Welcome back to the S. Besterjohn podcast. Today we launch our 2015 conference for pastors

in partnership with Bethlehem College and Seminary. The pastor's conference kicks off this afternoon

and it will be a full afternoon and evening of festivities at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

As always I look forward to seeing many of you in town for it and for those of you who refuse to

venture into Minneapolis in the wintertime, the conference will be streamed online.

You can go to desiringgod.org forward slash live for the schedule and for the video stream.

We're back with guest Matt Chandler. He's the lead pastor at the village church in Dallas.

Matt is also the author of the new book The Mingling of Souls. God's designed for love,

marriage, sex and redemption and he joins us on the phone from Dallas. Matt, I've got 10 questions

on relationships queued up for you and we're working through them. Eventually I want to ask you

about Facebook today but first here's question number two. Is there such thing as too fast in Christian

dating? How do you know if a dating relationship is moving too quickly, emotionally or too quickly

towards marriage? So I'm going to be real cautious about saying there is such a thing as too

quickly. What I'd rather do is say what's driving the speed? And so if mere physical attraction

or kind of emotive frilly, this is quote unquote the one type of weirdness is driving it, then yeah

I think if the relationship is outpacing a knowledge of character, reputation and knowledge of

godliness, then that's way too quick. But again to go back to what I said earlier, if the person

is known, if you're in a context in which you have watched their godliness, you have marveled

at their character, you have rejoiced in what God does in them and through them, then I think

that speed isn't as big of a factor. So we have a staff person here who really met and married

her husband in a matter of months. But she had watched him do ministry at the village, she knew his

reputation, they were these things that were already known and so what was driving the relationship,

...