The people, preaching and priorities of Together for the Gospel
In 2022 for the first (and last time) I attended the Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference in Louisville, KY. The experience was surprisingly impactful - the sound of 12,000 men and women singing praise to Christ is humbling. The caliber of preaching was astounding. But most notable was the centrality of the Gospel and the modeling of healthy relationships among believers. Through the warmth and friendly banter displayed by the hosts on stage I walked away with a clearer picture of how preaching propagates the Gospel and was encouraged to see the fire of faith, present first in the apostles, still being passed on through faithful men today.
During the conference I made an offhand comment to my pastor that I could use a computer to collect all his sermons and, with a bit of machine learning, summarize everything he'd ever said from the pulpit. A few weeks after T4G ended, somewhat on a whim, I began to do just that for the conference; with most of the transcripts from past events available on YouTube, and the rest able to be created using AI, it was fairly straightforward to gather, organize, and summarize everything said at T4G over its 16 year run.
I sought to better understand what Together for the Gospel has stood for over the years. Who was involved? What did they preach? Did cultural forces shape the conference? With my background in scientific research this became a year-long study to use machine learning to summarize nine conferences' worth of sermons and discussions and to place this data in the context of current trends in the Evangelical Church. In learning about the history of the conference, however, I soon discovered just how close I'd been to this movement without realizing the value of what, by the grace of God, I'd stumbled into.
To begin with, I learned that I am a byproduct of the Young Restless Reformed movement. Finding a church composed of my peers in college I embraced reformed evangelicalism, falling in love with its focus on doctrine and missional living. My friends and I read many books from YRR writers: David Platt's Radical, Matt Chandler's Explicit Gospel, much of John Piper's work and, of course, Mark Dever's 9 Marks of a Healthy Church. Our theology was thoroughly reformed, our ecclesiology biblical, and our focus missional.
Leaving college, it was the 9 Marks network that connected me to my next church. This one was not a young, upstart church of college students but a well-established Southern Baptist congregation in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Shortly after my wife and I became members, our church hired a pastor who had been through the Capitol Hill Baptist Church pastoral internship program. While I didn't realize it at the time, over the course of a few months in 2015 we had our own mini T4G, with guest pastors including Ligon Duncan, Thabiti Anyabwile, CJ Mahaney, and Mark Dever.
After Arkansas I fell in with the same crowd; my current local body can be found on the 9 Marks website and holds to a similar reformed theology. It was with this group of believers that I attended T4G for the first (and final) time in 2022. I'd heard about the conference in passing before but had never given much thought to attending. That changed when my pastor presented an open invitation to the church and my wife graciously agreed to watch the kids.
In researching and reflecting on the significance of T4G in my life, I've learned much about the immediate forces which have shaped my walk with God. It is my prayer that this profile will similarly help you to better understand your own walk with Christ and to see a small sliver of the work that God is doing within the Evangelical church.
Click the links below to see the three sections. Available here is a formatted PDF which tells the same story and provides extra details on the analysis and methodology employed.
Priorities
The priorities of the breakout sessions at Together for the Gospel and how they changed against a shifting cultural backdrop.
TLDR:
Throughout history many shibboleths have arisen to divide the Church. We have argued over eschatological views, over the time scale of creation, and over whether it is appropriate to wear skinny jeans from the pulpit. Together for the Gospel sought to overcome those differences in favor of highlighting the essential unity found in the Gospel, the Bible, and the Local Church.
Summarizing the sermons, breakout sessions, interviews, and panel discussions recorded from the 18 years of T4G's existence it is apparent that the focus of the conference has remained largely consistent, likely due in a large part to the continuous partnership of Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, and John Piper. The event served as a means to edify the church through the gifting of several high-profile pastors, while at the same time providing a platform for lesser-known individuals to bless the body through their teaching and preaching. Falling under the ``Young, Restless, Reformed'' movement, the theological convictions stated in T4G's statement of Affirmations and Denials are presented consistently enough that even a lifeless algorithm can discern unique topics such as Justification by Faith Alone. Finally, it appears that the focus of the equipping portion of the conference has shifted over the years, mirroring an external shift in evangelicalism from being concerned about doctrine to being concerned about how the Church ought to relate to the world around it.
Through its nine gatherings T4G has influenced tens of thousands of pastors and provided a platform for many individuals to use their gifts to edify the church. Many of the speakers remain active through outlets such as The Gospel Coalition and book publishers like Crossway along with preaching at other conferences. While there remain significant divisions in how the Church ought to interact with society at large, the consistency and faithfulness of the T4G preachers is encouraging. Reflecting on the conference as a whole, Collin Hansen summarized its legacy as follows:
We know that more leaders will fall. More friendships will falter. New alignments will emerge. And the Word of our Lord will stand forever, as T4G has reminded us every two years. That will be T4G's legacy-not an arena-sized event but thousands of pastors who open the Word week after week in the confident hope that God will speak to his people. T4G may not be able to resolve today's political, racial, and cultural disputes. Yet the formula of faithful, holistic, contextual ministry won't change. It's the same for every season.
It is my hope that this work, putting together the people, preaching, and priorities of T4G, will help others to appreciate the nature of the conference, its significance within Evangelical Christianity, and to better understand their own place within the Church of God.