European Leadership Forum 5

Monday

John Lennox took us to Genesis again today, concentrating on the disintegration of the family life of Joseph. The insights are fascinating as he pointed us to simple things which together make for a deep reading of the text. In the story of Genesis we get God setting up a natiopn, but it is not simply a multiplication of offspring. Abraham, to whom the promise of being the father of nations and with whom God made a covenant passed the blessing of the covenant to Isaac, not Ismael, and Isaac in turn passed the covenant promise on to Jacob and not Esau, but now we come to a different passing on – the twelve sons were included in the covenant. But the passing on was not just a physical birth. There is also the story which will eventually lead to Christ and there is a spiritual story here. As we looked at the factors which led to the disintegration of the family we were faced with questions which were so relevant to today’s issues – issues of gossip, loving our neighbour, favouritism, cutting corners as we do God’s work, God at work and the deceit of the human heart. We left feeling that there was so much depth that we yet had to see in the familiar story.

In the seminar tracks on Evangelism we had two sessions. In the first Michael Green faced the challenge of the Da Vinci Code and the accusation that the church distorted the true Gospel in a paper entitled The Books The Church Suppressed. And he readily admitted that as Dan Brown has claimed, the church did suppress some books – books which appeared long after the original Gospels and other documents included in the New Testament appeared – because they were a distortion of the true gospel. We should not be intimidated by the false claims of Dan Brown. There is no evidence to support his claims, whilst the Scriptures as handed down to us by the church in the New Testament have all the marks of authenticity.

In the second session Michael Ramsden then took us into the Ontological Root of the Gospel which sounds complicated. But really it simply means that Christianity is not rooted in ideas (epistemological root), feeling (existential root) or doing (pragmatism), but in being. It is an encounter with the living Christ which changes what I am.
Its method of revelation is that Jesus did not come to tell us about God. He came as God, and in seeing Him we have seen the Father.
It is rooted in being in Salvation. Through Christ’s physical death and ressurrection that we are saved. He took on our desperate need in his being and we are saved.
It leads to our transformation. Our very beings are restored and thus we can truly begin to learn how to think, how to relate to the world around us and how to live.
So Christianity is ultimately different to all other religions.

The afternoon seminar by Michael Green was entitled Don’t Just Sit There, Plant, and led us to consider the work of Church Planting. The people in the seminar included those who had planted churches in the UK, France, Belarus, and other places. We had valuable discussion with much insight into the need, challenge, and encouragements to be involved in this work.

The evening was given to a culture night with many choices as some participants in the Forum performed. I went to listen to Ellis Potter argue that as Christians we must redeem the arts, in our Christian faith utilising our creative nature.

Once again the fellowship with people from all sorts of cultures seemed to me to be the great blessing of the day.