I went to Together For The Gospel this year and as I expected, the experience was highly rewarding and did much to encourage, strengthen, and educate me in regards to the whole pastorin’ thang.

The neat thing that I loved about the conference was that, as part of their attempt to benefit other pastors in their work, the conference crew (C.J. Mahaney, R. Albert Mohler, Ligon Duncan, and Mark Dever) gave evey conference attendee a litany of carefully selected books. I bypassed reading these books immediately after I got them so that I could focus on one of the books I bought from the publishers selling books at the conference (Handbook of Church Discipline by Jay Adams), but I finished that and am now moving on to The Faithful Preacher by Thabiti Anyabwile.*

In The Faithful Preacher, Anyabwile gives a short history of the lives and preaching of three prominent African-American preachers, and includes sermons preached by these men that are relevant to the task of serving as undershepherds of Jesus for the benefit of his people. The preaching and lifetimes of these men span from the 1790s to the 1930s, meaning that in reading about these men we are crossing two cultural gaps: one consisting of time, the other consisting of differences in our experiences owing to ethnic and cultural differences. John Piper says this same thing in his foreword to the book:

In this book we who are not African-American receive the double profit of reading not only across a culture but across the centuries - and thus across another culture. And of course, that implies that the African-American reader will read across another culture as well. My guess and my prayer is that these unusual crossings will weave our lives and ministries together in ways we have not foreseen. (p. 9)

I have begun reading, and I love what I have been seeing so far. As I go through the book I will be posting summaries of the sermons in the book, as well as information about the preachers themselves (mostly from what Anyabwile has to say, but also from research I do elsewhere, providing information is available). I’m also going to see if I can find online copies of these sermons so others can benefit from these sermons as well.

*If you haven’t read any of Thabiti Anyabwile’s writings, he is an incredible author and preacher (he spoke at T4G; his sermon on Christian identity and the idea of race can be found here). Check out his blog. I recommend starting with his series on the requirements for church elders, entitled “Finding Reliable Men”: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]