Today’s second session was led by Edward Lobb who spoke on “Preaching as Work,” carrying on the theme begun by Derek Thomas earlier in the morning. Work is, by its very nature, difficult in this post-Eden world. There is a part of us that longs to avoid work and to do something else. But preachers have been called to labor.

The purpose of this session was to bring a fresh challenge but also a real encouragement to pastors. As his text Lobb used 2 Timothy 2:15. This verse derives its force from both what it says and from its context. The force of this letter is very plain. Paul encourages Timothy to keep on with his labor despite and through the difficulties inherent in it. Throughout the epistle Paul has warned Timothy about things he may be ashamed of and things that will come with the position he has been called to. By the end of even the first chapter, Timothy must be feeling weak and beaten down. In the second chapter Paul tells Timothy where his strength must come from. Ultimately the preacher and pastor works among many thorns and thistles. Ministry will never be easy. Those who pastor are put into a particularly thistley and thorny patch and in this we hear the exhortation of 2 Timothy 2:15. Even if the world were near-perfect this would be a difficult command to obey, so how much more so in this world? In verse one there is great assurance of the grace of Christ that will strengthen the pastor, but there are then several commands that are all about what the pastor must do to play his part. Verse fifteen cannot be seen as separated from the assurance of the first verse.

Approval or shame are the two alternatives held out in this verse. Behind the word “approved” is the concept of tested or tried. In the case of the pastor, when does this testing take place? Is it when he is young and goes before the selection board of his denomination? No, of course not, for here Paul is discussing God’s approval. Paul is thinking of the testing that will take place in the rest of Timothy’s life—the ongoing testing. This shouldn’t surprise us because testing is one of the Bible’s great themes. God tests his workers and these tests tend to come not at the beginning of the ministry but in the middle and the later years. Will pastors, in these years, be ready to stand firm, to suffer for the gospel? The biblical evidence, particularly Hebrews 12:23, makes us believe that Timothy was able to stand firm until the end. Pastors will either rightly handle the truth and persevere or swerve from it and be ashamed.

The fundamental character of the preacher’s task is to handle the word of truth rightly. In the Greek the word translated as “handling” really means “cutting straight.” The metaphor of straight cutting is a metaphor of cutting a straight road through the countryside. Timothy’s task is to communicate this word of truth to others, cutting a straight road so it can travel into their hearts and minds. The preacher’s task is to get truth from his heart and mind to the hearts and minds of the listeners. There are many obstacles to this. One obstacle is intellectual fog (either in the preacher or the listener, though the preacher cannot do much about the listener). The fog in the pulpit is part of the labor. The first hour of sermon preparation is not too difficult but then you need to start bracing yourself and start asking some serious questions of the text. Really understanding the passage is only the first task and the preacher must also consider how he will cut this road to the hearer’s heart. What is said in the pulpit must be coherent and logical. The single main thrust of the passage needs to be made unambiguous. The price of clarity in the pulpit is anguish in the study. Another obstacle is lack of confidence that this Word is the sufficient truth. Many pastors today do not quite believe that the Word is sufficient, turning instead to stories and illustrations and anything but the Word. The reality is that real expository is not Bible-based but is just Bible. This is not to say that illustrations are useless, but that there is a danger when the illustrations become the big thing and the thing people remember. The Word of truth is not able just to hold people’s interests but to remake the minds and hearts of God’s people. It is important to note that learning to cut it straight is not just the peserver of young men. Rather, men of fifty and sixty can still be significantly learning to be better preachers.

The fundamental character of the preacher himself is that he is a worker. His work is at the core this task of cutting a straight road—of preaching and teaching the words of God. Paul did all sorts of things: he traveled extensively, made tents, raised money. But his work was to preach and teach and this is the activity to which he gave himself year after year. He knew that people could not be saved if they did not believe and that to believe they need both the preacher and his preaching. When asked your vocation, do you say I’m a pastor or I’m a clergyman or do you say “I’m a preacher?”

Let’s consider this word “worker.” Paul clearly regards preaching as labor and toil. If pastors are to be workers, the work requires planning. He cannot be rigid in his planning and needs to be flexible. Preaching preparation requires planning and this must take into account the specific pastor’s skill and ability. This work also requires vigor. The Scriptures do not yield their treasure to chance inquiry but require dedicated effort.

There are two things that shouldn’t characterize the work of a pastor. Pastors are to be workers but not workaholics. To be a workaholic is to court sorrow and disaster. He may get away with it for a while but there will be inevitable painful payback in the end. Secondly, pastors are workers, not orators. Any preacher knows the temptation to be an orator and knows that oratory can have its own power. But this, at heart, is an attempt to gain leverage over the listener and shows that the preacher doesn’t quite trust the Bible. It relies on stirring oratory to woo the peoples’ hearts. It can also become a self-promotion, a look-at-me technique designed to win men’s praise. Orators really proclaim themselves rather than Christ Jesus.

