Pure Church

Today we leave for the God Exposed conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm looking forward to the trip for a number of reasons:

1. We'll sit under excellent preaching and preachers for a couple days. We should hear addresses from Mark Dever, C.J. Mahaney, Mike McKinley, and Danny Akin, President of Southeastern.

2. It'll be time to catch up with a number of good friends. There's Stephen, a former staff person at FBC recently enrolled at Southeastern. We'll have to find out about this watermelon milkshake thing he's hooked on! There's Bentley, a partner in ministry here at FBC and an elder as of this past Sunday. There's Pete, the man I regard as my first pastor and first model of exposition. There's Clyde, my Barnabas. There's James, fellow laborer in the gospel and new daddy. There's the crew from CHBC. And a whole ton of other people it'll be great to see and interact with.

3. It's Raleigh, where my wife and I met and where we began our family. Always good to visit the ol' stompin' grounds.

4. You can't go to Raleigh without going to Goodberry's. The best frozen custard on the planet.

5. Time probably won't permit actually eating some, but at least I'll be in sniffing distance of some fried fish! Cayman has wonderful restaurants (worth visiting the island just for the eating!), but there's nothing here like some fried fish and shrimp NC-style. (There is no decent barbecue, though. Too far east really.)

6. There's fall. I like the fall season; crisp sweater and jacket weather. It'll be awesome if the leaves are changing colors even the tiniest bit. In Cayman we have two seasons: peak and hurricane. Lots of glorious sunny days year-round, but fall is special. Fall means football, the final cook-outs of the seasons, tail-gating, and soon, Thanksgiving.

Two days of thinking about expositional preaching in one of the loveliest parts of the country with some of the best people you'll ever meet. Should be refreshing!