FIEL Conference in Portugal
John Folmar and I are enjoying the enormous privilege of leading some 9Marks workshops with a group of Portugese pastors, wives and other church leaders on the West Coast of Portugal.
It has been such a pleasure to spend the last couple of days with brothers and sisters in a country where it is hard to be a minister, and yet there is such joy, hopefulness and perseverance despite many discouragements and much opposition. But they worship exactly the same almighty, gracious and compassionate God as the most visibly successful pastor ploughing the easiest of soil (to mix my metaphors). He is being just as kind to them, and they seem to know it.
The conference is organised by FIEL, a publishing house based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It is a tremendous ministry that seeks to encourage pastors by translating good books into Portuguese, and organising conferences for pastors.
Jonathan Leeman and Matt Schmucker visited the Brazilian Conference last year
Mark Dever and Don Carson were at the Brazilian conference this year.
One of the new developments in FIEL's ministry is that talks from conferences going back some time are now available on ustream. You can find them here.
Here's John's First talk. Once he gets past his excuses for lacking a tie (worth listening to!) John gives a great talk on the importance of having a biblical understanding of the gospel at the centre of the life of the church.
Getting to hang out with John has been another highlight of the last couple of days.
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