Final Call for T4G

Mark Dever:
We are, as I say together for the gospel, we are Baptist and Bible church, charismatic and Presbyterian, and lots of others as well are here.

Sarah Zylstra:
T4G has been arguably one of the most successful pastors conferences in the United States in its first 10 years, attendance, more than tripled from 2,800 to 10,000 then was on track to top 13,000 in 2020 before COVID forced everything online.

Mark Dever:
I knew when we were planning this to Al would not get out of a suit and CJ wouldn’t put one on. So Lig and I being the kind of nice guys in the group decided that we would kind of do the middling thing. So I’m kind of tending to CJ and Lig’s kind of tending to Al. So we’re not together on what to wear. We’re also not together on what pulpit to use. At least one of our speakers probably feels that I’m in sin, standing this pulpit right now. You’ll get to figure out who that is. We are also not together for the music we are. So not together for the music that we almost did not have any music. I am serious.

Sarah Zylstra:
The conference drew it’s share of controversies and opposition, but clearly something was working. If you’ve been or talk to someone who has, you’ll hear about the messages, the music and the books, and you’ll hear about the friendships and connections forged among ministers. So it surprised just about everyone. When two of the founders, Mark Devor and Ligon Duncan announced a few weeks ago that the 2022 conference would be the last one.

Mark Dever:
Meanwhile, many of us in evangelicalism over here in America tend to say, you know, when we introduced somebody, there’s the apostle Paul and Martin Luther and Spurgeon and our speaker tonight,

Sarah Zylstra:
I’m Sarah Zylstra, senior writer for the gospel coalition. My job is to find and report on stories of where God is at work in the world. Usually that means I’m talking to people who have seen the spirit work in miraculous ways, doing something new or exciting. But in this case, T4G is ending usually a termination this abrupt means there’s been a moral failure or a financial scandal or a massive decline in interest. In order to figure this one out, we’ll have to go back to the beginning

Ligon Duncan:
Sarah, I absolutely remember where I was when I first met Mark Dever. I first actually met mark Dever on the phone.

Sarah Zylstra:
Ligon Duncan is the chancellor and CEO of the whole web of reformed theological seminaries. But back in 1987, he was 26 years old, just beginning his PhD in Scotland at the university of Edinburgh. Ligon had a friend named Randall who was working on his graduate degree, five hours south by train in Cambridge Randall’s church was without a pastor and Randall asked if Ligon wanted to take the train down to fill the pulpit for a Sunday. Ligand said, sure,

Ligon Duncan:
The guy you need most to meet in Cambridge is marked ever is that he is the Southern Baptist. You you’ve gotten, you just gotta meet this guy. And so

Sarah Zylstra:
I was saying the same thing to his classmate marked, ever. He was so sure they’d like each other that he asked mark to give Ligon a call. Now, odds are you. Haven’t talked to mark Deborah on the phone. So let me tell you, he’s not the guy you call to pass some time while you’re driving through Kansas.

Ligon Duncan:
Normally I’m super brief on the phone. If I can get over 40 seconds, I mean, that’s a big deal. I just, I like to get in and out. I’m done. And so I called ligan that day and we must have talked for an hour or two on the phone. It was just, it was great. And it was a lot, a lot of things. One, obviously the org of Mark’s personality and, and, and Mark’s a really warm Sarah in case you can’t tell very, very warm. He is intelligent, the range of interests that he had. And I loved, I loved his areas of theological expertise that I, I, that, that things that he was working on, I was interested in. And I was a novice that a lot of those things that I was interested in those things, and I knew he was also interested that that a Baptist would be interested in these things because the Southern BEPS he had known were not like this. Oh, well, let me, let me say that. That was, that was definitely one of the things here. Mark was the first Southern Baptist that I had ever met that understood Baptist politics. Ligand was one of the first Presbyterians I ever met, who understood the gospel. He was saved. It was awesome. He was Presbyterian and a Christian. It was a great combo. Really made him stand out.

