Quick Hits 12.31.08

* Tim Challies recently posted a poll about Christian conferences. Interesting to see the number of people who said they are not attending any conferences next year.  I’m going to two (one this month!).

* Be sure to check out Joe Thorn’s new and improved website.  He is picking up blogging again in 09.

* A great new blog focusing on the gospel has recently been launched called Gospel Reminders.  Who doesn’t need to be reminded of what God has done for us in Christ on a regular basis?!

* Speaking of the Gospel, read about three daily prayers of J.D. Greear that helps center him on the gospel.

* Tim Keller writes about the advent of humility in CT.

* Are those who use social media anti-social in real life?  I’ve often wondered about that.

* Here is a new tw0-volume biography of George Whitefield (1100+ pages).  Foreword by J.I. Packer, Preface by Richard Owen Roberts.  Looks really good.

* Looking for some new commentaries in 2009 the future?  Check these out.

* Speaking of books, this dude is selling his library of 2,976 volumes for a whopping $950,000.  That comes to something like $300 a book!  Yikes!

* EvangelismCoach asks if we have an evangelism strategy in 2009.  I do.  Do you?

* Got some old Bibles that you would like to give away to those who don’t have one?   Challies points us to a great opportunity to bless others.

* Mark Driscoll writes a late-night post about the “hard core of the hard core.” iMonk offers a response. Personally, I thought the post, though for sure well-intentioned, was really unhelpful and disconcerting.

* Read about a church in Illinois tht is giving 100% of their budget to the mission. Wow. Convicting.

* JT points us to the news that The Theology Program has just made all their courses available for free on iTunes.  I really look forward to loading my iPhone with some of these lectures.

* For those of you on WordPress and haven’t already upgraded to 2.7, ProBlogger offers a safe and easy way to do just that.

* Bobby Gilles has posted the Sojourn Worship year-in-review in pictures, taken by my good friend and fellow photographer, Dan Canales.

* For those who Twitter, check out the 2008 State of the Twittersphere Q4 Report.  Interesting stuff.  Darren Rowse believes Twitter will go mainstream in 2009. I guess we’ll have to see.

* One last thing about Twitter: You know you are too popular on Twitter when . . . 🙂

Southwest Founders Conference

The Southern Baptist Founders Conference – Southwest begins today and will continue through the weekend (see schedule).  Executive Director Tom Ascol will be speaking four times on topics including “Church Discipline & Church Growth,” “Biblical Church Membership,” “The Emergent Church,” and Ephesians 4:1-16 (others will be speaking as well).  The conference is being hosted by Heritage Baptist Church in Mansfield, Texas.

Andrew Nicewander will be live-blogging the conference, so I encourage you to check out his blog.  Also, I see that Tom is being tempted to Twitter his way through the weekend as well.  Finally, you may want to check out the live-streaming of the conference via UStream.  First session begins 3:30 p.m. CST on Thursday.