I spent last week at the Vineyard UK National Leadership Conference. So Erik, Matt and I headed off to a hotel near Portsmouth, England for four days of worship, teaching and fellowship. We got to meet a lot of new people and hang out with old friends. We got to use the leisure facilities and ate like kings every night which was sweet! Speakers at the conference were Rich Nathan ( Senior Pastor of Vineyard Church of Columbus, Ohio) and Simon Ponsonby (Pastor of Theology at St. Aldates Church, Oxford). I enjoyed both their ministry for different reasons. Rich was a wealth of knowledge calling the church to contextualize the Gospel for a now post- Christian culture, by being both faithful to Scripture yet relevant to our culture and the many pressing issues of the day. A lot of what I heard from Rich, I have heard from various leaders in the church today (Piper, Keller, Driscoll, Molher) so it was good to see the vineyard engaging with the same missiological emphasis. Simon was a refreshing character who taught through Jude 20-25 in the morning bible readings. The overview of his teaching was as follows: verse 20-21 reminding us to first look inward, verses 22-23 to focus outward and verses 24-25 calling us to upward worship. There is a real need for us as Christians to be rooted in Scripture, understanding the complete Gospel we have to offer the world, and yet engaging with our given culture and contextualizing the message to speak hope into peoples lives.
Through out the conference the band from Trent lead worship along with various leaders. In the afternoon we had a selection of seminars to attend. All in all it was a pretty intense week with a lot to take in and consider.
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