Sarah Zylstra:
You can see Randall was right, mark and Ligon hit it off right away. They were two Southern boys with large personalities. They both loved history and theology for the next three years while they worked on their degrees, they got together as much as they could. Anytime the church in Cambridge asked ligand to preach, he did the two went on trips together, all over the UK, exploring British history, Scottish history and church history. They geeked out together over stuff like the Canterbury tales, picture a 20 something, mark Devore, sleeping on the floor of LIG Duncan’s university dorm room. I’m spending a lot of time here on this friendship, because I want you to know it was real. A lot of times we think of guys like John Piper and Tim Keller, or Kevin D. Young and Matt Chandler, being friends, sort of superficially. We know they know each other professionally, they chat in green rooms behind stages, or they put their names on the same causes. And a lot of times that’s true. Even if you respect somebody and agree with them, that doesn’t always mean you want to split a BFF necklace with them, but this friendship with leg and mark was asleep on your floor, tease you about being four months older dedicate books to each other, kind of a friendship. It was legit. Mark had another legit friend that he thought Ligon would like his name was Al Mueller, and they met a few years earlier when both were at the Southern Baptist theological seminary,

Ligon Duncan:
Al and I just got on, well, he, I tend to stay up late heats in the stable later, he would call me like one in the morning. Sometime we would talk. We might meet up at white castle at the time and like, know two in the morning and talk for an hour about things out later,

Sarah Zylstra:
They had a lot to talk about in 1986 and 1987, their denomination, the Southern Baptist convention was having an identity crisis 10 years before a survey at their seminary showed that 87% of first year students believed Jesus was the divine son of God. Among third year students, that number dropped 25 points to 62%. In other words, you are more likely to keep your faith. If you didn’t go to Southern seminary, it wasn’t hard to see where the SPC would end up the path toward liberal theology had already been blazed by other mainline denominations, but the Southern Baptist wouldn’t end up there. Pastors were already working to wrench it back toward biblical orthodoxy. Al would play a huge part in that while mark and Ligon were working on PhDs in the UK 33 year old Al got himself elected as president of Southern.

Ligon Duncan:
And so Luder Whitlock, who was the president of reformed theological seminary wanted to encourage Al because he knew what Al was up against in that setting and invited out to be the speaker at the RTS, all faculty retreat in Florida. And I was designated as Al’s driver, you know, so I picked him up from the airport and drove him to the thing. And so we had a, we had a great time to together then, and then, and then

Sarah Zylstra:
Mark met a reformed charismatic pastor named CJ Mahaney around the same time, both were in the DC area and introduced him to the other two. All four guys got along surprisingly well for all their differences on serious issues like baptism or spiritual gifts.

Ligon Duncan:
The guys that really cared about the sufficiency of scripture, they, they really, really cared about teaching sound theology. There was a real concern for a deep well biblically, grounded, personal piety and Christian experience. Is that a very evident joy and humility in the lives of everybody I’d never, I’d never met any, I didn’t never met people like that in my life. And, and so, yeah, that was a unique thing. And we had started getting together and we would, we would meet in Louisville and, and we’d stay, stay there on campus and, and spend time at, at Al’s house, down in the, in the sort of the basement library that he has and talked till all hours of the night about everything under the sun. And w and we realized that, you know, in some ways we were sort of, we w we were an unlikely friendship, you know, a, a Baptist seminary professor, a local church Baptist pastor, a Presbyterian seminary professor, and then CJ, you know, who, you know, at one time would have been at a possible, and, you know, th those sorts of things in those circles. And, and, and we realized we had been, we had been personally encouraged in our walk of faith, by our friendship with one another. And we recognized,

Sarah Zylstra:
Oh, man, we know a lot of local church pastors who would really be encouraged by a friendship like this by now all four were speaking regularly at Christian conferences and then hanging out afterward to talk about them.

Ligon Duncan:
I think you first suggested we could just get together and have our own where we preached and then sit around talking about her afterwards. That’s what we did.

Sarah Zylstra:
Remember. This was back in 2005, when everyone was talking about the emerging church, nobody had even publicly identified the reformed resurgence TGC was just a small nameless pastors colloquium that had grown out of a restaurant conversation between Don Carson and Tim Keller Keller. Hadn’t written the reason for God yet. And Colin Hanson, hadn’t named the whole thing, young, restless and reformed

Ligon Duncan:
Mark. And I both thought nobody will want to come to this. Now, Al said, no, this will be big because Al had been out there and he, he already synced building what Collin Hanson would later call, you know, the, the young restless reform movement or the Calvinistic resurgence or whatever label you already synced that happening out there a month, young Christians. And of course that it definitely broke surface in the people that were coming to T 4g and those next years. But we, you know, mark and I didn’t think much would come of it. And, you know, yeah. I thought, yeah, we could all meet in a phone booth out back and do our conference.

