Fundamentalism & Evangelicalism

This is a brief overview of the final two sessions on day 3 of The Gospel Coalition Conference.

Session 8: Mike Bullmore – God’s Great Heart of Love Toward His Own (Zephaniah)
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We used to think that the problem of child molestation belonged to other people, but not to fundamental Baptists. Now we are learning otherwise. We are hearing more and more reports of sexual predation, pedophilia, and cover-ups on the part of fundamental Baptist leaders. The resulting impression upon the public is that the clergy of Baptist fundamentalism is unusually goatish, thuggish, and corrupt.

Bob Hayton did an excellent job describing Wednesday’s night sessions, so i’ll leave them alone, other than to say they were indeed powerful. Let’s just say there was no time for daydreaming.

Thursday morning’s sessions were quality.

Here is a brief overview of each of the plenary sessions from day 2 of the 2011 Gospel Coalition conference.

Session 5: James MacDonald – Not According to Our Sins (Psalm 25)
–Download audio–

The conference cranked back into session this morning with more folk (6-7k my rough estimate) and a plethora of more free literature from the numerous exhibitors at the conference. (Yesterday i thought it was limited, but they have been releasing in waves apparently.) While attenders have to wade through some “Christianized Commercialism”, there are benefits. My backpack is literally full of free books, videos and journals, not including the bag full I received yesterday. Our staff is literally considering shipping the books home because we only packed small carry-ons.

I’ve been real busy at the conference, and enjoying every minute of it. I wanted to share some reflections from day one, and plan on posting more thoughts later.

Day one of the Gospel Coalition for 2011 has been very long, but profitable. As I’ve been up for 17 hours with a two hour drive and two hour flight in the mix, I will have to be brief. I had the privilege of being at the 2009 event and this by far is bigger with a much better venue - McCormick Place in Chicagoland. As is the tradition at TGC, an attendee receives free bibles and books. There were fewer goodies this year, but the participants have also increased. No one has stated a number, but i would wager greater than 6,000 folk are in attendance.