Word Alive!

Word Alive is a Christian Conference which used to be held during the final week of Spring Harvest every year. After 15 years with Spring Harvest, Word Alive is now a separate event. Its focus is on evangelical Bible teaching and we certainly had plenty of that.

The main teacher was Don Carson who was teaching from 1 John over 5 days. But there was also some awesome teaching by John Piper on Suffering. Jamie and I chose seminars on the Trinity by Mike Reeves from the Merrie Theologian. We also went to talks by Richard Cunningham from UCCF and Hugh Palmer from All Souls, Langham Place.

We had some wonderful music/worship too from Phatfish, Keith and Kristen Getty and Stuart Townend. Townend and Getty wrote the massively popular song, In Christ Alone, which pretty much sums up our doctrinal position. {vbg} Grace had a long chat with Lou Fellingham after one of her gigs and that made her year! She was very sweet to my star-struck daughter and encouraged her in her worship singing.

Word Alive was a huge improvement on the increasingly frothy Spring Harvests we've been to. It was a good thing to get back to orthodox conservative evangelical theology and constantly looking at what the Bible says instead of: laughing at funny speakers, listening to people's weird interpretations, being distracted by bizarre 'worship dancing' during the music and all the other Spring Harvest 'stuff'.

However, there was a little *too* much emphasis on the intellect and the cerebral response to God and not enough encouragement to experience Him and worship Him wholeheartedly. Things were soooo intellectual, that at one point, Jamie and I snuck out the back of one marquee because the speaker, Mike Ovey, Principle of Oak Hill Theological College was using words we'd never heard of before and we weren't understanding any of it. {vbg}

Grace and Jack had their own Youth Track which they were fully engaged with. There was a particular VIDEO which they were shown which absolutely blew them away. I watched it when we got home and promptly burst into tears. I was so glad that they had been taught appropriately to their ages and thankful that God had spoken so powerfully through the godly leaders and things like this video.

Grace opted one day for a seminar on how to talk to your muslim friends about Jesus. I asked if she had any muslim friends. She said no, but if she ever did, she'd know what to say. {g} Jack went to a seminar about how to spot the meta-message in popular culture. This site, Culture Watch is useful.

All in all it was a Good Experience. Getting away fro our little town, being with 6,000 other believers, at least half of whom were university students, seeing some of God's Creation, getting fed some spiritual meat, hearing fabulous worship music, resting, engaging our brains, seeing the kids so happy. I'm so grateful to God that He provided the money to be able to book this holiday and hope and pray that we we'll be able to go again next year.