Sovereign Grace Bible Conference (African-American), 30th annual . . . August 4-8, 2013 in Chattanooga, Tennessee . . . Elder D. J. Ward, conference founder

Sovereign Grace Bible Conference. Chattanooga, Tenn.

I am set to attend the 30th annual Sovereign Grace Bible Conference, August 4-8, 2013.

The host church (2009- ) is New Home Missionary Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

New Home's pastor is Elder G. M. Spotts, one of the many ministerial students of the conference founder, the late Elder D. J. Ward.

I will be attending the annual conference with a budding African-American preacher from my new home church in Louisville, Immanuel Baptist Church. He is a student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a graduate of the University of Louisville.

It will be my first time attending the truly unique African-American conference since 2004. I had attended also the 2003 conference that had the then-Minneapolis pastor-author John Piper as one of the 12 or so mix of white and black preachers. This was when the conference was held in Lexington, Kentucky.

I first learned of the Sovereign Grace Bible Conference in the mid-1990s from John G. Reisinger of Sound of Grace ministries. I had become a Christian in October 1992 and soon thereafter a believer in God's sovereign electing grace (Calvinistic/Reformed Baptist theology, especially as it pertains to soteriology, the doctrine of salvation). I had initially learned the Doctrines of Grace (T.U.L.I.P.) through Reisinger's video tapes, as shown to me by friend and spiritual mentor, Daniel R. Green (1947-2006), of Port Angeles, Washington.

John G. Reisinger.
June 2014. Canandaigua, NY.

It was at a Sound of Grace-sponsored John Bunyan Conference in Pennsylvania in April 1995 that I first heard Elder D. J. Ward preach in person. What a blessing! At the time, I was 23-years-old and had just completed my first year of studies at Prairie Bible College in Alberta, Canada.

For the history of the annual Sovereign Grace Bible Conference that began in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, moved to the historic Main Street Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, and is now held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, see here.

And here is the Lexington Herald-Leader obituary for Elder D. J. Ward, and here is the April 29, 2008, online tribute to Elder Ward by Dr. John Piper. Lastly, here is the entire Homegoing and Memorial services for Elder Ward.

UPDATE

Click here to listen to and/or download the sermons and music sessions from the 2013 conference.

Elder D. J. Ward. Conference founder, Sovereign Grace Bible Conference.

New Home Missionary Baptist Church. Chattanooga, Tenn.

Chattanooga, Tennessee. USA.

John Calvin, 500th birthday + Calvinism and evangelist James Brainerd Taylor + thanks to John Reisinger and Dan Green

July 10, 2009, was the 500th anniversary of the birth of the influential French theologian and pastor, John Calvin. Conferences throughout the world are being held this year in honor of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Protestant reformer. Included among the conferences was a major, multi-day one at Geneva's St. Pierre Cathedral ("Calvin 500: A Quincentenary"). If I was not in Israel this year, I would have attended this July conference.

Also, many newspaper, magazine and journal articles and blog posts about Calvin and the resurgent Calvinistic theology in the U.S., Canada and abroad are being published and posted in 2009, including "Calvin's theology still shapes churches" (Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky., July 10, 2009).

In Time magazine's "What's Next 2009: 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now," "The New Calvinism" ranked third. A good resource regarding "The New Calvinism" is Colin Hansen's Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists (Crossway, 2008).

Though there is no evidence that James Brainerd Taylor read Calvin's popular Institutes of the Christian Religion or his other works, the American evangelist Taylor (1801-1829) was a Calvinist of the Jonathan Edwards variety. I argue this in chapter two my first book An Uncommon Christian: James Brainerd Taylor, Forgotten Evangelist in America's Second Great Awakening (University Press of America, Jan. 2008). Comments such as this reveal Taylor's Calvinistic theology:

Surely I am a miracle of grace--a sinner saved by grace, free grace, sovereign grace, almighty grace.

Regarding Calvin's impact upon my own life and theology, I thank the Reformed Baptist theologian-pastor-evangelist John G. Reisinger (Sound of Grace ministries) for introducing me to Calvinism's TULIP theology soon after my conversion to Christ in October 1992. It was in the Port Angeles, Washington home of my late friend and mentor Daniel "Danny" R. Green (1947-2006) that I viewed Reisinger's excellent and instructive videos on TULIP (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistable Grace, Perseverance of the Saints).

Other key theologians, pastors and authors--both dead and alive--whom the Lord has used to instruct me in the doctrinal truths of Calvinism/Sovereign Grace/The Doctrines of Grace have been the 16th and 17th-century Puritans, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), George Whitefield (1714-1770), Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), A. W. Pink (1886-1952), James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000), Elder D. J. Ward (died 2008, obituary), Richard Belcher, J. I. Packer, John Piper, R. C. Sproul and Mark Webb.

The Calvinism-based Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) have been especially instructive in teaching me that the "only true God" of the Bible (John 17:3) is a sovereign God who extends His free grace to undeserving sinners.