Guarding the Good Deposit of the Gospel at the 1st TGCi Conference

On April 30 and May 1, 2018, TGCi (The Gospel Coalition Italia) held its first annual conference. The conference, titled Guard the Good Deposit of the Gospel (2 Tim. 1:14), was held in Tuscany at the Santa Chiara Hotel in Chianciano Terme. The speakers were four TGCi council members: Gian Paolo Aranzulla, Pietro Ciavarella, Stefano Mariotti and Mark Oden.

Each of them expounded a chapter of 2 Timothy. About 90 adults and 20 children were in attendance. They represented 15 churches from Italian cities between Reggio Emilia in the north and Naples in the south. One family came from a church in Nottingham, England. TGCi is in its infancy and its website went online just a few days before the conference. The conference was organized completely by volunteers, with some of the council members’ wives doing the heavy lifting.

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A small sliver of Italy’s population is evangelical and of that only a tiny sliver is Reformed. Expository preaching is virtually unknown to most Italian evangelicals. The TGCi council believes the attendees felt very edified by the clear exposition of 2 Timothy. The times of worship and prayer provided opportunities for public expressions of praise, intercession, and thanksgiving. During meals and informal walks, conversations strengthened existing friendships and forged new ones. There was a strong sense of spiritual communion and excitement about what God may want to do through TGCi.

As TGCi looks to the future, here are some things you can pray for.

That God would be pleased to use TGCi to strengthen the Italian church.
That council members would grow in godliness.
That more and more people would be blessed by the new web site.
That more and more Italian preachers see the importance of expository preaching.
That TGCi would exercise wisdom in adding members to its council, which currently has 7 members.
That 2019’s conference on April 12–14, with Don Carson as its main speaker, would be used greatly by God.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.

But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.

To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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Pietro Ciavarella (ThM, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is married to Florentine Silvia, whom he met on a short-term mission to Italy in 1987. They have two teenage sons. He is a professor of Greek and church history, a pastor, exegete, and author. His forthcoming book in Italian on justification draws extensively on the 16th-century jewel of the Italian Reformation, Il Beneficio di Cristo (The Benefit of Christ’s Death, Venice 1543) to illustrate that doctrine from a native Italian source.