Where have all the preachers gone (3)?
A while ago, I asked the question. It was prompted (as you will read, dear reader) by our experience in London - where should we worship? And in a follow-up I suggested that several preachers whom we might have expected to be significant in our nation by now had, instead, been called to America.
One good brother pointed out that I hadn't mentioned Grove Chapel, Camberwell where Mark Johnston is the pastor. 'Of course!' I thought. 'What an idiot! Why didn't I think of that? That's where we'll go next time.'
And now news has reached me that Mark has left Grove Chapel. Can you guess where he's gone?
'The days are coming,' declares the Sovereign LORD, 'when I will send a famine through the land-- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD,' (Amos 8.11)
6 comments:
Interesting. Sad. Seems to have been kept quiet quite effectively.
Yes, very sad. If there are judgements on nations, as some of us have been debating recently, it is surely the withdrawal of good and godly preachers of the Word.
Hmm... up here the complaint is that too many preachers go to the south of England. As you know I was born in the street where you live and now I find myself up near Lancaster. And you...?
Paul
Glad you could join us, Paul. Fair point, but several differences: first, you're talking about me, and that's always different (!). Second, though, I've never been a pastor in the North who absconded to the South. We always said if we left Aylesbury it would be to go North, and I did preach at a northern church 'with a view' (as they say) in 1997. Last time I heard, they were still debating whether to have me for a second time... No northern church, except that one, has ever shown any interest.
See pebrown.blogspot.com.
Enjoyed your blog, Paul - though there's no place to comment, so I'm bound to do it here. I look forward to further reflections on this; the North is much in my mind. (Bethany, where I first heard you preach, is in dire straits. There's no necessary connection between the first and second half of that sentence, though.)
If you could email me an email address (to g.benfold@ntlworld.com) there's a simple, non-blog related question you may be able to answer for me, but best not in public.
Machen's comments on schools is provocative - and, once someone's said it, so obviously true. What strange days!
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