Sarah Zylstra:
Of course, they couldn’t really meet in the phone booth. So they reserved the Galt house hotel in Louisville, which could see 2,400. They invited their favorite reformed preachers, John Piper and John MacArthur, and to their delight, RC Sproll invited himself. And then since nobody was on social media, yet they put print advertisements in world magazine and Christianity today, the four friends had been around enough conferences to have opinions on how they wanted to do things. They knew they wanted to focus on pastors after all the whole point was to encourage friendships and what can be a lonely profession. They knew they wanted to be rock solid on doctrine and also serious about those secondary issues where they disagreed. And they knew they wanted to model those disagreements well with panel discussions among the speakers, they also wanted to stock pastors libraries with excellent free books. That first year they gave out 14 titles. Attendees had never seen that at a conference before and in the future, they would know to bring along an empty suitcase just for books. And they wanted to sing not in the manner of a praise and worship concert, but in the manner of a Puritan him sing, the only accompaniment they wanted was a simple piano, both Ligon and mark had been in their school choirs and they wanted to hear voices.

Sarah Zylstra:
The first T4G conference went really well. The 2,400 seats sold out and another 400 were squeezed in Matt Chandler was in the audience as was David Platt, Kevin DeYoung and Christianity Today editor, Collin Hansen.

Ligon Duncan:
I was surprised and I was on, I was elated with the friendship. I mean, one of the things that happened, Sarah is Mark would spend considerable time getting guys together at the conference. You need to ask, “Hey, anybody here from Athens, Georgia” and you know, seven guys would stand up and he’d say, “Do you guys know one another?” And they’d go, no. He said, well, brothers, these people are people that think like you they’re administering an app that you need to get to know one of them. You need to pray together. You need to support, you know,

Sarah Zylstra:
If Mark Dever were a character in a Marvel comic, he would be the human Velcro. He knows everybody. He is always sticking himself to new friendships at T4G. He got to stick ministry leaders to each other. The attendees loved it. They loved the books. They loved the singing. They loved the preaching, and they really loved the relationships in 2008 at the second T4G, they came back and they brought their friends around 5,000 gathered in Louisville’s convention center. Two years later, 7,000 came by 2012 T4G had moved to the yum center home to Louisville Cardinals basketball by 2014, the conference was hitting 12,000 in attendance. Instead of asking people from Atlanta to stand up, T4G got creative. Once attendees were brought into the main session state by state and asked to sit together like at a national political party gathering. Once those who came alone were asked to stand up. So other guys could see who to include in their group. And sometimes Deborah organized gatherings during breaks or mealtimes for geographic regions, T4G’s Canadian group was the largest gathering of Canadian evangelical pastors anywhere in the world.

Sarah Zylstra:
But here’s the thing about friend groups, the bigger they get and the longer they last the trickier, the relationships when Al and Lincoln signed the Manhattan declaration in 2010, which joined with the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics to oppose abortion support heterosexual marriage and support religious Liberty, RC sprawl objected to that extension of Christian unity in 2014, CJ Mahaney didn’t appear on the T4G stage. A former youth pastor at his church had just been convicted of abusing three boys and the speculation on how much CJ knew and when he was being debated in civil court cases, CJ was back in 2016, then withdrew again in 2018, the speakers of T4G had to process their riffs privately to remain friends on stage. They were serious about it outside of the conference. They invited each other to speak at their own churches and conferences before each T4G. The speakers met for three days to talk and pray and work on their friendships at T4G. They ate together, sat together, listened to each message together and then talked about them together.

