Wednesday 20 July 2011

A very important 10 minutes

The ten minutes from 44 minutes on in Dave Stroud's talk here is absolutely spot on.

When talking about our theological positions:

1) We must not be "Sloppy in our attitudes, language or use of media"

2) We should not "Create a culture that does not actually back the doctrinal position we stand upon"

3) and "we can encourage men without a cost to us in other areas"

He quotes from Tim Keller, who holds a very (in my view) well balanced view of complimentarianism.

Dave then talked about how we have in some ways moved to the edge of evangelicalism.

I agree.

He says we love the WHOLE body of Christ. But we have not always been as smart as we could be in how we have communicated it. I agree.

He says there should be no air of superiority. No exclusiveness. We should love people without agreeing with them. We should be more generous.

"Amen" does not even come close to covering it!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, it was a very interesting portion of his talk, and I await to see what will come of it. Certainly I think it is an area in which there is room for improvement.

DaveW said...

I have listened to the talk and I wish I could be as positive.

While I welcome these 10 minutes as more positive than we are used to from Newfrontiers there are many other issues that it raises.

I'll mention just one. To say so clearly that Newfrontiers is not going to change it's traditions (particularly Theology) is to put tradition above the authority of Scripture. All traditions including our favourite theologies must be open to change as our understanding of Scripture grows.

Anonymous said...

Dave W, This seems very shortsighted of you. The whole conference and indeed Newfrontiers as a movement are clear that scripture is ultimate authority. Any 'traditions' that they have are based upon scripture. If you have followed them at all you would surely understand that they have often changed things very courageously because of convictions of the word and prophecies. I've never heard the word 'tradition' in Newfrontiers. Values are what they use. And they firmly beilievve them to be biblical, that's what gives them value!