Sunday, April 13, 2008

Together For The Gospel

The MEBC pastoral staff will be attending the Together For The Gospel conference in Louisville this week. I am so thankful to pastor a church that makes such trips possible. I am looking forward to being challenged and refreshed through great messages. My plan is to blog each day on the sessions.

The lineup of speakers is:
Mark Dever
Ligon Duncan
C.J. Mahaney
Al Mohler
John Piper
John MacArthur
R.C. Sproul

The overarching theme of the conference this year is the cross work of Christ, particularly the substitutionary element of the atonement. I continue to be perplexed that the Southern Baptist Convention (the world's largest Protestant denomination) is bereft of such conferences. The one exception I know of was last year's Building Bridges conference held at Ridgecrest. It seems that much of our elected leadership and mega-church pastors would rather talk about politics and church growth methodology than theology and biblical studies.

2 comments:

Kelly Randolph said...

Todd,
Amen on your comment about SBC conferences. It has been several years since I attended one for this very reason. I attended a Shepherd's Conference the year after my last Glorieta Conference on National Church leadership. I've never looked back. Why spend your precious time and money to get a happy meal when you could be eating steak? We have the resources. Why don't we (SBC) sponsor such meaty and soul-feeding conferences for our pastors?

Todd Pruitt said...

Kelly,

I cannot imagine attending the SBC meeting. I don't have time for political posturing. Local associations are usually just as bad. I've attended a few of those meetings. This does not speak well of our ability to engage and keep younger pastors so many of whom are actually interested in theology and sound biblical preaching.

Also, I would like to know why you can find so much junk in Lifeway book stores (Haggee, Eldredge, etc). I would like to know why our denomination does not publish a decent magazine like "By Faith" (PCA). I'll begin with those questions.