Together for the Gospel was as expected – a time of great Spiritual refreshment and renewal. It was even better this time having members of Redeemer with Julie and I and to watch how the preaching and worship impacted them. The overflow of these types of feeding are priceless. Here are my highlights.
John MacArthur – The Theology of Sleep. What a great encouragement that my job (our job) is simply to sow the seed. The seed grows automatically at the working of The One who gives the increase.
Thabiti Anyabwile – While he might have received some blowback for “The Kingdom of God is multi-ethnic but it is not multi-cultural” was on point. I plan to meditate on this from SCripture some more, but it is true, there is a Gospel culture that transcends ethinic culture and is recognizable no matter where you are. Think about it; how many times have you been in a place where the ethnic culture is different from what you normally traffic in and you meet someone or observe someone in a public setting and think to yourself “I bet that person is a Chrsitian”. I gurantee you it is not because of the clothes they were wearing or the cultural slang they were using or the cultural music style they were enjoying. It was something that transcended all that. It was the gospel culture of love, peace, humility, longsuffering, etc.
Eating dinner with the Redeemer clan at some Italian restaurant in Louisville where the whole room was filled with Pope memorabilia and a massive lazy Susan where we shared our food with an acryllic box house a bust of Pope John Paul in the center of it! The food was certainly good as was the discussion around the table. Thank God for our Body. They are precious.
C.J. – Encouraging, genuine, funny, Godly.
Matt Chandler – A hero in the faith for me anyway, and to have him prayed over by the T4G men, and for them to ask for those suffering from chronic conditions (my wife) to stand and include them in the time of prayer was overwhelming in a really good and soul cleansing way.
The free books - Wow! love that part.
The worship – Was awesome as usual. Would have liked a couple other new songs from the ones we sang in 08 more.
The drive through the mountains of NC and Tenn. Gorgeous.
The centrality of the Gospel. I weary so often from the denominational and inter-denominational debates centered on what our identity ought to be along the lines of lesser truths at the expense of THE CULTURE we all share, and that is recipients of and participants in the Gospel. As Thabiti reminded us, “We are Gospel men.”
Can’t wait for 2012!
Patrick, didn’t know you were in Louisville (where I pastor now) for T4G. It looks like you had dinner at Bucca di Beppo’s! The rotating pope head on the lazy Susan was a dead giveaway! It’s actually a chain of restaurants, but we’ve only been to one. My wife and I just celebrated our 10 wedding anniversary there!