Just arrived in Springfield, Illinois, for the Midwest Advance – a large gathering of Baptists from the cool-kid states in the Midwest. None of you SEC types are allowed. They used to call this by some other name but it is a triennial gathering. The first one I went to lo these many years ago had this featured speaker from Arlington, TX, named Dwight McKissic. It was long before blogging started and I didn’t even get a chance to meet Dwight, but he preached a great message.
Todd Benkert is supposed to show up and we plan to stir up as much trouble as we can. Seriously, if you are a Voices reader, we’d love to meet you. This is an anonymous business and we love face to face meetings.
I am leading three breakout sessions tomorrow morning – back to back to back. All the info is in the program, if you are here! Frankly, I can’t remember which order these are in and I left my program down in the car. I drove 8 hours and this old codger needs a nap. But in no particular order, my breakouts are:
The Trajectory of the SBC – examining our past and present to project the future of our denomination. Where are we headed and where do we need to head?
Baptist in the Holy Spirit – I’ve been working on the series I have been posting here. Unfortunately, it is a typo in the program (Baptism in the Holy Spirit). We will look at how Baptists handle spiritual issues, examining cessationism and continuationism and issues like that.
Pastoring the Average SBC Church – So much of what we do at conferences like this is designed toward the trendy contemporary churches or about how to transition our traditional churches to become more like those. I am going to examine issues unique to those of us in average, traditional SBC churches.
Would love to have you come to any of these and join the discussion.
