Advance 09 Part 1

As most of you know, I, and a bunch of other cats, traveled to Durham North Carolina to attend the Advance conference put on by The Resurgence. I was a conference virgin prior to the trip. It was my conference debut. I was a rookie in the conference league. I was a conference noob. Here's some pictures of the shiz. Here's the messages in download form. I'm hoping that they will produce video as well at some point.

Anyways, the trip was sweet and opened my eyes to what these conferences look like. BASICALLY, there was a lot more content and preaching than I was expecting. The conference began on Thursday at noon and ended at the same time on Saturday. There were 11 Sermons and 2 Q&A sessions, each ranging from an hour to an hour and 15 minutes long. The lineup included:

• John Piper
• Mark Driscoll
• Matt Chandler
• Eric Mason
• Ed Stetzer
• Bryan Chapel 
• JD Greear
• Tyler Jones
• Danny Akin (or Danny "Takin" his sweet ass time to finish the sermon.  thanks faith :-D

After hearing all those names, many of you who didn't attend are likely to brim over with a mix of jealousy and anger. There may be tears and fits of pouting. You might wear black for days and walk around with your face veiled. It's possible...it's probable.

But those dudes are just dudes. And their talks, however funny and intelligent and theologically sound and engaging, will be entirely unprofitable if not taken to heart and applied. Ultimately, we must believe the Lord and obey or else we will simply be hearers of the word and not doers.

I was stirred up by this conference and convicted about a few things that I'll certainly talk about in the days to come, but I wanted to make a statement before getting into that jazz. No amount of conferences or sermons or duties or prayers, will make up for faith and obedience.

May we not just be challenged, but changed.