European Leaders Forum

I am in Eger, Hungary at the European Leaders Forum. It is a great gathering of leaders of the European church from all over Europe, including wide swaths of Eastern Europe. It is a full day of seminars.

Os Guinness spoke last night on the need to have a Christian Renaissance. It was a call to launch a third mission to the West. That is but one of the highlights. 

I am speaking twice. Yesterday I had a lively 1 1/2 hour session on historical Jesus in a context where such study has damaged the church. I presented the book I edited with Robert Webb called Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus (Eerdmans). I think it is fair to say that an initially partially skeptical audience came to see the value of doing such serious study, even though it often has had negative results. It is important to speak to the culture in its terms and not just from our own perspective. We have taken 12 events and used the rules of historical Jesus study to defend their authenticity to make a case for who Jesus was. The discussion time was lively for well over 30 minutes with quite honest and direct questions. It was a great exchange. Tomorrow I discuss the authorship and tradition issues tied to Mark and Luke. 

I also heard Pete Williams of Tyndale House Cambridge discuss both how we should pursue new types of research and apologetic arguments. The apologetics presentation was especially interesting, noting how names and use of places in some texts can be shown to fit the time they depict and lack anachronisms if the names were made up. 

Also significant is how much work is being done here interacting with Islam. I got to mentor a student from Ethiopia studying a key missionary to Muslims from the early 20th century. He is doing some great work and it was nice to be able to advise him.

So we are having a wonderful time. The conference runs through Thursday.