What is the purpose of preaching and teaching? That listeners should understand the passage, being built up and nourished by it. This work is the best toil and labor in the world, for through it God brings salvation to the lost, joy to the saved, and great nourishment and understanding to His servants.

After last night’s session Julian and I met up with the Dunn family who graciously offered to put us up over this conference. I have grown weary of hotels and it was great to be able to stay at a real house. So we made our way over there and I lasted just a few minutes before I had to head off to bed. The first day of a conference is always a tough one for me!

Today began with Derek Thomas discussing “Preaching as Calling.” By calling he did not refer simply to the question of do I have a call to the ministry, but whether there is that inward burden imposed by the Spirit that compels me to pursue full-time gospel work, corroborated and visibly demonstrated by the church and set apart for this ministry. He went a little wider to ask “What is the calling of a preacher?” The calling to be a preacher is the calling to be an expositor and a pastor to the Lord’s people. It is a calling that has a shape, a dynamic and certain contours. The discussion was framed around a handout he provided that had on it a section from “Of the Preaching of the Word” taken from the Westminster Directory of Public Worship. He feels this is a superior look at the topic and discussed it at length. This document discusses the qualifications for biblical preaching, the specific marks or form of biblical preaching, the method that should characterize biblical preaching and the style that will be characteristic of biblical preaching.

What is essential to a calling to the ministry? A preacher is a workman who needs not be ashamed. The call to ministry is a call to labor and a call to hard work. It is a call to labor in the Word and in ideas. It is hard work and ought to be a toil. There must also be some gifting in some measure. A call to preach requires certain gifts and the document spells out some of these. There must be “ancillary knowledge,” some of which are laid out in this document. More than anything, the document spells out the need to have a love for and a knowledge of good theology. Here he inserted an exhortation to read more and to read better. He encouraged pastors to have a strategy in their reading and in the way they gain knowledge of theology. Pastors must love the Bible and a knowledge of it. There is also what the Divines called “spiritual knowledge.” A pastor must be advanced in this kind of knowledge because a pastor can’t be just an ordinary Christian. As a pastor and as a shepherd you must be constantly growing spiritually, having insight into the hearts and souls of men and women. There is a balance of intellectual and spiritual equipment. The mark of preaching and of ministry is directly related to and proportional to the intensity of our communion and union with Jesus Christ. Am I walking with Him? Am I growing with Him?

The document goes on to speak of the manner and form of biblical preaching. Here it gets very specific. They did not lay down strict rules for expository preaching but recognized different forms of it. Contrary to what many people seem to believe, long, drawn out, verse-by-verse, multi-year expository sermons are not a biblical necessity. This document urges sensitivity to a particular congregation, telling the pastor to preach to the needs of his congregation. There are three principles operative here. The first is the bent of preachers inclination. His thinking and praying about a congregation will be molded and fashioned by the relationship between pastor and people. The second is the balance of Scripture. Are you preaching from both Testaments? Are you preaching from all of the literary genres? Third, the preacher needs to know the needs of the people of God. This document tells us that the most fruitful preachers are not those who are balanced, but those who are burdened. They have a burden for the people of God and who desire to see the Word get home to the people. It also gives a warning that preachers are not to be clones of each other. Personality serves as the conduit for the preaching and is an integral part of it.

The document deals with the form of exposition. It speaks of the parts of a sermon, from introduction to conclusion. A sermon needs to have form. A lot of Christians tend to read their Bibles the way you as preachers preach it. Many young Christians develop habits of reading their Bibles and asking certain questions of the text because of the way they hear pastors preaching it. This is why the form of a sermon needs to be clear, not just in content but in form. All sermons need to have form, but not all sermons need to have the same form. This is an area where pastors may be weak since they may not change the form of the sermon as they move from passage-to-passage and genre-to-genre. Eventually it may all sound like Paul wrote it. This document underlines the unity of structure that ought to prevail.

What is the method of biblical preaching? All fruitful preaching combines both light and heat (and I think time was running short here so I did not get much else out of this point!).

What is the preacher’s calling? It is one thing to understand a text and to have exegete a text or to be able to construct a sermon. It can become quite easy to contstruct a sermon but the difficult part is the “so what?” It is difficult to explain how the text is meant to impact the heart and life of the hearer. The people who wrote this document suggest that each sermon should have an application to the mind, the heart and the will. Every passage may have a thousand ways of being applied and the preacher needs to know his people so he can properly apply it and apply it to the right type of person.

