Basics Final Reflections

What a conference it was this year! Basics is always a great experience, but this year was really a treat. I've reflected on Monday's messages already, so I'll pick up with Tuesday. There were two morning sessions on Tuesday. In the first, Alistair Begg preached his first message on the importance of persuasive preaching, drawn from 2 Corinthians 5. Alistair gave a great challenge to a largely-reformed crowd to not let our belief in the sovereignty of God become an excuse for dispassionate, unpersuasive preaching. Following a coffee break, John Piper gave his second sermon, "Preaching Regeneration Undiminished," from John 3. It was a fantastic call to pastors to truly comprehend the weight and glory of the new birth, and to know and preach God's great salvific love for his people, a love that is "greater than the love of John 3:16."

After lunch (Chick-fil-A!!!), I attended a seminar by blogger-extraordinaire Tim Challies on "Training Your Church to think Biblically." Challies had some great practical advice, and his Q&A time was especially helpful. After an afternoon break and everybody's favorite dinner, barbeque night, John Lennox preached the evening session on "Using Scripture to Engage the Mind and Imagination." As I remarked before, it was perhaps the most powerful sermon I've ever heard. Take an hour this weekend and listen to it, and I promise you'll end the hour with a more magnificent view of God and his rule than you began it with. Afterwards, we had an informal Q&A with Alistair, a time that is always interesting and - thanks to his wit - very entertaining.

Wednesday morning began with a Q&A time with all the speakers and then concluded with Alistair's second sermon on persuasive preaching, this time from Acts 26. He broke down Paul's address to Agrippa wonderfully, and gave us a powerful charge to take a "foolish" gospel to a "wise" world with full confidence and expectation in its power. It was a great note to end the conference on.

It was a long drive home, complete with an Ohio monsoon and a nail in our tire, so it was certainly good to get back home to my wife and baby girl - who amazes me at how much she can grow up in three days. The conference was a time of tremendous spiritual refreshment and encouragement for me, and I would recommend a trip up next year to any pastor or church leader. Though the speakers have not been set yet, Alistair revealed a short list that includes Tim Keller, C.J. Mahaney, and Sinclair Ferguson. In short, I think we'll be OK.

Basics Audio Now Online

You can now download MP3s of all conference sessions and seminars for free here.

Basics Reflections, Tuesday Night - A Pause

It's been a fantastic day, and I fully intend to post some full reflections on the day's messages. However, I must confess that I heard tonight a mathematician preach what I truly think is the most powerful sermon I've ever heard in my life. As John Lennox preached Revelation 4-7, I felt as though I were led with John into the very throne room of God. With clarity and conviction, Lennox delivered an exhilarating reminder of the earth-shattering magnificence, glory, and grandeur of the living God. Rather than churn out a summary of the day like a journalist meeting a deadline, I want to take time tonight to reflect, exult, and repent of a complacent view of God that has often been trivial. I'll write more tomorrow, and I'll surely post a link to the audio of the message when it becomes available. I told my good friend Kenny immediately following the session, "I want to take an MP3 of that and give it to everyone I know." I pray that you would see and savor the greatness of God like I did tonight, and that you would rejoice with my heart in his mind-blowing lovingkindness.

Basics Quotables, Day 2

Some nuggets of pure gold from day two...

"From the first page of the Bible it is abundantly clear that God kicks the legs out from under the stools on which his servants seek to sit comfortably." - Alistair Begg

"Men are frightened that they may be involved in seeing the non-elect get saved. The benefit of the restoration of the reformation principles in the area of soteriology carries with it the danger that men who are unwilling to wrestle with the antinomies of the Bible will be silenced in their gospel proclamation. We dare not hide behind our inability or unwillingness to bow beneath the immensity of Scripture and thus fail to be persuasive in our preaching." - Alistair Begg

"Wherever there is faith the width of the strand of a spider's web, the fullness of redeeming grace is there." - John Murray

"How do you know you're going to wake up a Christian tomorrow morning? The only way you know [you won't fall away] is 'God won't let it happen.'" - John Piper

"Christ says, I'm sending you to open their eyes, to take out the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh, to raise the dead. But you say, 'But I can't open thier eyes, I can't make a new heart, I can't raise the dead.' You can't create electricity or make light, but it never stops you from flipping switches. You can't create internal combustion, but it never stops you from turning the key. You can't create cell tissue, but it never stops you from eating. When you speak, God raises the dead." - John Piper

"It seems that some people trumpet a childish faith as if it were the childlike faith that Jesus demands." - Tim Challies

"Through your preaching, you not only teach your congregation what to believe, you teach them how to believe." - Tim Challies

"If you're not careful, you'll end up studying Scripture to find sermons rather than to get to know God." - John Lennox

"Life is an illumination that points us to God. If you try to explain life without the throne of God, it ends up without significance." - John Lennox

"Imagine it - your last tear will be wiped away by the very governor of the universe." - John Lennox

Basics Reflections, Monday Night

What a day! Monday at Basics is always crazy - getting up at 6:30 to drive from Louisville to Cleveland, check into our hotel, and head straight over to the conference to walk in just in time for the first seminar. Loads of great preaching, some good food, a rekindling of old friendships, and here I sit at 10:40 ready to pass out before getting up tomorrow at 7:00 and starting another day. It's a blast!

