Did Ahab Rescue Jonah From the Whale?

Romany over on the You Did What? Blog writes of the demise of Spring Harvest's special Bible teaching week, Word Alive. I have to say that I am not completely surprised that the event has been cancelled as I've been wondering lately if Bible teaching is out of favour in the UK church.

I recently spoke at length to a lecturer at one of England's larger Bible Colleges. He shared how frustrated he was that the students starting their courses were appallingly ignorant of the very text which they were supposedly at College to study - the Bible itself. When asked many could not arrange important biblical events such as the flood, exodus, exile, monarchy in chronological order. Most knew of the major characters such as Abraham and Moses, but many had never heard of King Ahab, amongst others. When it came to theological debates students now have to have terms, which ten years ago would have been well-known, explained to them, using up valuable lecture-time.

Some years ago when I was in Vancouver I was asked by the minister there to prepare a study for the church staff on the Welsh Revival, because he believed that revival was what was needed in his city. In my conclusion I wrote:

It is important to learn from the mistakes made during the Revival. Roberts was no expositor of the Word, and this was a weakness that was passed on to the new converts, who relied heavily on emotion and not upon Scripture. In a sense the revival was based upon the preaching of a previous generation of ministers and Sunday School teachers, whose efforts finally bore fruit in 1904. When the Revival began to decline the established churches found it difficult to disciple the new converts, which is what they desperately needed. We need to seriously question whether our church is in a position to cope with thousands of new converts, before we ask God for Revival. Dare we ask for a Revival when we cannot care for the new spiritual children?

More and more I believe that this is the lesson the Welsh Revival has for Christians in the UK today. If find ourselves in the position of championing biblical ignorance in the face of clear biblical injunctions to read, memorise and to meditate on the Word of God we will continue to reap the fruits of this ignorance, empty emotionalism and ultimately, empty churches.

Fortunately, Word Alive will continue, but not under the Spring Harvest banner. For more information visit http://www.newwordalive.org/