reFocus 08: Session Resources

Here is a quick way to find notes for the reFocus Canada 2008 conference sessions. As audio and video recordings become available, I'll add links to those as well.

Speaker	Title
Bruce Ware	The Basis for Authority Authority in the Godhead
Bruce Ware	Universal Authority The Authority of the Creator
David Short	Christ’s Authority The Authority of Jesus Over the Church and the World
D.A. Carson	Biblical Authority The Exclusive Authority of Scripture for Faith and Practice
R. Kent Hughes	Preaching Authority What the Preacher Must Believe About the Word
John Neufeld	Elder Authority God-Given Authority to Lead the Church
Hughes, Neufeld, Short, Ware	Q & A: Expositional Preaching

Fresh Links

By the looks of the blog as of late you would think that we gave up blogging for Lent or something. I'm not sure if the other guys are still alive and well, but for me it's been a hectic month of hospitals, funerals, the flu, blizzards and baby puke. And I heard something about Easter coming up soon... anyone heard this?

So, I just wanted to point you to some links around the web that caught my eye recently:

Text and Context was the name of the 2008 Resurgence National Conference, held at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, February 25-27. There is no question that if I even lived within 1000 miles of Seattle, I would have been there. The speakers were John Piper, Jim Gilmore, Matt Chandler, CJ Mahaney and Mark Driscoll. Here's the good news: the audio is up and ready for your consumption.

If you haven't picked up Tim Keller's new book The Reason for God, you should. I've been looking forward to this book for some time, and it did not disappoint. Keller challenges the most common doubts that skeptics raise about Christianity. Check out the book's website, which had boatloads of helpful content including sermon audio, study guides and other good stuff.

I'm sure many of us have heard about what's going on in the Anglican Church of Canada in recent years. Justin Taylor has a helpful post about the situation as it regards St. John's Shaughnessy in Vancouver. Learning more about this situation sure piqued my interest in hearing David Short speak at reFocus on "the authority of Jesus over the church and the world."

Learning to Preach

How does one learn how to preach? I imagine most of us have read textbooks on how to preach a sermon and taken some sort of Homiletics course in seminary. But is the classroom the place to learn how to preach? Is it a simple skill that can be taught in the same way as long division or welding?

As usual, The Doctor has some good wisdom:

What about preaching as such, the act of preaching of which I have spoken? There is only one thing to say about this; it cannot be taught. That is impossible. Preachers are born, not made. This is an absolute. You will never teach a man to be a preacher if he is not already one. All your books such as The A.B.C. of Preaching, or Preaching Made Easy, should be thrown in to the fire as soon as possible. But if a man is a born preacher you can help him a little—but not much. He can perhaps be improved a little here and there.

How can that be done? Here I am probably going to be somewhat controversial. I would say: Not in a sermon class, not by having a student to preach a sermon to other students who then proceed to criticise matter and manner. I would prohibit that. Why? Because the sermon in such circumstances is being preached with a wrong object in view; and the people who are listening to it are listening in a wrong way. The message of the Bible should never be listened to in that way. It is always the Word of God, and no one should ever listen to it except in a spirit of reverence and godly expectation of receiving a message.

What then is a young preacher to do? Let him listen to other preachers, the best and most experienced. He will learn a lot from them, negatively and positively. He will learn what not to do, and learn a great deal of what he should do. Listen to preachers!
(D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching & Preachers, p. 119-20)

I'm sure the Doctor would have rejoiced at God's great gift to preachers: the iPod. Here are some preachers I have benefited from listening to:
John Piper
Mark Driscoll
Matt Chandler
Tim Keller
Mark Dever
D.A. Carson
John Neufeld
Darrin Patrick
Norm Funk

Any recommendations?