20/20 Conference

I had the pleasure of attending the 20/20 Conference at Southeastern. It started Friday evening and went on all day yesterday. The highlight was definitely hearing Mark Driscoll speak twice. C.J. Mahaney's talk was excellent as well. The fourth plenary was with Bill Brown, who is the president of Cedarville University. The last was from Danny Akin who is the president of Southeastern. His was OK, but not nearly as good as the first four. Then again, being the anchor is tough.

I attended a few good breakout sessions as well. Here are some things I gleaned from them:

• The Bible is about Jesus. It is not about you nor is it really about the history of Israel.
  
• There is a "grand inclusio" in the Bible. Note the setting of Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22.
  
• We can make a biblical case for a limited government whose primary job is to protect us from criminals both within and without. That should govern how we handle the political realm.
• Churches should not be in the business of endorsing candidates.
• When we read literature we should look for the truth and excellence in it. We are not necessarily bound by authorial intent. For example, we could use the Beatles' "Let It Be" to discuss God's sovereignty, though that is not what they intended. I'm still mulling this one over.

Driscoll's sessions were especially challenging and funny, as you might imagine. I'd say the most profound thing I took from the first is that politics reflects our culture. In other words, we don't want to use politics to change culture, but we need to affect culture as far upstream as possible to change our politics. There are only a few real culture-makers in society and those are the folks that need to hear the gospel. Of course, everyone needs to hear the gospel, but the point is that real societal change doesn't happen from a church with 3000 Joe Blows.

His other session was about worship. I've heard some of it before from other messages of his. It was all very good. We all have idols in our lives. A great way to identify them is to examine where you make sacrifices. For example, do you sacrifice going to church so you can play sports?

I look forward to next year's conference. I'm not sure if Amanda does though, since she had the kids. One thing I can say is that being there made me feel very, very old indeed.