T4G: Key Quotes (Part 1)

In this post I’ll stitch together some of the most salient quotes from the plenary sessions and the panel discussions. Disclaimer: Most of the time I was typing like a madman, so I can’t guarantee the precise accuracy of the quotes. Please don’t rely on my transcription, but listen to the recordings if you plan to quote the speakers.

Dever on the minister as a steward of the mysteries of God:

We are the mailmen of God’s message, not the source of the message. Apart from His message, we are not called.

Dever on creativity in the pulpit:

We are not concerned to be original, but reliable.

Dever on the cross-centered life of the minister:

True ministers are happy to be despised if somehow through them being despised the gospel is displayed.

Dever on discipleship:

God has entrusted your people to your care as an example—so you can show them that you care more about them and their relationship with Christ than you care about yourself.

Dever on the centrality of the Word in church reform:

The important issue for recovering churches is putting the Word at the center, and that occurs most fundamentally through preaching.

Dever on the need for discernment:

Wolves don’t come with business cards that say “Wolf.” They dress up like sheep, talk like sheep, and are published by sheep publishers.

Mohler on his role as a seminary president:

My hope is that we get to put the seminary out of business. What we need to see is more biblically-grounded, theologically-driven churches training pastors, because the local church is the place where pastors need to be trained . . . Churches think they can “franchise out” their responsibility to train pastors . . . Don’t send someone to me that you wouldn’t call back to your church.

Dever on the failure of churches that demanded Mohler’s battle for the soul of Southern Seminary:

Al Mohler went through what he went through in the early years at SBTS because of the failure of pastors to discipline.

Duncan on preaching the OT:

We ought to be able to preach Christ exegetically from the OT. That does not mean we force Christ into the OT in an unnatural way. We realize that there is a way to Christ and the cross from every passage in the OT . . . [Preaching the one plan of redemptive history from the OT] does not in any way downplay the distinctives or discontinuities between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant . . . One of the grave dangers of neglecting the OT is that we will produce a generation of Christian that is deficient [of the knowledge of the attributes of God].

Mohler on culture:

I see in our times something of a polarity of dangers. Some take the culture of no seriousness at all. Others make the culture the whole rising of their ministry. There is a double-edged danger in the polarity . . . Our concern for the culture is because the culture is the place where we find sinners. Everything else about the culture is irrelevant . . . Do we really think of ourselves to be elect exiles of the dispersion? Our temptation in evangelicalism is to feel quite at home in this culture, but we are starting to realize that perhaps we are not at home, and that to live as though we are would be to deny our identity. We have no reason for optimism about culture.