After fighting our way downstairs this morning (the Galt House hotel always has elevator problems, and they are exacerbated on the last day of a conference when everyone is trying to leave at the same time-all the elevators coming down were full, so we eventually caught one going up and then rode it back down) we had a nice breakfast with Collin Hansen, who is a writer for Christianity Today and the guy who wrote the “Young, Restless, Reformed” article that was so widely read last year. It was great to meet him and his wife and to spend a bit of time with them. And then we headed over to the conference center once more.
This is the last session of the last conference I’ll be attending for a long time. The spring conference season is just about over and most of the major ones have already happened. C.J. Mahaney was given the privilege of delivering the closing message here at New Attitude. It fell to him to help the people who attended this conference to prepare to take all of the theology they’ve learned back to real life. He helped them prepare to think about how they will live what they’ve learned. This was less of a sermon and more of what Josh Harris termed sitting down with C.J. for a cup of coffee and just listening to him.
Because of the intensely personal nature of this message it did not lend itself well to a quick summary. He framed it around the priority of application and the practice of application, first showing the importance of application (while still affirming the beauty and value of correct doctrine) and then teaching three aspects of the practice of application, saying effective application is specific, requires patience with others and must be done in the shadow of the cross. If you know of C.J.’s ministry you’ll know that he is most gifted when it comes to making doctrine practical so this message was, as we’d expect, particularly convicting and useful.
We were told today that all of the conference audio will be available by Monday through the New Attitude site. I really do feel that anyone can benefit from these messages, but certainly younger Christians in particular will benefit from them. In just a few hours Aileen and I will head back home. By tomorrow I should be back to real life and back to our regularly scheduled programming at this site.
Comments (6) »
1. Tim H.
May 29, 2007
2:50 PM
Thank you so much for the time and energy you put into these Tim! I greatly appreciate it (and read it all).
2. Carole
May 30, 2007
8:30 AM
Ditto. Your notes/summaries are excellent. Thank you.
3. Sheena
May 30, 2007
10:35 AM
Sounds like you had a great time, hope your wife and baby enjoyed it too!
4. omo
May 30, 2007
4:01 PM
when i am at a conferences, if the wait is too long for the elevator, i take the stairs. I have walked up 27 flights of stairs and still arrived before people who waited for an elevator!
5. jeni
May 31, 2007
11:20 AM
Hi Tim!
Not sure if you remember, but I introduced myself to you before the first session of the conference, and then started ‘oohing and ahhing’ over your baby :)
I actually MEANT to thank you for all that you do with this website - my husband and I have had some great discussions about some of your articles, and I don’t think we would have had them if it weren’t for you getting your thoughts out there. So thanks! I just saw a baby, though, and all ‘thanks’ went out the window. Hehe.
I also had a question. I was wondering if you had, by any chance, written down Bob Kauflin’s first ‘spontaneous song?’ my group was sitting kind of behind you during that, and i thought i saw you typing away, and i got all excited that maybe you were writing the lyrics down. Only because my mom, who is a new believer and going through a divorce, was really touched by it. And no…. I wasn’t trying to spy on you :)
Anyways, thanks again and take care!
-Jeni
6. Tim Challies
May 31, 2007
11:47 AM
“Not sure if you remember, but I introduced myself to you before the first session of the conference, and then started ‘oohing and ahhing’ over your baby :)”
Sure I remember you. It was great to meet you and I don’t blame you for oohing and ahhing over Michaela. She’s just that kind of baby!
I actually did write down the song, or as much of it as I could capture. I’m not sure if it would be a terrible breach of charismatic convention to post it here (I’m a bit ignorant in these things), but if you send me an email I’ll reply back with what I got down…