People
The archives at T4G.org contain recordings attributed to some 60 different men. In order to provide a clearer summary, only those who were present for two or more years are included here. The timeline of speakers is visualized in Fig. 1, which shows whether they spoke at a main session, a breakout session, or both.
Fig 1: A plot of all individuals involved in Together for the Gospel in some way in at least two years. Yellow corresponds to those who spoke at a main session and red those who were involved in some form of breakout, interview, or panel discussion.
The first several names include the conference organizers Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, and CJ Mahaney. These four men held (and still hold) prominent positions within the Church. Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, founded the Center for Church Reform in 1998 which eventually became 9 Marks, a church planting newtork providing resources to pastors. Ligon Duncan was a Presbyterian pastor and head of the Systematic Theology department at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) in Jackson, Mississippi, leaving pastoring to become the chancellor and CEO of RTS in 2013.
At 30 years old, Al Mohler became president of Southern Seminary, the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, and his leadership has been credited with steering it towards biblical inerrancy. He has been heavily involved in SBC church life and in cultural commentary, running a daily podcast on current events and appearing in columns and interviews. Finally, CJ Mahaney is the founder of Covenant Life Church and held significant leadership in Sovereign Grace Ministries, a network of reformed, charismatic churches.
T4G itself was born out of the friendship of these four individuals, connected through various circumstances and mutual acquaintances. To hear Ligon describe it,
These are guys that really cared about the sufficiency of scripture, they really, really cared about teaching sound theology. There was a real concern for a deep, well biblically grounded, personal piety and Christian experience. There was a very evident joy and humility in the lives of everybody. I'd never, I'd never met any, I'd never met people like that in my life. And so, yeah, that was a unique thing...
we realized that, you know, in some ways we were sort of, we were an unlikely friendship, you know, 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 an apostle, and, you know, those sorts of things in those circles. And we realized we had been, we had been personally encouraged in our walk of faith, by our friendship with one another.
These relationships ultimately led the four of them to organize the inaugural Together for the Gospel conference in 2006. Their intent was to focus on several key points: encourage connections among pastors, emphasize core Christian doctrines, demonstrate how to disagree in a healthy manner, and provide attendees with a veritable library of books.
The core doctrines and convictions of the organizers did not come out of a vacuum: broadly speaking, T4G falls under the umbrella of the ``Young Restless Reformed'' (YRR) movement, also known as New Calvinism, which touts the importance of theology and doctrine, vigorously defends a Calvinistic understanding of salvation, emphasizes the importance of missions, and identifies the local church as the primary community for believers to live out their convictions. The term was first coined in 2006 by Collin Hansen, then writing for Christianity Today, in a piece profiling the growth of Calvinism in evangelical circles.
In exploring the history of the movement, Collin Hansen identified three individuals as particularly contributing to its popularity: R. C. Sproul, John Piper, and John MacArthur. Sproul, a reformed theologian, laid the theological and academic groundwork for the resurgence of Calvinism. John Piper, at the time pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, preached a practical combination of the sovereignty of God with the actions of men. Finally, John MacArthur, longtime pastor of Grace Community Church in California and founder of the Masters Seminary, consistently advocated for Biblical exposition in preaching and a historical, grammatical interpretation of the Bible.
It is little wonder, then, that Fig. 1 shows all three of these men being involved in the conference from its inception. The significance of their presence at the first gathering is captured well in Collin Hansen's book on the YRR movement:
The generational dynamics at work made the conference especially significant. The four middle-aged Together for the Gospel hosts watched their heroes, each older than sixty, address a crowd mostly in their twenties and thirties. The pyramid of influence illustrated the generational resurgence of Calvinism. Long-serving pastors Piper, Sproul, and MacArthur inspired the generation that includes Dever, Mohler, Mahaney, and Duncan, who have joined them in turning thousands of young evangelicals toward Calvinism.
Looking at Fig. 1 one can see that through the years most of the original four organizers remained heavily invested. Going down the line, however, new men become regularly involved in the conference. This includes Thabiti Anyabwile (pastor of First Baptist Church in Grand Cayman and later Anacosta River Church in D.C.) in 2008, Matt Chandler (pastor of The Village Church), Kevin DeYoung (pastor of University Reformed Church in East Lansing and more recently Christ Covenant Church in North Carolina), and David Platt (then senior pastor of the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham and now McLean Bible Church in D.C.) in 2010. Much like the organizers, each individual has been heavily involved in writing to and encouraging the Church broadly, contributing to the continuation of the YRR movement. Finally, towards the end of T4G we see H.B. Charles and Greg Gilbert join the ranks of regular speakers at this event.
In addition to new speakers, there are noticeable absences and gaps in the lineup at T4G. The first is R. C. Sproul who, likely due to health and age, gave his last message at T4G in 2010, about seven years before his death in 2017. C.J. Mahaney did not attend in 2014 and has not been involved since 2018. According to Mahaney, this was due to allegations of mishandling of sexual abuse by leadership in the Sovereign Grace family of churches. Chandler's absence after 2018 is presumably also due to similar allegations, which in 2022 involved a settlement in civil court.
Additionally, after 2018 both Thabiti Anyabwile and John MacArthur stopped attending despite both being heavily involved in six conferences. While the fact that the conference was virtual in 2020 may have contributed, it is also possible that their decision not to attend was due to diverging convictions regarding the public witness of the Church. Despite not being physically present in 2022 however, MacArthur's influence was still apparent as his New Testament commentary was given from the stage to a young, aspiring pastor.
Perhaps the most significant hole is that of Al Mohler in 2022 who, one year prior, had announced that he would no longer be involved with T4G. In explaining this decision 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.
Ligon Duncan and Mark Dever are two of the closest and dearest friends I ever hope to have on earth and I pray God's blessing on the T4G 2022 gathering, which will be a tremendous blessing to pastors.
It was largely this announcement by Mohler that spelled the end of the conference. With only two of the original four organizers left, and eight years of solid preaching, teaching, and book giveaways behind them, Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan made the decision that the 2022 conference would be the ``Last Word.'' It is with this understanding that Mark Dever set the tone for the final gathering in the program given to all attendees:
True and lasting unity can only be found in Jesus Christ. Other unities will dissolve as the years pass. Even the sweetest of earthy fellowships come and go. But the union we have both with Christ and with everyone indwelt by his Spirit will continue. It's that kind of unity we celebrate as we gather again together for the gospel.
