Exploring Truth Ministries

I just returned home from the True Church Conference that was held by the First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals. I can say that I have been exhorted by some of the greatest of God’s servants in the United States. The times of worship were just as wonderfully anointed and were terrifyingly heavenous.

The theme of the conference this year was Church Discipline. Focused on both the theology and methodology of Church Discipline, the preachers exhorted us to consider that we will never have true churches until we practice the scriptures in their entirety and this includes discipline. They also challenged us to simply be humble men of God who base their life and ministry on the scriptures alone.

Tom Clay did an amazing job leading worship. I once heard a preacher say, “you don’t sing because you can sing, you sing because you’ve got a song.” I felt that the entire church had a song, the song of the redeemed. What a blessing to be around people who sing over redemption of the soul.

It was truly a wonderful weekend. Timmy Brister, live blogged the entire conference and has most of the sermon outlines on his website if you are interested in what went on.

Union University Jackson, TN

My heartfelt prayers go out to all those that have endured such a tragic ordeal in the past few days. For all of you that may not know Union University has lost much of it’s student housing among other damages earlier this week as tornado’s ravaged across the south.

I urge you to help in any way possible.

Here is a list of websites to keep you informed on that status of the situation at Union University:

www.timellsworth.com

www.uuemergency.blogspot.com

For the past 3 months I have been teaching the doctrinal portion of my own, “History and Doctrines of the Baptists” during our Wednesday night services. We have started with the basic doctrines of salvation: repentance, faith, regeneration, justification, Godly Sorrow/Conviction. We have now finished the Soteriological doctrines and last week we reviewed all of these doctrines. Tonight I have something special planned.

Theology in and of itself is purely academic and meaningless. So, tonight I am going to deal with “ordo salutis” or the order of salvation. I have a pretty cool idea in mind for my congregation, we are going to play a game. I am going to make a card for each doctrine we have learned about that has that doctrines name printed on it. Then I am going to ask the congregation to put them in the correct order based on what I have taught them in order to get the dead man to live! In other words, I’m going to make them tell me how God saves some using theological terms.

This does 3 things. First, it causes them to THINK and use their minds to make sense of everything they’ve been taught thus far. Second, THEY will be the ones defining in their own minds that regeneration proceeds faith. Lastly, it primes them to look deeper at the sovereignty of God in salvation.

I’m super pumped. I hope my folks are getting it! We will see tonight.