Impact 09 Day 1
As I’m sitting here at the end of Day 1 of Impact 2009 Bible Conference, Hastings has chilled up like a popsicle and my seat is not heated. But a good 400+ folks have been warming their voices on powerful songs, and listening to powerful preaching through the day.
A brief run-down:
General session 1 - Rick opens the plenaries by outlining the life and character of the Apostle Peter. He’s shown in Scripture to be passionate yet flawed (definitely not infallible Pope material from what the Bible records). Peter was a regular, Christ-exalting, fallible, arrogant, passionate, broken, and eventually restored man.
General session 2 - Jerry Wragg opens his series by listing a multitude of ways evangelical Christians have been affected by the postmodern worldview. Wragg laments the perceived decline of absolutes, depreciation of propositional truth-claims, and the exaltation of human wisdom. He looks forward to delving through 1 Corinthians in addressing issues, including how far should contextualisation and the “all things to all men” principle go.
General session 3 - Rick Holland unpacked the opening two verses of 1 Peter by highlighting three points: the Father elects, the Spirit sanctifies, and the Son redeems. Holland skirted around the election/predestination debate, focusing more on the astute observation that Peter mentions these points to the persecuted church not for theological challenge and controversy, but for pastoral comfort and spiritual security. Definitely a good challenge in getting doctrine turned into practice.
As a side note, the Driscoll contextualisation controversy got a mention by Holland during the first seminar session, titled “what’s wrong with youth ministry today?” I’m picking interesting debates on that issue during the Q&A session on Sunday.
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