Ian McConnell grew up in North Philadelphia, the oldest of six boys in a “rough-around-the-collar” Irish-Catholic family. Today, by God’s grace, Ian is an urban church planter and the lead pastor of Grace Bible Church in Philadelphia. On July 5, Grace Bible Church will celebrate their adoption into the Sovereign Grace family of churches.

At our 2009 Pastors Conference, Ian shared his passion for urban church planting and told the story of his path into Sovereign Grace. You can listen to the 14-minute audio clip here:


Download MP3 (3.2 MB)
 

Audio and PDFs from the 2009 Sovereign Grace Ministries Pastors Conference (April 6-8) are now available for download.

Here is a list of the conference messages:

General Sessions

• The Pastor’s Charge, Part 1 (C.J. Mahaney)
• The Pastor’s Teaching (Jeff Purswell)
• The Pastor’s Mission (Dave Harvey)
• The Pastor’s Legacy (Jared Mellinger)
• The Pastor’s Charge, Part 2 (C.J. Mahaney)

Seminars for Men

• The Pastor and Christian Liberty (Craig Cabaniss)
• The Pastor and College Ministry: Compelling Reasons to Take the Gospel to the Campus (Bill Kittrell)
• The Pastor and His Community: How the Gospel Informs Our Mission beyond the Church (Mark Dever)
• The Pastor and His Older Children: The Possibilities and Perils of Parenting Teens (Bob Kauflin)
• The Pastor and Preaching: How to Start a Sermon, End a Sermon, and Prepare the Middle of a Sermon (Mike Bullmore)
• The Pastor and Small-Group Leaders (Jim Donohue)
• The Pastor and the Counseling Process (Andy Farmer)
• The Pastor and the Priority of Plurality (Dave Harvey)
• The Pastor and the Spirit: An Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12–14 (Jeff Purswell)
• The Pastor and Titus 2 (Aron Osborne)
• The Pastor and Youth Ministry: The Priority of Teaching for Parents and Teens (Steve Whitacre)

Seminars for Women

• The Pastor’s Wife and Culture: What Feminism Has Done to Femininity (Carolyn McCulley)
• The Pastor’s Wife and Ministry Opportunities: Five Great Deals She Won’t Want to Miss (Carolyn Mahaney)

Visit the Pastors Conference page to download the audio recordings and all available PDFs.

Each year, Sovereign Grace Ministries presents a short documentary highlighting a few of the activities in our family of churches. This year, we produced three shorter films to highlight our Pastors College, our ministry among international churches, and our church-planting activities in the United States.
 
Our second documentary in the 2008 Mission Presentation features Covenant Life Church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which was planted by two Pastors College students five years ago and is now planting another church in Addis. View the film here.

Each year, Sovereign Grace Ministries presents a short documentary highlighting a few of the activities in our family of churches. This year, we produced three shorter films to highlight our Pastors College, our ministry among international churches, and our church-planting activities in the United States.
 
The first video features the Pastors College in Gaithersburg and the Arche Church in Hamburg, Germany, which sent Christian Wegert to be part of the 2007–2008 Pastors College class. You can watch the nine-minute film, plus two bonus interviews, here. Two additional videos will be released later this month.

Each year, Sovereign Grace Ministries presents a short documentary highlighting a few of the activities in our family of churches. This Mission Presentation is usually made in Sovereign Grace churches over various Sundays in October. This year, we produced three shorter films to highlight each of our funding categories—our Pastors College, our ministry among international churches, and our church-planting activities in the United States.
 
This year’s Pastors College documentary features the Arche Church in Hamburg, Germany, which sent Christian Wegert to be part of the 2007–2008 Pastors College class.

The international documentary features Covenant Life Church of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which was planted by two Pastors College students five years ago and is now planting another church in Addis.

The final video is an interview with C.J. Mahaney by Joshua Harris, which addresses some of the structural changes Sovereign Grace Ministries has made to position our ministry for growth in domestic church-planting.

Watch a trailer of the three 2008 Mission Presentation videos here.

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Related: Previous Mission Presentations can be viewed at www.missionvideos.org.