GARBC Conference Recap

This week I -- along with Pastor Rich & Lynette and David Kreis -- attended the GARBC's annual conference in Schaumburg, Illinois. Thank you to Walnut Ridge for enabling us to attend and benefit from the messages and fellowship.

First, what is the GARBC? It is the national fellowship of churches that our church partners with. It consists of about 1,300 churches who join together around common belief and remain autonomous as local churches, yet help each other out so that we can each accomplish more. Pastor Rich has served on the association's board for a number of years, as did Pastor Moore. And a number of our former pastors -- Robert Ketcham, Mark Jackson, and current GARBC national representative John Greening -- have been key in the group's history.

The theme of the conference was Our God Reigns, and in the first session, John Greening encouraged us attendees that, instead of repeating back hearty "amen"s during the messages, to shout back "our God reigns." Nine speakers tag-teamed to speak through the book of Daniel, and we were freshly reminded of the sovereign rule of God over all things.

Below are the messages from the conference. Click the links to save the MP3 files to your computer. I especially recommend three of them (not to the neglect of the other nine!):

- Dan Davey is pastor of Colonial Baptist Church and president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Virginia Beach. His message from chapter two gives some great principles to help guide your study of the whole book of Daniel.

- My friend Joe Earle pastors Grace Baptist Church, Harlan, Iowa. His message on chapter five's handwriting on the wall is thoroughly excellent.

- Mike Stallard, dean of Baptist Bible Seminary, spoke from chapter nine, one of the most important passages in the Old Testament.

Another benefit of the conference is the chance to connect with many friends and learn of what we can do to help each other in the coming days. This leads to some ideas that we might be able to flesh out in our church, and we'll see what the Lord has in store for us along those lines this year.

Chapter 1 - John Greening
Chapter 2 - Dan Davey
Chapter 3 - Ken Spink
Chapter 4 - Dan Davey
Chapter 5 - Joe Earle
Chapter 6 - Tim Jordan
Chapter 7 - Dan Davey
Chapter 8 - Bill Gasser
Chapter 9 - Mike Stallard
Chapter 10 - Dan Davey
Chapter 11 - Steve Lovelady
Chapter 12 - Bernie Augsburger