June 26, 2009 • 2:51 pm 0
My good friend and colleague at ‘Life in the Spirit’, Sam Storms, was interviewed recently by the folk at Desiring God ahead of their Autumn conference. Here’s some of Sam’s testimony:
John Piper’s appreciation of Sam is also well worth viewing here.
Filed under: Conferences, Life in the Spirit, Sam Storms
April 24, 2009 • 11:09 am 0
I want to take a minute to bring to your attention that The Gospel Coalition met this week and has made available the MP3’s from its conference. The speakers include John Piper, Tim Keller, D. A. Carson, Mark Driscoll, Lig Duncan, and many others. Here’s the link to the audio from the 2009 Gospel Coalition messages.
For those who are interested, Tim Challies has a succinct description of The Gospel Coalition.
(HT: Denny Burk)
Filed under: Conferences, DA Carson, Evangelical, Gospel-centred, Jesus Christ, John Piper, Ligon Duncan, Mark Driscoll, Preaching, Tim Keller
April 15, 2009 • 9:14 am 0
If you’re anywhere near Albuquerque May 1-3, you may want to check out this year’s Clarus conference, featuring Sam Storms and Ray Ortlund on “The Convergence of Doctrine and Delight.”
(HT: Justin Taylor)
Filed under: Christian hedonism, Conferences, Doctrine, Sam Storms
February 4, 2009 • 2:32 pm 0
Abraham Piper blogs these helpful summaries of Mark Dever’s messages on evangelism at the DG Pastors’ Conference.
1. A Desire to Be Obedient to God’s Commands
Jesus commanded his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. That is exactly what the early disciples did. Paul spoke of a compulsion to share the gospel. To evangelize is to obey.
In Acts 8:4, we see that those who had been scattered preached the gospel wherever they went. One of the clearest examples of evangelism being commanded is in 1 Peter 3, where Peter commands believers to “always be…prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”
Our silence is not a matter of neutrality. You need to tell yourself that. Our silence is a matter of guilt and sin. Obedience is definitely a biblical reason to evangelize.
2. A Love for the Lost
Preachers, we have got to stop avoiding the topic of lostness—hell. Jesus spoke of God’s wrath remaining on those who don’t believe on him. God will cause terror in us if we appear before him apart from Christ.
Apart from God’s grace, the sinner will never stop sinning. God’s judgment will never end. Their rejection of God never ends. God will inflict extreme and unnatural pain on them forever.
As preachers of the gospel, we have no business making God seem more humane to sinners who are in rebellion against him. Think about if hell were unleashed on you forever and tell unbelievers how horrible it is.
Christians are motivated by a love to others. Hudson Taylor said he would have never thought of going to China if he didn’t know that they were lost. It’s people who are this lost, who have this fate awaiting them, that we are aiming to convert.
We can confidently tell people the basic message of the gospel and trust that God’s Spirit will faithfully pick up our message and use it to save people.
3. A Love for God.
We want to see God glorified. We want to see the truth about him told in creation. The desire to see God glorified was the motivation for all Jesus’ actions.
Everything exists for God’s glory (Romans 11:36). Our salvation is “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6). God does everything he does for his own glory, and we should do all we do for the glory of God.
To tell the truth about some people is not to honor them, but to tell the truth about God is to honor him. God is glorified in the gospel.
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1) Imposition
We mistakenly take evangelism to be manipulation. But that’s what the world says. In truth, we’re not trying to impose our beliefs on anybody. Biblically, we can’t impose our beliefs on anybody. Force and coercion cannot finally bring about the change that God demands. You can’t expand Christianity by the sword. Evangelism is not some sort of intellectual imposition.
To believe that something is true and to share that with others is not coercion. We don’t impose when we evangelize. We freely offer it to all and do not, cannot, force it on anybody.
2) Personal Testimony
A personal testimony is a wonderful thing. The Bible is full of examples of it, and we should testify to the wonderful experience of receiving God’s mercy.
