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DG Pastor’s Conference Wrap Up

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Now that I’m back from the 2011 Desiring God Conference for Pastors, here are some reflections on each of the messages.

Session 1 – Cultivating Private Prayer as a Pastor – Joel Beeke

This was a great kick off session, full of quotes and much practicality. I really felt conviction of my lack of prayerlessness through this sermon. His two paths of application were Take Hold of Self and Take Hold of God. Matt Perman tweeted that this was the best sermon on prayer he’s ever heard. I am in relative agreement, although this wasn’t an exposition as much as a topical unfolding of the subject of prayer.

Session 2 – Helping Your People Discover the Praying Life – Paul Miller

If you’ve read Miller’s book, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World, then this session will be a helpful, one talk summary of all that this book teaches. It was really encouraging as well.

Session 3 – Prayer as a Way of Walking in Love: A Personal Journey – Francis Chan

This talk was a testimony of sorts as to how Chan has experienced answered prayer in his walk with the Lord. Great question in this talk was “Do you still believe God answers prayer?” Very motivational to the practice of prayer.

Session 4 – He Kissed the Rose and Felt the Thorn: Living and Dying in the Morning of Life Robert Murray McCheyne – John Piper

I love these biographical messages by Piper each year. This year’s didn’t disappoint. He weaved what made this young man burn with passion for God by showing his conversion and preparation for a young life. It ended up looking at the place of prayer in McCheyne’s life. Again, very encouraging.

Session 5 – Leading Family Worship – Joel Beeke

This talk had 4 goals: to lay out a paradigm for family worship, to discuss the practice of it, to lead us to preach on this and to consider more effective ways of training others in this. This talk was replete with practical ways one could go about practicing family worship.

Session 6 – Unreached Peoples and the Power of Prayer – Jerry Rankin

Another highlight of the DG conference is the missions talk or how does the subject of the conference relate to the fulfilling of the Great Commission. Rankin gave a call for us to go about obeying the Great Commission and realize that as we pray for the nations God might be changing our hearts to go ourselves.

Session 7 – Q & A – Speakers Panel

The conference typically wraps up with a session dealing with some questions the conference inspired. Helpful way to review and hear about the subject matter again.

Overall Reflection: I loved attending this conference. DG always does a great job of leading us in singing, giving us opportunities to pray and helping us think through subject matters. I personally would have liked to see more Biblical expositions, but found the messages helpful. I think, also, that sometimes commendations were confused with commands. It’s easy for pastors (especially) to treat applications as matters of obeying or disobeying what God has actually said. There was some blurring of that. However, these are minor assessments. Overall, I know that I need to be about the work of prayer in ministry and this conference helped give me avenues to flesh this out more in my life.

My Week…in Minneapolis, MN for Storm of 2011 and…

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…the 2011 Desiring God Pastor’s Conference:
Traveled here yesterday with men from the church. With the big storm coming, we drove straight through and ended up getting in around 12:45AM today. Got into the hotel and slept pretty well. Today, we will have the conference later today, but at Noon, we are meeting with one of our church’s supported missionaries.

If you think of us, pray that God would encourage us as we think about being people of prayer and leading Crestview in this regard.

Further Idolatry Findings…

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In Colossians 3 Paul tells those believers who are united to Christ to seek the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. In Colossians 3:5-6, consistent with this seeking is a call to put to death, among others things “covetousness, which is idolatry.” You might not think that idolatry is something that believers struggle with, but even John, when writing 1 John to give assurance to believers, closes with an appeal “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

Related to this was a post on the DG Blog, 13 Questions to Diagnose Your Idolatries. Here’s the questions they give:

1. What do you most highly value?
2. What do you think about by default?
3. What is your highest goal?
4. To what or whom are you most committed?
5. Who or what do you love the most?
6. Who or what do you trust or depend upon the most?
7. Who or what do you fear the most?
8. Who or what do you hope in and hope for most?
9. Who or what do you desire the most? Or, what desire makes you most angry or makes you despair when it is not satisfied?
10. Who or what do you most delight in or hold as your greatest joy and treasure?
11. Who or what captures your greatest zeal?
12. To whom or for what are you most thankful?
13. For whom or what great purpose do you work?

Use these to evaluate your heart and flee idolatry.

BBC Women’s Conference – You Are Mine!

