Reflections On T4G...

10) The 'T4G' acronym might be improved upon my switching it to 'T4TG', as in Together For The Gospel. There are not many gospels, but only the Gospel.
9) The church is to be multiethnic but not multicultural. The implications of this thought are surprisingly far-reaching.
8) Seeing 7,000 men rejoice while singing the line "I know that it is finished" is a rapturous experience.
7) The men who spoke at T4TG are not physically impressive men, but they are formidable; not by their aesthetic grandeur but by God's empowering.
6) Sitting around a dinner while talking theology and Christian ministry with the good men of Christ Our Redeemer is exactly why listening to the lectures online doesn't compare to being at the conference.
5) Watching C.J. Mahaney worship is almost as edifying as listening to his sermons.
4) Even if given 20 free books, when presented with a bookstore the size of a soccer field you're gonna' walk away a couple Washingtons lighter.
3) The moment we feel compelled to 'save' the Gospel, to adjust it in some way to make it more palatable or effective, we run the serious risk of losing it altogether.
2) If we are to live a life of faithfulness to God, we must develop the God-given courage to stand in antithesis to false ideologies and theologies.
1) Behind the 7,000 men who came to be built up in the Lord are many more thousands of church members faithfully serving God and community. God is building His kingdom.

T4G Day 3 (The Day After)...

Well I'm writing about day three of Together For The Gospel a day later, as I didn't have time to record my thoughts with all of yesterday's travels and assignments due today. Just by way of general retrospect, the whole conference was a great time of worship and focusing of the heart and mind on God. If you can make it down there in two years, do it. Anyway, day three was essentially just a morning session, but it was packed with three messages. Ligon Duncan got up first and gave a lecture on the presentation of the gospel in the church fathers' writings (the leaders of the Christian church for the first few-hundred years after the Apostles). I know this sounds dry, but it was absolutely fascinating and Duncan demonstrated what happens when intellect is fueled by passion. After this, Matt Chandler gave some personal testimony as to what God has done through suffering. After radiation treatment, he is now going through chemotherapy to treat a malignant brain cancer. Chandler is a very gifted communicator, but the real highlight of that time was just hearing his prayer; that his children and family would never grow bitter toward God no matter what happened to Him. I hope this is included in the download on the T4G site. Lastly, C.J. Mahaney gave a sermon geared at all of us normal people in the crowd who do not have the gifts of a Piper, Dever, or Duncan. With much emotion (a Mahaney trademark), he encouraged us normal men to be faithful pastors, a fitting commission as we all returned home. I would strongly, strongly encourage you all to listen to the lectures, sermons, and discussion panels from the conference; they will impact you. Here's a link, all of the video should be made available in the coming days; http://www.t4g.org/resources/. I hope to Lord willing return for T4G 2012, and would love for many of you to come along as well.

T4G Day 2...

I'm going to keep this one short, as I am tired and feel as if my brain is about to melt. The day started off with a talk by Thabiti Anyabwile, in which he talked about the new culture that is created in Christ, and how we as Christians are called to more identify ourselves with this new culture over against our earthly culture of origin. The thought-provoking statement from his lecture was that the people of God are multiethnic but not multicultural. This talk was prededed by another great session of worship, and one moment in particular stood out to me. As we were singing "How Deep The Father's Love For Us", we came to the line 'I know that it is finished', and much of the room erupted in cheers and applause. I hope I don't soon forget the power there is in seeing scores of individuals rejoice in unison over the fact that their very real sins, the lusts of their flesh, their pride in selflessness, their mistreatment of their family... all of their sins were once and for all in one moment of time completely accounted for on the cross of Christ. It was unreal to see a group that large collectively rejoice in the once-and-for-all forgiveness of mountains of sin. This is the power of the gospel of Christ. After Anyabwile, John MacArther taught out of Mark 4 about the work of God in salvation, that as the seed-sower plants the seed and then sleeps, it is the power of God that makes the seed grow. In the afternoon I went to a break-out session, in which Brian Habig talked about the fears of the minister, and man did this one hit home. He expounded on the people-pleasing and self-doubting tendencies of the minister, how these desires to live for men and make our name known can distort true proclamation of the gospel, and how our justification in Christ alleviates this malady. I think everyone in that room went away convicted and refreshed. After dinner with the Christ Our Redeemer boys and a discussion about mentoring and the church, we came back to the auditorium for some more worship and a sermon from John Piper. I thank the Lord for that man. He preached from Luke 18 about justification by faith alone as seen in the parable of the pharisee and tax collector praying in the temple, and the implications of this doctrine. This again is one of those sermons that I highly recommend everyone listen to when it becomes available, I promise you will not regret the investment of time. The night was capped off for me by having a brew and talking theology with Chris Smith and Jason Pancheau; an excellent way to finish a day. And of course, we got more books. I think I'll be taking about 25 home with me from Louisville, and that makes me a happy boy. Well I said this would be short and I failed, but there was quite a bit packed in to the day. I'm looking forward to hearing from Ligon Duncan, Matt Chandler, and C.J. Mahaney tomorrow.

