The Format of the
Grace Unity Conference

 

The Grace Unity Conference was specifically designed to allow grace believers of all grace teaching groups and independent grace teachers to come together in a fun and friendly atmosphere to share with one another their different points of view.

The policy of the Grace Unity Conference is, “Nobody is right and nobody is wrong.” With this policy we can allow different viewpoints to be taught so that we can see why each teacher believes what he believes. In doing so, we can allow communication with one another and possibly work out some of our division problems as the Lord beseeches us to do in 1st Corinthians 1:10, which says,

“10 Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.”

Working towards unity in the grace movement is a good thing. Just think of the impact grace believers could make in this world if we all had our act together and spake the same thing and had unity among ourselves. Another added bonus is when we stand before the Lord Jesus Christ at the judgment seat and have to give an account of everything that we have done in our body whether it be good or bad. I believe with all my heart that working towards unity is a good work and is pleasing to the Lord and will go to our account on that day.

So with all the benefits of working towards unity ahead of us, let’s discuss how the conference format is put together. At this time, the National Grace Unity Conference, is put on by three preachers that call all the shots for the conference and make all the decisions for the format of the conference, the date, location and so forth. These three co-hosting preachers are:

Randy Arendell of Shreveport, Louisiana
Clint Morgan of Pensacola, Florida
Jerry Pourcy of Denham Springs, Louisiana

In the future, as more preachers attend the Grace Unity Conference, they also will be allowed to be a co-host of the National Grace Unity Conference. Having more preachers to help make the decisions for the conference shows unity among these preachers to get these goals accomplished.

It would be very difficult for many preachers with their smaller congregations to put on their own bible conference every year, but it is very feasible for these smaller congregations to co-host a conference every year. This way these preachers and congregations can be partakers of their very own conference by co-hosting with other preachers and congregations, which would show even more unity among grace believers.

Do all the co-hosts have to believe exactly the same? No. We don’t all agree now. This is the beauty of it. We don’t all exactly agree on everything but we all agree that we should work towards unity, which is exactly what the Lord wants. This is our driving force, to be pleasing unto the Lord by working towards getting rid of our divisions and working towards unity.

In putting together a Unity Conference we have many challenges and obstacles to overcome. One of these challenges is that many preachers use different bibles. Not all bibles say the same things in all places but rather differ in many places throughout the bible. This causes a serious disunity problem. This is not by any fault of any of the preachers, but rather a problem associated with the different bibles themselves because they do not match.

Much prayer and thought went into this decision and our conclusion was to use a mutual foundation for all Unity Conferences. To see the problems that could arise by allowing different bibles please read this link:

The Mutual Foundation

As with other decisions that have to be made, there are pros and cons to both sides. Having a mutual foundation for the Grace Unity Conferences far outweighs the problems of allowing all sorts of different bibles with the disunity among these bibles.

The King James Bible is by far the most popular bible among people that rightly divide the word of truth and get into the deep things of God. Sure, there are more popular bibles overall out there, but when it comes to getting into the deep things of God, the King James is hands down by far the most popular.

So for the Grace Unity Conferences, since we will be getting into the deep things of God, the King James Bible will be the bible of choice.

But if there are enough preachers that want to, we can have a Unity Conference to discuss the differences between bibles and use different bibles at this particular conference. But because there is so much disunity among different bibles, I personally don’t believe we will accomplish much unity at this particular conference except for the fact that when it is over, we will all agree that these bibles say many different things in many different places. I’m sure that we will have agreement and unity in this conclusion.

All grace teachers are invited to come and teach, old ones, young ones, college grads, high school dropouts, whatever. If the Lord called you to teach and you have a bible class or a church assembly and you teach that salvation today during the dispensation of grace is by grace through faith not of works and you understand that the bible needs to be rightly divided, you are welcome to come teach.

Some conferences only allow popular preachers to teach. Some only allow older preachers to teach. And almost all only allow like-minded brethren to teach. The Grace Unity Conference has no barriers and we are not given to partiality. Everyone is treated the same. The Holy Spirit is who teaches, the preachers are just the vessels.

The only person that gets special treatment is the featured guest speaker. For this year, it is brother Les Feldick. Brother Les will open the conference with a special message and close the conference with a special message. He will also be participating in the topic discussions.

For the National Grace Unity Conference, all the topics will be chosen by the co-hosts of the conference. Regional or mini conferences will be different, having a sub-theme, some conferences will allow the individual preachers to pick the topic of discussion.

The topics chosen for the 2009 National Grace Unity Conference are as follows in this link and will be discussed in this order:

Topics

These topics were chosen because of the high interest and they also have different views associated with them.

Any preacher can choose the topic or topics he wishes to speak on. You do not have to teach on a topic that you do not wish to. There will be a table in the meeting room with containers labeled with the different topics and the different views on these topics.

Example:

Let’s say you believe that salvation was always by grace through faith not of works throughout all time and you would like to speak on this subject. You simply write your name on the small form and place it into the container marked as such.

If you see any other topics that you would like to teach on do the same with those topics.

As we start the conference we will take the topics with their different viewpoints one at a time and draw names randomly from the containers.

The first name pulled will go first to start this viewpoint of the topic. When this first brother is finished or his time runs out, we will pull the next name out of the container. This next preacher will be asked not to repeat what was just said by the first preacher but rather to add to his teaching to enhance the teaching with other comments and other scripture.

This process will be repeated until this viewpoint of this topic is exhausted. When all the preachers have had their turn or the viewpoint is exhausted we will go to the next viewpoint on the same topic and repeat the same process until it is exhausted.

When all viewpoints are exhausted for a topic, then we move on to the next topic. There will be no going back and forth on topics such as a debate. We take a topic, take the first viewpoint and exhaust it and then take the next viewpoint and exhaust it then we move on to the next topic.

On the next topics we will pull names randomly out of the containers but this time if a name is pulled and that preacher has already spoken and other preachers have not spoken yet, their name will be held and allow other preachers which have not spoken yet to get their turn to teach. After these preachers are finished then the others can go again.

This process will be repeated until our time runs out.

On Sunday December 13, we will have audience participation day where the audience can get their questions answered. There will be a container on the table with forms and the audience can write their questions on the forms and place it into the container. The questions will be drawn randomly from the container and read to the preachers and the audience.

Then we will ask the preachers if any of them know the answer. If there is more than one preacher that would like to answer, then we will pick a number and whatever preacher gets closest to the number will go first.

Of course, there might by more than one view to answer the question, so all views will be taught.

After our time runs out for the questions, brother Les Feldick will close the conference with a special message.

Everyone will be asked to take everything they heard at the conference and research, study, and pray and come to their own conclusion on the topics.

Here at the Grace Unity Conference we encourage brethren to not be followers of men, which causes division, but rather be followers of the word of God and holding the head which is Christ.