For anyone who may be interested in what books they gave away at the Shepherds’ Conference this year. Here is a quick list.
- The Passion Driven Sermon by Jim Shaddis
- Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary by James Montgomery Boice
- Dying Thoughts by Richard Baxter
- A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (Audiobook) by George Marsden – I listened to this on the drive back home, it was very good
- Teaching Romans by Christopher Ash
- New American Standard Bible, Compact Edition – This is what I call “Shepherds’ Conference Bling” it’s go an inscription on the front and the staff on the spine.
- Reasons we Believe by Nathan Busenitz
- A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity, Volume 1 by Rolland McCune
- Touchpoints by Randy Alcorn
- Truth Ednures by John MacArthur – This is a collection of 12 of MacArthur’s most significant sermons over the last 40 years and a 70 page Biography of John written by Iain Murray.
- Right Thinking in a World Gone Wrong by John MacArthur
- The Darkness and the Glory by Greg Harris
- Love or Die by Alexander Strauch
- John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion by burk Parsons
- The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Matthew, Volume 1
- Culture Shift by Al Mohler
- When People are Big and God is Small by ed Welch
- Instructing a Child’s Heart by Ted & Margy Tripp
- Pastoral Ministry by John MacArthur
March 09 2009 | Blog | No Comments »
I’m sitting in the sanctuary at Grace Community Church waiting for the last General Session with John MacArthur. It has been an amazing weekend learning and being fed by some of the world’s great Bible Expositors, but even with how great the teaching has been the real benefit of the Shepherds’ Conference for our church is the fellowship and the like mindedness that it produces amongst our leadership. Somewhere between eating together, driving 40 hours together, late night conversations together, and drinking large amounts of coffee to stay awake we have bound our hearts together with a love for the Scripture, a love for each other and a commitment to the glory of God.
Sorry for the brevity of this particular post, but I’ll try and put some pictures up tomorrow as we make our way to Grant’s Pass and than back to our families, who we miss very much.
March 06 2009 | Blog | 1 Comment »
We had another great day today at the Shepherds’ Conference. Rick Holland lead the day off with a sermon on Pastoral Theology. He encouraged us from 2 Corinthians 11:3 to have a Fearful Ecclesiology, a Functional Bibliology, and a Jealous Christology. Rick was one of the primary men who taught me how to preach, so I greatly appreciate his ministry.
After Rick, we got to listen to a Q&A Session with John MacArthur and after that we had In-N-Out and got to walk the campus, look over the book store and generally have a great time.
Mike, Gary and I went to a session with the Executive Pastor of Grace Community Church called “Making Waves without Sinking the Ship,” which was about leadership in the church.
The day wrapped up with a sermon from Al Mohler on authority in preaching. Mohler said, “Too much preaching leaves us with a question mark instead of an exclamation point.”
I was poking around the web and found some great resources for anyone who is looking to keep up with what we’re doing and especially what we are listening to.
You can listen to any of the sermons that have been preached by going here and registering for a Shepherds’ Fellowship account. They already have most of the general sessions up and available for download for free.
Or, if you have some time today you can listen to the general session sermons live online by going here, also for free!!! Tomorrow’s schedule includes:
Fridays Schedule:
9:00am – Phil Johnson
2:00pm – Steve Lawson
7:00pm – John MacArthur
You can also find summaries of the conference and the seminars over at the Pulpit Blog.
Finally, one of the big highlights of the day is the books!!! Each year the Shepherds’ Conference gives each attendee a massive stack of books. This year, they gave us 21 great books!!! In addition, they have a conference book store with deep discounts. I’ll close with a picture of Collin sitting next to both of our stacks.
March 06 2009 | Blog | 2 Comments »
This is a guest post from Chikita:
After yesterdays little mishap, morale was a tad bit low. The office didn’t open until 10:00, what with the late night insurance adjusters and hair defrizzing. (We’ve been assured the wigs won’t be permanent- although Laurie’s not bad as a blonde.) It didn’t take long before one little chirper soul cried out, ‘Let’s remember Christian’s sermon! Trust – Nothing is impossible with God – God is always at work upstream – Fan the Flame’ (oops – wrong choice of sermon quote……) (From this very moment on, any reference to matches/candles/fire have been permanently banned from the office)
Viewing the damages in Jubilee Junction’s roof, we rallied together and tried to look at the bright side – which was made easier by the sun shining through the hole in the roof. Terry felt somewhat responsible for today’s cause to pause, but we assured her there were many ‘meant to be’s’ about this situation. For example, a new skylight installment would turn around any Pacific NorthWest gray day – she’ll probably have a run on teachers wanting that room. Well, with that one positive encouragement, we all felt as if a day’s worth of work had been done. We ended on a light note – in a circle, holding hands, and singing ‘It only Takes a Spark’.
