If you’re in or near Greenville, South Carolina, this conference on April 9–10 may serve you (brochure | online registration). I’m looking forward to it.

One of the most underemphasized blessings of attending a gospel-centered conference is gospel-fellowship with so many brothers in Christ. It’s an invigorating means of grace! (Pictured here is my cancer-surviving friend Matt Hoskinson, whom my daughter appeared to find rather fascinating!)

BTW, audio and video from The Gospel Coalition’s 2009 National Conference is being made available here (just click on the titles of hyperlinked sessions).

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week, over 3,000 Christian servants will gather in Chicago for The Gospel Coalition’s 2009 National Conference.

• The 36-page program that those attending will receive when they register is available as a PDF.
• The ten plenary sessions (not the workshops) will be available as live webcasts.
• “Audio and video for each session will be made available online, free of charge, within one day of each session ending. Visit www.TheGospelCoalition.org to download” (from the inside front cover of the conference program).

My soul has feasted on the Together for the Gospel Live CD many times in the last couple of months. It features the rich hymns that over 5,000 of us sang at T4G in April 2008.

This CD is on sale this month for only $6 with free shipping in the continental US. (Sovereign Grace Ministries is also selling other books and CDs at reduced prices this month.)

Related:

• T4G Highlights and Pictures
• T4G 2008 MP3s
• More T4G 2008 Pictures

The annual meetings for the Evangelical Theological Society (Nov 19-21) and Society of Biblical Literature (Nov 21-25) begin next week. (I’m planning to attend only ETS this year so that I can devote more time to preparing for my impending comprehensive exams!)

After attending ETS and SBL last year, I made two observations:

1. ETS and SBL differ in several ways.

1. Requirements for full membership: ETS requires “a Th.M. degree or its equivalent” and adherence to its doctrinal basis. SBL requires a Ph.D. Only some members of ETS are members of SBL, i.e., those with Ph.D.s and who focus on the biblical disciplines.
2. Size: ETS has over 4,000 members, and SBL has over 8,500 members. I’ve heard that about 2,000 people attend ETS’s annual meeting. SBL’s annual meeting last week drew over 10,000 people. Consequently, there are about ten times as many books for sale at the latter.
3. Doctrine: ETS consists largely of professing evangelicals who are orthodox, but such people are a large minority in SBL, which does not have a doctrinal basis or statement. It is not surprising, then, that the SBL meeting is diverse, including conservative evangelicals, post-conservative evangelicals, liberals, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, and much more.

2. There are four prioritized reasons to attend ETS/SBL annual meetings.

(This is not original with me. I’ve heard D. A. Carson explain this a handful of times in various settings.)

1. Network: Catch up with friends, and make new friends and acquaintances.
2. Buy books: Everything is on sale, which warrants spending the majority of one’s book-buying budget. The stalls at SBL are superior.
3. Meet re projects: If applicable, meet with certain people regarding various projects, proposals, contracts, etc.
4. Attend sessions: If there is time, attend some sessions that you’d find profitable. Beginners often go with the mindset that #4 should be #1, but most valuable sesssions will be published shortly anyway. One exception for this general rule is when a particular session directly addresses a topic on which one is currently working.

The Gospel Coalition recently uploaded nine short videos.

About The Gospel Coalition

• Introduction to The Gospel Coalition
  (In order of appearance: Carson, Dever, Ryken, Keller, Harris, Anyabwile, Mahaney, Carson, Keller, Piper)

• What Is The Gospel? (Mark Dever)
• Evangelicalism in America Today
  (In order of appearance: Dever, Carson, Ryken, Mahaney, Carson)

• What Is The Gospel? (John Piper)

About TGC’s 2009 National Conference

• D.A. Carson (part 1)
• D.A. Carson (part 2)
• Tim Keller (part 1)
• Tim Keller (part 2)
• Phil Ryken

More info about the conference here. Register here.

In April I posted some pictures from T4G 2008. This morning I became aware of many more such pics (partly from watching this slideshow): see the first 25 pages here (the rest are from T4G 2006). Here are a few examples:

All of the MP3s for the general sessions and panel discussions are now available for free downloads. Brief bios of the speakers are available here.