The document closes with seven remarks about the style of preaching. These seven can be summarized along three lines of thought. First, the call to be a preacher is a call to seriousness or gravitas. The opposite of this is not dour, but frivolity. This is a serious business and a serious call. Second, the preacher must be humble. The preacher must speak plainly so that everyone may understand. It is not difficult to make things difficult sound difficult, but to make the difficult simple. Third, the pastor must be loving. The pastors has to give the sense that he loves them and they will then be more willing to listen and to believe to what the pastor says.

I suspect you would gain more from this rather excellent presentation by getting a copy of the document and listening to the audio!

Voddie Baucham began the conference proper with a session dealing with “Preaching to Postmoderns.” He explained that this is a difficult title because it relies on a term that is nearly impossible to define. Some use postmodernism to describe a generation, a group of people currently in their twenties. But this is unfortunate because postmodernism is not new. Since the sixties at least this postmodernism was shoved down the throats of students. In reality postmodernism is about a specific epistemology. We are talking about individuals who take issue with (though they do not necessarily deny) certain truth claims. Postmodernity is about taking issue with certain truth claims or with our ability to know and to grasp this absolute truth and therefore taking issue with certain constructs. We are dealing with individuals who ultimately come to a place where they are not willing to stake a claim on certain historical doctrines or truths. They may not deny certain doctrines or truths but they also will not go to war with them. It operates under this mantra: what is true for you is not necessarily what is true for me. Another difficulty is that we could actually believe that we have to fundamentally change the practice of preaching in order to suit a group of people. Preaching is preaching is preaching. As Lloyd-Jones said, ultimately if a sermon is going to be preaching, it has to be expository in nature. We don’t start with ourselves or start with a need. We start with the text. Having said that, we do live in an age where people take issue with certain types of exposition. So how do we engage this group? How do we engage the individuals growing up around our college campuses who are immersed in postmodernism, but want to both hold on to the truths of Scripture and be relevant to the culture around us. Can we do biblical exposition with this group?

The answer is yes, you can! From 1 Corinthians 15 we’ll learn how. Here Paul is dealing with people who claim interest in Christianity or identify with it but there are certain aspects that they cannot grasp onto wholeheartedly. The issue of the resurrection is problematic because their way of thinking, their philosophy, their preconceived ideas, must be brought to bear on the text or the message that is being proclaimed. When the message being proclaimed rubs the wrong way of something we hold to, the message loses. This is what he deals with in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul makes three arguments: argument from authority, argument from evidence, argument from logic.

In the first few verses, Paul argues from authority. Paul identifies himself as the one who sends or provides this message but that he does so on behalf of God. God says that there are certain requirements to be His child. This argument from authority points out those who are true believers. You cannot claim to be something without having met the requirements to be what you claim.

In the next set of verses Paul argues from evidence pointing to Jesus. There are so many who are wrong on Jesus, wrong on Christ, and hence wrong on the gospel. They don’t believe that He died for sin, that He was raised. If we’re wrong on the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus we’re wrong on the gospel. The argument from evidence is that Jesus, in His life, fulfilled promises that were made hundreds of years before. Jesus dies according to the Scriptures, is raising according to the Scriptures in fulfillment of prophecies. There is also eye-witness evidence of those to whom he appeared (including Paul himself). The third evidence is to look at Paul, saying “Look at me.” We can fall into a trap of thinking we’re sharing the gospel when we’re really sharing our own story. Paul shares his story but only after the gospel, not in place of it. We are prone to simply compare our stories with each other, reducing the gospel to experience. Paul doesn’t leave his story out, but he also doesn’t highlight it.

Then there is the argument from logic. It is a little bit difference because here Paul answers people directly who claim to believe in Christ but not in the resurrection. He takes their arguments to their logical conclusion. In this passage people are saying that Jesus is fine, but they just can’t believe in the resurrection. Paul, though, says that if there is no such thing as the resurrection there are seven things that absolutely must follow. You can’t just get away with saying this. With that one statement you’ve then made other conclusions necessary. Namely, Christ has not been raised; our preaching is vain; your faith is vain; we are liars and blasphemers; your faith is futile and you haven’t been forgiven; those who have died have perished; we are the most pathetic lot around and we may as well just eat, drink and be merry.

Are these three points magic bullets that always work with postmoderns? No, absolutely not. But it is a verse-by-verse, straight out of the text exposition. It means that it’s easy to remember; that, because the Word of God is alive, it is powerful; it validates what we say because it’s rooted in the authority of Scripture; it keeps us from being the authority.