But consider John 9 and the man born blind. He gives his testimony but doesn’t even know who Jesus is. His words glorify God, but they don’t present the gospel. This is not evangelism.
Unless you’re explicit about Jesus Christ and the cross then it is not the gospel.
3) Social Action / Public Involvement
Mercy ministries display God’s kindness, and they are good and appropriate for the Christian to do. But such actions are not evangelism. They may commend the gospel to others, but only if someone has told them the gospel. They need to have the gospel added to them. Helping others or doing our jobs well, whatever they are, in and of themselves are not evangelism.
4) Apologetics
Apologetics are valuable, but they have their own set of dangers. You can get bogged down in talking about purely intellectual or peripheral matters and never get to the gospel.
It’s fine for us to talk with unbelieving friends about questions that they have, but our attempts to try and answer them without setting the gospel as the foundation does no good. Jesus must set the agenda for evangelism.
5) The Results of Evangelism
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
Note that the same ministry has two different effects. It’s like the parable of the soil: same seed, different results.
We cannot finally judge the correctness of what we do by the immediate response that we get. The need for numbers puts an unnecessary stress on pastors and misunderstands the way that God saves.
We must practice our ministries realizing that some of us will be like Adoniram Judson or William Carey, who had no converts until after seven years of faithful gospel ministry. It’s a fact that most people don’t believe the gospel the first time they hear it.
Don’t let the gospel that you preach be molded by what it is that gets an immediate response. Preach the gospel, trying to persuade–pleading for your hearers to believe–but knowing that you cannot convert a person. And then let God do with it what he will. He alone can call the dead to life. The gospel is powerful, and God is committed to using us to spread this good news.
Filed under: Conferences, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Evangelism, False conversion, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Love for God, Mark Dever, Missions, New Birth, Reformed, Salvation, Saving faith, The Church, The Gospel, The word of God
September 29, 2008 • 1:05 pm 0
This page at DG has all the audio, video, and notes from everything at the conference.
Here’s the video:
(HT: Justin Taylor)
Filed under: Conferences, Evangelical, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, The Christian Life, The word of God, Theology
September 11, 2008 • 4:13 pm 1
If, like me, you can’t make it to the Desiring God National Conference this year, the next best thing (apart from listening to all the messages after the event!) is to feast on these video clips of this years speakers. There is plenty here to stimulate and edify. And make you wish you could be there!
My thanks to Justin Taylor for posting these links.
John Piper
Bob Kauflin
Paul Tripp
Dan Taylor
Sinclair Ferguson
Mark Driscoll
Filed under: Christian Ministry, Conferences, Culture, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Sanctification, Sinclair Ferguson, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Church, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God, Truth, Union with Christ
June 13, 2008 • 2:49 pm 0
The Power of Words
Filed under: Christian Ministry, Conferences, Discipleship, Evangelical, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Preaching, Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life, The Gospel, The word of God, Truth, Worship
April 9, 2008 • 12:06 pm 0
Next week I’ll be heading out to Louisville, Kentucky, for the T4G conference. This has been made possible by some good friends. To whom I’m very grateful! Many of my favourite preacher/teachers will be speaking. It’s a mouth watering prospect indeed, but more importantly I’m expecting it to be a life changing encounter.
You can check out the titles of the sessions here.
Here’s some highlights from the last conference in 2006.
I’m also booked in for the Band of Bloggers luncheon. Should be fun!
Filed under: Al Mohler, Christian Ministry, Conferences, Jesus Christ, John Piper, Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, News & Views, Preaching, RC Sproul, Reformed, The Bible, The Christian Life, The Cross, The Gospel, The word of God, Theology
Unreached People of the Day -
Please pray for the ...
Arab, Palestinian of West Bank / Gaza;
Population: 3,823,000;
Language: Arabic, South Levantine;
Religion: Islam;
Evangelical: 0.15%;
Status: Unreached 
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