I’d recommend listening to these in order:

1. Ligon Duncan: Sound Doctrine: Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry
2. Panel Discussion 1: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
3. Thabiti Anyabwile: Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church
4. Panel Discussion 2: Anyabwile, Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
5. John MacArthur: The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability
6. Mark Dever: Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology
7. Panel Discussion 3: Dever, Duncan, MacArthur, Mahaney, Mohler
8. R.C. Sproul: The Curse Motif of the Atonement
9. Panel Discussion 4: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Sproul
10. Albert Mohler: Why Do They Hate It So? The Doctrine of Substitution
11. Panel Discussion 5: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
12. John Piper: How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice
13. Panel Discussion 6: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Piper
14. C.J. Mahaney: Sustaining a Pastor’s Soul

Related:

• T4G 2008 Highlights and Pictures
• T4G 2006 MP3s (general sessions and panel discussions listed in order)
• More T4G 2008 Pictures

I thoroughly enjoyed attending T4G 2008 last week (thanks to T4G’s generosity!). It was edifying and God-glorifying.

Here are some highlights and pics:

Continue Reading »

Mark Dever posed his eighth “T4Free question” on the T4G blog earlier this week, and I was surprised that my answer was selected. (Perhaps mine had the least misspelled words and the most Piper-like hyphenated ones! Regardless, I’m grateful for this happy providence and eager for edification along with about 5,000 other people at T4G in mid-April 2008.) Here’s Mark’s question followed by the 100-words-or-less answer I submitted:

Q: “What Christian book (other than the Bible) do you think has been read by the most people attending T4G 2008, and why?”

A: “John Piper’s Desiring God

“This richly theological and warmly devotional best-seller has been the means for sending countless Christians on a trajectory towards theology that is increasingly joyful, robust, God-centered, Christ-exalting, and gospel-treasuring.

“My testimony is not unusual. I read it as a freshman in college and again during my first year of seminary, and it had a revolutionary effect on my Christian life. It shaped my attitude towards Reformed soteriology and convinced me that God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.”

In addition to selling the print book for just $9.50, Desiring God Ministries offers the following free resources:

• the entire book online
• Desiring God Study Guide
• Desiring God Study Guide for Groups
• Desiring God sermon series (text and audio)
• Desiring God seminar (audio)
• other free resources on Christian Hedonism
• other books about Christian Hedonism

I thank God for John Piper. He is a gift to the church.

On a related note, D. A. Carson pays Piper no small compliment in the preface to Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson by mentioning him parallel to three other giants of the faith:

“But my aim is much more modest: to convey enough of his [i.e., Tom Carson's] ministry and his own thought that ordinary ministers are encouraged, not least by the thought that the God of Augustine, Calvin, Spurgeon, and Piper is no less the God of Tom Carson, and of you and me” (p. 11).

This morning I returned home from San Diego, where I attended the annual meetings for the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Biblical Literature. I immensely enjoyed the sunny weather in San Diego (where I lived in 1994–1995 and where Jenni and I honeymooned in 2004), seeing and making new friends, and buying and browsing books!

Continue Reading »

This morning Christianity Today posted Collin Hansen’s article on The Gospel Coalition: “Tethered to the Center: The Gospel Coalition is committed to core evangelical beliefs and wide-ranging cultural engagement.”

Related links (listed in the “theological writings” section of my recommended resources):

The Gospel Coalition (D. A. Carson, Tim Keller): articles, audio/video (plenary talks, interviews, workshops, and a panel discussion), foundational documents

The annual Mid-America Conference on Preaching, hosted by Inter-City Baptist Church and Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, is scheduled for Thursday and Friday, October 18–19, 2007. Dr. Claude Wiggins just emailed this (pasted below with his permission; hyperlinks added):

“We would love to have you join us for the 2007 Mid-America Conference on Preaching. Our theme for this year, ‘Learning from the Past, Pressing toward the Future,’ is a reminder that we are runners in a relay race that began with the Apostles and will continue until our Lord returns. We can’t live looking backward, but if we don’t understand what has happened before us, we’re surely headed for trouble.

“This year’s speakers include Doug McLachlan, Mark Minnick, Sam Horn, David Saxon, David Doran, and the faculty of DBTS. The schedule includes eight general sessions and opportunity to choose from two dozen workshops. Complete conference information, including workshop list, schedule and registration form, is available at http://www.dbts.edu/1-4/1-41.asp. For additional information please email macp@dbts.edu or call (313) 381-0111.”

