Bethel Baptist Church of El Sobrante, California held its first annual Word of Truth Conference beginning on Wednesday night, November 11, 2009. Visiting pastors and wives and Bethel members gathered together for a wonderful Filipino dinner at 5:30pm. This was followed by a sermon by Pastor Dave Mallinak of Berean Baptist Church of Ogden, Utah at 7:00pm. All the sermons in the conference were expository, exegeting portions of Scripture. Pastor Mallinak preached two messages from the book of Amos. Later in the week, the attendees heard sermons from Pastors Don Smith of Platteville, CO, Dr. Gary Webb of Carrboro, NC, and Bobby Mitchell of Brunswick, ME. Expositions came from Genesis, Malachi, Nahum, Daniel, and Acts, resulting in a rich time in God’s Word for the week, the preaching accurate and practical.
An important aspect of the Word of Truth Conference are the morning sessions beginning Thursday morning at 9:00am, for the first three years dealing with the Bible doctrine of ecclesiastical separation. I started these sessions on Thursday with teaching on the relationship of separation to unity as seen in the New Testament. Pastor Gary Webb covered the whole chapter of Matthew 18 on Friday morning, focusing on the church discipline section in the middle of that text. Pastor David Sutton from our church in El Sobrante taught on Romans 16:17-18 and the protection of the purity of the church. The teaching sessions ended with Pastor Bobby Mitchell covering Acts 19-20 and the role of the pastor in the purity of the church. Both of these later teaching times occurred on Saturday morning. Pastor Mitchell will come back in future years, Lord-willing, to teach on this from the pastoral epistles and Revelation 2-3. Sunday evening at 6:00pm was a panel discussion during which questions were answered over the four morning sessions.
The meals and the music were tremendous. We had a great time praising the Lord with congregational and special music, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. The church provided meals for lunch and supper Thursday and Friday, and each evening was a dessert fellowship time. Many commented on how wonderful the food was for conference attendees. A notebook was available at the conference for ten dollars that included complete chapters from the future book on separation.
The weather was warm and sunny. Those who came to the conference did some sightseeing at the amazing places around the Bay Area. Attendees visited the giant redwoods, waded in the Pacific ocean, walked or drove down the crookedest street in the world in San Francisco, and saw the seals at Pier 39. The Bay was clear and colorful with sailboats dotting the blue surface of the water. The sunsets were gorgeous behind the Golden Gate Bridge.
Bethel is tentatively planning on holding the conference November 10-14, 2010. You can begin registering right now for the next year, so we can begin preparing for another great time together. We hope you make plans to come. We will provide more details regarding the 2010 meeting as we get closer to the conference date.