Excuse #1: I'm lazy
Excuse #2: ...?
By way of catching people up that might (or more likely probably are not) following this blog, I have been a bit busy the last several months. The one thing that has taken a bit of center stage was a conference that I helped set up and was the final speaker at during the first weekend of May. Battle for the Soul: DiaPrax in America was a conference that was centered on the idea that the enemy of our soul has developed a systematic approach to manipulate, deceive, and ultimately control how people think. Once you control "how" people think, it is easy to control "what" they think.
The keynote speaker was Mr. Dean Gotcher from the Institution for Authority Research. Other speakers were Pastor Paul Mowery of Harvest Fellowship in Leo Indiana, Steve Rea of IAR, our very own Mark Turney of the Reality Check, and me.
Dean spoke for three one-hour sessions, detailing how the process began and has been inculcated into the modern world through the educational establishment and elucidated on the penetration of the process through other areas of our world. We kept Dean to three one hour slots to make room in everyone's head for all the great information he has to present. He could probably hold forth for 30 hours if we had the time to go through it all.
Pastor Mowery kicked the session off teaching on the biblical warnings concerning false teachers and false prophets. Showing how things have worked throughout history and how they continue to work out today. The main emphasis was upon recognizing the wolf in sheep's clothing and reconciling what they say to the Word of God for authority. By instilling in people's minds the importance of the immutable standard of the Word as the first, middle, and final authority by which we judge truth and reality, Pastor Mowery set a beautiful tone for the conference.
After Pastor Mowery, Mr. Gotcher spoke for his first of three one-hour sessions and then we retired for the night eager to get back on the next morning to begin afresh.
Saturday morning started with Dean's second and third installments on the dialectic process in education. Having done thousands of hours of research and reading on the process and coining the phrase "DiaPrax", coming from the words "Dialectic" (dialogue) and "Praxis" (practice) Mr. Gotcher is the foremost authority on the entire process.
Everyone had lunch together as part of the conference after Mr. Gotcher's second talk and then when everyone was done, Mr. Steve Rae began telling his story. He showed how the educational system is databasing children and performing illegal psychological testing upon them to determine how to change the "how" of their thought process. He found the databasing process being used on his daughter and fought a hard-won victory in court, proving his case against a team of lawyers. He took it to the highest court in his home state of Ohio, and won, much to the chagrin of his opposition.
Our own Mark Turney was up to bat next and expounded on DiaPrax in Worship. Mark's session was most like to step on people's toes and he revealed both 'liberal' and 'conservative' "Christian" leaders who had abandoned the Word of God and replaced it with something that was more palatable. He then detailed for the attendees the difference between praise and worship. Praise is an offering of musical adoration to God, and worship is a lifestyle of obedience, not simply to be relegated to 30 minutes on Sunday's and Wednesdays. Then began his critique on the songs we tend to sing at church and call 'worship'. He demonstrated the Biblical pattern of praise and songs that are more based upon the experience of the singer and their emotional state and how these songs we not praise songs and did not belong in the 'worship' service at corporate gatherings.
I, Mark Long, gave the final talk of the conference entitled: "What Now? A practical guide to defending against DiaPrax." While I did the speaking, much of the information and the systematic approach to this defense came from the hours of work and research by Darren Turney and myself. We have developed a system to train others to defend themselves in verbal altercations. This system we titled with the Latin word Tutela, meaning teaching and defending.
The basics of this talk came from a contrast between WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) and WDJD (What Did Jesus Do?) Making the Word the final authority, not our notion of what seems to be right. I went through the identification process, and then a three-step solution.
#1 Identify the Standard in Question
#2 Define the Terms in the engagement
#3 Reconcile to the Stand of God's Word
I followed all of this up with some back and forth with the conference attendees to make the final session one of practice and application, more akin to workshop than a seminar.
We are continuing with our video endeavors, and hope to be adding a great deal more content in the very near future. Please keep us in mind and pray for us as you are directed.
Thanks and God Bless!
Solo Deo Gloria
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