2007 National Leadership Conference - Day 3

As I mentioned on my last post, Thursday started off with Dr. Dave Doran’s presentation on "Our Unique Gospel."

Thursday also included two other General Sessions and some workshops.

The second General Session of the day was a presentation by Dr. Kevin Bauder of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (MN) on "Our Unique Authority."

As Dr. Bauder himself acknowledged, there was nothing new in this presentation, but he did do a good job of some important ideas for review.

His proposition was "We must submit ourselves to God’s Word" and he gave three reasons why we must submit ourselves to God’s Word from 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

I. The first reason we must submit to God’s Word is because God breathed it.

Key term: Authority

Whatever is Scripture is the product of God’s creative breath and therefore has God’s authority.

"You cannot claim to be loyal to God if you are not loyal to what He says."

The doctrinal implication of this truth is that everything that Scripture affirms must be true.

The label for this, of course, is "Inerrancy"

It is not that the Bible contains the Word of God or that the Bible becomes the Word of God, but rather the Bible is the Word of God.

While there is no division of authority in the Bible, not all of Scripture is equally relevant in answering the same questions.

II. The second reason we must submit to God’s Word is because it has the Power to change lives.

Key term: Profitable
A doctrinal implication of this truth is the perspicuity of Scripture

When you knock down the perspicuity of Scripture, you knock down the authority of the Bible.

The power and utility of Scripture is seen when we grasp it.

The Holy Spirit is capable of illuminating the text when we don’t understand it.

An implication of this is that the Bible is not useful and powerful when we let it sit on the shelf.

III. The third reason we must submit to God’s Word is because the Word of God gives us all that we need.

If we were going into a physical battle, we would want to be as equipped as possible. In the spiritual battle, we need the Bible if we are to equipped for battle.

A doctrinal implication of this deals with the Sufficiency of Scripture.

The Bible is our sole authority, yet people will turn to all kinds of external authorities today.

While he did not use this term, it is important that we understand the difference between sola Scriptura and noda Scriptura. While the Bible is our sole authority, it does not tell us everything about the world in which we live. It is not the sole source of information.

As an illustration of this point, he gave an illustration of a woman feeding arsenic to her husband. "The Bible does not say you ‘no arsenic’ - you legalist!" (You probably need to hear the presentation to appreciate this comment in its context.)

Dr. Bauder dealt with a familiar text and familiar topic, but, as usual, did so in an excellent way and this session is also worth listening to if you can.

Thursday Evening’s General Session was more of a testimony than a General Session. Evangelist Mike Redick, who is a graduate of International Baptist College in Tempe, Arizona and serves as a missionary evangelist in Southeast Asia.

Mr. Redick gave some incredible testimonies and connected them loosely to Matthew 9 and the idea that "the harvest is plenteous." He also stated that there must be an Acceptance of the Promise (I know this is probably nitpicking, but it seemed that Mr. Redick was indicating that the idea that "the harvest is plenteous" as a promise, rather than a statement of fact, but maybe I misunderstood him.) He also stated there must be an Awareness of the Problem - the problem is not the harvest or the seed, the problem is with the harvesters.

One thing that I that I thought was interesting in regards to the testimonies that Mr. Redick shared was that after the Gospel meetings that they held in the Philippines many of the converts were immediately part of a two-week discipleship camp. The first week of the camp focuses on teaching the basics of the Christian life. The second week of the camp focuses on teaching the new believers how to present their new faith. Having two weeks of intensive training for new believers would seem to be a great blessing and I wonder if it is part of the reason for the apparent effectiveness of some of the ministries of which Mr. Redick spoke.

Tomorrow I plan on adding a post (or two) regarding Friday (including the Panel Discussion) and then a general summary before moving on to individual workshops.

I hope this information is helpful to others out there.

Just my thoughts,

Frank