Marriage can be tough. Ministry can be tough. Together, they can be an explosive combination. What should be a joyful partnership sometimes turns out to be the very thing on which both ministry and marriage founder. We cannot let it.
So that’s why we run a couple of small Marriage and Ministry conferences. Each conference is a 24 hour stopover hosted for up to 14 couples.
We’re running two of these in October; one is Leicestershire (at Hothorpe Hall), the other in Wiltshire (the Old Bell, Malmesbury). They will begin at 11am on Monday 24th and conclude with lunch at 12.45pm on Tuesday 25th.
There are still some spaces available on each conference. You can click here to book online at Leicestershire, and here to book online for Wiltshire.

One of the problems with EMA is that, being based in central London, many who might really benefit from it are unable to attend just because the cost of accommodation in London for three nights is simply unaffordable.
For the past few years, we’ve been looking for ways to help facilitate such people and are so grateful for a small group of volunteers who have generously offered their homes to host a guest (or sometimes two!) for the duration of the conference. This kindness makes all the difference to those guests and also to us too; to be able to welcome those who otherwise would be prohibited from coming. We are so thankful for this willingness to help and such hospitality.
This year’s EMA runs from 21st-23rd June. Perhaps you also may be able and willing to offer your home to someone for those days? If so, please let us know at pt@proctrust.org.uk. If you’re a pastor, please feel free to pass this request onto members in your church that may like to help.
Equally, maybe this is your solution to attending the conference if accommodation costs were a hindrance to you? Or perhaps you know someone whom this would really benefit? Again, please feel free to get in touch at the above email address. We’ll do our best to help you out where we can.

Thanking you in advance.

PS: We are also looking for hosts for the Cornhill Summer School which is the week after EMA (27th June- 1st July); if you’re able to help then, let us know about that too!

When I was first given Teaching 1&2 Thessalonians – the first book from this series I had encountered – I expected another commentary from the pastoral mid-range style of the Tyndale and Bible Speaks Today series. It is a similar length and appeared to have a similar emphasis on practical application. Reading the book it quickly became apparent that this was not the case and to judge it in comparison to other such commentaries would not only be unfair but to be asking the wrong questions and looking for this book to provide something it was never intended to. This was a most pleasant surprise.

If you are looking for a commentary that will deal with a text verse by verse and maybe even touch on how best to translate the original languages, then this is not the book you are looking for. If you are looking to start a sermon series on 1 and/or 2 Thessalonians, this is without a doubt a five star, must-buy book.

From the highly concise introductions to the general themes of the books and the well-crafted choice of sermon series outlines, this handbook to your future sermon series provides preachers with an excellent tool kit to get them started. Whereas many commentaries often lose sight of clear structure and thematic progress in a biblical book, making it hard to sculpture a sermon series, this book keeps such concerns to the front making sure that from start to finish a sermon series has a definite pace and constancy.

Especially helpful are the parts of the book dealing with illustrations that provide a ‘way in’ to a topic and ideas for applying a text to the lives of the congregation. Helpful bullet-point summaries are provided at the end of each chapter asking the kind of questions the congregation and preachers need to be thinking about based on the teaching. These applications and illustrations are especially helpful for ministers who are either more generally academic and often forget about ‘real world’ application, or on the other hand ministers who are (likely) too young to have had the life experience needed to illustrate and apply all such passages to the lives of people usually much older than they are.
In sum I could not recommend this book highly enough. Having come across such a resource I doubt that in future I would ever embark on preparing an expository sermon series without first consulting a book from this series.

Adam Young
Emmanuel Church, Saltburn-by-the-Sea

This review originally appeared in the Autumn 2015 edition of ‘Churchman’, p.279-280. 
Published by Church Society
http://churchsociety.org/churchman/

For the past few years, a small army of volunteers have hosted EMA guests for the two or three nights of the conference. There a number of people for whom the cost of accommodation in London would hinder their attendance and these generous offers of somewhere to stay make all the difference.

This year’s EMA runs from 22-24th June. So, if you live in London and are able to help, please let us know at confs@proctrust.org.uk .  And if you’re ministering in a London church, could you ask folk in the church whether they might be able to accommodate anybody? Thank you in advance for your generosity and help.

PS: We are also looking for hosts for the Cornhill Summer School which is the week after EMA (29th June- 3rd July) ; if you are able to help then, let us know about that too!

The final two talks from the recent Autumn Ministers conference were by Garry Williams. Garry is director of the John Owen Centre, part of the London Theological Seminary. His first talk was on the love of God, and particularly preaching the love of God in today’s love-obsessed world. His second highlighted four ways in which the world might enter the church, considering the particular characteristics of our society and how they may negatively influence the church.

Garry’s talks can be found here.

At last month’s Autumn Ministers conference, Nigel Styles took us through the book of 1 Thessalonians in three sessions. The audio and video from those are now available here.

In case some might not have realised, the names of conferences, speakers and bible books in the right hand column of our (relatively!) new-look resources page are clickable – that is, the details of the talks under the word FREE.
So if you click 1 Thessalonians in that column, you’ll get a list of all our talks on 1 Thessalonians; if you click the speaker name, you’ll get all the talks from that speaker (these were Nigel’s first talks for us, so in this case you’ll only get those three!). We’re still working at improving our catalogue, but within the list we hope they’re sensibly arranged – there’s a line at the top of the list which will tell you how the talks are sorted for you, typically either by chapter (if you’re looking at talks on a particular book), or by date (if you’re looking at one speaker), or (hopefully!) in something like the order they were given, if you’re looking at an individual conference.

Last month saw our annual Autumn Ministers conference, the audio from which is now online. Vaughan Roberts’ opening and closing expositions from Revelation encouraged and
challenged us in our ministry – listen in here.