Today, I attended a seminar by John Piper on ministry under the motif of 1 Corinthians 1:24 - working for the joy of our people in Christ. The topic and the message was a familiar one for anyone who's ever heard Piper, but his passion is always refreshing and his Q&A afterwards yielded some good information. John Lennox led the first session, and delivered a fantastic introduction to his topic this week - preaching as an engagement of the mind. After his sermon, I can't wait to hear him tomorrow - his perspective on the Gospel and reason as intrinsically connected was fascinating and a great encouragement to live a life that begs the question by our hope and engages the world with the truth of the gospel with intellectual confidence but ultimately a trust in God's power. Piper preached the evening session on "Preaching Justification Undiminished." The sermon, focused primarily on Philippians, reflected his pastor's heart on the topic of justification by faith - specifically, the imputed righteousness of Christ - an overview of his study and concerns and the recent debate between he and N.T. Wright. Peppered in between with hymns by the Gettys, familiar and new, it was a great day of worship that has me feeling refreshed and refocused on the greatness of our God.

I'm going to fall asleep at my keyboard if I keep going for much longer, so goodnight, God bless, and I'll try to post an update during our break tomorrow afternoon.

Basics Quotables, Day 1

"The saltiest thing the world will ever taste is Christians who don't lose their joy when they're being hammered." - John Piper

"Have you ever noticed that people who claim not to be learned in the Scriptures can tell you everything about the stock market, thought they are not stock brokers. They can tell you every detail about the Kansas City Chiefs, though they are not professional football players. Yet they cannot tell you anything about James or Romans." - John Lennox

"Paul everywhere used his reason and his intellect to his help, but he didn't trust it - he trusted God. Paul used every ability that God had given him, but he trusted God...it's not one or the other. Pitting reason against the Holy Spirit is a false dichotomy. We need to be very careful not to find a theological reason for being intellectually lazy." - John Lennox

"When you hear [liberal theologians] talk about being "global" and "loving," it sounds so right - because it is! But it's been gutted from the inside [by the removal of the Gospel]!" - John Piper

Here I Go Again!

Well, tomorrow morning I'll be headed off to Cleveland for the 2009 Basics Conference for Pastors. Alistair Begg's annual conference, which I've attended since 2006, starts tomorrow afternoon and will feature Alistair, John Piper, and Dr. John Lennox. Can't wait! I'll be taking my laptop along to post reflections throughout the week, but you can also head over to Tim Challies' blog for a liveblog of the event.

Consider Me Counting Down

One of my favorite times of every year is my annual trip with good friends in the ministry to Cleveland, Ohio for Alistair Begg's Basics Conference for Pastors. This past week, the brochure for this year's edition, held May 11-13, was released, and the lineup looks as good as ever. Alistair, my favorite preacher, will be speaking as always, and this year he will be joined by Dr. John Piper and Dr. John Lennox, professor of mathematics at Oxford (and father of songwriter Kristyn Getty) under the theme, "Minds Stirred, Wills Urged, and Affections Renewed." This will be my fifth year attending the conference, and if you've never been, I can't urge you strongly enough to go. It's an incredibly refreshing and challenging experience, and the people of Parkside are among the most hospitable you'll ever meet. You can now register online. See you in Cleveland!

Back From Basics

Well, the Basics 2008 Pastors’ Conference is in the books, and once again it was a great time of spiritual refreshment. As you may have noticed, I wasn’t able to post while at the conference, due to limits on time and wi-fi. If you’d like to get a good synopsis of the messages, I would encourage you once again to check out Tim Challies’ blog. Tim has really outdone himself this time by providing extremely thorough summaries of each conference session.

Voddie Baucham was really the highlight of the conference (which was on the theme, “Preaching the Gospel to Ourselves.” His two messages from 2 Timothy on enduring suffering for the sake of the gospel were powerful, and I’d encourage any Christian to head over to the Truth For Life website and order the audio. It was great getting to hear Alistair Begg preach after his absence last year due to prostate cancer. He is now cancer-free, doing well, and he offered some great advice from 2 Corinthians on the character of gospel preaching. Jerry Bridges simply exuded wisdom in his two messages. Though he’s not the most captivating speaker you’ll ever hear (his thoughts are much better suited to the printed page) his lifetime of following God makes itself evident in the advice he offered us all.

As always, the food alone was worth the price of admission (mmm, barbeque night), and the 20% discount at Parkside Church’s stellar bookstore is always too tempting to pass up. I bought Voddie Baucham’s Family Driven Faith and Jerry Bridges’ Respectable Sins, and look forward to reading both. Also, on our day off, we headed downtown and walked through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was pretty cool. If you’re a rock fan and find yourself in Cleveland, you’d do well to check the hall out. All-in-all, it was a great trip, and I would strongly encourage any pastors to check it out next May, when Alistair will be joined by ID scientist Dr. John Lennox and John Piper. Let the countdown begin!

Back to Basics

Tomorrow morning, I'll be headed to Cleveland, Ohio for Alistair Begg's Basics '08 Pastors' Conference. This will be my fourth year in a row making the trip up to Parkside Church, and each year has been a great time of fellowship with good friends and very rewarding spiritually. This year, Begg will be speaking along with Voddie Baucham and Jerry Bridges on the topic of "Preaching the Gospel to Ourselves." Should be a fantastic conference. I'm hoping to be able to post some reflections each night this week, but should I be unable to (or should you want a synopsis far more well written than mine), check out Tim Challies, who will be Liveblogging the conference for the second straight year. Pray for a good trip for me and for the others attending, that God would use this time to encourage and strengthen us in our ministries.