Workshops include the following:

• Essential Qualities of God-Honoring Worship Songs
• A Model for Developing A God-Centered Ministry
• Shades of Evangelicals: Recognizing the Differences
• Conservative Evangelicals and Fundamentalists: Recognizing the Differences
• Are We Worried about Holiness or How We Look?
• Expositional Preaching from the Parables
• Designing Sermons for Effective Communication
• Weakness or Wisdom? Fundamentalism and Romans 14:1–15:13
• Are Baptists Protestants?
• In Defense of Penal-Substitutionary Atonement
• Evangelistic Calvinists Past and Present: Being What We Were Chosen to Become
• Is There a Present Form of The Kingdom of God/Heaven: A Case Study in Hermeneutics and Theology
• Meaning of Fellowship in 1 John
• An Overview of Ecclesiastes
• Local Church Membership and the Practice of the Ordinances

MP3s from the 2006 Together for the Gospel conference (both main sessions and panel discussions) are now available for free at the Sovereign Grace store. Highly recommended.

1. Mark Dever: The Pastor’s Understanding of His Own Role
2. Panel Discussion 1
3. Ligon Duncan: Preaching from the Old Testament
4. Al Mohler: Preaching with the Culture in View
5. Panel Discussion 2
6. R. C. Sproul: The Center of Christian Preaching: Justification by Faith
7. Panel Discussion 3
8. John Piper: Why Expositional Preaching Is Particularly Glorifying to God
9. Panel Discussion 4
10. John MacArthur: Forty Years of Gospel Ministry
11. C. J. Mahaney: Watch Your Life
12. Panel Discussion 5

Cf. (1) Preaching the Cross (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007; 176 pp.), which makes available the main sessions from the 2006 conference in print and (2) the edifying T4G video that debriefs on the 2006 conference and talks about the upcoming 2008 conference. The video, like the five panel discussions from the 2006 conference, are hilarious!

MP3 downloads of workshops given on May 24, 2007 at The Gospel Coalition Conference are now available here. I attended “Q and A on Preaching” with Crawford Loritts and Ligon Duncan, and it was very profitable. I haven’t heard any of the other workshops yet.

See also TGC articles (including an RSS feed for recently added articles), audio & video (including interviews and a panel discussion), foundational documents, and the e-newsletter sign-up.

An edited manuscript of D. A. Carson’s “The Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-19)” is now available at The Gospel Coalition site. Carson preached this message in May at The Gospel Coalition’s first conference: video | audio.

Other resources at TGC site: articles (including an RSS feed for new articles), audio & video (including interviews), foundational documents.

The Gospel Coalition now has dozens of short video interview clips available. Four men, at least in the interviews posted so far, answer various questions: D. A. Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper, and Mark Driscoll. I reserved a few hours today to watch these, and it was well worth the time—regardless of whether one completely agrees with every viewpoint expressed. Some of the clips are especially thoughtful and moving, especially those by Carson and Piper. (Cf. TGC’s articles, audio & video, foundational documents, and stakeholders.)

I’ve heard dozens of John Piper’s sermons on MP3, but yesterday at the The Gospel Coalition conference, I had the privilege of hearing Piper preach in person for the first time.

• It was the most moving sermon I’ve ever heard Piper preach. It compelled me to worship my sovereign God, long to be with Him, and hate what He hates.
• The Gospel Coalition’s site will have audio and video from the conference available for free in about three weeks, but Desiring God has already posted the manuscript and MP3 of Piper’s sermon entitled “The Triumph of God in the New Heavens and the New Earth,” an exposition of Romans 8:18-25.
• The MP3 does not include D. A. Carson’s introduction in which he gave an anecdote about D. Martyn Lloyd Jones‘ powerful preaching and then described John Piper as the modern-day Lloyd Jones.

Scott Aniol just announced that he has made available the MP3s and PDF notebooks for the past one-day annual conferences at his church called “The Conference on the Church for God’s Glory.” I profited from attending the first two conferences in May 2003 and 2004.

• 2003 resources
• 2004 resources
• 2005 resources
• 2006 resources
• 2007 resources

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the latest “Together for the Gospel” video this morning. I found it both edifying and enjoyable to watch Mark Dever, Al Mohler, Lig Duncan, and C. J. Mahaney interact with each other for over fifty minutes!