Report from the 2021 FIRE Southeast Regional Conference

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. This week the show is going to be a little different. You might notice already if you're watching by video that I'm not in my normal studio.

I'm actually in my office at the church. I'm a little bit behind this week because for three days I was gone to the Southeast Regional Conference of the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals.

That is the association that our church is a part of, well the fellowship that our church is a part of. And what I want to do today on the program is I want to give sort of a report about the conference.

I want to talk about the things that we learned, the things that we discussed, and also encourage you if you are not a member of FIRE and you're interested in being a member of FIRE, I'd like to encourage you to do just that.

And let me tell you what FIRE is. FIRE again is the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals. And you can join FIRE either as a church, like our church became a FIRE church many years ago, or you can join FIRE as an individual member.

Some of the pastors that are part of FIRE, their churches are not part of FIRE, but they are individual members of FIRE as pastors. And depending on your particular situation and your need, you may find yourself in one of those two situations.

And either one is great. We love our pastors and we love our churches. And again, FIRE is a fellowship. It's an opportunity for ministers and churches to come together to minister to and with one another and to learn from one another, encourage one another.

And it is honestly one of the sweetest fellowships that I know of and have been a part of. And I'm encouraged every year when I get to participate. Now, I personally have never been to the national or international conference because over the years it just hasn't been that I've been able to get to where it is located.

And typically it's located a little further away from me. There are fewer churches in the southeast region. In fact, there's only two FIRE churches in Florida. There are more FIRE members, but there are only two FIRE churches that I know of that are active in Florida.

Our church, which is Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, and Mitch Pridgen's church, which is Crosswalk Church in Daytona Beach, Florida, which is where the Southeast Regional Conference was held last year.

And if you remember, if you've been listening to the program, I actually spoke at last year's conference in Daytona and I did interviews from the conference of many of the speakers that were there that week.

And we talked about what was going on in FIRE, what was going on in their individual churches. Well, this year, because it was held in Bartlett, Tennessee, which is right near Memphis, and I want to again thank Pastor Randy who hosted us at Trinity Reformed Church there in Bartlett.

They did a wonderful job. Their church was such a blessing. They were so encouraging to us and they hosted very well and we're very thankful for them. But when I went this year, it was such a long drive, I didn't bring all my equipment with me to do interviews.

So I didn't get an opportunity to interview anyone at the conference this year. So what I thought I would do instead of that, since I didn't get to do interviews, is I thought I would just share with you some of the things that we discussed, some of the things that were learned at the conference.

Maintaining Focus in Distracting Times

And the conference this year was about maintaining our focus in distracting times. Maintaining focus in ministry can be very hard because there are always distractions. And over the last year and a half, two years, there have been a lot of additional distractions than what might be normal for ministry.

There's a lot of things going on in the world with COVID and the different things that have happened as a result of COVID and the economy and people having job situations that have gone bad. And it's just a lot that's going on in the world and ministering in this particular context, it is very easily distracting, to say the least.

So I thought that the conference focus this year, the idea of maintaining our focus during distracted times was a great topic. And the four speakers that we had, I'm going to mention each speaker and I'm going to mention a little bit of what they talked about and how it personally affected me and encouraged me.

And Brother Andy was there. One of our elders here at Sovereign Grace was with me. So he and I went, we represented the church as the only one who wasn't able to go was Brother Mike Collier, our other elder.

So the two of us went to represent Sovereign Grace and were there. And afterward, we had a long conversation about all the things that we learned and enjoyed and heard while we were there. And again, it was very encouraging.

And again, I say, if you are a church that is reformed and you're not part of a fellowship, I recommend FIRE to you. Here's what FIRE is, is a fellowship of churches that are reformed or reforming. You may not be, you may not all the way be there, but if you're going in the direction of reformed theology, and in particular, reformed Baptist theology, if you're going in that direction, if you're Baptist and you're Calvinist, if you're reformed in your theology, then the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals may be for you.

Again, independent, it maintains that Baptist distinction of not being a denomination, but it is a fellowship of independent, reformed evangelicals, gospel-centered churches. And if you have any questions, you can always message me.

If you want to know more about it, you can always contact our program at calvinistpodcasts at gmail .com. I would love to answer any questions that you have. And again, we enjoy being a part of FIRE. I'm thankful for it.

I'm thankful for these conferences and the opportunities for learning and growth that they open up. So, and again, today's program, like I said, is a little different. I do different things each week on the program, and this is not necessarily a commercial for FIRE, but it is an opportunity that if you don't know anything about it, to learn and to maybe ask some questions.

Public Reading of Scripture and Submission to the Word

So the first speaker that we had was Dean Olive. Dean Olive is a man that I have known for many years. I love him. He is an older minister that I respect and appreciate for his longevity of service and the things that he has done in the ministry.

And he focused on 1 Timothy 4, verse 13, which reminds us to devote ourselves to the public reading of scripture, to the exhortation, and to the teaching. And he gave a wonderful exposition of that text and really focused in on the concept of publicly reading the scripture.