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The Spring Women’s Conference at Bethlehem Baptist Church is an event that is being attended by my wife (and our women’s leadership team). [Side note: I miss you lots, love; the boys and I are fine.] I noticed this afternoon that they put notes from Session 1 online at Desiring God (Session 2 and Session 3 notes are available, too). Sounds like a good time with speaker Andree Seu (here’s Noel Piper’s take). Let’s pray that God’s purposes continue to unfold in the lives of women present.

Auditing Church

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I enjoyed these thoughts from David Livingstone, a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church and not that famous missionary, who wrote about an article for their newsletter entitled, “Is Watching a Very Good Sermon on TV or Online the Same As ‘Doing Church’?”. A helpful summary (from the DG Blog):

No doubt there are more than just a few folks who have surfed their way into our services from elsewhere to hear the very good sermons and will stay only as long as the sermons remain very, very good. That’s what “doing church” is for them … they are “auditing” church.

And that’s not all bad … in fact, it’s way better than staying away. By all means, come and audit! For that matter, staying home to watch a good sermon on TV is also way better than watching virtually everything else on TV. Long ago, the Apostle Paul wrote that he rejoiced at any kind of gospel preaching so long as Christ was proclaimed (Philippians 1:15-18), and so should we.

The rub comes in letting ourselves settle into minimalism. In other words, it’s very sad to reduce “doing church” to listening to a sermon whether it’s at home in front of a screen or in a building with others in front of a screen. “Doing church” is far more and far better than that … both on Sunday mornings and all through the week. Why? Because church isn’t a building to go to or programs and classes to attend; it’s a living fellowship of people who have a saving relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ … and a saving relationship with one another as members of the family of God (consider Hebrews 3:12-13).

I hope you found this helpful too.

Pastor’s Conference Wrap Up…

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We are in KC today. We left the conference yesterday and drove in here. Ate some nice BBQ and visited with some old friends. Here’s the recap from yesterday:

We got up for a session called “Morning Devotions” with Paul Tripp. He masterfully encouraged us to be ambassadors for Christ in our families and churches (from 2 Corinthians 5:14-21).

The AM session featured the US Director of Frontiers, Bob Blincoe (Notes, Audio, Video). This session was a highlight for us. What stuck out was his phrase (borrowed from Dawson Trotman): “If you can’t see far ahead, go as far as you can see.” He related this to God calling him to serve in a missions context. Oh that we would have faith to go where we can see and beyond.

The conference wrapped up with a Q & A (Notes, Audio). There was some amazing interaction between the panel. Good stuff, really.

Our hearts are full and we look forward to getting back later today.

DG Pastor’s Conference – Day 2

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Today was the busy day at the conference. I started off with a breakout session featuring David Michael of Children Desiring God, which helped reaffirm my passion for training the next generation. I had a chance to visit with David and he was encouraging about things our church is doing to help children prize Jesus.

The 1st AM session featured Eric Mason from Epiphany Fellowship in Philly. (Notes, Audio, Video) His message was to pastors on having joy in suffering, especially as it relates to sanctification. It was a compelling call to this end.

The 2nd AM session was Sam Storms giving the foundations of Christian Hedonism (Notes, Audio, Video) I think what stuck out to me there was the reminder of God being the fountain of all joy.

After lunch, Piper gave his biography of C.S. Lewis (Manuscript, Audio). There were lots of zingers in this talk. Piper showed why he appreciated Lewis so much in his summary: he had an awesome experiential joy and a determined hold on objective truth.

After Piper’s talk, I was able to sit down with Matt Perman, Director of Strategy for Desiring God, and talk about vision planning, BHAG’s, and other things related to being organized and leading in terms of big picture direction. There were lots of practical helps in this time.

Finally, after supper, we were back for Sam Storms final session: Killing Sin with Christian Hedonism (Notes, Audio). This session got practical, again encouraging us to have joy in suffering. The session ended with Bethlehem’s Elders and Pastors praying for individual needs of the pastors present. Very meaningful.

Back at hotel, we are working to prep to leave tomorrow.

Short Term Mission Trips…

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Over at Desiring God, Bill Walsh, who helps oversee International Outreach, has been doing a series of posts all week on short term mission trips. Very good stuff to consider if you have something planned this summer or are wondering about the long term vision of these short trips…

Rethinking Short Term Missions (Day 1)
Effect of Short Term Missions on Poverty (Day 2)
Our Needs & Their Needs (Day 3)
Teaching as a Short Term Missions Strategy (Day 4)
Doing Missions As Servants (Day 5)