Last week Erin and I finally were able to attend a conference together where neither one of us had any responsibilities and we were able to simply sit, listen, learn and worship. We attended the
Gospel Coalition Conference in Chicago. The theme of the conference was "They testify about me" and it was thus focused on preaching Christ from all of Scripture--particularly the Old Testament. The talks, panel discussions and fellowship were all great. We were able to stay with good friends--actually our former pastor in Urbana, IL where Erin and I met and the woman Erin worked with for 7 years at the University of Illinois. They were great hosts and it was great to even spend the little time with them that we did. We also got to see good friends from Gainesville who came up for the conference. We were able to sit through many of the sessions with them and we also got to go to Giordano's Chicago Pizza together! We do miss our friends in Gainesville, but the Lord continues to be faithful to us in Cincinnati and we continue to pray and seek out where He would have us begin a new Gospel-centered church.
I may have Erin write a little bit later on what she learned from the conference, but some of the takeaways I had--which I'm still processing much because it simply was too much info to take in over such a short period of time--are these:
- Reinforced that all of Scripture speaks of Jesus (John 5:31-47, Luke 24:13-34)
- To be able to preach Christ/the Scriptures well you must know them well--the entire Scriptures. Preach from the wholeness of the story of Redemption while keeping context in mind, but understand the trajectory.
- Tim Keller stated that "until you get to Jesus you're just giving information, but once you get to Jesus you are preaching--you change people on the spot." (at least something like that)
There really is so much more and I would encourage you to listen to the talks (
here). It was simply great to be with 5500 other people sitting under a wealth of great Bible teaching and great singing (please check out Keith & Kristyn Getty's new album "Awaken the Dawn).
