Common Slaves Fall Conference: Friday, October 26, 2018
Sounds Minds and Soul Care : Person-hood and problems (Mental Health) through the lens of Scripture
Location: Lifespring Church, Crosby, MN (www.visitlifespring.com)
Date: Friday, October 26, 2018 (8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.)
Who: Pastors, Elders and laymen, all men and women who love Christ and His church.
To Register: www.eventbrite.com search and register (Please Register in advance)
Cost: None (free-will donations will be received for the meal)
Questions www.commonslaves.com or Pastor Eric (ericanderson@brainerd.net) (218)820-7532
Why this Conference? We hope to address, in a culture steeped in sin-rooted confusion about Personhood and our problems, a culture given over to the language of addictions, mental health, Self-diagnosis and psychological assessments; how our forefathers in the faith handled personal problems through God’s Reveled World, in the local church; and How we are to we receive and give Gospel-help to hurting and confused people. We will not provide every answer to every question, but we will point everyone to the one who has all the answers as He graciously invites to come to him through Faith.
Speakers: We invite seasoned pastors and ministers to speak at our conferences. These men have been around long enough to have preached and counseled from the Word both in seasons and out of seasons, and we will all benefit from their wisdom.
8:30—Greetings, Welcome and Singing
9:00—Session 1: Dr. Ivan Fiske: Play the Man: Living as a Godly Man in a Toxic Culture (Psalm 1:1-6)
9:45—Break
10:15—Session 2: (with Q/A following) Pastor Mark Snider: The Normal Means of God’s wondrous Grace: Soul Care through worship, preaching and member care. (Acts 20:17-36)
11:30—Lunch
1:00—Session 3: Pastor Bob DeYoung: Helping the church walk through seasons of grief and suffering
2:00—Break
2:30—Session 4: (with Q/A following)
4:15—Closing Pastor Brent Nelson: The Soul Care of John Newton to William Cowper
We believe that we will all benefit, not only from the content presented, but also from the fellowship time together as brothers-and-sisters who share a common faith and master in northern rural Minnesota.
Presented by the Common Slaves Network: A Minnesota fellowship of Rural Reformed (and reforming) pastors, elders and churches
Overarching Purposes:
God Created this World and all that is in it. He rules and Reigns still. He declared his creation “good.”
Since Adam and Eve rebelled against God ate the forbidden Fruit and knew sin from experience, Life in this World has been Fallen and Cursed by God. This means that from the moment we are born we are dying. We will die physically, but are already dead in Respect to Favor with God. This is the description of each and every one of the 7-8 Billion Image bearers of God on this planet. Nothing works as it should. Plans Fail, People are in conflict, Nations Rage, even good inventions are used to destroy another human. Even our Minds are enslaved to this fallen world.
According to the Scripture, There are enemies of God in Union together: he World and all it’s attempts to answer and counter our human fallen-ness, which our adversary, Satan uses deludes us into the lie that we are not dead, merely sick inside, and there is some natural cure, or creative program, which can help free the inner-mind to act upon Goodness, declaring: You don’t need God!
On top of this, the biggest problem is each one of us…our own Sinful hearts, finding hope in things we can see, ideas we can fixate upon, solutions we can ingest, pridefully and thank-lessly insisting in finding meaning and hope on our own…
The Bible’s prognosis of our health long-term, especially our minds is not Good..We call this Total Depravity.
It is therefore, is no Wonder that even in an advanced technological age, the frustration and anger over humanities failed attempted to overcome sin and fallen-ess has left us depressed, bitter and hopeless.
Blaise Pascal wrote It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the cure of all your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promise…Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God; sensuality, which binds you to the earth; and they have done nothing but foster at least one of these maladies. If they have given you God for your object, it has only been to pander to your pride; they mad you think that you were like Him and resembled Him by your nature. And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your nature was like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.
He summarized Paul in Romans 3:10, No one is righteous, no not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God.
Paul was describing the human condition and echoing the words of the great prophet who proceeded him centuries before: Jeremiah, who said The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
The Gospel is Good News that reaches our ears beginning with the Words…But God…!
God who is rich in Mercy–not giving us what we deserve and what we seek, Entered our World from outside…His Son Jesus, Christ, born of a Virgin…did not inherit the Falleness of this sin-cursed human condition. He also Faithfully obeyed God’s command not to eat from the forbidden tree.
Ephesians 2 But[c] God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
But the World hated the Lord Jesus Christ. Why, He told them no. No. It is not in you to reach God, live forever. You cannot find the cures from the world. You need a New heart…You need to accept responsibility for your own contributions…you own Sin. You hate God and must Repent. Come to your Senses. Duh!
It was God’s Will to put him to death through rebellious people; in order to saved His enemies through a perfect atoneing sacrifice.
The Lord Jesus was raised to Life, conquering death, the World and the Devil.
He gives New life through His Spirit–a Renewed hearts and Minds…one which grows increasingly Christ-like as we mature, preparing us for the weight of Glory in the New Heavens and New Earth.
For Contained in His Revealed Word is all the source of wisdom and godliness…truth about him and distinctives for navigating the many challenges and pitfalls of one fallen human living among-st 8 bill other fallen.
Our Mission Statement for Lifespring Church is stated: It is our Purpose to proclaim the Supremacy and Sufficiency of Jesus Christ, in order to present everyone complete in Him.
II Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God[a] may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
To this end We are thankful for Doctors and psychologists, for we desire to alleviate human misery, but we know that in God’s sight and for eternal joy, anything from the world can, at best, prop a person up, help with navigate the fallen world, but can do nothing to bring a person on step closer to Eternity or Christian maturity: Only the Gospel can give Life and the Holy Scripture help in healing the human condition.
Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by nphilosophy and oempty deceit, according to phuman tradition, according to the qelemental spirits1 of the world, and not according to Christ.
II Peter 1:19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The Purpose of our Conference is to show from Scripture and Church History, Hope and Healing for the Human condition; the Gospel and the Means God provides for our maturity and growth: Counseling from the Counsel of His Holy Word….that the Sufficiency of Scripture is for life and godliness.