Well,

Introduction and Welcome

welcome to Ask Free Grace Baptist Church, or Ask FGBC as we call it. And so, I'm William Kirchhoff from Free Grace Baptist Church here in Chilliwack, and I'm joined today by Pastor Jim Butler and Cam Porter from our church. So, welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, so for those new to Ask Free Grace, this is where we answer questions submitted by you, our listeners, our church family, and others. We tackle questions around theology, practical Christian living, issues facing believers today, and all from a confessional Reformed Baptist perspective, rooted in Scripture and our 1689 London Baptist Confession. So, if you're not already subscribed on Surmaner or YouTube, I recommend that so you can be notified when those come out.

Also, through the website or a link in this video, you'll see how to subscribe to our newsletter on the website, and we send those out as well. So, it is to listen to what interests you, but also share it with other friends or family who might benefit. So today we've got lots of great questions lined up, covering everything from baptism and reading the Bible for the first time, and deeper theology, theological matters like federal vision, and Bacsterianism, order of salvation, faith. And before we get into that,

Conference Purpose and Overview

we want to spend a few minutes talking about our upcoming conference in April. April 10 and 11 here in Chilliwack. It's called Confessing the Faith. So Cam, let's just start with that.

What's the purpose of the conference? Why did we start this? I think maybe speaking more largely and generally, the conference is designed, hopefully, to know our God and His truth better. We want to understand historic, doctrinal, biblical, confessional Christianity.

So, you know, the vision of the conference is to do just that, to improve our understanding of historical orthodoxy, the understanding of our precious Christian truth. It puts pastors into context, elders, officers of churches into contact with each other, into contact with a deeper and richer understanding of historical Christianity, the doctrines of the Bible. What we do, the format, which will be, I think, maybe even touched on in an upcoming question, but the format is such that we're following a confession of faith, so a progression through our confession of faith. And so, having already done Chapter 1 on the doctrine of the Scriptures, having completed Chapter 2 on the doctrine of God, and of the Holy Trinity were coming up on the doctrine of God's decree.

And so, with the purpose there, it would be to understand that doctrine better, the God of that doctrine better, placing it in its historical and biblical and confessional context. Yeah, providing not only pastors and officers in churches, but also members of churches, Christians properly speaking, providing them with an understanding of what they believe and of the God that they believe in. Anything to add? Usually we get professionals in a particular subject, and this year we'll have Dr.

Jim Renahan, who is the president of the International Reformed Baptist Seminary, and we'll have Dr. Richard Barcelos, who's a professor at the International Reformed Baptist Seminary and a pastor in Palmdale, California, and then Pastor David Charles from Toledo, Ohio. And again, professionals in their field. on the decree of God, so Drs. Renahan and Barcelos will deal with the nuts and bolts of the confession, and then Pastor Charles will do a pastoral reflection on the decree of God, how it's to be taught, how it's to be embraced, how it's to be preached.

We're trying to add that dimension to the conference, have a pastor that's working regularly in the text and with the people of God to give some reflection on a particular chapter, so just to make it, you know, a bit more application or a bit more useful in terms of just putting the doctrine into practice. Yeah, excellent. And maybe another thing to add that I didn't mention with regards to the purpose is we also want the conference to serve the end of unity amongst Christ's churches. You know, as much as sometimes division needs to obtain by virtue of the truth, if we look historically at church councils, you know, church creeds, church confessions, that sort of a thing.

But the truth is intended by God to unite as well. And we want to rally around with like-minded churches and like-minded brethren, rally around the truths that are believed amongst us, the form of sound words that we hold strongly to. So, it's a collegial spirit that is intended to be engendered by the conference as well. And I think that's important to emphasize.

Yeah, there can be some differences, but focusing on what unites. There can be differences on baptism and church structure, and there's still so much in common. Yeah, that's right. And I guess like the name, I love the name that we came up with for it, is Confessing the Faith.

That's the Jude 3 reference, right? This is nothing new. This is not 20th century, 19th century, 1600s. This is back to first century, right?

Yeah, that's right. For sure. Very good. And I guess,

Importance of God's Decree

why is the topic of God's degree important at this time or all times, right? Well, I think it's directly connected to the first two chapters. You know, we have of the Holy Scriptures in chapter one, which sets forth truth concerning who God is and what God has done. And then, of course, chapter two emphasizes of God and the Holy Trinity and by virtue of His perfections. and His relation to the world or the things that He has made, it is important for us to understand the decree of God that what we face or experience in this present world is not random, it's not haphazard, it's not fate.