Ultimately what is important is not winning an argument, but winning a soul. It is easy to feel good about using logic and intellect and information to feel superior to an opponent. One thing exposition does to you is making the baser parts take a back seat. We don’t write the mail—we just deliver it. And that’s enough.

Postmodernism is nothing new. If we love the Word and cherish it and the God who gave it to us, and get into this book and get this book into us, we will have ready responses that have the authority of the Word of God that will be alive and active. This does not mean we don’t share our experiences, but we do so as people who have been encountered by truth to show that our experiences do not validate that truth, but merely show an example of a life that has been touched by these truths.

This is only the second time I’ve encountered Voddie’s teaching (you can read about the first here), but I’ve found both of these sessions remarkable in their content, delivery and application. You’ll want to get ahold of this MP3.

As I finish this, Keith and Kristyn Getty have taken the stage again and are going to lead us in a few minutes of song. That will bring us to the end of the first day of this conference. I’ll be back tomorrow with more. And, once again, if I could bother you with a prayer request, I’d be grateful if you could pray for God’s blessings as I speak again tomorrow.

We had a good and safe drive to Cleveland (“we” refers to myself and Julian Freeman, a friend and pastor’s assistant from my church. Julian, you may remember, traveled with me to the WorshipGod 06 Conference last year). It was quite uneventful but for a brief hiccup at the border. When I cross the border to go to these events I always mention that I’m going to a “pastor’s conference” or a “Christian conference.” I gave the usual reply this time but the border guard this time asked “Are you speaking at this conference?” This is the first time I’ve been asked this question and, as luck would have it, the first time that I have actually been asked to speak. When I heard that I was speaking, he gave me a little pink piece of paper and told me I’d have to speak to someone in Immigration (“Park over there and enter door one”). I eventually got to speak to someone who asked me what I was doing (“giving a seminar”), whether I was getting paid (“I actually don’t know”) and whether I had any information about the conference. At this point he did the obvious thing: pulled up his browser and Googled the conference and my name. He pulled up my site, saw that I had just posted on my site that I was heading to Cleveland, and then decided that I wasn’t such a bad guy. He stamped my piece of paper and let me go, telling me that I’m not allowed to go into the States and get paid unless its on an honorarium basis. I guess that’s something to remember for the future. Meanwhile, my American friends can rest in the knowledge that the first line of defense for the United States of America is Google.

We arrived at the church at around 1 PM and got the grand tour. And then, at 3 PM, I gave the first of two iterations of my seminar on “Blogging Your Ministry” to however many people could fit in the room (40 maybe?). I thought it went pretty well, though rumor has it I spoke a little bit quickly and perhaps tried to cram in just a little bit too much information. And one person told me (quite helpfully, I think) that it sounded more like a blog post than a seminar. So I suppose it was a fairly successful transition from the written word to the spoken word. I’ve got things to work on for the second time I present it. They did record the audio and I’ll share the link if it’s not too embarrassing. I’ll share the text at some point as well.

Alistair Begg kicked off the conference with an update about his surgery. While most of the news is good and the doctors claim they feel he is now cancer free, he does have some more minor surgery scheduled tomorrow. He will be present for portions of this conference but not for as much as he might otherwise like. Begg then introduced the staff, speakers and blogger who are involved in this event (and at this moment blogging jokes are flying fast and furious). Derek Thomas and Edward Lobb each took a few minutes to introduce themselves and to share their testimonies. This weekend’s third speaker, Voddie Baucham is still in transit and hopes to arrive here before his 7 PM session is set to begin.

Begg provided just a brief exhortation on 1 Timothy 4:16 which reads “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.” We were then sent off to eat dinner. The conference will begin in earnest in just a couple of hours when Voddie Baucham leads the first general session.

I am off to Cleveland in about fifteen minutes. I’ll be attending The Basics Conference which is held at Parkside Church (which is, of course, pastored by Alistair Begg). Cleveland is somewhere around five hours away by car so I decided to drive rather than fly. I will be there until the conference wraps up Wednesday at around noon.

If you could remember me in prayer, I’d be grateful. Not only would do I ask for traveling mercies, but I’m also leading a seminar (twice) and, since this is one of my first forays into speaking at one of these seminars, would ask that you seek God’s blessing on my behalf. I’m not a natural public speaker so this is definitely a bit of a stretch for me. I know the subject matter and know what I want to say, but really do want to say it in a way that is most helpful.

Check in later this afternoon or evening and I’ll begin to provide updates.

I had a long and deep sleep last night and then headed to the dining hall for breakfast with a Reformed Virginian and an American Swede. After munching down some crispy bacon (seems to be how they eat it in Mississippi) and french toast, we gathered again for the conference’s final worship service, this one led by Ken Pierce and with Derek Thomas preaching “The Benediction” from 2 Corinthians 13:14.

