2019 Conference Talks

Since changing jobs, I now do not have a long commute to work. This means I haven't really listened to many talks in the car. However, the one podcast I now regularly listen to is Solid Joys Daily devotional with John Piper. (podcast link on this page). I set this to play in my morning routine off my phone. It is a short daily reflection from John Piper. It's not a replacement for a daily Bible routine, but its worth a listen to, especially when waiting for the coffee machine to do its thing in the morning.

Below are the conferences that I have listened to this year, with an attempt to link to the audio/video where available.


Nexus '19 Evangelism: let's do better (April): I saw this via a live stream in Canberra. The main drawcard for me was Mark Dever, I like his style and I appreciated his book The Gospel and Personal Evangelism. One thing Dever said, that despite all the cultural change that has happened in the last 20 years with Christianity being pushed to the side, our job has been made 0% harder, as for anyone to become a Christian, it requires supernatural change. This was encouraging, but the cultural environment may make it harder for Christians to speak up in the age of tolerance in their government workplace. Devers last talk drilled down into what evangelism is (a declaration the Gospel) and isn't (like a personal testimony, social action, apologetics etc...). He then suggested ministers should model evangelism by praying, modelling it personally, in preaching and having members share their story. Other speakers were Andrew Barry, Craig Schafer and CS Tang. They were encouraging us to open our mouths and speak the Gospel, to really believe how good and powerful the Gospel is, and to find open doors to say it.

Fruitful Churches Conference with Andrew Turner (August): This was a good reminder on the bigger picture of Church, ie that we should not be inward-looking but outward-looking. Turner argued that a church that sends 20 people to start their own church after it grows to 120 people, which it turn will plant again when it is at 120, would over the long haul be more effective than a church of 100 that grows by 10 people every year over 100 years. After 100 years the second church would be at 1,100 people and their celebration service would be great, and the first church would only be at a maximum of 120, but they would have actually affected and reached more people in that time. Turner had some great analogies for church, that it isn't like Disneyland and curated for our comfort, but more like a space shuttle launch pad, where the engineer gets a say over aesthetics, as the goal is to send. A university is a failure if it doesn't have graduates, but what does it say about a church if we are sending out people we are training up? What if church was like boot camp, training for a war, and then what happens if we hear that there isn't a war and we are not going to be sent out? Is church like that today? I bought Andrew's book at the end of the day. When I read it, I will probably review it here.

Jesus is good news for a rainbow world with Ed Shaw (August): This was an event aimed at Youth. We did a combined live stream with about 4 other youth groups in our area. Ed Shaw is a same-sex attracted Christian so he gave personal and sound advice to teens about sexuality. Shaw's main talk was pretty much a clear Gospel presentation. Jesus is good news because he knows what it is like to be human, He can forgive us anything, He gives us a new identity, shows us how to live and will always be there for us. The real standout was the extended Q&A time. Shaw had obviously thought hard about what it means to be a same-sex attracted Christian and what the Bible says, and that came out with the variety of real, practical questions he was presented with.

The Gospel Coalition’s 2019 National Conference - Conversations With Jesus (March-April): While this big conference came out at the start of the year, I only downloaded these last month and I still have one more keynote to get through before I troll through the many, many breakout sessions. The keynotes are dealing with passages from the gospels with Jesus interacting with different people. These are narrative and some are not really complicated (besides Ligon Duncan's one), but it still great to hear world-class speakers deal with a Jesus story. In the breakouts some sessions that I would be keen to listen to over this break time is on discipleship and evangelism. Session by Sam Chan, Mack Stiles, David Platt, Glen Scrivener, Jared Wilson, Al Mohler are some that come to mind.

Canberra Christian Convention

I should be transparent and say that I help with some parts of Canberra Christian Convention, and I am the reason why some of the audio isn't online yet (sorry).

Raising Up Apprentices with Ben Pfahlert (May): After a short talk by Russell Smidt on the power of looking and copying each other Ben got into some pretty nitty-gritty of MTS. Ben is the director of MTS so this was his thing. He talked about how their program is more for training the ministers who will in turn train the apprentices. A church needs a champion who will create the training culture in that church and not give up. He also warned that the first MTS person you have needs to be done right, as it set a precedent. All the MTS material is free online, which I have downloaded to go over and see if any of it would be useful in my context.