Mark Dever:
Well, when everyone’s add new speaker, it was a big deal because it was like injecting something new into that fairly tight fellowship. And so whether it’s, you know, the BD or Kevin D. Young or David Platt or Matt Chandler, I mean, whoever it’s going to be, that’s going to cause its own stresses and strains because you know, Mark and Lig and Al and CJ are one thing, but then every circle you get further out, there are going to be more variables in how somebody process somebody else’s public ministry and what it means for them to be publicly associated with that person. So pretty much every T4G was an act of God.

Ligon Duncan:
I don’t think people understand lot to stay together for the gospel. It is one thing to be together for the gospel, it tight taillight to stay together for the gospel because no, no minister can predict what’s going to happen in his congregation. And no minister can predict what is going to happen in his denomination. And no minister can predict what impact that’s going to have on his relationship with other ministers. Look as hard as it has been to go through some of the things that different members of the group have gone through in terms of controversies in their own background. I mean, that’s real life, right? If you’re going to be friends with other ministers, they’re going to be involved in serious controversies and issues in local churches

Sarah Zylstra:
Without CJ, the conference sort of became T3G but it continued to grow. The attendees looked forward to seeing each other, to singing together, to hearing good sermons and taking home good books. The reformed resurgence was also expanding. The gospel coalition was on its way to becoming one of the largest Christian websites in the world. Along with John Piper’s desiring God, Tim Keller published the best-selling the reason for God and became a household name, at least in many Christian households, Crossway sold out its first printing of the ESV study Bible, which was also the first study Bible to win a book of the year award from the Christian publishers association, mark Driscoll founded and then was replaced by Matt Chandler at the acts 29 church planting network, nine marks and Ligonier were growing in 2009. Time magazine ran a cover story on the 10 ideas changing the world. Right now, the top three were work that is meaningful, the emptying out of the suburbs and this new Calvinism.

Ligon Duncan:
So this kind of thing is actually happening all around the world. That was very new to people in 2006. Now in 2021, all sorts of other things have popped up since T4G. You know, you have a TGC, that’s, that’s doing a conference. You have, you know, you have other organizations that are, that are, that are bringing together folks that are committed to the doctrines of grace. So the conference landscape is Clematis really different than it was in 2006. You know, there was no Keith and Kristyn Getty thing conferences going on in, in 2006,

Sarah Zylstra:
But that’s not the only thing that’s different today. Since the first T4G America has logged on to social media and started carrying around smartphones, the began wrestling with the rise of mass shootings and police violence against black men, the economy boomed then busted then boomed again. We elected Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden just in the past year and a half we’ve sheltered in place taken masks on and off and fought about vaccines. Political polarization is sharp and statistically measurable. The reformed resurgence is splintering to sprawl died in 2017 in 2019 Al Ligon. And mark declined to sign John MacArthur statement on social justice. T4G 2020 conference was missing John MacArthur, Matt Chandler, and Thabiti Anyabwile. In 2021 Al ran for Southern Baptist convention president, but came in third, as many of his allies supported other candidates, the gospel that held reformed Christians together, despite different views on baptism and speaking in tongues, doesn’t feel strong enough to hold through racial reconciliation and vaccine mandates.

Ligon Duncan:
And then it’s just a different climate. 2006 was a time of coming together. 2021 has, has been a time of things coming apart and people that once walked together or not walking together and groups that weren’t once fellowship together are not fellowshipping together. And so it’s a very, very different dynamic at 2021. It wasn’t 2006,

Sarah Zylstra:
A few weeks ago, Al told his friends, Lig and Mark that he needed to step away from T4G. He hasn’t spoken publicly about his decision, but he told Christianity today, each of us faces questions of urgency and priority in life and ministry. At this stage in my life, I need to concentrate on helping the SBC and working on some important new priorities, including world opinions. They could have kept going without him. There are plenty of pastors to fill the stage, but T2G doesn’t have the same ring to it. And so they made the decision to close down the conference.

Mark Dever:
Yes, it’s true that there are some partnerships that are harder or that just are not going to happen right now, but there are still a lot of partnerships that do happen in some that happened quietly where people realize, yeah, we may disagree on how to respond to this COVID mandate. You know, I may go around with it. I may go along with it. I may civilly it. I may sue over it, but still, you know, that that does not affect the gospel. I think that these are challenging times that the Lord is using among other things to help remind us how the gospel is supreme and help us in a Galatians way kind of clarify exactly what it is we have to hold in order to be following Christ. And in that sense, I think we, we trust this sort of adverse circumstances as his discipline notes and as intended for our good

Sarah Zylstra:
When the band breaks up, you can get nostalgic. You can bet there will be a lot of reminiscing and throwbacks at the final conference planned for April 20, 22 in Louisville.

