Commentary on Desiring God's National Conference

~ fundyreformed

The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World--Desiring God's 2006 National Conference

I feel somewhat foolish not being at Desiring God’s 2006 National Conference when I live right here in St. Paul and attend Bethlehem Baptist Church. Actually I would have loved to go, but the $100 was too much for us. And also I normally work nights on the weekends, and so I would need time off from work to boot.

But I hear the conference messages will be posted for free online at Desiring God’s exciting new website. So I can download the audio or video of the sessions and listen to them just a little bit late.

I am blessed in that we Bethlehem members will be treated to a sermon from David Wells this Sunday. He is the author around whose book the conference is named. He wrote Above All Earthly Powers and the conference is named “Above All Earthly Powers: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World”.  

For info  on all the conference speakers along with  clips of  interviews and more, be sure to check this link  out. I’ll be sure to link to the conference messages when they get posted. But for now, you might enjoy some commentary on the conference like I did.

Tim Challies of challies.com is liveblogging the conference. He gives a synopsis/precis of the message from each session.

There are a whole bunch of other great posts out there on the sessions or different aspects of the conference in general. Adrian Warnock’s blog gives the best rundown on all the various posts out there. Just go to his blog and you’ll be able to navigate around easy enough to find all the info I’m talking about. I will, however, list a few of the highlights below as well as point out a few Adrian missed.

  • Tim Challie’s pastor (Paul Martin) posts the best summary of the first Q & A session with Driscoll, Piper, and Keller that I have seen.
  • Josh Harris posted some great reflections from all of the Q & A sessions so far. Especially interesting is his description (and application to his own self)  of a pastoral correction that John Piper gave to Mark Driscoll publically after his message. (Adrian posts an excerpt dealing with just that part of Josh’s post.)
  • SB of Exhibiting the Value of Knowing God gives a great “cornucopia” post with a hodgepodge of pictures, video clips, and links.
  • That post is what clued me in on some great liveblogging that is going on at Samshua. That blog has the first three sessions blogged, but also has several videoclips taken live during the conference, and lots of photographs. Just go to the blog and scroll through the various posts. (I think that Adrian missed the resources on this blog!)
  • Lastly, the New Attitude blog is the only one I found that has all five sessions summarized for us. This is the fifth post on DA Carson’s presentation (Challies’ post on this is not available yet). (Adrian didn’t link to this one either, but I’m not sure what time it is over there in England. He’s probably in church right now.)  

∼striving for the unity of the faith for the glory of God∼ Eph. 4:3,13 “¢ Rom. 15:5-7

8 thoughts on “Commentary on Desiring God's National Conference”

  1. Bob,
    Slice did a piece on Mark Driscoll, Pastor at Mars Hill in Seattle. Slice has done a couple of pieces on him, one of them has video’s about his ministry… I think it’s called- “Mark Driscoll Speaks About His Seattle Ministry.”
    What I was wanting to know is, are you aware of some of the Emergent issues out there, and does Bro. Piper see eye to eye with the Emergent Crowd? I noticed that Driscoll is speaking at Piper’s conference, and I also know he has many folks talking round’ here. I have a friend who visited his church last month while on a business trip, and said it made Fellowship Church here in Texas- look liturgical. Anyway, any thoughts or knowledge on the Emergent subject and Piper’s role? Thanks Bob.

    Gage Browning
    Experimental Calvinism

  2. Bob,
    Sorry, if you don’t know Fellowship Church, it’s akin to Willowcreek, and the basic Mega-Seeker Church. It runs approx 25,000 on a weekend.
    Thanks,

    Gage

  3. Gage,

    I am no expert on Driscoll but here is my take. He is very overtly reformed and complementarian–conservative theologically. He has geared his church to be acceptable by the culture he is in–much like a missionary to a foreign culture would. He views it as being hospitable and making it so that when people take issue with him and his church it is over the message of the gospel and not a Christian Culture peculiarity.

    You should check out the video clip of Driscoll in this post, and check out his message (see Challies’ summary of it linked to in this post–and it should eventually be available on the Desiring God website).

    Piper is very much anti-emergent. And Driscoll does not run in the circles he once did early on. This whole conference is really an attempt to speak to the problem of the emergent church. Emergent church has their own solution to ministering in a postmodern culture, and this conference gives the polar opposite view, in many respects. You should check out Piper’s message it is now available here.

    Does that answer your questions?

  6. Hey Bob,

    I just listened to almost all of these sermons. They are great. I really liked the Q&A one too.

    I really enjoyed Pastor Driscoll’s preaching as well. I knew his visit there would be controversial but I think everyone comes away from it a little better. I listened to a sermon of his recently from the marshillchurch.org called Death by love that was very similar. Still good though and a really strong picture of crucifixion.

    Say “Hello and blessings” to your family from ours.

  7. Mike,

    Great to hear from you. Glad the messages were a blessing to you. I plan on downloading them and listening soon as well.

    God bless you richly in Christ,

    Bob

  8. Pingback: Storms, Sleepers, and Substitutes–Jonah As a Type of Christ « Fundamentally Reformed

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