Our dear brother John Richardson went home to glory this year. As a writer, he is a loss to this column, but his ministry has myriad legacies. Not the least amongst them is the annual Junior Anglican Evangelical Conference (JAEC) which took place in September.
The ‘Junior’ refers to the delegates – they are all people with less than seven years in ordained ministry, with some who are only just embarking on that path. It was wonderful to be there to see men and women from all over the country gathered to explore together their future ministry, in pursuit of John’s oft repeated goal – nothing less than the evangelisation of England.
Lee Gatiss (Director of The Church Society) gave a rousing John Richardson Memorial Lecture – propounding the view that ministry with a ‘single-minded’ commitment to the Church of England would secure the place of conservative evangelicals in the national church and serve to advance the cause of the gospel in England.
‘Power is a powerful drug and the detox process is hard’
One of the most insightful speeches at the Church of England's General Synod in July came from The Revd Lindsay …