Guard the Gospel with Ben Pfahlert (May): This was the Canberra Men's convention where Ben Pfahlert took us through 2 Timothy. Ben was a great men's speaker, he was blunt with an air of "just get on with it" attitude. He had a bit of smarts on him when setting out the historical context and an interesting take on the "cloak " Paul wants back in 2 Tim 4:13 (a chest filled with books). Ben got us to think about how much we value and guard the Gospel message, what legacy we are aiming to leave behind us and how much we are committed to preaching the Gospel. He had some good practical examples of sharing faith with other blokes and a great small group model on training. One of the elective speakers was Martyn Iles, speaking on non-toxic masculinity. I was presently impressed by him and he reminded me so much of an old uni mate.

Single Minded (June): What do we do with single people in the Church? Should we be trying to matchmake them? In our preaching do we idolise marriage and if so what does this implicitly say to the single adult in the church? I only listened to the first and second talk of this as I was part of the organisation team, but I think Dani Treweek clearly laid out the "problem" of singles in the church, so much so that I didn't really feel much closer as I missed the other talks. When I brought this up with people who did attend, they didn't feel the same, they felt challenged, affirmed and accepted - so that sounds like they hit the nail on the head. There were three breakout sessions and a Q&A afterwards, the electives were all recorded but the Q&A audio didn't happen (sorry).

Preaching the Proverbs with Andrew Errington (August): I liked Andrew Errington, and am glad it is at St Marks, which means our church gets him to speak sometimes. Andrew gave two sessions, with much Q&A and interaction. He gave a good overview of the context and ideas of Proverbs and pointed out that other cultures also have their collection of saying, which Proverbs may take and adapt from. This is because wisdome is written into this world and can be discovered by all people. It is part of God's common grace. He also then offered helpful advice in how you may preach from this book, do you do it chronologically, or thematic, or one at a time etc... I always like listening to guys who know their stuff, which I think is why I appreciated this day so much.

Church Size, Church Dynamics and Growth with Raj Gupta (November): This probably wouldn't have been an event I would have chosen to go to, but I was on the organisation committee. I was pleasantly surprised by Raj Gupta and his thinking in the space of growing churches and what systems and expectations need to change as the church grows. He leaned a lot on Dunbar's Number and since ministry is relationships, the number of relationships one has or is expected to have will affect ministry. Is it a win if someone who is in a small group cares for a sick members spouse, but yet no one at the Sunday service asks how they are going? Where should the "locus of relationship connectedness" reside in the church? This will all depend on the size of the church. Raj has written a PhD on this, and while this audio isn't up (yet) some of his thinking is around the web.

Katoomba Christian Convention

In order to listen to audio from Katoomba Christian Convention, you have to download their app.

Katoomba Easter Convention - The End of all things: Life on the edge of eternity (April): Peter Adams took us through the book of Habakkuk and it was great. Peter was not in a hurry to sit and dwell on the struggle of faith and waiting on God to keep His promises. I drew on him pretty hard in a talk I gave on trusting in God when things aren't going to plan. If you only have time to listen to one speaker from this event, listen to Peter Adams. I attended two of Geoff Harper's sessions on parts of Revelation, again waiting on Jesus and again he was encouraging in reminding us that God is in control and there is a real future hope. Tony Payne and Ray Galea alternated in the second-morning sessions. They were clear and punchy and spoke on focusing on Jesus. Ray's talk on the four seeds was something I hung on to, with the idea that we shouldn't suspicious of those who say they come to faith but instead be charitable and rejoice with them, and if they don't make it till the end, we may be sad but are not to be surprised.


KYCK19 - The Book of John: Believe, Love, Remain (April): I enjoyed this KYCK more than last year. The speakers took us through Jesus' Farewell Discourse from John 14-17. Like every year there was an explicit call to follow Jesus (of which we had a year 7 boy in my group make that decision). In the past, there were also calls to "recommit" you life to Jesus (whatever that means), but the two main speakers (Hayden Smith and Ed Springer) really downplayed this, because Jesus says to remain. Those who are saved in Jesus don't need to recommit their lives to Jesus, they just need to remain in Him. The Sunday morning session was also really practical and got the teenagers in the room to split into small groups around them and to think through real tangible ways they would live for Christ on Monday at school. Our Youth group has already bought tickets for this event next year.