NEXT

Donald A. Carson, that is.  Maybe Christopher will buy coffee for the first person who tells us what the ‘A’ stands for?

So, you’ve heard by now that Dr. Carson is coming back to Next in 2010.  I know I’m not alone in thinking that’s good news - really good news.  Let me just take a moment to try to whet your appetite.

Some of the things that have made Carson’s writings and sermons deeply edifying for me personally would be things like:

1.  The way he directs my eye to Scripture.  He wants his listeners to “see it in the text of Scripture”.  As a result, I come away with a deeper appreciation for God’s Word and the sense that God has spoken to me through the preaching of the Word.

2.  He loves Christ and characteristically leverages the message of the gospel in a way that awakens wonder at God’s grace and fuels glad-hearted obedience to the Savior.

3.  He is a church man.  His father was a pastor and church planter.  Happily, the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.  Dr. Carson is a scholar with the heart of a pastor and the gospel-fervor of a missionary.  He doesn’t speak long before this passion finds a vent and comes through.

4.  He is a broad-range minister - a renaissance man in the best sense of the term.  He’s a math whiz (I think he majored in math - that is, to name one of his major areas of study) who loves aesthetics.  He isn’t the infamous professor in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off ... “Beuller, Beuller?”  He loves to see God’s glory in sights and sounds, in fiction and history, in comic strips and architecture, in the theological tome and the pew hymnal.  So, often I come away feeling that God’s glory peeks through in unfamiliar places.

Actually, these four things I’ve mentioned aren’t unique to Carson.  That’s one of the beauties of Next.  One session rolls on top of another, each one giving me a deeper sense of the privilege of having and hearing God’s Word in corporate gatherings.  Oh, this is gonna be good.