Penal Substitution ignites the blogosphere...

Catch up on what the blogs are saying about UCCF, Word Alive, Steve Chalke, Spring Harvest, NT Wright, Pierced for our transgressions and more...

Cross-purposes

Adrian Warnock reports on a major split in UK evangelicalism - Keswick & UCCF forced to go separate ways from Spring Harvest... and the issue is crucial - it's the Cross. This Easter a clear line was drawn in the sand in British Evangelicalism. For years, whenever the word “evangelical” was mentioned, people in the UK would think almost immediately of Spring Harvest — easily the UK's largest Christian conference. Part of that package has been Word Alive, a distinct all-age event run by UCCF (who owns the UK-based Intervarsity Press) and the Keswick Convention in partnership with Spring Harvest. At the heart of Word Alive has been a separate student track with up to 2,000 students. Beginning in 2008, there will be no more Word Alive at Spring Harvest. New Word Alive has managed to confirm a fantastic line-up of main preachers: John Piper, Terry Virgo, and Don Carson will all be speaking at the event. www.newwordalive.org This is all wrapped up in the issues we've been highlighting at www.beginningwithmoses.org this month.

15 Incontrovertible Arguments in favour of Expository Preaching

(1) Preaching through the books of the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, respects and reflects God’s authorship. God did not gives us a book of quotable quotes, nor a dictionary of useful texts, nor an anthology of inspiring ideas. When God caused the Scriptures to be written the medium that he used was that of books of the Bible. If that was good enough for the author it should be good enough for the preacher.

(2)Expository Preaching reflects God’s respect for human authors. One of the most beautiful features of the Bible is the way in which God causes his truth to be written and yet does not over-ride the individual writer, but respects their place in history, their vocabulary, their spoken and literary style. If God is so careful to respect the human authors of the Scriptures we should endeavour to do the same by reading, studying, preaching and teaching their books in the order in the way in they wrote them.

Read the other thirteen reasons and more in Peter Adam - Arguing for Expository Preaching

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Some sort of server problem today. Not sure why, we've called the helpdesk and they're trying to fix things. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
To my knowledge this is now fixed. 22:06

The shedding of blood for a sin-ravaged world

Mark Meynell writes: "Living outside the UK at the time of the publication of The Lost Message of Jesus1 meant I was largely unaware of most of the heat and sadly often harsh words which it provoked on all sides. The book caused controversy, and, in many ways, rightly so. One of the difficulties, however, is that Chalke and Mann’s rather inflammatory discussion of the atonement forms only a small, although perhaps highly indicative, part of the book. That can detract from the number of valid points they make. Nevertheless, because their treatment of the atonement has resonated with what a number of other scholars have been saying (especially in the USA but in the UK as well), it is important that we reflect not only on what they are saying but also (more importantly) why they are saying it..." Read the full article: The shedding of blood for a sin-ravaged world (PDF) Mark Meynell blogs All Souls, Langham Place, London