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Introducing the Confessing the Faith Conference

Jim Butler · 2024-02-17 · 840 words · 5 min

Confessing the Faith - 2024

So yeah, my name is Wim Kirchhoff. 
I'm with Free Grace Baptist Church here in Chilliwack. I'm in the 
tech and media group for the church with streaming and such, 
and also in the organizing team for our new conference called 
Confessing the Faith. So super excited to kick this 
off. And today I have with me my pastor 
Jim Butler from Free Grace Baptist Church here, as well as Pastor 
Mike Kirkpatrick from our church plant in South Surrey. So really 
sister church at this point. It's a fully mature church as 
well. So welcome here. Thank you. Thank you. And in 
this first video, we're going to do several videos. This one 
is about just about the conference in general. So yeah, just Jim, 
what's the idea for this conference? How did it start? I guess it 
goes back a while. Well, there's a church or a conference in Southern 
California called the Southern California Reform Baptist Pastors 
Conference. And I think that's a good thing. 
They have an annual conference. They take our Confession of Faith, 
which is the Second London Confession of 1677-1689, and basically they 
schedule a couple of high-profile men to come and speak on a particular 
chapter. So we're at a place in our church 
life now where we think we can do something similar to that. 
And there's an additional reason not just to have a conference 
in our church, but there is some conversations going on with several 
Reformed Baptist pastors in Western Canada. So the desire is is to 
try and establish an association of Reformed Baptist churches 
in Western Canada. So, we thought that the conference 
would be a good means to bring us together, a good means to 
sort of learn more about our common confession of the 1689 
Second London Confession of Faith. and just for fellowship and just 
for camaraderie and that sort of thing. So, as we considered 
this particular conference, we didn't want to just limit it 
to pastors. So, there's basically a three-fold 
emphasis. One is to promote unity and fellowship 
among the Reformed Baptist pastors in Western Canada. Secondly, 
to promote fellowship and unity among Reformed churches in general, 
because we as So, confessional Baptists have a lot in common 
with our brethren in, say, other Reformed denominations. So, we 
want to make sure that we can try to facilitate open, friendly, 
fraternal, and collegial relationships. And then thirdly, just to have 
a conference where the people of God can come. It's not limited 
to pastors. It's not limited to scholars 
or theological students. It's open for everybody. Awesome. So, Mike, you've been to conferences 
in the past. How has that helped you as somebody 
studying for the ministry, being in the ministry? How has that 
been useful to you? I have a bit of a confession. 
I haven't attended that many conferences. But the ones that 
I have attended, mainly the Southern California ones, especially during 
my time at seminary when I was in California, I think it was 
just a nice break from the studies that I was undergoing. And it 
was helpful just to learn more about our confession from guys 
who were well-studied in that. I think Dr. Barcelos' purpose 
for bringing in the men he does is men who are gifted in those 
specific areas and topics. And so, it really is a blessing 
to be able to have Dr. Renahan and Dr. Barcelos, who 
are experts in their field, to further help us and further help 
the Church understand the importance of Scripture and what that means 
for our Church. Yeah, I'm excited as well. I 
haven't been to any real conference before either, and this is right 
in our backyard in our own church. So, it's local. So, that's huge 
as well, it being in Canada, in BC. Yes. And so, as Mike just 
mentioned, the speakers for this first conference, it's on Chapter 
1 of the Holy Scriptures. So, it'll be Dr. James Renahan 
and Dr. Richard Barcelos. So, Dr. Richard 
Barcelos and I go back many, many years. He was my pastor. He's been my long-term mentor 
and friend. Probably no other living human 
has had as much impact upon me in terms of my Christian faith, 
practice. He's, you know, took me under 
his wing, as I said, many years ago. So, we're very excited to 
have him. And then Dr. Renahan, I think 
Mike can give us a bit more information about him. Yeah. We'll cover 
that in another video. Oh, okay. Okay. That's good. 
And then, yeah, when and where, just briefly? So, April. Twenty-six, 
twenty-seven, I think. Twenty-six and twenty-seven at 
the Free Grace Baptist Church on Wellington, unless we get 
too many people to sort of facilitate. We want to try to provide food 
and snacks, and we're a bit limited in terms of that capacity. So, 
if we get many registrants, we're going to try to use the Free 
Reform Church here in Chilliwack. Awesome. Thank you.