KEYNOTE / Live Your Truth (and other lies): How Popular Deceptions are Making us Anxious, Self-Obsessed, and Exhausted

Alisa Childers / Speaker/Author

Popular slogans like “live your truth,” “follow your heart,” “you are enough” “you are the boss of you” and “you’re perfect just as you are” flood our social media feeds. In many cases, even materials marketed as “Christian” promote these ideas. But are they biblical? In this talk, Alisa will walk the audience through 3-5 cultural lies, demonstrate the bad thinking underneath them, and then turn to the Bible for a much better story.

KEYNOTE / Understanding Culture’s Influence on Progressive Christianity

Jon McCray / Whaddo You Meme??

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BREAKOUT / Progressive Christianity: A Biblical Response to a Growing Movement

Alisa Childers / Speaker/Author

This session will take up both Breakout Session slots, as the content is designed for two hours.

In this talk, Alisa will walk the audience through the history, key beliefs, and key figures of the movement of progressive Christianity, and ultimately show how progressive Christianity is at odds with historic Christianity and even disagrees with Jesus on what the Bible is, what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and the definition of the gospel.

BREAKOUT / Engaging Progressive Christians w/ the Gospel 

Jon McCray / Whaddo You Meme??

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BREAKOUT / Fragmented Reality in the Internet Age

Jon Rendall / Faith Beyond Belief

There is no shortage of information on hand for citizens of the 21st century. Smartphones, social media, streaming services and even virtual reality are constantly competing for more and more of our time. As we dive into virtual communities and spaces, our perceptions of reality are altered. As Christians, we need to be aware of how the internet can affect us and how it can reshape our worldview and identity. How does this contribute to false teaching in the Church, and how can we stay faithful to Christ and biblical teaching in the new fractured reality?

BREAKOUT / Revival in Light of Progressive Christianity

Shafer Parker / Faith Beyond Belief

The recent revival at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky has whetted hunger for a wider and deeper renewal of the North American church. But while we wait for revival, several questions should be asked. For instance, what have been the hallmarks of widespread revival through 2,000 years of Christian history? Are the priorities of progressive Christianity in line with the priorities of Holy Spirit-inspired revivals? Can progressive churches be revived and remain progressive? How should we pray for revival in the face of the growing influence of progressive ideas in Christ's churches?

BREAKOUT / Intentional Grandparenting in the “Progressive Age”

Ian McKerracher / Faith Beyond Belief

Grandparenting should be the dream job for our later years. What can we do when “progressive” ideas come between us and our kids and grandkids? How can we overcome the ideological barriers to touch our family with Christ? Here are some ways we can actively love those who hold our hearts in their hands.

BREAKOUT / Biblically Informed Christian Ethics

Rob Blackaby / Canadian Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and College

How should the Bible give shape to Christian personal ethics in our contemporary Canadian culture?

Christian Ethics is the natural outflow of Christian Theology.  And the Bible is the fundamental foundation in the formation of our theology and ethics.  The Bible provides reliable and authoritative answers to pressing current questions, such as: “What is love?”; “How is the Old Testament law useful?”; and, “What is right and wrong, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous?”.

TBD / Cracks in the Window: The Progressive Worldview

Randy Baker / Author

Randy Baker will take attendees through a look at some of the tenets of ‘progressive’ theology, recognizing that there isn’t an agreed-upon standard theological position. Then, he’ll compare and contrast these views with the teaching of scripture and capture the problem of embracing a worldview that embraces ‘progress’ instead of adhering to the ongoing established teaching of scripture.

ONLINE / Uninvented: The Jewish Nature of Jesus’ World, Progressive Christianity, and How the Bible Could Not Be Made Up

Mike D’Virgilio / Author

Liberal Christianity, what we know today as progressive Christianity, started with a German pastor, philosopher, and theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). He has been called the father of liberal theology because he sought to take Enlightenment, non-supernatural assumptions and merge them with Christianity. He ended up destroying it, like all who came before and after trying to do the same thing.

By 1923, Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen wrote a book called Christianity and Liberalism in which he argued that liberal Christianity is a different religion altogether. We’ll see why Machen was right then, and why he’s right about progressive Christianity in our day. To understand why, we must examine the assumptions leading progressives to reject the divine nature of Scripture.

Progressive Christians, like all liberals that came before, have something else in common that follows from their basic assumptions: the Bible is made up, in whole or in part, merely a human invention. If these Enlightenment assumptions are true, then the Bible must be made up, primarily the miracle parts. One reason it can’t be is the Jewish nature of Jesus’ world, something ignored by biblical critics until the 1970s. In this session, we will learn:

• Why it is easier to believe biblical stories are true than to believe they are made up, and that it takes more faith to believe the latter than the former. 

• How this helps Christians effectively challenge skeptics and critics of the Bible and put the burden of proof on them. 

• Why the anti-supernatural bias of the Bible’s critics is arbitrary and causes them to dismiss the textual evidence for the Bible’s veracity. 

• Why Christians can have every confidence the Bible is exactly what it claims to be, trustworthy eyewitness accounts of historical events.