2010 IDMC Conference Hall Fully Booked

Tuesday, Sep. 1, 2009 Posted: 6:17:23PM HKT

There appears to be growing appeal for the Intentional Disciplemaking Church Conference organised by Covenant Evangelical Free Church.

Already the main sanctuary of the church's Woodlands location where the event will be held is fully booked.

The CEFC leadership is preparing accommodation for 3,000 to 3,500 conference attendants for the upcoming IDMC Conference in 2010.

CEFC’s two locations will be opened up for the event. The event will be physically conducted at Woodlands, but there will be a live link to CEFC’s Bukit Panjang location.

IDMC this year saw an over-registration. While the church initially prepared its Woodlands facility for 2,000 people, more than 2,850 people registered and paid for the conference.

The theme for the upcoming event is Knowing God’s Word and arises from the speaker’s conviction that the Church is facing a crisis of ‘theological rootlessness’.

There is biblical illiteracy, superficial understanding of the Word, and shallowness among Christians today, according to The Rev Edmund Chan.

It is time for Christians to be grounded in the ‘solid’ Word of God. The Word is the source of truth, which is the ‘most precious commodity’ in the unseen world, which is in turn the ‘greatest world’ people live in, he said.

During the conference, the pastor stressed the importance of restoring a God-centered study of Scripture. This means reading Scripture in their context and identifying what he called the ‘theological anchor’.

Offering two examples from Isaiah 40:31 and Psalm 1, he showed how this could be done.

In the former case, though the popular understanding is that the verse is telling people to wait on the Lord to receive strength. Actually, it is centered on the fact that God is the trustworthy, everlasting God, as constant as the mountains around Jerusalem.

In the second case, most people think that God is giving people a quick route to worldly success. He pointed out that the passage is really centered on how since there is a day of accounting the approval of God is of ultimate importance.

The pastor suggested three ways of finding the theological ‘anchor’ in biblical passages or ‘spectacles to see God with’ which he will elaborate in the conference next year.

A first paradoxical pattern in biblical narrative to recognise is the story and the surprise. An example of this is Genesis 22, the story of Abraham going to the mountains to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to God’s commandment.

Rather than talking about Abraham’s act of sacrifice, he said the passage speaks of God’s provision even in the midst of seeming sacrifices He calls people to make. He is “not a God who seeks to get, but a God who seeks to give”.

The second pattern, the speech and the silence, is found in the story of Job. Here, what God did not say to Job was as effective as what He did say; asking him a barrage of rhetorical questions. The story teaches the lesson of trusting God as the one who knows best even amid suffering and doubt. It is about “finding the tranquility of the soul in the tranquility of surrender”, he said.

Thirdly and finally, there is the symbol and the structure. He took the teaching of keeping the Sabbath and explained it using the ‘enacted parable’ of the Jubilee celebration and the offering of animal sacrifices at the end of the book of Leviticus.

Just as everything goes back to their owners in the year of Jubilee and firstborn animals cannot be offered because they already belong to God, the parables teach that God owns the things Man has and that they are only stewards.

The Rev Chan is also convicted that theology should lead to doxology and godliness. Knowledge is vast, and there is a need for humility in the study of theology.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com