One highlight of the Conference for Pastors is the hour-long panel where speakers interact with questions from the pastors in attendence. Download the audio and video.

Time-markers —

00:50 — What is biblical femininity? (Wilson, Patrick)

05:12 — Does Christianity have a feminine feel? (Piper, Loritts, Patrick)

11:25 — How can fathers best care for their daughters? (Wilson, Patrick, Loritts)

15:44 — How do we know to apply strictness or mercy? (Wilson, Piper, Loritts)

24:55 — How do we model Christ in parenting foster children? (Piper, Wilson)

28:40 — Lessons for courage, boldness, and wisdom. (Atallah)

30:56 — How does Christian worship threaten the pattern of this world? (Wilson)

33:43 — How does masculinity relate to our worship music? (Piper, Wilson)

40:45 — What are strategies for building godly men? (Loritts, Patrick)

43:45 — How do we surround ourselves…

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Ramez Atallah, general secretary of the Bible Society of Egypt, spoke at the 2012 Conference for Pastors on ministering with vision, creativity, and courage. Download the audio and video.

Memorable Quotes

• "Obligated, eager and not ashamed — these should characterize a church with the gospel."
• "When I came to understand the gospel for the first time, I knew that this is what my peopled needed."
• "A Christian leader has to have a vision — he must see things other people don't see and empower them to capture it and incarnate it."
• "Faith respects people who are eccentric and marginal."
• "Humility allows us to be mission oriented, rather than gift oriented."

The gospel turns people into pilgrims. It comes with a culture-correcting force that creates aliens and exiles of the world.

Drawing from a 1733 Jonathan Edwards sermon, John Piper offers seven descriptions of what this looks like:

1. Pilgrims are not diverted from their aim.
2. Pilgrims are to hold the things of this world loosely.
3. Pilgrims become like what they hope to attain.
4. Pilgrims will not be satisfied with anything less than God.
5. Pilgrims are not grieved by their arrival at the journey's end.
6. Pilgrims ponder what they pursue.
7. Pilgrims travel together.

Read the entire article, Jonathan Edwards on the Pilgrim Mindset.

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Recent posts from "Piper's Pen" —

• The Pastor's Role in World Evangelization
• Planning for Spiritual Necessities in 2012
• How and Why God Changes People

John Piper gave his annual biographical message at the 2012 Conference for Pastors. This year he spoke about the life and ministry J. C. Ryle. Download the audio and video.

Pastor John begins the message by explaining what he means that "Christianity has a masculine feel."

Theology and church and mission are marked by overarching godly male leadership in the spirit of Christ, with an ethos of tender-hearted strength, and contrite courage, and risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading, protecting, and providing for the community — all of which is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It’s the feel of a great, majestic God, who by his redeeming work in Jesus Christ, inclines men to take humble, Christ-exalting initiative, and inclines women to come alongside the men with joyful support, intelligent helpfulness…

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I want to be like Jonathan Edwards, don’t you? The guy was amazing. He was a polymath, an incomparable scholar, “probably the greatest America mind ever” (as they say). Writing a treatise on spiders was like a few rounds of Angry Birds to him. He was the pastor-theologian. A school president. A missionary to unreached peoples. A leader in a movement that changed America. He was a giant.

Paul Talks About Us

And then the Apostle Paul reminds us with the Corinthians: “not many of you” were wise or powerful or noble. “Not many of you.” It doesn’t apply to everyone, but it does to most of us.

Most of us don’t come to faith in Jesus with the intellectual respect of secular scholars. Most of our conversion stories don’t include anything close to a Nebuchadnezzer-like experience of boasting in our kingdom. Most of us weren’t born into noble families with financial frei…

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Darrin Patrick's message at the 2012 Conference for Pastors was on being and building men in the local church. He expounded Galatians 5 and walked through the on-the-ground work of killing sin and living in the Spirit. Download the audio and video.

Memorable Quotes

• "When you become a leader of men, you plug your life into an ampiflier and everyone hears it."
• "You don't obey for your acceptance, you obey from your acceptance."
• "You don't measure your maturity by comparing yourself with others. You judge maturity by comparing yourself to Jesus."
• "Paul tells us to crucify the flesh. Crucifixion is a slow death, but it is a certain death."
• "Your flesh is anything you use other than Jesus to get God’s approval. Your flesh will take your ministry and make it your righteousness."
• "A key to killing your spiritual flesh is through surrounding yourselves with broth…

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Crawford Loritts' message included practical insight and a short exposition of Galatians 5 on what it means to live and walk by the Spirit. Download the audio and video.

Memorable Quotes

• "Manhood is not a private matter. It is a public thing. A man aspires to be the desired destination at which others arrive."
• "This summarizes my dad: Stepping up, never walking away, if it belongs to you, you do something with it."
• "Our disproportionate desire for relevance is injecting embalming fluid into the next generation."
• "Out of struggle comes strength; out of strength comes discipline; out of discipline comes integrity; out of integrity comes inheritance."
• "How people treat you should never define you. It's not what people call you, but what you answer to."
• "All we have to give to the next generation is what we have become."

Doug Wilson's first message at the 2012 Conference for Pastors was about the role of fathers in leading the home. Download the audio and video.

He noted six things to learn about fatherhood in the baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:16–17),

1. When Jesus was baptized, his father was there.
2. The Father made his presence felt.
3. The Father made his presence known by speaking.
4. The Father's statement identified with his son.
5. The Father expressed his love for his son.
6. The Father expressed his pleasure in his son.

Memorable Quotes

• "Fatherhood in the home and pastoral care in the church are analogous activities. This makes sense only if they are related activities."
• "When Paul considers the leadership of the church he doesn't first refer to a rigorous M. Div. program."
• "The way we image the Father is to be open-handed and generous in all that we have."
• "Masculine toughness has to…

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Audio and video from the 2012 Conference for Pastors is now available for free streaming and download.

"Father Hunger" in Leading the Home
Doug Wilson

Lessons on Biblical Manhood Learned from His Father
Crawford Loritts

Being and Building Men for the Local Mission
Darrin Patrick

"The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle" — The Value of a Masculine Ministry
John Piper

"Father Hunger" in Leading the Church
Doug Wilson

Pastoring with Vision, Creativity, and Courage in Hard Places
Ramez Atallah

Speaker Panel
John Piper, Crawford Loritts, Darrin Patrick, Doug Wilson, Ramez Atallah

The Supremacy of Christ in All of Life: The Pastor and His Worldview
A Conversation with Doug Wilson and John Piper

Careful here, brothers. Conferences can make a lot of hearers, but we're called to more than that. May God give us grace to fulfill our roles as men in the home and in minist…

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The Bible is clear. While we can't exhaustively comprehend it all, the divine authorial intention communicated through the human authors is suffuciently clear for all purposes of salvation (WCF 1.7).

But why is Scripture clear? Here's one of the most basic and solid arguments:

John Frame writes,

Since Scripture is God’s word, it is his communication to us. In Scripture, God speaks, not primarily to himself or to the angels, or to the winds and waves, but to us human beings. God cannot fail to accomplish his purpose, so his communication cannot be anything less than successful. If words are unclear, they fail to communicate; they are not communication. So Scripture must be clear.

The Doctrine of the Christian Life, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2008), 147.

"All Are Yours" is a new column featuring quotations from living authors writing from a God-centered, …

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