It's not impersonal forces kind of working behind the scenes, but it is the God described and defined and delineated in chapter 2 that governs all His creatures and all their actions, that has ordained whatsoever comes to pass, and that ultimately for His glory, for the good of His people. And if the people of God get a good understanding of that, it really does provide and afford a great degree of stability. peace, comfort, and hopefully take some of the guesswork out of life, knowing that whatever our God has ordained is good, and hopefully promotes in us a more worshipful and thankful approach to our God. Obviously, both of you have taught on the chapter many times, so we'll put a link on the website or in this video to where you can find that teaching and from the sermon audio as we regularly go through our confession and study these chapters. So, a good overview.

Not required for the conference, but helpful to get an overview of the chapter. Yeah. Okay. And then, yeah.

Cam, just because real quick,

Conference Format and Schedule

what's the format in terms of sessions and the schedule for the conference? Yeah. So the conference takes place over Friday and Saturday, usually beginning Friday afternoon, continuing into the evening, and then reconvening Saturday morning and finishing in the afternoon on Saturday. And the format is, Jim had already mentioned that we bring in speakers to speak on a given topic each year.

So there are certain, usually 45 minute to one hour sessions slotted for each of the speakers where they will speak on the topic, intermingled amongst breaks and treats and coffees and and dinners, but the idea is to have a good format that is conducive to understanding, to participant attention, so that we can provide the giving of solid material about our confession of faith, about the truth of the Bible, in a format that's easily received and easily understood. And, you know, some of the subject matter is going to be, I don't know if the proper word to use is difficult, but it's going to be heavy in the sense that we're not dealing with, you know, the latest flavor of Skittles or potato chips. We're dealing with the truth of the living and true God. And so the content is intended to be rich.

It's intended to be accurate, to be precise, to be faithful to the biblical witness and faithful to our confessional heritage. that we believe accurately captures and represents that biblical witness. Yeah. I would say even if people are not in theology and doctrine on a regular basis, but anyone can benefit from it. You may not get 100%, maybe nobody does, but even 25% will be a huge blessing for you.

Just feed your soul and your mind. Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, we've been transformed by the renewing of our minds as Christians by virtue of God's amazing and victorious grace. And we're called to use our minds, to have our souls elevated, to apprehend and to understand our God better.

And I think we ought to always receive that challenge with joyful Christian hearts. Not to roll our eyes at doctrine, but to have warm Christian hearts that openly embrace the receipt of doctrine, the receiving of doctrine, that we might better understand the Word and the God who has revealed himself therein. Yeah. Amen.

And then, yeah, opportunities for fellowship as well, right? With the breaks and the dinner. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's something we encourage too. You know, we talked about unity that obviously we hope to obtain around a doctrinal reality for the content of the conference, but also you know, networking and unity among the brethren, fellowship amongst pastors, amongst deacons, amongst Christians, generally speaking, getting together, meeting one another, speaking to one another, talking about the content of the lectures and about their respective walks with Christ. So it's a wonderful environment for a number of things, one of those being the fellowship and the networking and meeting new people that you haven't met before. Yeah, I definitely heard that from the pastors and people who have come.

They feel very filled. It's like there's tears in your eyes. They're so grateful for it, right? Because it can be very lonely.

Yeah, that's right. It is very lonely for most, yeah. And then, I guess,

Logistics and Registration

accommodations we do. We have families in our church that will host people from out of town, so providing meals and stuff. And that's been a great blessing to both parties as well, is for that, to have an evening and break bread together and a weekend together. So we have a form on the website you can submit with your details and for being with children, what their ages are, et cetera, so we can do a good matchmaking to a home there.

So recommend that. And if you're flying, do recommend Abbotsford rather than MacGoover. It's a lot more convenient for rides and it's much closer to Chilliwack.

Questions and Answers

Tickets for the conference are free. It's just a ministry of our church. And then the dinner is optional. It's $40 to cover the catering costs there.

Check out the website for details and to register. With that said, we'll go continue with our questions. We've done 53 already, so this will be number 54.

Scripture References

• Jude 3