It was Martin Luther who reintroduced the benediction as a liturgical act of bringing a worship service to a close and since the Reformation this verse (2 Corinthians 13:14) has had pride of place in many services. But we may have lost a sense of the usefulness of a benediction. It is more than just a farewell or a prayer, but is meant to be a blessing (which means you should be looking up, not looking down with your eyes closed). This particular benediction functions covenantally, indicating the twin themes of blessing and cursing, the way of the Lord and the way of the world. At the end of the service it is appropriate to declare to the people which is the way to true joy and happiness. When using this benediction, every service ends with God, His Word and His covenant. It reminds us of the faithfulness, character and immutability of God. It also serves as a prooftext reminding us of the Trinity, of what He is in His being and essence. It is a constant reminder to us of the essential truth of this doctrine and reminds us how important it is that the rest of the service is also trinitarian.

Thomas then expounded on each of the benediction’s three points, the grace of the Lod Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, my notes on this sermon left a little bit to be desired (actually, they left a lot to be desired) so decided it would be best to just leave things like this, as only a brief summary. The sermon was meant to uplift pastors who are so often burdened by their work, and who are tired and sometimes worn out or beaten down. This benediction serves as a reminder to them of these three wonderful principles that should minister to the hearts of those who minister to others.

And this was a recurring theme at this conference, that ministers so often face extraordinary difficulties and that they come under attack from within the church and without as they attempt to bring the Word to God’s people. I could quickly see that this conference, this fellowship, serves as an opportunity for pastors to escape, for just a few days. It is an opportunity for them to hear some teaching and to offer worship to the Lord. But most of all it is an opportunity for them to fellowship with other ministers, to relax and to unwind, whether than involves quiet Bible study under a tree, endlessly casting a line into the lake and hoping that there is a fish in their worth catching, or using a handgun to obliterate the threat posed by marauding haybales conveniently covered in concentric circles.

I’m not really sure how one becomes a member of this fellowship, but I do know that many ministers would benefit from it. The grounds of this conference are unique and uniquely beautiful. It is an amazing place to be and wherever I go I hear people saying how much they love this time and how much they love to meet here with their brothers in the Lord and brothers in the ministry. The flavor is southern and southern Presbyterian in particular. But even as a Canadian and a Baptist I felt welcome and felt at home. It has been a grand week.

This afternoon we enjoyed a panel discussion in which Ligon Duncan spoke with several African American pastors. He asked about how they were saved, how they came to embrace the doctrines of grace, and how they feel the church can best address issues of race. He also spoke briefly on the phone with Mark Dever (asking Mark about his upcoming writing projects) and then with D.A. Carson (whom he also asked about his upcoming writing project). In the afternoon we had a few hours of free time which I used to make a long and circuitous tour of this incredible facility. I even found myself at a shooting range with a bunch of pastors blasting away at some targets with at .45 (two to the chest, one to the head seemed to be the order of the day). We walked for at least an hour and still had to stop short of seeing everything.

After dinner we reconvened for another worship service, this one led by Jay Harvey and with a sermon by Thabiti Anyabwile.

Thabiti spoke from Ephesians 2:11-22 on the topic of “The End of Alienation, Hostility, and Homelessness.” He began by discussing how important and confusing this issue is, and how racial identity continues to be a major struggle for individuals and for our culture even in the twenty-first century. Many unbelievers are attempting to sort out the issues, but even the best and brightest minds continually contradict each other. The vision held out to us by God through His apostle in Ephesians 2 is glorious and provides the biblical solutions.

The three problems connected with race and identity that are addressed and answered in this passage are Alienation, Hostility and Homelessness.

The answer to our alienation is nearness to God. Verses one through ten of this chapter see Paul addressing individuals but in verses 11-22 he zooms out and looks at the people of God. He addresses these Gentiles with whom there is sharp ethnic division from the Jews. Because they were not Jewish they had been foreigners to the covenant and were without hope and without God. This is how people show up at our churches, in a desperate, desolate condition. They are estranged from God, from His people and from any kind of hope. Through Christ they are now brought near to Christ and are Christians. They are a new spiritual ethnic group. This changes everything! Alienation ends when we find nearness to God.

