I want to just kick off our time together tonight by letting you know how we got here and how we

arrived at the conversation that we are having right now. I think it would be fair to say if you

are a Christian who's paying attention to the conversation that other Christians are having online,

certainly in the biblical counseling world,

you're going to be aware that there is something of a disagreement, a little bit of a fight

among Christians who love counseling, and that is unpleasant. Nobody wants to be locked in a

disagreement. I hate disagreement, but I have been involved in the disagreement and perhaps even responsible

for some of it. And so it seemed appropriate that we would come here and just in a very special

event, try to take some of your questions that you've been asking. There's no possible way

for me to respond individually to all the things that we hear about in the office at ACBC.

And so we just kind of wanted to do this and knock out a few of your questions and your concerns.

I want to let you know a little bit of the context about this.

It started, I think it'd be fair to say, around the theme of the ACBC annual conference

for 2017. The theme of our annual conference was faithfully Protestant, biblical counseling,

and the Reformation. We always select our annual conference based on themes that we think are in need of great attention by biblical

counselors and we thought that the Protestant Reformation would be something that we could talk

about as biblical counselors and add a very unique flavor a counseling spin if you will on the

500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

Our conferences at ACBC are often controversial. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, if you can

believe it, this ACBC annual conference has been a little less controversial than others.

I got a couple death threats on the homosexuality conference a few years ago.

So no death threats this year yet.

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