I think oftentimes we forget how important the public reading of scripture actually is. I think oftentimes we think that maybe that's just the, that's just something that's done to fill time. You know, we read scripture in service, and some churches have even gone away from reading scripture.

Some churches don't read maybe just the verse that the pastor is preaching on or the verses that the pastor is preaching on. In our church, we begin our worship service with a reading of an entire chapter from the New Testament.

And the reason why we do that is because currently I'm preaching in the Old Testament. I've been in Genesis, and I'm preaching out of the Old Testament. So we take our scripture reading from the New Testament.

And if it were reversed, we would do the opposite. If I were preaching in a New Testament book, we would take a chapter from the Old Testament. That way, always giving honor and reverence to the whole of God's word, both the Old and the New Testament.

It's not saying that's the only way to do it. I know some churches that do readings from both Testaments independent of the sermon every week. And it can be done in a variety of different ways. But again, Pastor Dean just stressed to us the importance of that public reading of scripture, you know, reminding us that no congregation ever gets beyond its need for the exposition of God's word.

God's word is central, and the teaching and preaching of God's word is vital. And the only part of the sermon that's infallible is the reading of scripture. And that's the one part where God is speaking.

It's not always, you know, it's not in the music. It's not in the prayers. It's not in anything. God speaks when his word is read. And God speaks to us in the reading of scripture more than he does in any other way.

And so that was a wonderful encouragement. And this is something else he said. I wrote notes. I'm sort of looking at my notes as I go through this. He said, churches are healthy, which submit to the word of God.

Churches are healthy, which submit to the word of God. And again, such a simple thing, but such a profound thing because how many churches aren't submissive to the word of God? In fact, years ago, I wrote my book.

I've got to just happen to have a copy right here. My book is entitled, A Biblically Functioning Church. Why did I entitle it, A Biblically Functioning Church? You can put the word biblically in red. It's because I believed when I wrote this that so many churches aren't concerned about what the Bible says and how they function.

They're concerned with pragmatism, what works. They're concerned with what gets the most numbers, what gets the most attention, what markets well. But they're not super concerned with what the Bible teaches.

And again, reading the notes from Pastor Dean, churches are healthy, which submit to the word of God. And he told a story, he told about William Jennings Bryant, the famous attorney. And William Jennings Bryant was asked to read a passage of scripture publicly.

And he read that passage publicly with great oratory skill. He was a wonderful orator. And someone commented about how well he had read that passage in public. And this is what he said, quote, he says, labor to read God's word in a manner worthy of its author.

I thought, what a wonderful thought. When we stand to read God's word publicly, even when we're reading privately, we should read God's word in a manner that is worthy of its author. What a wonderful, wonderful thought.

Corporate Worship, the Regulative Principle, and Discipling Through Worship

Moving on, I want to look at my notes from the other teachers and kind of go through what else we learned. The second speaker was Rob Davis, was my first time ever meeting Rob. Wonderful brother, very, very smart man.

He is a seminary professor. I could tell when he began to teach that he had an aptitude for teaching. And he taught about corporate worship and the tyranny of the urgent was the title of his message. And he talked a little bit about the subject of the regulative principle of worship and the normative principle of worship.

What should we be doing in worship? What does the Bible command us to do in worship? And he even asked the question, why do we gather together? And he gave the answer, we gather together because we're commanded to do so because it's modeled in the New Testament.

And worship is always described in scripture in the plural, the body of Christ. It's the coming together, it's the assembly. And it was a wonderful message that he gave, and then he gave an exposition in that message of Psalm 46, which was just masterful, and I thought it was very good.

And one of the things that he mentioned, and I want to just put this out there. Again, if you're a pastor listening to this, or maybe you're a leader in your church, or maybe you're someone who helps make decisions.

He made this point, he says, we should have a full and robust theology of worship. And that really stuck with both Brother Andy and myself, because what he was saying is, when we do things in worship, we should know why we do those things.

Why do we do worship the way that we do? The things that are in our worship service, do we do them simply, again, it's just simply time fillers, or things that seem to make people happy? Or are we doing them because these are the things that are prescribed for us in the scriptures.

These are the things that God has commanded us to do in worship. And he made this statement, I like this. He says, everything we do should be discipling people with the gospel. I thought that was a wonderful thought.

Is our music discipling our people? Is our prayers, are we worshiping, and also discipling, as we worship, discipling the people of God? And so I was very appreciative of that. The third message was by missionary Trevor Johnson.

And if you're not familiar with Trevor Johnson, I would encourage you to look him up. He has a tremendous missionary work that has been done in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea specifically. And the thing about Trevor when he was there, he was in pain while he was teaching because he's still dealing with the sickness that he had gotten when he was overseas.

And he's still dealing with the effects of this. And he said this, he said over half of his missionary friends, people that he's gone into missions with, people that he's worked with over the years, he said over half of them are off the field.