The answer to our hostility is reconciliation and peace through Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself is our peace. Peace is a person and He is the only peace available to Jew or Gentile. To achieve this peace, Jesus made groups that were once hostile to be unified, He destroyed the wall or barrier of hostility, He abolished the law and its regulations, and He came and preached this message of peace (which is a way of summarizing His earthly ministry). Jesus’ purpose in creating this peace was to create one new man, a man characterized by reconciliation with God and with fellow Christians. We see the power of what Christ achieves in the cross when He offers Himself in our place. We see the end of alienation and the end of hostility. He does not make it possible or make it available in the future, but something He does and accomplishes. Why stress this? Because in most Christian churches we live beneath our inheritance on this issue. The power for reconciliation is found in the power of the cross. The danger for us is that we can live in a way that we show the world, which is so confused by racial reconciliation, that we haven’t figured it out either. When we do this we lie about Jesus and what He has accomplished for us.

The answer to our homelessness is a new, permanent dwelling with God. Because of our hostility we are a people that are not at home with God or with each other. We are a household built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and with Jesus as the chief cornerstone. He anchors this building, keeping it level and sturdy. All of history is about God building for Himself a holy temple, a dwelling place. It is a new building made of living stones which each of us is (or, as Thabiti said, “we be that!”). We are the temple, the place where God resides.

God ends the alienation, hostility and homelessness. So what? How does this impact a pastor’s ministry? What difference does a passage like this make in living out our faith? There are several applications:

First, Ephesians 2 lets us know that Christianity is more corporate than we may be accustomed to thinking. It is about more than our personal relationship with God. The doctrine of the church may be a secondary doctrine but it is not a primary reality. We cannot afford to have an anemic understanding of how we cultivate togetherness in the church.

Second, this passage promises greater unity than we may imagine or experience. The cross holds out for us more promise, power and deliverance than we may have ever imagined. We need to preach the cross in such a way that it applies to the way people think about identity.

Third, this passage begs us to be an aggressively inclusive people. Christians, of all people, who have been strangers in this world and who have been alien, are to be the people with the widest arms, the people seeking to embrace the most. This may be in evangelism or in hospitality or in any other way either inside or outside the church. Failure to do so is a failure to rightly grasp the gospel with our own lives.

Fourth, we need a new anthropology, a new understanding of man. We need to speak to the likeness of all people, regardless of race, but we need more. Distinctly Christian anthropology has to go on to talk about our new identity of Christ in dialog with notions of culture. We need a Christological anthropology. It also needs to be ecclesiological as well.

To summarize briefly, through the cross of Christ we can hold out to the world what it looks like to no longer be alienated, hostile or homeless.

Tonight’s winning quote came courtesy of Thabiti: “I’m in Mississippi in front of a largely white audience…in the woods!”

I’ll be back tomorrow with one more update and possibly some reflections. And then I’ll be heading home!

The day began with David Robertson speaking to us about Robert Murray McCheyne. Robertson, who currently pastors St. Peter’s Free Church, the very church of McCheyne, wrote a biography (Awakening: The Life & Ministry of Robert Murray McCheyne) of McCheyne in 1994 and shared with us some of the lessons we can learn from the all-too-short life of this great Scottish preacher.

We then turned to the second of this conference’s worship services. After Kevin Smith assisted in reading the Word, praying and leading worship, Brian Habig preached from Genesis 11:1-9.

Depravity is not an abstraction but has particular manifestations.

Why are these people building the tower? - The world’s population is increasing but is not expanding outwards as much as they could or as much as they were commanded to. The earth was still wild and people were staying where it was safe and settled. The people decided to make a name for themselves by making a city and a tower that could sustain them. They were effectively saying, “When someone comes from afar they will see this tower—our tower.” Remember that Moses originally wrote this text for a people who had just been released from Egypt and it would be difficult for them to believe that someone could actually make bricks and create huge buildings on a volunteer basis.

What does God not like it? - He is against this project because something that is natural to Him is that He wants people made in His image to spread out and fill His earth. We speak of the Great Commission but the first commission is to fill and subdue the earth. These people are simply ignoring this and do not want to fill the earth.

What does God do about it? - He does something in the short-run and something in the long-run. In the short-run, He comes down, though we don’t fully know what that means. He Himself goes to Babel and draws this conclusion: if they are already doing this and have one language, there is almost no cap on what they will come up with. So he confuses their language, making it so bewildering and confusing that they cannot finish the project and the city goes unfinished. He scatters them over the face of the earth.

In the long-run He comes as both God and man to earth. He comes as the God-man and does not just appear to walk around, but really lives here and dwells in our midst and He says things like “I have come to seek and to save the lost.” He goes to all kinds of people—the poor, women, the marginalized, etc. And finally, lays down His life for His people and is raised in glory. When He is risen from the dead He gathers his disciples together and, before He ascends, says “you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth.” At Pentecost you get the reversal of Babel so that all languages declare the only name worth naming. Luke goes out of his way to let us see something—he lets us see how the gospel message began to be taken to the world as the people were scattered through persecution (Acts 8). God Himself scattered them in this way.