Mark Dever:
Oh, Ligon’s sermon about Elijah is definitely, I think the sermon out of all of the messages given at T4G over the 10 or 20 years, I think I hear more references to that message that Ligon gave than any of the other messages.

Ligon Duncan:
I still remember Mark’s opening introduction to the whole thing at the first T4G, where he talked about how we were not together and how we were together. And it was funny, but it was serious. And I, I really think it captured, it was one of those moments where everybody there went, yeah, right. That’s what’s actually going on here. That was very important for me that there had been a lot of messages. David Platt’s first message on missions. That was a very powerful message for me, praying for Matt Chandler in the wake of his cancer was a, was something that I will not forget because we didn’t know how long Matt was going to live. When John Piper stood up and said, I am amazed that I am still a Christian as the opening line of one of his sermons. And the emphasis was, what power does it take to keep you a Christian? And the answer was the same power that it took to raise Jesus Christ from the dead is necessary to keep you a Christian. And, you know, I could, I could give you a hundred things like that. That has ministered to me through the preaching of my brothers there at T4G, that they’ll just never leave my heart.

Sarah Zylstra:
T4G was a public symbol of the reformed resurgence. And some have wondered if the final conference signals and end to the movement as a whole, after all, as Collin Hansen will tell you the way, you know, something was a revival is that it eventually comes to an end, but Ligon and Mark who work all over the world, aren’t worried about that.

Ligon Duncan:
I just got back from Brazil and the Fiel Conference where thousands of people gathered the same sort of way, a Baptist and Presbyterians and Bible church guys, and others from around Brazil. And you know, one of the largest Catholic countries in the world with a massive Pentecostal presence. And they’re all about reformed theology as well. So this kind of thing is actually happening all around the world.

Sarah Zylstra:
It’s easy to see how the fruit of T4G will outlast the conference itself. Those free books have informed thousands of sermons already. The singing has shaped the way hundreds of congregations worship and the friendships have opened up and strengthened all sorts of ministry opportunities.

Ligon Duncan:
A lot of guys came to T4G, especially in the early years feeling like, you know, there’s nobody left, but may God. And they came away with the Lord saying there are 7,000 who have not yet bowed the knee to bail. And, and, and, and that, I think that’s important though, after the very first T4G, I was standing in the airport in Louisville, getting ready to board my flight to get back to Jackson, Mississippi. And there was an Episcopal priest from New Jersey who was in the diocese where the Bishop was John Shelby Spong. And that Episcopal priest said, I came here this week, having already written my resignation letter to put on the vestry docket for when I got back and having been here for these three days, I’ve decided I’m going to go on and try and be faithful in ministry in my little parish. And I could tell that story over and over and over, where were guys came at the end of their rope. And they went back saying, I’m going to go back and I’m going to, I’m going to be faithful. And I’m going to do my ministry and my local church. And I, I hope that that legacy will linger long. We do need continuing encouragement. And thankfully there are lots of places to look for that encouragement, but I think T4G continually encouraged people in the pastoral ministry that way

Sarah Zylstra:
One more thing, Ligon and Mark, don’t see this ending as a funeral, like the death of the doctrines of grace or of God at work in Louisville. They see it more as a step forward in to the next thing God is preparing,

Ligon Duncan:
Which we can know as Christians, that however, bright something behind us was what’s ahead is even better. So that’s just, I just, I don’t have it in me to get discouraged about this conference stopping because that doesn’t erase what’s happened. The good that’s happened in it. And, you know, may God forgive that anything which is not good and, and wash that away, but you use the good and, and then bring on better.

Sarah Zylstra:
This is Sarah Zylstra. Thank you for listening to this episode of Recorded. It was written by me and edited by Josh Diaz. Our Creative Director is Steven Morales and our editor in chief is Collin Hansen. Special thanks to T4G organizer, Matt Schmucker.