He said because of everything that's going on and things that are going on and it's, he said something and it touched my heart. He said, when God calls us to go into all nations, he says he didn't just call us to go to those nations that ain't gonna kill you.

That was exactly how he said it, that's how I wrote it down. And he says all nations does not mean just those nations that ain't gonna kill you. He says we're called to go to all nations, even the dangerous nations, even the dangerous places, and he has gone to those places.

And he shared with us the things that God has done through him. I would recommend to you, if your church, again, if you're a pastor listening to this, if your church is looking to support a missionary, our church supports Scott Phillips, which is also a missionary to Indonesia, to the Tao tribe, but Trevor, I've known Trevor for a long time and his ministry is also one that I would certainly commend to anyone if they're looking for support, or looking to support, and I would ask for you to continue to pray for Trevor Johnson and his missionary work.

After Trevor spoke, the way these conferences work is we have the first night, and we do worship together, which includes the preaching of the word, the first night, and that was Dean's opportunity to preach.

Then the second day is several messages, and the first two messages that we had were Brother Rob and Brother Trevor. Then we had pastor's reports, where every, this is something very unique to FIRE. Every church has the opportunity to share prayer requests for their church and give a report as to how things are going in the church.

So I was able to talk about Sovereign Grace and the things that are going on here, things for which we need prayer, and other churches, and this was sort of a time where people opened up. I'm not gonna share what anybody said, but I'm just gonna mention some of the churches that were represented there, because again, these are men that I've known and appreciated for a long time.

I got to meet Rob Davis. I mentioned him, had not met him before. Brother Donnie Martin was there, wonderful minister of the gospel. Met Matthew Rickett, had not met him before. He was there from Antioch Baptist Church.

Jerry Marcellino, I've known him for a while. Mitch Pridgen, we're dear friends. He's down in Daytona Beach with Crosswalk Church. John Kratz was there, one of my favorite people. I love John. He is such a faithful brother in Christ.

He is up near the Atlanta area and a wonderful preacher of the gospel. Randy McClendon was there, that was the Trinity Reform Church. He was the pastor of the church that was hosting. Matt Rayburn was there, and Dean Olive.

And again, we all had took the opportunity to pray for one another. After each person gave their report, another pastor would pray. What a wonderful opportunity it was to pray for one another. And I'm encouraged to continue to pray for these men.

And I've got their names, and I'm gonna be praying for their churches. And I know they're gonna be praying for us, so I'm very thankful for that. And afterwards, after that part was ended, and one other person I wanna name, even though not an individual pastor of a church, but David Meade was also there.

And David is a wonderful brother. I interviewed him last year on the program. He is with Propempo International, which is a ministry that works with missionaries and helping connect churches to missions work and missionaries.

And David said something about unity. He was talking about unity in the church and unity among elders specifically. Cuz one of the things that was great was all the pastors that spoke, spoke about the fact that they all had a plurality of elders in their churches.

And that plurality of elders had gotten them through many difficult times. And David stood up and he said, you know what, that's a unity that is necessary. And he said, and unity costs something. The ability to have unity among elders, we have to be willing to give up some of our pride.

We have to be willing to not put ourselves first, but willing to listen and to be taught and to be humble. And when David said unity costs something, I thought, man, that is really wise. And so, David, if you get to hear this, I wanna say I thank you for that.

That was a powerful thought that you gave. Well, the conference ended with the fourth message, and the title of that message was The Gospel and the Centrality of the Cross. And it was Pastor Mitch Pridgen, again, my friend from Crosswalk Church down in Daytona Beach.

And he gave a wonderful exposition of 1 Corinthians 1, 17, 17 down to the end of the chapter. And he made a point that the way that we can really avoid distractions in the ministry is to stay focused on the cross, to stay focused on the gospel.

And I was encouraged by that. I'm looking here at my notes and just some of the things that he said. He said we don't want the message to get lost in the presentation, and that often happens. We focus so much on the presentation of our messages that we forget that the most important thing is not all these distractions, but what the message is about.

It is about Christ. And if we remove the cross from our message, we have removed the gospel from our message. And we must not forsake the word of the cross. And what's going on outside cannot take preeminence over what we preach.

And he said this, and I thought this was great. He said so much of what's going on outside is distracting. And certainly we have to speak to the world and about the world sometimes in our messages. But it cannot take preeminence over the cross.

Everything that's going on in the world is secondary. We have to preach Christ and him crucified. And I think that's a wonderful message, and it was a wonderful way to close our conference. Well, that's my report from the 2021 Southeast Regional Conference of the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals.

And again, if you have any questions or thoughts about this particular organization and you'd like to know more, you can feel free to message me at calvinistpodcast at gmail .com. And I'd love to talk to you about it and encourage you if you're not a part of another association or if you are looking to be a part of an association, we would love to talk to you about what it means to be a member of FIRE.

Thank you for listening today to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.

Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe. And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail .com.

As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.

May God be with you.