Spiritual hunger in Newcastle
Geoff Thomas—a dear friend of the seminary and a speaker at ‘Pilgrim Life in a Fallen World’—shares his perspective of our 2024 Annual Conference.
There is a spiritual hunger amongst true Christians for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Surely this is as old as Pentecost, and a worldwide phenomenon. We see it in our Bible-centred churches, in the amazing output of Christian books, in the wealth of online preaching—and in the almost-weekly conferences being held all over the UK.
A case in point is an annual conference that has occurred every autumn in Newcastle for about ten years. It is organised by the growing Westminster Seminary UK, and held in Newcastle’s magnificent 200-year-old All Saints Church building. This Conference steadily grows in attractiveness and importance. This year, Christians from as far as Hungary and Germany were amongst the 200 or so who came to hear Mark Johnston, Chad Vegas, Donald John Maclean, Peter Szabo and me speak. Chad, co-founder of Radius International which trains Bible translators for the estimated 3,100 unreached language groups, is a Californian—but quick to acknowledge his debt to Iain Murray’s two-volume life of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
We had been given the task of dividing Peter’s magnificent, inspired first epistle into ten bite-sized chunks under the title, ‘Pilgrim Life in a Fallen World.’ It was a remarkably effective way of holding the conference together, providing a coherent, vital and relevant exposition of Peter’s words over the three days. The students from the seminary were full of questions and wanting help to grow as preachers; after each session speakers were happy to recommend approaches to the high calling of the preacher-pastor. The Lord of the Word was honoured, and the Word of the Lord was opened up and applied to the hearts and minds of young and old.
The secondary essentials necessary for a conference contributed their own happy flavour to the gathering: the magnificent display of hundreds of excellent books, the delicious food and snacks, the singing, the acoustics in the beautiful old auditorium. The Q&A session was lively as all the speakers sought to answer the serious questions that addressed them. Much good was done and we hope, God willing, to return next year, October 23–25, for a conference that celebrates the seventeenth centenary of the Council of Nicaea.
