More European Forum

The European Leaders Forum wraps up today. Yesterday there was a long interview with Os Guinness. His call for Transforming Engagement asks for more than James Hunter's Faithful Presence (reviewed earlier this year in this blog). 

The European Leaders Forum wraps up today. Yesterday there was a long interview with Os Guinness. His call for Transforming Engagement asks for more than James Hunter's Faithful Presence (reviewed earlier this year in this blog). 

My own take is that these two need to be placed together versus being in opposition. The goal of our service and honoring of God is to seek to have a transforming presence through an engagement in the public square that is both civil and challenging in reflecting how God calls us to live. However, the results are in God's hands, so we may not see the fruit of our labor. If we measure our spiritual success on whether transformation has occurred, then we may misread our service. Isaiah sought to transform and yet  met with rejection. Jeremiah and Ezekiel experienced the same result. So to be careful that we do not overextend the cultural mandate or produce a goal that can be seen as triumphalistic, we need to wed the goal to be a transforming influence (by bringing people and culture into contact with God who can change people) with an appreciation that our faithfulness is what we carry out. The rest of God's business.

Earlier, Matthew Heide of Marburg University gave an update on evidence for the reliability of the Old Testament through texts we have found over the last two centuries. 

Lee Gaetis of the United Kingdom took us through a survey of George Whitefield, the Great British preache, on his teaching on spirituality in his sermons. He has edited two volumes of Whitefield's sermons that will be published next year. 

Becky Pippert gave a rousing call to take our sin seriously as we do evangelism. Her point was that both outside and inside the church we have lost a sense of how sin is what drove Jesus to die for us. We sent him to the cross and yet the cross frees us from sin. She argued the culture is influencing the church to take sin less seriously. We lose an appreciation for grace as a result. The issue is not which sins I commit (or which are "worse" than others) but that we all turn our back on God and need him, which is why we can share with those who need God because we appreciate the need and do not see ourselves as better than others, what she called playing on a level field.

The conference has been a solid experience. It is encouraging to have met so many serious Christian Europeans who really desire to reach out to their neighbors here. Now it is on to Berlin and a three day conference for Chosen People Germany on how the New Testament uses the Old.