This is your weekly notification of the reviews I’ve added to Discerning Reader. This week I’ve written four reviews and Scott Lamb has contributed one as well. The reviews are as follows: From Alister McGrath comes The Dawkins Delusion?, a rather brilliant response to Richard Dawkins’s bestselling The God Delusion which I reviewed last week.…
There is always something a little bit strange about returning from a conference. When at such a gathering one’s mind is set on a particular topic for a day, two days, five days. And what’s more, there are hundreds or thousands of other people in attendance, all of whom are focused on this same subject.…
This is the final session of the 2006 Shepherd’s Conference. J. Ligon Duncan, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi and chairman of The Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, will bring us the final address. It is interesting to see that this place has cleared out quite a bit already as clearly many…
This is my final day at the conference. The conference proper will end at lunchtime today, though attendees are encouraged to remain until after a communion service tomorrow afternoon. However, I will be spending the day in and around Los Angeles before heading to the airport to catch the redeye flight home so that I…
This has been an encouraging week. It has been a powerful week. I have learned a lot this week, but perhaps more about service than anything else. I have seen young men, so often the type of people who are proud, joyfully traveling with older men in order to serve them. I have seen a…
Over the lunch break this afternoon I elected not to go anywhere off-campus, but to just sit and relax. This was much needed and was very rewarding. Near the end of this time I was privileged to be given a tour of the seminary library by the librarian, Dennis Swanson. Of particular interest was a…
This morning finds us at the fifth and final seminar. I have chosen to attend one led by Carey Hardy, which he has entitled How to Raise a Pharisee: Avoiding legalism in the home.’ Carey is senior executive pastor at Grace Church and an adjunct professor at The Master’s College and Seminary. The pharisees were…
There is a little newsletter given out here at the conference called (not too originally) The Conference Chronicle. This morning it listed some “food facts.” Apparently thus far the conference attendees have gone through 835 gallons of coffee (0 of which can be attributed to me), 6,580 donuts (1 2 of which were consumed by…
Tim meets Phil: Tim meets C.J.: Tim meets Tommy: Tim also met Mark Dever today but forgot to ask for a photograph. Maybe next time.
That’s it! From now on I’m deciding where we eat for dinner. We ended up going to a great little deli that was supposed to be nearby. It was not exactly nearby and after eating what was admittedly a nice meal, we raced back across town, or attempted to race, through L.A. traffic. We made…
Phil, evidently enjoying a conversation, showed up late for this seminar. It took a tap on the shoulder from his wife to get him down to this basement room. Phil, it turns out, likes to talk. Who knew? This session is called “Dead Right Part 2.” Part 1 was a seminar from last year’s conference…
This seminar deals with the tendency of so many churches today to be driven by fads and pre-packaged programs to influence the agenda of the church. Phil will attempt to show why this is a really bad strategy. There are many pastors and leaders who feel that, to be convincing to their audience, they need…
The sense of anticipation in and around this building has built to a crescendo. No, it has nothing to do with the speaker who will next take the pulpit, nor with the topic he will address. It has to do with books. The patio outside the worship center is filled with tens of thousands of…
Perhaps one of the most amusing aspect of this conference is the regular “pastor rushes.” Every time a session begins, a crowd gathers around each of the ten or twelve doors to the worship center. At the moment the doors open, a crowd of pastors rush to the front, seeking to nab the premier spots.…
I have not visited very many churches that are as large and important as Grace Community Church, but I have been inside a few. I was not prepared for the “plainness” of Grace. The church is, to be honest, quite unremarkable but for its size. The inside is not at all exciting – the walls…
It is interesting to look around and see how many people travel alone, and how many travel in groups. There are a great number of people, it seems, who travel to this conference on their own. These people tend to sit quietly on their own, sneaking into the auditoriums before they are supposed to be…
It has become quickly apparent that this conference exists not merely to equip pastors, but also to serve and honor them (and perhaps even spoil them a little). At the close of the earlier session one of the organizers announced that there was an area for “shoe-shining and everything else a pastor needs.” I don’t…
I would not have expected John MacArthur to begin the conference with a comedic monologue, yet that is what he did. He made jokes about the length of his tenure at Grace and even his age. He asked for how many people this was their first Shepherd’s Conference. When at least half the men in…
So here I am. I’m sitting in the worship center of Grace Community Church. Apart from the orchestra, which is doing some last minute practicing, and a few scattered conference staff, talking in small clusters, the auditorium is empty. The Master’s Seminary choir, which must number at least 100, just finished practicing a few of…
I have been given the great privilege of liveblogging this year’s Shepherd’s Conference. The conference, which is geared primarily towards pastors and is sponsored by Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, is composed of both General Sessions and Conference Seminars. The General Sessions “are times when we gather as one great congregation to worship…