EMF open day
Welwyn Evangelical Church was filled to capacity for the European Missionary Fellowship’s (EMF) School of Biblical Studies (SOBS) open day on Saturday 9 April.
Among the attendees were ten students from Hungary, Israel, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. There was a morning and afternoon meeting and the day got off to a fine start with the singing of the hymn ‘Immortal, invisible, God only wise’.
The current assistant director of EMF, Martin Leech, gave a review of this year’s school to date. He mentioned the ongoing difficulties of some non-EU students with their visa applications this year, which meant three potential students were unable to join the course. EMF’s concerns about this have been raised at government level.
Steven Bowers, pastor at Brighouse Evangelical Church and lecturer on early and medieval church history, gave a lecturer’s perspective on the EMF school.
Daniel Webber, who retires as Director of EMF on 31 July, interviewed some of this year’s students about their Christian testimony, home church, progress in the school and plans for the future.
After lunch, Volodymyr Kostyshyn, currently an EMF worker in Ternopil, Ukraine, and a former student at SOBS, gave his perspective on the course. He said that coming on the course opened his mind and his heart to the Reformed faith; he was thankful for all he learned during his studies.
Mr Webber closed the day by bringing a message from Psalm 90, taking as his text ‘From everlasting to everlasting, you are God’. He reminded us how God is unique in himself and unique in his relationship to man and how we can know him through his Son, Jesus Christ.
When we do, we find that our satisfaction in life is in knowing our everlasting God and that our greatest privilege is to be able to serve this God.
Further information about the course, which is open to applications from UK residents too, can be provided by EMF’s office on hq@emf-welwyn.org
A retirement meeting for Mr Webber will be held on 9 July, at 3.00pm in Welwyn Evangelical Church, with Ken Huxtable as preacher.
David Butler