March 05 2009 | Blog | No Comments »
We started this morning at 8:00am, but were shocked to find a torrential downpour here in Los Angeles. I’ve been coming to the Shepherds’ Conference since 2002 and have never seen it rain down here!!! It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if I’d remembered to bring a coat 
, but Collin was very gracious and let me use his after I dropped them off at the church and walked 5 blocks in the rain.
After I got to the church, I checked in and got my conference guide and gift (every year they give every conference attendee a gift). This year they gave us a $50 gift card to the book store and a really nice money clip (I’ve never had one before, but I’m committed to figuring out how to use this thing and maybe transitioning out of using a wallet).
MacArthur preached the first general session on “Why every self respecting Calvinist must be a 6 Day creationist.” It was nothing short of amazing!!! The sermon will be available online later this week, and I highly recommend it. One of the major points that he made was about how a theology of creation should impact our response to the environmental movement.
We had lunch after the general session and got to peruse the book store. Herb, Christian, Collin and I attended Phil Johnson’s seminar on “What is an Evangelical” which was also very good. The final session of the afternoon was with Tom Pennington who exhorted us to be very careful in how we build the church.
For dinner we decided to walk over to a fast food restaurant called “Del Taco” and than came back for our session of the day with John MacArthur. John has been the pastor of Grace Community for the last 40 years and he spent some time reflecting on the beginning of his ministry at the church and what has made Grace such a unique place for the last 40 years. He gave us 10 foundational elements that Grace has held dear for the last 40 years.
1) The Absolute Authority of Scripture
2) The church is primarily an assembly of believers who are worshipers.
3) Doctrinal Clarity
4) The need for Spiritual Discernment
5) The church is to pursue holiness
6) The need to develop godly leaders
7) The need to be devoted to discipleship
8 ) The need to love one another
9) The need for prayer
10) The need for sacrificial giving
We just got back to the hotel and we’re looking forward to another great day tomorrow.
March 05 2009 | Blog | No Comments »
Another peaceful day at EBC – if all days could start out this stress-free. I’m sure it’s the new and improved atmosphere that is now the theme at our church. It all started with the contest! Our thanks goes to our new church administrator, Dennis Weems, who talked to us about conserving energy throughout the building. We decided to see how much money could be saved in just one day! The incentive of this contest is that we ladies split the savings and have a staff party at the end of the week. It’s amazing how much we’ve saved already with your absence!
We thought we’d start with the electricity. Do you know how much glow comes from one single candle? Sue, our ever penny counting bookkeeper laid down three rules: 1. One candle allotted per person, per work station 2. You can choose your own personal style or type of candle 3. When your candle has burned down to its wicks end – your work day is done!
Personalities certainly shone through. Our Women’s Ministries Director, Cindy, chose an artistic style – it even had a fragrant scent; Pam felt that candles were too dangerous and gave a bad signal to Jubilee Junction children. She used a flashlight (her work day will never end with those Energizer batteries!); Caryl chose not to participate. Instead, she brewed a pot of coffee and poured it into Christian’s prized Israel coffee mug – ‘the boss’ mug – she pretended to be the supervisor all day; Laurie enjoyed the coffee smell so much that she thought a ‘tea’ candle might be fun; Chikita chose a birthday candle and was out the door by 8:22 a.m.!!; Terry, acting as Mayor, wanted a Roman Candle – I think she was going for Ancient History, and believe me, SHE DID! Jubilee Junction’s roof is now ancient history!
Sorry this is getting to you so late in the evening. Sue is still calculating the damages with the insurance adjuster and the rest of us are defrizzing our hair at Toby’s. What an experience!
March 04 2009 | Blog | 1 Comment »
Everyone woke up early this morning and got to the vans by 7:00am for our departure…everyone that is but Dennis. Scott (still recovering from Drew’s Rob Bell impersonation) was frankly appalled.
Tim, in utter disbelief, didn’t know what to say other than “maybe he’s just not good with numbers”
Drew and Collin immediately ran to make sure that everything was ok and…well…here’s what they found:
(not Dennis’ actual legs)
I wish that I could say this was the strangest thing that happened all day, but alas poor Gary has run out of money and has taken to selling Arlene’s cookies to get by.
