Ecumenical Evangelical 1: Momentum

As I alluded to in my post "When I am an Ecumencial Evangelical", I've been to three quite different conferences/festivals over the past month, and its prompted reflection on what that means for me, and a bit of thinking about British Evangelicalism, at least the younger end. Today I want to share a little about what was, for me, the most radical thing to go to. Momentum.

As regular readers and offline friends will know, my relationship with Soul Survivor (and arguably Charismatic/Continuationist Christianity!) has not always been positive on my part. That said, the Sovereign God who rules creation had different ideas, and so I've ended becoming part of the Vineyard in the UK, and being someone who is convinced that the Gifts of the Spirit continue today, and trying to find the 'Radical Middle' between Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. With that in mind, I went along to Momentum for a couple of days to see if the journey that the Holy Spirit has taken me on bore any resemblance the lingering doubts/stereotype I had about Momentum/Soul Survivor.

Simply summary - I was wrong.

Longer summary - I was wrong, but I expect that the journey God has led me on over the past few years has a lot to do with my approach to Momentum and how I reacted to it. So what did I learn? What did I like?

I LOVED the opening night. Thousands of milennials - the generation of 20's-30's who are supposed to not like church - were gathered together from across the denominations to worship together, listen to teaching together, and to pray together. Mike Pilavachi, perhaps unsurprisingly, opened the weeks teaching, daring to share with us out of the Old Testament. The response was good, and whilst I'd heard parts of the talks before, I was encouraged to hear Mike preaching the same thing, and to see thousands of people listening raptly. Soul Survivor/Momentum music has always been something I've had a soft spot for - and I really enjoyed it that opening night. I really appreciated the way the band were facing inwards, and it wasn't that 'showy'. I'll never like worship band participants behind words, but given the low-key style of the rest of the thing, I wasn't too bothered. For me, there was a tangible sense of the presence of God, and there were clearly things happening in the ministry time.

After a good nights sleep - if you are camping, then bring a memory foam mattress from your inlaws -  I eagerly pottered off to the seminars. I went to a fascinating seminar - David Wilkinson on SETI. Wilkinson is the principal of St. Johns College, Durham, and had doctoral degrees in both theology and astrophysics. Given the fuss that many make over whether the discovery of alien life would disprove the Bible, and render theology moot, I was interested to see what Wilkinson would say. I will share more of that in some future posts, I think, but to be honest anyone who appeals to the Lordship of Christ and the Sovereignty of God to think about the unknown is on the right lines as far as I know! I also went to a superb seminar on pornography, with powerful stories and a really thoughtful and mature understanding from those 'on stage'.

I spent some time browsing the myriad of stands in the Toolshed, a bookshop-cum-coffeeshop-cum-exhibition. Everything you might have expected was represented there, and whilst there were some terrible books on the stall, there were significantly more good ones, and some fantastic recommendations and reductions. Whilst wandering around, I had some great interaction offline with some people I've been following on Twitter for a while, which was really cool. Some of them I recognised, others recognised me, and it was really good to put a face to name, and a person to the opinions! I spent a bit of time hanging around the UCCF stand too, seeing quite a few people sign up to be linked to CU's, which was encouraging. 

One thing I really appreciated, and that I really noticed on the saturday night, was the commitment of Momentum to Unity and Truth. Given that the session that evening ended up being an interview with a psychologist, that might be surprising, but he was wonderfully Gospel-focused, sound, and thoughtful. It was powerful to hear truth spoken about mental illness in a very Charismatic setting. The session closed with - how dare he - a Gospel response. Mike Pilavachi, apparently unaware that you aren't supposed to confront millennials with truth/response - closed with a brief explanaiton of the Gospel. People responded. I was grateful to God - a group of people went off to be prayed for and given bibles. Reaching my generation isn't rocket science. We don't need gimmicks. We need Gospel proclamation and the work of the Holy Spirit, the retelling and living out of the ancient story we find in scripture. The evening 'closed' - and we left - with some brilliant joyful worship from Rend Collective, one of my favourite styles. 

I loved my first experience of Momentum. It wasn't perfect, but I'm definitely not, and it was wonderful to gather at the Cross with so many of my -allegedly lost - generation to hear about Jesus and worship him together. I hope to be back next year, if finances allow. It gave me real hope for the future of the Church - and sense of joy at the way a breadth of evangelicalicism was represented, with seminars by all sorts, nearly always exactly the right person for exactly the right topic. I was sorry to miss - among others - Sean Doherty on Sexuality and Rico Tice on Evangelism! Maybe next year...