This year my Bible study was looking at Mark, so I spent a bit of time listening to a sermon series on Mark by John MacArthur. This consisted of about 75 talks, so that ate into the time I had to listen to new content that came out in 2015.
The Gospel Coalition 2015: This conference runs every second year and they drop a lot of content. The theme was on Heaven (or "Going Home") with the main talks hitting on bits throughout the Bible on Heaven. They were good talks, but I think the main gold was in the workshops. There was over 50 of them that covered a massive range of topics, including homosexuality (Al Moher, Christopher Yuan), the Holy Spirit (Graham Cole, J.D. Greear), helping the poor (Mez McConnell, Brian Fikkert), church culture (Collin Hansen, Trevin Wax, Jared Wilson), mission (Daniel Montgomery, Erik Raymond) and much more. Main speakers include: Tim Keller, John Piper, Don Carson, Mark Dever, Voddie Baucham, Ligon Duncan, Philip Ryken and Augustus Nicodemus Lopes.
KEC15: Resurrection - Death is not the End: (audio is free in their app) Garry Miller took us through the Easter story. In one talk he covered about 50 verses and then the next we looked at six almost nondescript verses. He did very well (so he should as he has written a book on preaching) and is worth a listen to next Easter. Paul Tripp was the second speaker and kinda spoke on 1 Corinthians 15 and kinda used it for a platform to talk about grace and trusting Jesus. You can download his transcripts in the KCC app. For their night time speakers they had different topics. I only made it to one session and there I heard from Mark Smith about work which is worth a listen to. I also heard the talk on friendships was also a good one.
I should put a disclaimer on the next four conferences as I was involved in organising three of them and helped with the website for all of them.
Getting to Grips with Mental Illness: This even must of struck a chord with the church. We ran this event on Friday morning and got 120 people (we were expecting half that) and by far these talks have been downloaded the most from the Canberra Christian Convention resource library. The new dean of St Marks, Andrew Cameron gave some theological insights into depression and Rebecca Randall who is doing a PhD on the topic of mental illness gave some great practical advice on how to care for people with mental illness and gave some local knowledge on support groups and services available in Canberra. Her slides can also be downloaded.
Sex and the iWorld: Vaughan Roberts is a minister in Oxford, England. In his book, Battles Christians Face, he came out and said he struggled with same-sex attraction. Since he was the speaker for the Canberra Mens Christian Convention (see below) the next day, we though he would be apt to talk on the topic of marriage, same-sex marriage and singleness (he threw in a bit about transgender as well). Vaughan approached this topic Biblically and personally. He may not have answered all you questions about this area (I was manning the Q&A questions as they came in), but it was a good start. (Christopher Yuan's workshop audio from TGC15 above is also good in this area).
CMCC15: Guarding the Heart: I like the Canberra Men's Christian Conventions and this year felt better than last. Vaughan Roberts talk on how we should be active in living Godly lives. We should feel secure in God's love, even when struggles come our way, for our affections have been changed. In the last talk, Vaughan focused on how our lives should be different in the work place.
Preaching Evangelistically: Ian Powell is my minister, so another disclaimer here. Ian address about 40 christian workers (paid and unpaid) telling them to not be boring. Preachers shouldn't default to some systematic theology topic a passage touches nor always land on the two general applications of try harder or tell more people about Jesus. Instead they should focus the text for their sermon and work out what the Bible would be missing if that passage wasn't there. Looking at the sermons in Acts, Ian shows that Peter and Paul really did use different methods with Jewish and Gentile audiences, especially with their use of the Old Testament.
EMA15: Identity Crisis: I haven't finished listening to these conference talks, but they seemed good. I have heard a bit about Proclamation Trust and they seem to put on good events (with free audio). I might keep my eye on the EMA16 for next year. This conference covers areas of ministry such as John 8, how to teach Genesis, christian family life, ethics, preaching and women in ministry. Speakers include: Christopher Ash, Bruce Ware, Tim Keller, Reuben Hunter, Andrew Reid, Vaughan Roberts, John Wyatt, Jonathan Griffiths and Ken Buckle.
Grace Agenda 2015: Marriage Militant: (scroll down the bottom of the page) I intended to listen to all of this audio, but I really only listened to the ones by the Wilson's. The topic was on marriage and I thought it looked good. I find Doug Wilson always has something to say and I am liking N.D. Wilson. I would listen to N.D.'s talk on Husbands and Fathers again. Maybe I will listen to all six talks over the summer break.
Previous conference talks posts:
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