Spring Harvest Expresses Regret at End of Word Alive Partnership

Spring Harvest has expressed its regret over the end of the Word Alive partnership which had brought the ministry together with Keswick Ministries and the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship in leading a week of intensive Bible study for the last 14 years.

Word Alive had grown over the years to become one of the most established and highly anticipated Bible events in the calendar, taking place each year during Spring Harvest's Bible study week at Butlins to a consistently large student audience. The last ever Word Alive finished earlier in the month.

Bishop Pete Broadbent, on the Spring Harvest Leadership Team, issued a statement today in which he said: "The partnership has been a fruitful one and we thank God for the way he has worked through this event over the years."

He said the Spring Harvest Council of Management took the decision to end the partnership after it become increasingly difficult to accommodate Word Alive as a separate week within the Spring Harvest calendar of events.

"Spring Harvest wish the Word Alive partners well and we separate thanking God for the part the other plays in the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in the UK today," he added.

He denied suggestions from the UCCF and Keswick Ministries that the split was over disagreements on penal substation.

Rev Richard Cunningham, director of the UCCF, had said that the decision to end the partnership lay in the 2003 publication of the controversial The Lost Message of Jesus by the Rev Steve Chalke, a member of the Spring Harvest Event Leadership Team and Council of Management.

In The Lost Message of Jesus, Chalke promoted unorthodox views of the nature of the atonement and hit national media headlines with his controversial and graphic description of penal substitution.

"The Word Alive committee, of which UCCF is a part, believed such views to be contrary to orthodox biblical teaching and as such, decided that the Rev Steve Chalke could not teach from a Word Alive platform," said Rev Cunningham.

In response to the closing of 'Word Alive', Peter Maiden, the chair of the Keswick Convention council, said the decision to split with Spring Harvest had "been taken with enormous pain and regret".

"Word Alive has been a very important partnership for the church in the UK," he said, adding that the controversy over the atonement had "created difficulties in the partnership" in addition to the debate over whether there was space for Word Alive in the Spring Harvest programme any longer.

"We at the Keswick Convention pray that our brothers and sisters at Spring Harvest will know the blessing of God as they continue their ministry," he said.

Bishop Broadbent said, however, "Various people have since attempted to 'spin' the reasons why we decided to go our separate ways for their own purposes. That's their decision. It's not where Spring Harvest are."

He added that the UCCF statement "simply isn't true to what actually took place" but added that he did not want "to get into a public row with UCCF" as he reaffirmed his support for their ministry among students.

"We stand for the same faith and the same gospel," he said.

Spring Harvest will now run its own student-based Bible study week at Minehead in partnership with Fusion, which includes Chalke on its Council of Reference, while UCCF and Keswick Ministries have also announced that they will come together to lead a new separate event scheduled for 2008 in Pwllheli.

Yesterday, Rev Cunningham, also expressed his regret at the end of the partnership saying the UCCF had been "delighted" to partner with Spring Harvest over the last 14 years for Word Alive.

The Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, chair of the Word Alive committee, said, "I am sad at the ending of the partnership. The new Word Alive event remains totally committed to our distinctives of lively Bible teaching for all the family and to having on the platform only those who are enthusiastically committed to the historic evangelical faith.

"In the present climate, that means commitment to a high view of Scripture and to a penal substitutionary view of the atonement," he said.

The replacement for the 'Word Alive' event, organised jointly by Keswick Ministries and UCCF, has been planned for 7 to 11 April 2008 at Pwllheli. Confirmed speakers include John Piper, Terry Virgo and Don Carson.

The UCCF said there would be an increased capacity and further details will be released shortly.