Musings of a Former Fundamentalist (IFB) Renewed by Reformed Theology
The Standpoint Conference hosted by Southeast Valley Baptist Church in Gilbert, AZ (pastored by Joel Tetreau), just finished up last week. The conference was aimed at some of the issues that “young fundamentalists” have brought up concerning fundamentalism. I plan on downloading the audio, available here, and commenting on the conference in more depth later. For now I just wanted to let you all know about it, as several of my readers may be interested.
As Joel Tetreau would say, “Straight on!”
I am blessed to be a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church, where my pastor is John Piper. His sermons and writings have made a lasting impact in my walk with Christ. He is a very humble man, even though he is an evangelical leader with an ever-growing influence. Desiring God is the ministry our church started to help spread pastor John’s writings and books. And for the past several years they’ve held a national conference here in Minneapolis.
I haven’t yet attended one, largely because it conflicts with my job schedule and I can’t afford it. But with Desiring God’s policy to spread sermons in print, audio and video formats for free, I get to enjoy them anyway. Here’s a run down on this year’s conference. I haven’t started listening yet, but I’m planning on downloading and listening to all the messages.
- The Tongue, the Bridle, and the Blessing: An Exposition of James 3:1-12 by Sinclair Ferguson
- Panel Discussion – Piper, Driscoll, and Ferguson
- Words of Wonder: What Happens When We Sing? by Bob Kauflin
- How Sharp the Edge? Christ, Controversy, and Cutting Words by Mark Driscoll
- The Life-Shaping Power of Story: God’s and Ours by Dan Taylor
- Panel Discussion – Piper, Tripp, Kauflin, and Taylor
- War of Words: Getting to the Heart for God’s Sake by Paul Tripp
- Is There Christian Eloquence? Clear Words and the Wonder of the Cross by John Piper
If you did attend the conference, share your thoughts with us. In the meantime, I think I’ll start with Bob Kauflin’s message. I have great respect for his wisdom and insights, and he has written some of the best and richest songs I’ve ever heard.
It’s hard to believe that it has been 2 years since the first Together For the Gospel conference. I remember the excitement I had as I blogged about the event (which I couldn’t attend). Then and now, I consider the conference a wonderful display of, and needed encouragement towards, Christian unity. And not just unity, but unity coupled with doctrinal commitment to the true Gospel. We don’t have to sacrifice doctrine to gain unity. Both are important, and T4G demonstrates this well.
This year, I also could not attend, but I suspected the messages would be available online for free, as they were in 2006. I’m not sure if the speaker panel sessions will be available, like last year, but the seven messages are available for free online.
And while you are there, you should check out Together For the Gospel’s updated website. The messages from last year are available as well as their doctrinal statement.
To encourage you to listen to the messages (I plan on eating them up on an upcoming road trip), let me direct you to Tim Challies’ liveblogging of the entire conference. Thanks to Tim, you can get a taste of the event and each message.
Let me conclude by quoting from T4G’s “about us” page.
Together for the Gospel (T4G) began as a friendship between four pastors. These friends differed on a number of theological issues, like baptism and the charismatic gifts. But they were committed to standing together for the main thing””the gospel of Jesus Christ..
So they began a conference which occurs every two years and aims principally at encouraging other pastors to do the same””to stand together for the gospel. And now this conference is evolving, as God pleases, into an informal network of church leaders who all share this ambition and who intend to encourage one another to do the same…..
Update: Josh Gelatt has collected some quotes and personal reflections on the conference which you may enjoy: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.
Recently we’ve been debating the idea of whether certain doctrines should be considered fundamental or essential, and others merely secondary. Most Christians and even fundamentalists do admit that there are essential doctrines that are more important than others. However, as my last installment of my church’s elder confession of faith shows, this doesn’t mean other doctrines are not important.
With these thoughts on my mind, I was surprised to find a recent discussion of this very topic from my church’s most recent conference. At the 2008 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, they had a panel discussion on a variety of topics. One of the questions was “What makes a doctrine essential?” John Piper and D.A. Carson did a good job discussing that question. I took the conference video (available for download), and tried to cut it down to just this question: unfortunately, during the last 2 minutes, the audio and video are a little out of sync, but not too much.
Update: I should also note that I thought Carson’s warning about “being prophetic from the margins” was similar to my contention that majoring on the minors belittles the Gospel. Also, if anyone can’t view the video online, or download the original video, they can read the transcript.