T4G Day 1...

Day one of Together for the Gospel 2010 is drawing to a close, and I think just today's events would be worth the trip. For those of you who don't know, T4G is a conference aimed at leaders in the Christian church and focused on placing the gospel at the center of Christian ministry. Here are a few of my highlights so far. First, the books- we've been given a lot of books (eight and counting). For those of you who are nerds like me, this is a very exciting thing. Second, getting to hang with guys like Brett Sweet, Jason Wakefield, Dan Morse, Chris Smith, Jason Pancheau, and my little bro is a good thing. Getting to sing praises to God with them and almost 7,000 other men is a great thing. And of course, the lectures from Mark Dever, R.C. Sproul, and Al Mohler, to understate a little, were compelling. Dever spoke on the church and its evangelistic role as the bearer of the gospel. Speaking of the universal relevancy of the gospel to a fallen world, he mentioned that "we give them the diagnosis that finally makes sense of their condition". Sproul later gave a talk that assuredly went over the heads of half of us in attendance, speaking on how we have over the years attempted to 'improve' the gospel by synthesizing it with earthly idealogies. A couple of quotes to give you an idea of what he was talking about; "..the church is to stand in the awful, awful discomfort of antithesis", "the unvarnished Word of God... doesn't need to be made more palatable with the brass of pagan philosophy", and quoting Francis Schaeffer, "The problem that is facing the church is that it has lost its sense of antithesis". This is one I'm going to want to listen to again. Finally, Mohler expounded on the ways in which the church tends to adjust the gospel, listing modern, postmodern, moral, aesthetic, therapeutic, pragmatic, emotional, and materialistic lines of thought that distort the gospel. I really recommend everyone listen to this talk, I'll have a link on my blog to where you can download it once it becomes available. And I recognize that I have used the word 'gospel' quite a bit in this post without really defining what it means. Maybe I'll succinctly define that in another post, but for now I'll recommend that you do some searching on your own and see what comes up. Also, I may put pics up here if I figure out how to post them on this here blog. Peace out, I'll try to give an update tomorrow.

Reflections On Hebrews 2:9...

I often forget how absurd Christianity can sound; I forget that to the wise, to this world's adequate minds, the message we proclaim and defend often comes across as foolishness. I've been a Christian for years now and I've talked about Jesus and the Bible with a few people, some absolute strangers. Every so often during these moments of confession, in which I openly state my beliefs, I have found that I really am taking a couple leaps of faith with this whole Christian thing. It goes something like this. 'So you see God created everything; the sun, moon, stars, ocean, land, animals, etc. And He created this one dude Adam and from Adam's side made the first woman, Eve. However, one of God's created angels who rebelled against Him came in the form of a snake and tempted Adam and Eve that they may question God and eventually disobey Him by eating from the only tree that God had forbidden. Of course in this act of thinking they knew better than God, sin entered the world and man no longer lived in perfect relationship with the perfect God...' And by this time I am usually asking myself, 'Do I really believe this?' The answer is yes. Absolutely yes. I firmly believe it takes less faith to trust this creation story than it does to believe that matter and energy came into being on their own and somehow without any direction or guidance developed into incredibly complex life; even life with instinct, critical thinking, volition, emotion, memory, etc. Still, I understand why the whole Christian faith sounds silly, because it only gets more unbelievable as it leaves the Garden, and I am reminded of this as I read Hebrews 2. In a portion of Scripture that presupposes not only a belief of the existence of angels but an understanding of their hierarchical standing, maybe the most unfathomable concept is relayed in Hebrews 2:9; 'that by the grace of God he might taste death...' In what universe does a statement like this make sense? How could it be by the grace of God that someone might experience death, especially the kind of death that is in view here? In what logical realm is it tenable that it would be due to the very fact of the gracious, loving, compassionate nature of a holy God that His own Son, God become man, would be beaten to a bloody pulp, mocked, and strung on a cross by the people He created and came to serve and save? Where in the world is the grace in that? We find where the grace goes in that Jesus tasted death 'for everyone', that Jesus died where we should have. We are the recipients of the grace, only made possible by Jesus being the recipient of wrath. There certainly is no sense in this, it is in no way logical. There is only grace. Because Christ's cross work is foundational to Christianity I often forget that belief in this truth requires God-given faith, and I usually pass by such statements with no second guesses. But this time I paused... 'by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone'.... and thought, 'This is absolutely absurd'.