Last week I had the opportunity to speak at a local event called Eighth Letter. I’ve been asked to describe the theological perspective of the event and I haven’t been able to do better than “emerging church.” I know this title brings all kinds of baggage with it and that not too many people want to be associated with it anymore. Nevertheless, it’s probably the simplest theological shorthand I can use. Which is to say that I was definitely not representative of the speakers who were there (a list that included Shane Claiborne, Leonard Sweet, Peter Rollins, and many others).

The format of the event was rather interesting. Each of the speakers was to bring a letter, no longer than 15-minutes in length, and read it aloud. The letter was to communicate our most urgent message to the church of North America. It was that simple. I spoke on the Friday night and immediately after my talk participated in a very brief panel discussion hosted by Andy Crouch (an editor at Christianity Today and the author of Culture Making).

My letter focused in on getting the gospel right. And if you are interested, I’ve been given permission to post the message here, though only for a limited time. So give it a listen and let me know what you think. What would your most urgent message be?

The reaction to my message was a little bit on the cold side. I was probably something of a stranger to the audience at this conference and brought a letter that was quite a bit different from the rest. So while I was not booed off the platform and did not have anything thrown at me, my impression was that the message was not particularly popular.

If interested, you can buy my talk or any of the others at the Epiphaneia web site. You can also download (for free) the brief panel discussion.

This week’s sponsor is christianaudio.com. It seems fitting that, as I blog the Ligonier Ministries National Conference focusing on The Holiness of God that we would give away some copies of the audio version of Sproul’s classic book by the same title.

This is my last planned post about Together for the Gospel. I want to use it to provide some final links and information. Then I’m going to move on to other things. Or at least that’s the plan for now.

T4G Audio & Video

Here are links to each of the sermons:

Session I Ligon Duncan - Sound Doctrine - Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry Download

Session II Thabiti Anyabwile - Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church | Download

Session III John MacArthur - The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability | Download

Session IV Mark Dever - Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology | Download

Session V RC Sproul - The Curse Motif of the Atonement | Download

Session VI Albert Mohler - Why Do They Hate It So? The Doctrine of Substitution | Download

Session VII John Piper - How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice | Download

Session VIII CJ Mahaney - Sustaining a Pastor’s Soul | Download

To watch the various YouTube videos that were posted online through the conference, simply click here.

To listen to the audio from the Band of Bloggers event, visit this link.

T4G Books

Here is the first batch of books:

Here are the rest of the T4G giveaways along with most of the Band of Blogger book giveaways (though a couple were not available at Amazon):

T4G Posts

Many of the people who were present at T4G have been writing about their experiences. It may be easiest just to click here to read the Google Blog Search roundup.

One that caught my eye was Zach Nielsen’s Is There A Uniqueness To Men Singing Together About The Gospel?. He gives three good reasons that such singing is a sign of gospel humility.

Another good one is Bob Kauflin’s list of the songs he chose for the times of worship.

No sooner had the T4G ‘08 conference wrapped up than I jumped in a van with a pack of guys from my church and headed straight home. We made it back to Toronto in pretty good time and with fewer adventures than on the way down. I enjoyed talking to the guys about their impressions of the conference and benefited from debriefing with them. There were lots of laughs and lots of good talks. Though there was a variety of opinions on which of the messages was best or most applicable or most challenging, we all agreed that it was a very good conference and I think we all returned home much encouraged.

If you would like to hear the conference messages, they are all available for you (and entirely free). You can find them right here: Together For the Gospel Sermons. Though each of them is well worth the listen, I would definitely recommend R.C. Sproul and John Piper. Those were the ones I found most personally challenging and edifying.

Here is a video containing some “exit interviews” with various participants of the Together for the Gospel ‘08 event. It concludes with some words from one of the youngest participants there—very reassuring about the rising generation!

Just a couple of days ago I completed a project for New Reformation Ministries, the teaching ministry of Dr. Steven Lawson. The timing was largely coincidental to the fact that only last week I was down in Mobile, Alabama at a conference hosted by Dr. Lawson and by his church. This is what the ministry is all about: “The unique focus of New Reformation is to recover and reclaim in the church a high view of God, an exalted vision of Him, who supremely reigns over all. Especially does this ministry seek to magnify the sovereign grace of God in the salvation of sinners. These transcendent truths that once shook the world in the sixteenth century are those same doctrines that are particularly featured in the preaching and teaching here.”

I assume that Dr. Lawson will eventually write a “Welcome to this site…” kind of article pointing out some of the site’s new features. But until he does so, I’ll outline some of the good new features that I’m most excited about.

First, and perhaps most importantly, the Sermons section has been completely overhauled. Because it is difficult to know what an audio file contains, and thus it is difficult to search for just the right audio file, we created a tagging system to try to pull out some of the key words. Thus you can look at the sermons through a tag cloud, picking out particular key words that are of interest to you. Of course sermons can also be viewed more traditionally through titles, texts, series, dates, and so on.

Second, the site’s Books section has been expanded a little bit. I think it will be improved further as the site evolves. But even in its current form it contains some good information about Dr. Lawson’s books, and especially his most recent titles from Reformation Trust.

Finally, the site now has both an RSS feed to update you on new articles and updates, and also a podcast address so you can receive Dr. Lawson’s sermons and conference messages as soon as they are posted at the site.

Of course this is not all the site has to offer. There are some good articles there along with information about Dr. Lawson and his ministry and information about where you can hear him speak. So be sure to drop by the new web site and let Dr. Lawson’s ministry serve your faith. He is, I am convinced, one of the finest expositors of our time and I’ve benefited greatly from his ministry.