King of Kings School’s 3^rd Educating for Eternity Conference was on Saturday 21^st June. Venue: Heaton Moor Evangelical Church

Worship: Matt Holloway, former Christian school student, now homeschool parent. He blessed us with his enthusiasm, humility and skill, welcoming everyone to worship.

First speaker: Mark Golamhossen spoke on the title, ‘Does God have Grandchildren?’  Mark discussed people’s individual responsibility to accept Jesus for themselves and, therefore, the need for discipleship.  He talked about being persuasive in your evangelism and not assuming that it doesn’t affect the children, or that they will naturally drift into Christianity.

The feedback for Matt and Mark was very positive.  People felt that the worship had prepared their hearts for the rest of the day and that Mark was interesting, informative and challenging.

We invited Pascale Lord to share a testimony, whose children attended Christian school before God led her to homeschool.  Pascale was followed by Christine Lewis, who was talking about her experience of meeting her husband and how she could see the effects of Christian education very clearly and positively in her husband.  She spoke about how broad and strong his education was.

We had a break with cakes.  We enjoyed the hospitality and the time that people had to share with each other.

After the break we welcomed Dr Beth Green, who had chosen the topic ‘Against the Flow’.  Beth spoke beautifully on the topic.  People felt she was ‘informative, thought-provoking and relevant’. Beth was followed by the two Christian schools who had sent representatives, Covenant and King of Kings.  Head Teachers, Roger Slack and Brenda Lewis, reported on their schools at the moment.  Mrs Lewis mentioned the current newspaper coverage and adversity and John Lewis, her son, who had that week appeared on Newsnight, debating with Jeremy Paxman, defending Christian Education and the ACE curriculum particularly.

Lunch was a great time to share again and was served very kindly by various teachers and parents from King of Kings.  We started the afternoon session with a song from David Balogun, a former King of Kings student, MOBO Award nominated Gospel singer.  David recently won an award for ‘Best music video of the year’.

Philip Lewis followed David with his talk.  Philip Lewis had offered at 10 pm the night before to step in, in place of Nigel Steele, the billed speaker, who had suddenly been taken ill.  Nigel was too sick to travel up from Gloucester, but his prayers were with us.  Nigel is well again, praise God, and was very interested to hear how the conference had gone.  Dr Lewis spoke (as if he’d been preparing for quite some time) on the title of this year’s conference, ‘As for me and my house: we will serve the Lord.’  This is a verse that has been up in the hallway of his house for many years and a verse by which he has lived.  He spoke about the pressing need for Christian education and for us to communicate with the pastors on this and to persuade them. This was followed by the testimony of a new student.