Habig then reminded the people here that one of the founding principles of the PCA was an emphasis on the Great Commission and, while this continues to be emphasized, many PCA churches have neglected the mission field in their very backyards. We are to spread out where God has placed us. The question for pastors is this: Is that the fruit of what you’re teaching and preaching? Does your own behavior exemplify this? Do you put yourself in uncomfortable places where you will be able to meet people who need to meet the Savior (much as Jesus placed Himself in a strange place to meet the woman at the well)? The exhortation is this: place yourself unnaturally to reach people where you would not naturally go.

If you are a pastor or an elder, I think this is a message you will want to hear.

This afternoon Carl Robbins invited different pastors, church planters and heads of ministries to provide brief updates on what has happened in their ministries over the past year. This was really an amazing time as we were able to see the diversity of Reformed ministries. We heard from missionaries raising support to head to other countries to begin churches or whole denominations. We heard from churches that are helping the recovery efforts in Gulfport, Mississippi, we heard from people who translate good books into Spanish and from people who have begun new churches. This was only the first round of these updates and I look forward to hearing more as this event continues. I really got the feeling as I sat here that the value of this event must grow with each year a person attends. A person who has heard updates and prayer requests year-after-year will be able to immediately recognize the answers to prayer and praise God for them. Most conferences have a clear beginning and end. It seems that this fellowship is merely paused at the end of each year and that each time these men gather they just pick up where they left off the year before.

Tonight we had the first of what will be four worship services during the course of the conference. Each is a full service and allows the ministers in attendance to gather ideas about how others conduct their services. Tonight’s service was led by Harry Reeder and the sermon was preached by Douglas Kelly. He preached from Mark 11:24-26 (and do note that verse 26 does not appear in some translations, the ESV included—Kelly preached from the King James) and dealt with the subject of forgiveness. Satan will not be likely to attack a conservative pastor on issues such as “the enlightenment tells us that miracles can’t happen.” Rather, he seeks to have him believe that prayer goes unanswered and seeks to keep him from having a vibrant, powerful prayer life.

The point of this passage is simple. You have to forgive in order to be powerful in prayer. The bad news is that this is one of the hardest commandments in the Scripture to practice. But it’s not really bad news because we have the Holy Spirit to help and guide us.

The sermon was framed around four matters raised by this matter of forgiveness for personal and ministerial prayers to be answered:

The importance of forgiveness - We know that forgiveness is important because Jesus says in several different places that we are to do it. In this passage he connects our willingness to forgive with the power and effectiveness of our prayers. There are never grounds for a Christian not to forgive since God has forgiven us the infinite debt we owe to Him. There are two major impediments to an effective ministry in the local church, one being lack of perseverance in prayer and the other being a lack of forgiveness. It is difficult to think that heartfelt prayers for other people within the church can be blocked because you have neglected to extend forgiveness to others. Yet this is what this passage preaches.

What forgiveness is not - We do not pay off God to forgive our sins by forgiving others. To accept the Divine forgiveness through Jesus’ blood and resurrection ushers me into God’s holy presence where I experience great changes of heart and mind and attitude. It means that the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in my deepest personality. To refuse to forgive others means you’ve never really understood the gospel in the first place.

How forgiveness works - Forgiveness day-by-day unblocks the barriers to joyful communication. Being a forgiving person unblocks any barrier between my soul and the Lord’s favor. Forgiveness on a human level unblocks the joy of communication with other brothers and sisters in the Lord, allowing happy, ongoing relationships.

Several objections to forgiveness - While we tend to agree that this is biblical, we often raise objections to actually having to do it. This is easy to understand but very hard to practice. Hence a self-protective device so we don’t have to go through the pain of forgiving is to come up with objections to forgiveness. Here are five objections: First, if we forgive someone who hurt us, we will be taken advantage of and they might do it again. The answer to this is, yes they might but Jesus told us to forgive seventy times seven. We do our part and leave what they do with God. Second, to forgive some unworthy person would lower our moral standards. This can’t be right because God the holy and pure forgives sinners without lowering His standards. Third, it is embarrassing to ask for pardon. Many of us feel that if we apologize the other person will know that we were in the wrong. But, of course, they already know that. Fourth, it is hard to forgive but the answer is to understand what it took for Jesus to forgive us. There was nothing easy about it. Fifth, we worry that the other person has not apologized to us. but we are to be like God in taking the initiative to forgive.

We closed with that great Getty/Townend hymn, “The Power of the Cross.”

