Rainhill, on the outskirts of Liverpool, is famed in railway history for its locomotive trials in October 1829. Five engineers entered their steam engines in a competition to secure the contract to build locomotives for the Manchester to Liverpool Railway. Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’ proved its worth and won the day.

It was a test of a different kind which drew about 150 men and women from churches in the north-west and beyond to Trinity Evangelical Church, Rainhill, for the ‘God’s Glory, our joy’ conference on October 14-15 2005. Entitled ‘Building Biblical Churches for the 21st Century’, we were challenged to test our churchmanship and our approach to mission, inter-church relationships and children’s work against Scripture. The papers given were well prepared, well delivered and saturated with Scripture. These conferences, which have been held now for several years, have certainly proved their worth in stimulating thought.

The aim was to encourage every church leader and member to examine his or her commitment to the reformation of the local church. Judged by that aim, the conference can only be reckoned an overwhelming success. I would be amazed if any of the hundred and fifty or so folk who attended, went away unchallenged. Personally it was a privilege to have been there.  If you didn’t enjoy that privilege, then order the tapes.  You need to hear the papers; your church needs to hear the papers. And we all then need to go away and do something about what we’ve heard. As we were reminded in our last session, we are to “be doers of the Word and not hearers only”.  By God’s grace we must all play a part in the reformation of our local churches and thus bring glory to God’s wonderful name – only then can we truly enjoy Him forever!

2005 Conference sermons now available. Listen on-line or download the MP3 sermons.

A fair sized crowd of folk gathered in Liverpool for this year’s “God’s Glory, Our Joy” conference. There were a mere 5 sessions over the two days (down from 6 last year), the idea being to encourage informal fellowship between the papers. As in previous years, the papers given were broadly based around the theme of “Building Biblical Churches for the 21st Century”.

Oliver Allmand-Smith kicked off on Friday evening, speaking on “The Church around the Word” from Paul’s letter to the church at Colossae. Taking Colossians 3:16  “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…” as his text, he spoke about the proper focus of our meetings (the word of Christ), and the proper means to attain that focus (teaching and admonishing). He gave a strong call to centralise Scripture, and a searching exposition of what makes up good preaching, and how to listen to it.