Weeks after attracting a record 700 people to its Summer School, New Creation Teaching Ministry, a cross-denominational ministry in South Australia is shutting down.

Teaching at New Creation.

It wasn’t that they only had oldies attending. This year’s summer school attracted hundreds of young people and children. And New Creation Teaching Ministry has profoundly affected thousands, if not tens of thousands in South Australia.

“We have a strong sense that God is calling us to finish up”, says New Creation.

“What God is going to do next will not be contained within a teaching ministry structure such as ours, but will emerge in many new and different ways”.

For example, one aim of New Creation was to promote Bible teaching ministry in the churches.

“God is not dependent on us at New Creation”, Andrew Klynsmith of New Creation told Eternity. “We are sure that the preaching of the gospel of Grace will go on in the churches.”

New Creation’s teaching of “the grace of the triune God, from the beginning to the end of the Bible, grounded in the cross of Christ, with a view to the ultimate community of God with His people” seems set to carry on.

New Creation managed to bridge charismatic and reformed theologies from its foundation in 1974. This was due to its founder Geoffrey Bingham, a former prisoner-of war, farmer, minister, missionary, and Bible College principal.

Bingham’s ministry was forged by his suffering in the Changi prisoner of war camp together with the East African Revival which left him “unsatisfied with anything else but the church fully alive in Christ” according to Martin Bleby, Bingham’s long-time associate. Read John Sandeman’s obituary of Geoffrey Bingham here, or Lesley Hicks obituary of Geoffrey Bingham here.

New Creation Publications’ vast range of resources—over 400 books, and thousands of audio and video recordings—will continue to be made available for future generations, mainly in electronic form.

The story has been told in a newly-published book by Martin Bleby, A Quiet Revival: Geoffrey Bingham in Life and Ministry, available along with remaining stock of published resources until 15 February 2013 from ministry@newcreation.org.au, 08 8270 1861.