More on Conferences

From Don Carson at the Theology Conference, I learned about Matthias Media (I’ll talk about Philip Jensen in a later post) and more about Mark Dever and the 9Marks ministry. I had been listening to several of the audio interviews on the 9Marks website during this time. For the record, the theology conference was poorly attended, outside of the church’s incredible members. They put on a wonderful conference. Next year is MacArthur and Bruce Ware from Southern Seminary. You can hear the audios from this year here along with other info: http://ncct2008.blogspot.com/

When I came back from Nashville, I read on Doug Smith’s blog his adventures and experiences from his 9Marks Weekender. I signed up on the waitlist for the late Winter conference and didn’t get to attend that one (no one dropped out) but I got an early shot at the May 9Marks Weekender and signed up for that one.

Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out where, why, and when Ed Stetzer was going to be in Abingdon. I had no success until I began to mine his itinerary items for details and discovered that he was a speaker at a new evangelism conference sponsored by the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia. Now that was almost too much to comprehend; I knew that Stetzer’s views were very similar to mine (we both publicly claim to hold the same theology as Don Carson) and neither of us are fans of the Finney sawdust trail, so I immediately knew this was not your normal SBC evangelism conference.

Quality Theology Conferences

I am almost overwhelmed by the abundance of high quality church and theology conferences that are being held these days. It seems that the bar has been raised at least 2 notches in the past year. I hope to get on the bandwagon by presenting a conference in the Tri-Cites, but that take money that I don’t have right now. If you know someone who would like to contribute to this effort, have them contact me.

The book business (even the big boxes and the big online stores) has been in the dumper for quite a while but it took a significant nosedive about mid February of this year. I’ve been doing it so long (going on 42 years) that I have seen many cycles come and go… and I am finally beginning to learn to go with the flow. Not so much in the past……during the mid 80′s I went on an expansion spree and opened retail stores in each of the Tri-Cities and a warehouse/office complex near where the 2 interstates intersect.

I thought things would continue to grow then and they most likely would have if the moral failings of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart had not been of such significance. As a result of those things, the mergers and acquisitions mania of the book industry (consolidation), the Gulf War, and the biggest economic recession since the Great Depression in 1981, my retail book empire came tumbling down. I lost a lot of money (nearly everything I had made in the previous 17 years) and closed all locations except the main location in Kingsport.

Since then, I have run a single theological bookstore, I rebind (by hand) personal and heirloom Bibles for folks, and sell Bibles, and new and used theological and homeschool books online. I have around 150,000 new and used Christian and theological books, mostly published since the 1960′s. Fortunately for me, my wife went back to college for the past several years and got a couple of marketable degrees…..hey who wants to pay real money to bookseller-theologians? We’re just workin’ for eternal benefits.

My point here is that since the book business is once again in a lull, I decided around the first of the year to begin occasionally attending some really good theology conferences when I could find them. This began with a trip to Albuquerque in mid January (it was cold there too) to attend the Evangelical Free Church Mid Winter Ministerial Conference. It was a great conference which lasted for several days. I attended a multi-session Church History and Polity class for the EFCA and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was able to meet several pastors and leaders for the EFCA and several of the denominational agency heads made presentations to the Polity class.

The highlight of the Albuquerque meeting (besides Polity) was a full 12 hour session led by Ed Stetzer of Lifeway fame. This guy is an incredible dynamo like the Energizer Bunny (but much larger). Ed is a missiologist, has 2 masters and 2 doctorates, works full time as head of Lifeway Research, travels the world on a daily basis, and in his spare time pastors the huge 1st Baptist Church of Hendersonville, TN (where country stars like the Oak Ridge Boys attend) as an interim pastor after the pastor there died last year. When we chatted, he mentioned that he would be in Abingdon, VA soon.

When I returned from Albuquerque, I Googled to check Don Carson’s itinerary (which I do regularly) and found that he was going to be the keynote speaker of a new conference (called The Church and Theology—right up my alley) in Nashville during February. Well I couldn’t pass that up, with him being that close (and I needed an excuse to go to Nashville to swap some hymnals at Word Music) so I was able to attend that wonderful conference and to chat briefly with “the Don.” Community Bible Church of Brentwood was the host of the conference with their terrific young pastor Byron “Boo” Yawn, a Master’s Seminary graduate. I was also able to meet and hear both pastor Steve Lawson of Mobile and blogger Tim Challies speak at that conference.

Dever and Carson

Some folks who don’t know me well may not be aware that I am a big fan of Don (D.A.) Carson and Mark Dever. They are both Cambridge Ph.D.’s who are on the cutting edge of what is going on in evangelical theology and in the life of the evolving evangelical church (at least in America) today.

Carson is considered by many to be the greatest living theologian today and by others to be the most erudite north American New Testament scholar and editor. Carson, who is pushing 62 still travels the world like the younger Ed Stetzer and ministers to the church, college community, and theological students on a variety of continents in a variety of languages. In his spare time he mentors Ph.D. students at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Dever is pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, lured to that post by Carl F. H. Henry who was a long time member of that church. Dever had finished his Ph.D. at Cambridge and was teaching at the Divinity School there while serving as an associate pastor of Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge. The story goes (according to a C.J. Mahaney interview with Dever…) that Mark was summonsed by Henry through a hand delivered letter whose courier was Don Carson.

To shorten the story, besides serving as pastor of a prominent church, Dever does many related things which include training pastors and church leaders and mentoring seminarians who serve a 5 month paid internship in his church. The projects revolve around the ministry of http://www.9marks.org

Carson’s current proposal is to reinvent the evangelical church through a process of restoration and reformation in a collegial group of 50 or so pastors who are scholars (or vice versa). He is aided at the helm of this project by the recent NYT bestselling author Tim Keller, who is pastor of an influential church in NY city called Redeemer Presbyterian. The basis of their project can be found at thegospelcoalition.org

Bootcamp leadership training

I just returned from my first of three residencies in a new Ph.D. program in Leadership at Tennessee Temple University’s Temple Baptist Seminary. Don’t let the Baptist name mislead you, this school is evangelical and welcomes folks from all denominations and non-denominational leaders. Our group was about half Baptist pastors and the rest of us were teachers, business people, and non-pastor church leaders. This was an incredible immersion (no pun intended) into leadership development as we worked 16 hour days in class and study groups, as well as individual study time. We had extensive reading projects, a number of seminars and lectures, and broad multi-disciplinary exposure to the many aspects and nuances of critical, technical research and dissertation writing methodologies. There are 17 students in our 3 work groups.

Teaching others to teach others

This blog is about church based leadership training. In the spirit of 2 Tim 2:2, we focus on the teaching of theology and leadership to adult Christians so that they may teach and train others.