This conference is essentially an expanded form of one of the Regional Workshops held by 9Marks. The goal is to cultivate and encourage churches to reflect the character of God, something they will do as they institute several, often-overlooked biblical practices. Six main sessions will be presented on building healthy (that is, biblical) churches. Primarily, these sessions are for pastors, church leaders, and seminarians, but registration is open to all eager to learn about how healthy churches glorify God.

The Tuesday evening session will be open to the public. Dr. Dever will be preaching an expository message that models evangelism of the lost. Therefore, this will be a great night to invite your unbelieving friends and relatives to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Each session will begin with prayer and singing led by the Grace Fellowship Church Band of Brothers.

What Will I Hear? The goal of the conference is to present several major Biblical principles and then ask how those should be worked out in the local church context that you are in. The goal is not to create clones of another church, but to help grow a healthy church. Each session will include time for discussion with the speaker.

The six Workshop sessions are divided into the following parts:

Foundation
Session 1: Displaying God's Glorious Gospel

Construction
Session 2: Preaching & Biblical Theology
Session 3: Gospel, Conversion & Evangelism
Session 4: Membership, Discipline, and Discipleship
Session 5: Leadership

Life Together
Session 6: Covenanting Together

In all six, we aim to present pastors and church leaders with a little theory and a little practice, kind of like moving between your high school chemistry lecture room and the laboratory. Pastors want to 'get the point'; that's the theory. But they also want to know how to 'get the church from here to there'; that's the practice.