was held at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis February 26-28, 2008. The denomination in question is the Presbyterian Church in America, a sister Church to my own communion.
I can't say I'm sold on everything the speakers had to say; even the idea of calling a series of lectures a "conversation" strikes me as a wee bit precious. I would also take issue with Matt Brown's implicit assertion that desiring a recovery of "old ways of doing things" is necessarily a "resting on laurels;" in my curmudgeonly opinion, the ecclesiastical disaster we have inherited because our fathers traded the ordinary means of grace for methodism is an excellent argument for a return to historic (by which I mean pre-1700s) presbyterian practice. At the same time, he gets massive bonus points for observing that many locations for new PCA Church plants are chosen as much because they're hip and exciting as because there's a genuine need there for new congregations.
Nonethelesss, I think the analysis presented (particularly in the lectures on ethos and ecclesiology) of the generally schismatic condition of confessionally reformed Churches in our nation (although framed specifically as a description of the PCA in particular) is right on. Again with certain caveats, I very much appreciated Jeffrey White's lecture on missions, in which he called into question the present obsession with "cultural renewal" in many presbyterian circles and recommended instead Church planting amongst the poor.
So, if you're looking for something to fill up your iPod, you can download the conference lectures (for free!) at http://www.denominationalrenewal.org/.
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