Gospel.com Blog

The Leadership Summit at Willow Creek Community Church is underway! The summit’s goal is to develop authentic leaders within the church, and it presents an impressive and varied array of speakers: Bill Hybels, Tony Blair, Bono, Carly Fiorina, and more.

The best places to keep up with what’s happening there are probably the official summit Facebook page and Twitter feed. Out of Ur is liveblogging from the summit, as are Tony Morgan and Justin Wise. Even if you weren’t able to attend, you can still get a good feel for the summit from these posts and writeups.

Interested in attending a Christian conference this year, but unable to do so in this difficult economy? The Revival Conference 2009, organized by the folks behind the excellent SermonIndex.net, is underway now and you can tune in online! Here’s how the Revival Conference site describes it:

There are over 10,000 conferences that happen every year. The ‘Revival Conference’ is not to be just another conference but a honest, sincere, earnest plea for the desperate need of revival. There is no cost to attend the event. No materials will be sold. There will be no big bands. The conference will have the chief object to be God-glorifying. The speakers will come on their own accord trusting God for provision. There will be no emphasis on money during the event. The event will be a simple, apostolic, yearning for a genuine biblical revival in our day.

The conference webcast went online just a few minutes ago with an opening prayer meeting, and will continue through this Thursday, June 4. Watch it online at the Revival Conference website or catch the highlights via the Twitter feed.

What does a Christian life look like in the world of academia? Last December, InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministries put on the Following Christ conference, where speakers like N.T. Wright and Andy Crouch talked about faith and the academic world. And fortunately for those of us who didn’t attend, they’ve collected audio and video from the conference and put it all online for free at the Following Christ conference website.

The highlight of the site is the archive of conference audio, which contains over seven hours of audio from the conference’s plenary sessions, including a three-part study of Colossians by N.T. Wright and an exhortation to understand science as worship by Francis Collins.

If you’re a grad student or a faculty member in the hallowed halls of academia (or even if you’re not), this is a site worth checking out—it’s living proof that the Christian faith is alive and well in the world of higher education.

There’s no shortage of Christian conferences out there to attend—there are leadership conferences, revival conferences, marriage conferences, and countless others, all aimed at cultivating your talents, relationships, or faith. But the more technologically-oriented among you might be interested in Godbit’s list of Christian tech conferences in 2009.

They list several tech conferences taking place this year that have a specific focus on the intersection of faith, evangelism, and technology. First up (in February) is the Ministry 2.0 conference, followed by BibleTech in March, Dynamic Church in May, and the Echo Conference in July. Whether you’re a veteran techie, a blogger, a church leader, or just want to explore how Christianity does and should make use of media and technology, take a look at these conferences and see if one of them is a fit for your schedule and interests.

We’re off to the Internet Ministry Conference this week! That means posting here will be a bit light, but we’ll be keeping busy blogging over at the conference blog. Over the next several days, we’ll be attending workshops and sessions about every aspect of online ministry. If you’re curious about the conference, be sure to check there for blog posts (or watch the conference Twitter feed) from us and other conference attendees.

Next week will see not one, but two separate conferences put on by members of the Gospel.com community!

First up is the Internet Ministry Conference, hosted by Gospel Communications (creators of Gospel.com, among other things). Over 200 people—representatives of internet ministries both large and small—will gather in Grand Rapids, Michigan for four days of workshops and networking, all focused on the challenge of doing effective online ministry. Registration for IMC is closed, but keep an eye on the conference blog for updates and reports during the conference.

The other conference next week is the Revival Conference, hosted by Sermon Index. Registration is still open, and it’s free—so if you can make it down to Atlanta, Georgia next week, consider attending! There will be a live webcast of the conference on the conference website starting on October 21, so if you can’t make it, you can still participate online.

That’s a busy week—hope you can attend one of these conferences!

Will God send another great awakening? Can revival still change nations? These were among the questions addressed at last year’s Revival Conference, which featured many different speakers on the topic of revival and was attended by over 1,000 people.

If you missed the 2007 conference, you’re in luck—the Revival Conference 2008 is coming to two different places: Atlanta, Georgia (October 21-23) and Greenock, Scotland (November 25-27). The Revival Conference is a different kind of conference than you may be used to: there’s no charge to attend, no materials for sale there, and no big bands or flashy entertainment. Just a great lineup of speakers and thousands of other people committed to spiritual revival.

To get a feel for what the Revival Conference is like, you can browse the archives from the 2007 conference. If you can’t make it this year, the conference will be broadcast live online, so you won’t have to miss it entirely. So mark your calendar and plan to attend, either in person or over the internet!

Last September, hundreds of people gathered in Grand Rapids, Michigan to attend the Internet Evangelism Conference 2007—all there to learn about how to do effective online ministry. Conference workshops covered topics like evangelism in Second Life, managing volunteers in an online ministry, writing effectively for the web, and lots more.

If you weren’t able to attend the conference, you’re in luck—videos from several of the workshops are now online for you to watch. They include workshops by David Bruce of Hollywood Jesus, Robby Richardson of Gospel Communications, and five others.

In addition to those videos, audio from several other conference workshops is available over at the Internet Ministry Conference blog. There’s lots of material to watch and listen to, so see what looks interesting and check it out! And if you like what you see/hear, the next Internet Ministry Conference is slated for October 2008!