Like a scalper outside of Safeco field, Gary peddles his wares to unsuspecting young people
Drew and Collin remained strong, as they have children to feed and can’t afford such luxuries, but alas poor Dave took a bite of the forbidden fruit and now sits like a puppy dog waiting for a treat outside of Gary’s hotel room.
Gary has decided to share his newfound wealth with Tim and the two of them are living pretty high on the hog (or bull as the case may be)
In all seriousness the drive down has been worth the backaches and cheesy blog posts. Time praying together, listening to John Piper sermons and long conversations brings us together as brothers in Christ and friends. We are all looking forward to tomorrow and the start of the conference.
March 04 2009 | Blog | No Comments »
The day began at 4:00am with the arrival of our crew (minus Herb) at the church. Spirits were high as we began to pack the vehicles.
Dennis, however was very skeptical about us making it past Smokey Point without needing to stop for a potty break for poor Pastor Christian.
I agreed with Dennis’ skepticism, but didn’t have the heart to tell Christian that we were going to have to wait at least ‘til Marysville to stop, especially when he looked at me and flashed his injured wing.
Scott and Mike were dumbfounded by Dennis’ pessimism.
In the end, I had to calm the whole situation down by doing my best Rob Bell impression.
Gary was appalled that I would allude to Rob Bell on a trip to the Shepherds’ Conference, but if you give a man a doughnut, he usually calms right down.
We eventually stopped for lunch at Carl’s Junior in Grant’s Pass, when Gary started quoting verses from the Cat in the Hat and demanding that we all begin wearing Dr. Seuss hats for the rest of the journey.
Scott was mortified by our behavior…
but eventually he gave in and joined the fun
After lunch we realized that there was only one men’s bathroom, so we had to spend the time wisely
Collin and Drew stepped out on a limb, but with much fear and trepidation…less trepidation on Drew’s part though
We arrived in Redding at 4:45pm, went to dinner and got back in time for 24!!!
March 03 2009 | Blog | 4 Comments »
A quiet, plane day at the offices of EBC. However, we heard there was quite the activity in the EBC parking lot at 4:00 a.m. departure time this morning – loading all that baggage……..Can people really breathe that early in the morning? Seriously, in twenty years a study will come out describing the health risk’s involved when one tries to function at that hour. It could be terminal. Well, not to shorten our life span, we, meaning Sue, Terry and Chikita arrived on – time at our usual 8:00 a.m. arrival time. And, as usual, we were hard at work – yes, working non-stop this morning! We were boarding on near exhaustion – when to our delight Pastor Herb stopped in to surprise us! He is First Class! He sent us out to lunch and even paid our fare! I’d have to admit, I did had reservations about leaving Pastor Herb to pilot the front desk on his own. Delightfully, he single handedly answered the phones, sent faxes, juggled the books – I mean, studied from The Book, and served peanuts & pepsi to all the walk-in’s today! A natural – he was able to wing it on his own. Look at this picture! Have you ever seen him so happy! He chuckled continuously as he browsed through the new Alaska Air Mile Catalog. . . . .
March 02 2009 | Blog | 2 Comments »
Before you read this post, be sure to follow the links that I’ve inserted to get a feel for the conference last year (they are hilarious!!!).
It’s been exactly 1 year since our epic voyage to the Shepherd’s Conference in 2008. There were highlights (learning about Gary’s belligerent attitude), there were lowlights (Christian’s unfortunate love affair with El Pollo Loco) and there were crazy secretaries running rampant around the church campus. This year holds great promise as we make our way back down to the Promised Land (yes, I am referring to CA). Our crew consists of me (Drew), Christian, Herb, Collin, Dennis, Scott, Gary, Mike, Dave, and Tim.
There has been a great deal of discussion about how to get there. The other day Herb asked me about flying, so I casually said that he should look and see how much it would cost. In all my 4 years at this church, I have never seen that man move so fast. You’d think he didn’t want to drive for 20 hours with 10 men. In the end, we decided to take 2 of our 15 passenger vans to give the guys enough room to stretch their legs (being 5′ 6″ I don’t usually have a problem with this ) and Herb will be flying because he said that he has a hard time reading in the car or something like that, but I don’t know if I believe him…
Keep an eye on the blog for daily updates on all of our shenanigans and feel free to leave a comment with the new easy to use comment system. In addition to our daily posts, I’ll also be keeping up my Twitter account for anyone interested in short posts about what we’re doing at the moment. If you don’t know what twitter is, just keep an eye on the top left part of the blog which will be displaying all of my tweets (twitter posts) from the conference.
That’s it for now. I’ll try to get something posted tonight from the Red Lion Inn in Redding, CA.
March 02 2009 | Blog | 3 Comments »
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