He makes a number of interesting observations along the way. One of the most important of these is that ‘contemporary evangelicalism is increasingly becoming aligned by shared conferences, courses and choruses, rather than confessions, creeds or catechisms.’

Andrew Wilson has a fascinating post on his blog on the subject of the ‘new centre of British evangelicalism.’ Within it he argues that, while there are parts of British evangelicalism that are not within the ambit of its direct influence, Holy Trinity Brompton has become by far the most significant player within the UK evangelical world. Andrew defines the ‘centre’ that HTB represents as ‘the reasonably large, obvious bit in the middle, as far away from all extremes as you can get, from which it is possible to influence most of the game, and which, if you want to play with everyone else, you have to interact with on a regular basis.’

Here’s how it works. People become Christians on Alpha, which usually introduces them not just to the gospel, but also to a particular form of middle-class, charismatic, non-confessional, low church, generic evangelicalism (which is increasingly representative of the sorts of churches they will find in their area, whether they are Anglican or not, including mine). If they’re young, they go to Soul Survivor (teenagers) or Momentum (students and 20s), led by fellow Anglican, charismatic, non-confessional, low church, generic evangelical Mike Pilavachi. If they’re not, they go on HTB’s marriage course, recently trailered enthusiastically by the Guardian, or perhaps their parenting course. If they’re involved in worship leading, they connect with Worship Central somehow, either through a conference or through their online resources, and this gradually influences their corporate singing times in an HTB-ish direction (partly because several of the UK’s leading Christian songwriters are based there). If they want to go deeper in prayer, they link up with Pete Greig’s 24-7 prayer, now also based there. If they want to go deeper in the scriptures, they can download the hugely popular Bible in One Year app for free, and use that. If they’re involved in leadership, of any sort, they can go to the Leadership Conference at the Albert Hall, where they will hear from Cardinals and Archbishops, business leaders and former Prime Ministers, as well as Megachurch pastors of the Warren/Hybels sort. If they feel called to lead a church themselves, they can get trained at rapidly growing St Mellitus College—recently the subject of an extremely positive op-ed in theTelegraph—and then go church planting. I doubt there’s a church in the world whose programmes, conferences and courses are more widespread than HTB’s.

Andrew’s discussion of the character, reach, and effect of HTB’s influence is perceptive and stimulating. He makes a number of interesting observations along the way. One of the most important of these is that ‘contemporary evangelicalism is increasingly becoming aligned by shared conferences, courses and choruses, rather than confessions, creeds or catechisms.’ One of the effects of these new means of alignment has been to downplay the significance of many of the traditional faultlines between ecclesially defined Christian groups—issues of church practice, sacraments, liturgy, and polity—and to accentuate other faultlines in their place, the sort of faultlines that are thrown up by the new means of alignment, things such as the faultlines between egalitarians and complementarians or between different positions on the charismatic gifts:

Spring Harvest is neither Presbyterian nor congregational, but it is emphatically egalitarian; Alpha is neither Calvinist nor Arminian, but it is clearly charismatic; and so on. Consequently, the things over which one must agree to run a course or a conference, even when they are relatively trivial, can appear to be much more important things to define than things like sacraments or soteriology, when in reality the opposite is usually true. If we’re running a conference together, we can agree to disagree on baptism, and church polity, but not on whether women can teach men or whether we should have ministry times. This elevates the perceived importance of the latter.

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