“For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (Hebrews 6:10-12, ESV)
C.J. Mahaney is taking small steps in an attempt to regain his footing on the conference circuit. You may recall that two months ago Mahaney’s good friend Al Mohler attempted to kick start Mahaney’s conference career by offering him a bit part in his leadership conference. It seems the conference was a dismal failure for Mahaney as he overplayed his hand. His unabashed brown-nosing of Mohler as a genius with a big stack of books was so over the top that it actually proved an embarrassment to Mohler. Here, once more for your listening pleasure, is the classic segment:
Well, a few weeks ago another attempt was made by Mahaney to resuscitate his struggling conference career. This time a friendly, intimate audience of about 100 young people of Sovereign Grace Church of Gilbert AZ was chosen as the target audience.
You may recall how, in the past, Mahaney has praised pastors for the hours and hours they spend in sermon preparation. I highlighted that this seems not to be the case with Mahaney as these days he seems to prefer to regurgitate sermons from memory which he has delivered numerous times in the past.
Well, maybe this time would be different. Mahaney has been stripped of his leadership of the Sovereign Grace denomination, his only real duty these days is to pastor a church of about 60-80 people, and for this small congregation he has 3 other assistant pastors to help shoulder the load. One would think he would have plenty of time for prayer, bible study and sermon preparation. Apparently not. The time pressures on the guy must be more intense than us common folk can grasp. Rather than prepare a unique sermon, tailored specifically for his audience of young adults, C.J. reverted to his bag of canned sermons and pulled out a few of the “old faithful” that he knows so well.
If you would like to access the above page to listen to the sermons you can click here.
The first sermon was on Jude 1. You can listen to the same sermon, nearly verbatim, at the links below.
The second sermon was based on Psalm 88 and is also well rehearsed by C.J. He has undoubtedly preached it numerous times, below is evidence of his having delivered it on at least two other occasions. Let’s hope the usually cash-starved college-aged kids in attendance didn’t have to pony up too much cash to listen to sermons that can be found all over the internet.
When all was said and done the two local Sovereign Grace pastors who took part in the conference proclaimed it a rousing success, hoping to repeat the conference next year with an even larger crowd (and undoubtedly some more of the same old, time-tested Mahaney sermons). When queried as to what was the highlight of the conference, one of the local pastors responded predictably that just to sit under the teaching of the vaunted Bob Kauflin and C.J. Mahaney was the greatest highlight. (Who says these guys don’t learn their stuff at the nine month Pastor’s College? They definitely know what side their bread is buttered on!)
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that C.J. Mahaney stuck around after the conference to preach at Sovereign Grace Church of Gilbert on Sunday morning. (I wonder what the honorarium fee was?) Did he have a fresh word from the Lord for the good people of Gilbert? What do you think?
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