Introducing the Confessing the Faith Conference
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.
