Interview with Greg Gilbert, Part 1

1) Where do you pastor?

I am assistant pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.  Mark Dever is my senior pastor, and it’s been wonderful to work with him and the other guys here at CHBC.  When I was here in 2000-2002, I never imagined that the Lord would give me another opportunity to spend time living and working my brothers and sisters here in DC.  But I am deeply grateful that he did!

2) How did you come to Christ?

I was raised in a Christian home by wonderful Christian parents.  We attended church faithfully, and the gospel was made clear to me over and over again as a child.  I was converted and baptized at the age of 9, during a week-long revival meeting at my church.  I remember listening intently to the sermon (though I don’t remember now what was said!), and I remember being convinced that I was a sinner deserving of God’s punishment, that Jesus had been punished for me, and that I could be blessed instead of punished if I trusted in him. It was a simple understanding of the gospel, but it was a real one.

3) Describe your call to ministry.

Never once as a teenager did I ever feel God calling me to the ministry.  I went to college determined to go to law school and start a degree in politics, but between my freshman and sophomore years at college I attended a week-long camp as a counselor to a group of high school freshmen.  That was an atomic week in my life, one in which God flipped some switches in my heart that had never been flipped before—concern for someone’s spiritual well-being, a pastoral love for others that I’d never felt before.  It really was overwhelming, and over the next year I wrestled hard with that.  By the end of my sophomore year, though, I knew that God had called me to the ministry, and I was ready to follow Him in that call.

4) Tell us about your family.

I am married to Moriah, the woman who is truly the love of my life, and we have three children.  They are Justin (6 years old) and Jack (3 years old), and Juliet (born in Jan. 2010).  My boys are 100% boy, and their days are filled with tractors and swords and balls and bats and super-hero capes and light-sabers.  God has blessed me beyond belief!

5) What are some of your favorite activities with your family or personal hobbies?

I enjoy all kinds of sports (you don’t have to be good at them to enjoy them!), reading, snow skiing, water skiing, running, playing Wii with my 6-year-old, hiking with the family, double- or triple-dates with friends, a movie and take-out Thai with Moriah.  Those are a few.

Interview with Brian Habig, Part 2

6) Favorite biography?

I re-read Werner Neuer’s biography of Adolf Schlatter (translated by Robert Yarbrough, a former professor) every Advent.  Schlatter was a genius of amazing breadth, and his labors as a scholar for the gospel’s sake (in a hostile European context) are an annual encouragement to me as a pastor.  He’s not a household name, but I love this biography.

7) What will you be speaking on at T4G?

“The Fears of the Minister.”  Substitute the word “fears” with “insecurities,” and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what I plan to address.  Ministers talk about Jesus Christ a lot, but we have come up with all sorts of ways to place our identity elsewhere.  (Even during the gospel-saturated days of T4G, most everyone there — especially ministers! — will be sizing each other up and wondering how they stack up by comparison!)  This session will be as pertinent to non-clergy as it is to ordained ministers.

8)Which of the main T4G speakers could you “take to the mat” so to speak?

Ligon used to doubt my claims to mastery of Shaolin Kung Fu, but after what we simply refer to as “the incident,” he now grows strangely silent whenever the matter comes up.

9) Why are you excited about T4G?

I’m a blank slate, having never attended T4G.  It will be a 90 degree learning curve for me.  I’m humbled to be a part of it.

10) Anything else we should know or you’d like to say?

Thank you for even reading this far.  And I think that 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 would be a fitting way to be praying for those teaching that week, especially the main speakers.

Twitter Symbol

The hash tag for the upcoming T4G conference is:

#T4G2010

So put that in and start chatting about the upcoming conference!

Interview with Brian Habig, Part 1

1) Where do you pastor?

I pastor Downtown Presbyterian Church, a church plant of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.  Our city’s downtown has undergone a revitalization that has garnered national attention, and our church is committed to this particular area of our city.

2) How did you come to Christ?

I grew up in the church but didn’t have ears to hear until high school.  In God’s mercy, He granted me the new birth when I was a tenth grader, using the teaching of His Word in our church and older believers there who invested time in me.  And He has provided others to preach and model the gospel to me ever since.

3) Describe your call to ministry.

I had talked myself into being a business major in college, but even in high school I had thought about pursuing ordained ministry.  One particular thing that the Lord used was reading the first volume of Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ biography during my summer job lunch breaks about halfway through college.  After graduation, I worked as an intern with Reformed University Fellowship, which confirmed both an “inward” and “outward” call to the ministry.

4) Tell us about your family.

My precious wife, Dana, is a Mississippian like myself.  [Insert all the "outside-my-league" type remarks here.  They would all be accurate.]  Our children’s names — Henry (9), John (7), and Betsy (4) — have been described both as “old school” and as “British royalty.”  All my attempts to make our children as boring as myself have failed.

5) What are some of your favorite activities with your family or personal hobbies?

I love to take over-produced 80′s songs and strip them down to a bare-bones arrangement for my acoustic guitar.

Thank you to all who registered!

Wow. A lot of folks registered for T4G in the last few days. T4G wants to say THANK YOU and praise God for what we hope he’ll do in 2010. We look forward to exalting Christ with all of you coming. We’re very excited.