrase of the Bible some years ago.
Knowing God Better
Becoming like God’s Son
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 May 2016
I remember the evening vividly.
A frail old man, walking stick in hand and supported by a friend, slowly climbed the steps to the Keswick platform and onwards to the lectern. During his life, he had spoken on every continent of the world, to multiple thousands in baseball stadia, to hundreds in church buildings of every denomination, to congregations gathered under trees and at many student missions.
Knowing God Better
Longing for blessing
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Feb 2016
It spans 140 years and crosses cultures and continents.
It’s a remarkable story. It has revolutionised hundreds of thousands of lives. It has had a radical impact on churches and communities. It has launched new mission movements and pushed forward the frontiers of the gospel. And it continues to expand, not through formal organisation or slick marketing but, we believe, as a movement of the Spirit.
After the Wall
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Nov 2009
20 years ago I was driving through Germany one November evening when, on the car radio, I picked up some news which was to shake the continent: East Germans were pouring through a breach in the Berlin Wall.
I had been visiting Christians in Poland and Hungary and knew that they would find this almost unbelievable. According to Vaclav Havel, ‘The fall of the Communist empire is an event on the same scale of historical importance as the fall of the Roman empire’. Oxford scholar Timothy Garton Ash has suggested that there is not a corner of the world that has not in some sense been touched by the consequences of 1989.