The Gospel Coalition

Last week me, Nathan Burke and Pastor Tim Smith had the great privlege of attending the first Gospel Coalition meeting in Deerfield Illinois. In attendance were heavy hitters Don Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper and our own Mark Driscoll (Pr Driscoll weighed in on his blog here). The conference has been adequately blogged about already so I’ll leave out the details and simply link to a couple blogs that did the conference justice here and here. The final GC documents can be found here.

 The Coalition’s main purpose is to rally together like minded pastors, scholars etc around the importance of the centrality of the gospel as it is proclaimed in Christian ministry and missions. Seems like a no brainer, right? Well, in light of some of the latest theological gymnastics being done in evangelicalism these days which at times toys with very central teaching of Orthodox Christian faith, I’m glad that organizations like the Gospel Coalition exist. In short, it was really encouraging to hear these mean speak and it was such an encouragement to me to be with other like minded men and women that are fighting to contend for the faith in their own corners of the continent.

 The highlight for me had to have been when John Piper addressed the 50 or so Acts 29 church planters. It was a very informal Q&A over a pizza dinner and his insights were very fatherly and wise. I couldn’t help but comment to some of the guys I’d met later that evening that I felt like I was present for something historical with the older passing the torch to the younger.