Ligon Duncan kicked things off with an explanation of this fellowship (they do not refer to it as a conference), the reason it exists and what they mean by continually referring to “the ordinary means of grace.” The Twin Lakes Fellowship is a ministerial fraternal committed to connecting gospel ministers and elders with one another. Duncan quoted Jonathan Edwards who said that when God prepares His church for a significant blessing, He brings together a brotherhood of ministers. These people will have differences but believe passionately in the things that bind them. The Fellowship represents a wide variety of Christians spanning Presbyterians, Baptists, Christian Missionary Alliance, etc.

Every minister at some point feels alone and this is too hard a work to feel alone. This fellowship promotes a dissipation of that aloneness and promote this fellowship. They can come together to know that they’re not alone and to find people who are close to them both theologically and geographically. It is not just a ministerial fraternal but one that wants to have a positive effect on church health and growth through the ordinary means of grace. They want to promote church planting and kingdom extension.

This phrase, the ordinary means of grace, required lengthy explanation. The ordinary means of grace are a focus on the Word, prayer and sacraments. These are the ordinances given by God through which congregational life is nurtured. A ministry that focuses on the things God says are critical to the health and growth of His people.

He paused here to reflect on results-based ministry and said we cannot shoot for only short-term results but need to work towards the long-term results. He quoted Jim Boice who said Evangelicals over-estimate what they can accomplish in five years but under-estimate what they can accomplish in twenty. Far too many ministers and ministries focus on the short-term at the expense of real growth and change.

Ministers today are facing challenges from the emerging church, the word faith movement, Purpose Driven and other fad-driven programs. These programs claim that, since everything in the world has changed, we need to change. But the fundamental human problem has not changed and thus neither has the biblical solution or the God-given means. Effective Christian ministry has always been marked by a confidence in God’s Word both in message and method. This doesn’t mean that we don’t think hard about cultural context but we must know what God’s answer is.

There are only three views of gospel ministry:

• Effective engagement requires us to update the message.
• Effective ministry requires us to update our methods.
• Effective ministry begins with a pre-commitment to God’s methods and message as set forth in His Word.

The first approach is that of theological liberalism and says that the gospel won’t work until the message is changed. The second approach is that of modern evangelicalism and especially the seeker-friendly approach, as they say that the gospel won’t work until the method is changed—the message is fine, but the methods need to be tweaked. However, the medium is the message. The method and the message cannot simply be neatly separated. The third approach is that of those who are committed to the ordinary means of grace. Those committed to an approach that believes that the gospel works and that God has given both the message and the method. This is a ministry based on doing the things God says are central to the spiritual health and growth of His people. It is radically committed to a biblical direction of the priorities of ministry. There is a desire among young Reformed evangelicals to see change in the church but “what kind of change?” is the question of the hour. Some people say we need to reject how church and ministry have been done because they don’t work, but they look only to recent church history and blame Protestant confessional theology on the mistakes of the past forty years. This is bad diagnosis and the solutions are worse than the problem. The other direction of change is to go back to the way the Bible says we are to do things. This means challenging some of the sacred cows of church tradition and the culture around us.

However important it is to understand our times and our context (and they are very important!) the ordinary means approach to ministry is first and foremost concerned with biblical fidelity because we believe that faithfulness is relevance. As David Wells says, those whom the world thinks are most irrelevant are in fact those who are most relevant to this world.

People committed to the ordinary means of grace know that God instructs ministers and churches to: Give attention to the public reading of the Word; Preach the Word; Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…; Celebrate the Lord’s Supper; Pray. These are the ways that God’s people grow. These are the tools of God’s grace and nothing else in the church’s program should detract from these means of grace. This means that ministry is not rocket science. Gospel faithfulness does not require a PhD in Sociology. Ministry is determined more by reading the Word of God than by reading culture. The ordinary means of grace minister wants to think hard about culture, but when it comes to determining method and priorities he moves from text to ministry, not from culture to ministry.

Duncan then asked What do we want to see coming out of the Twin Lakes Fellowship? He mentioned briefly that a few days ago he was with John Piper who has told Reformed leaders that they need to take responsibility to shepherd the young Reformed awakening and to give it godly, biblical counsel. Duncan then said that this Fellowship longs to see a renewal of the old evangelical alliances around the gospel and a strong coalition of [And here he began to channel John Piper in a paragraph that would have broken the - key on my keyboard had I been able to keep up with it and transcribe it] pastors working together for the gospel. And these men will shepherd churches banding together for the gospel and holding tightly to biblical theology.

And that is an overview of the Twin Lakes Fellowship. After a brief pause he called Philip Ryken to discuss two projects Ryken is leading, a literary study Bible that will be published by Crossway and the Reformed Expository Commentary series.