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CTF 2025 - Why another conference?

Jim Butler · 2024-12-20 · 428 words · 3 min

CTF 2025 - Preview

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Summary

Other

A chapter-by-chapter conference through the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession exists to rally the people of God around the doctrines most surely believed among Reformed Christians, promoting edification, fellowship, and fidelity to the received theological heritage.

This preview conversation introduces a confessional Reformed Baptist conference designed to walk through the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith one chapter per year, gathering pastors, elders, and laypeople around the doctrines most surely believed among Reformed Christians. The 2025 conference focuses on Chapter 2 of the confession, a chapter with significant overlap with the Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and the Belgic Confession. The stated purpose is the edification of the saints through theological instruction, fellowship, and fidelity to the received biblical and confessional heritage.

Key quotes

We invite pastors and laymen and consistory members and the people of God in general to study those things most surely believed among us.
We thought it would be helpful to just take a chapter per year and to invite some men that are specifically competent in those fields or areas to be that means of educating the people of God so that we can know better what Scripture teaches and know what our Christian tradition teaches as well.
We are the inheritors of a received theological heritage, and we want to be faithful to the biblical conclusions of that received theological heritage and to educate our people.

Applications

  1. Study the chapter of the confession being covered at the conference so that you arrive prepared to engage with the theological discourse.
  2. Attend the conference not merely as a passive recipient but as one of the people of God rallying around the truths most surely believed among us.
  3. Recognise that as an inheritor of a received theological heritage, you bear responsibility to know what Scripture teaches and what your Christian tradition teaches.

Questions this sermon answers

Why was this Reformed Baptist conference started?

The conference was started to promote the edification of the saints by gathering pastors, elders, and laypeople to study the central doctrines of the Christian faith as summarized in the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession.

How is the conference structured from year to year?

The conference takes one chapter of the 1689 confession per year and invites men competent in that doctrinal area to teach and lead theological discourse around it.

Is this conference only for Reformed Baptists?

While rooted in the Reformed Baptist tradition, the conference also invites pastors from outside that tradition and laypeople generally, in a collegial spirit of shared doctrinal study.

So

Conference Purpose and Vision

we're discussing the conference coming up in the end of April for Chapter 2 of our confession, I should say our shared confessions between the Westminster, the Savoy, and our Baptist confession of 1689, the Second London, with significant overlap to the Belgic in terms of the theories and concepts. I've got a bit of a summary here, a few questions and points to talk about. So in the first one, the purpose of the confession, sorry, the purpose of the conference. Why did we start the conference?

What do we intend to achieve with the conference? What's the vision behind it? Over to you. Well,

Edification of the Saints

we started the conference as a means to promote edification of the saints and specifically we invite pastors and laymen and consistory members and the people of God in general to study those things most surely believed among us. So, that's kind of a subtitle, or at least it's been appended to our confession of faith. And we thought that a conference was a good way to promote that fellowship, to rally around central doctrines of the Christian faith, which is what the 1689 basically is a summary of, those chief things that Christians ought to believe. And we thought it would be helpful to just take a chapter per year and to invite some men that are specifically competent in those fields or areas. to be that means of educating the people of God so that we can know better what Scripture teaches and know what our Christian tradition teaches as well.

California Conference Pattern

I believe there was a California conference that was similar that kicked off 11 or 12 years ago. Can you speak to your experience with that, if any, and how that's translated into our conference? Yeah, well, a very similar format as Jim just mentioned. The idea there was to gather together primarily Southern California Reformed Baptist pastors, but also pastors from outside the Reformed Baptist tradition, and also lay people to attend and to take in theological discourse, lectures, presentations around a chapter of a confession progressively, like the conference that we're doing.

So, yeah, it sort of served as a foundational pattern, you know, with that general collegial spirit, but also with an emphasis upon the fact that we are the you know, the inheritors of a received theological heritage, and we want to be faithful to the biblical conclusions of that received theological heritage and to educate our people and just to rally around, as Jim mentioned, those truths most surely believed among us. Excellent.

Study notes

Confessions & catechisms

  • 1689 LBCF 2
  • Belgic Confession 1
  • Westminster Confession 2

Theological terms

  • Confession of Faith×4
  • Edification

Audience

  • pastors
  • mature