We've been asked by a number of folks to post an update about RC Sproul Jr's Generations Conference. Given the scant information that's come out about the conference we thought at first we hardly had enough to warrant posting an article. But then that's a significant part of the story -- how little anyone wants to talk about it, including the normally very talkative speakers.
Take for example what Doug Phillips posted on his blog -- pictures, pictures, pictures, and. . . well you get the point. Lots of fluff, no substance. Why isn't Doug telling us anything? He probably has good reason for that.
The only folks who are actually saying much of anything at all is a Highlands Study Center employee and his wife (and of course we can count on them to be honest and objective). They've posted several articles on the Generations Conference. Funny thing is they expend most of their time talking about things completely unrelated to the actual conference, like eating supper with the Sprouls and Phillips in RC Jr's home in Mendotaville. Yet they tell us next to nothing about the actual conference. The most extensive article is by Amy Howard, and the title of Amy Howard's article is (now get this), "Dinner After The Conference... An Historic Event."
We're sure glad that the Howard family had "an historic event" over supper at RC Jr's home. It would've been great if all the conference attendees could've shared in the "historic event" with you. But if you think the conference itself was an historic event you're sadly mistaken. We've heard from more than one attendee how utterly unimpressed they were -- the conference was a dud -- an historic disappointment.*
Around 600 people attended (that includes children), far less than the 1000-plus they had planned for. Considering the Highlands Study Center conference had over 400 attendees last year with just Doug Phillips and RC Sproul Jr, and they only brought the figures up by 200 by adding the legendary Dr. RC Sproul and Howard Phillips, that's not very impressive. We're told they lost quite a bit of money on last year's conference, and it's likely they lost money again. Poor planning (like overinflating your attendee estimates) will do that.
Nothing was mentioned at the conference about RC Sproul Jr's recent defrocking. In fact that was a subject that was carefully avoided. One way to avoid the subject is to prevent anyone from asking any embarrassing questions. We're told that the speakers kept themselves at a distance from the audience, with the exception of when the speakers made brief appearances at their book tables. A number of "ushers" prevented audience members from approaching the speakers during breaks, so it was all but impossible to ask any of them any questions, especially the dreaded, "Sir, what are you doing speaking at a conference with a defrocked minister?"
Oddly enough there's been nothing said anywhere on the internet since the conference. It's almost as if the people that attended were so unimpressed that they're embarrassed to admit they were there. If it had been a great conference we'd expect to see something posted about it somewhere -- anywhere. Well, there is this, which not coincidentally looks remarkably like Doug Phillips' blog content. Doug trains his boys well -- when you're trying to avoid an embarrassing subject, don't say anything of any substance, but post lots of pictures.
The one and only blog article we can find not written by someone who's either a Generations Conference speaker or working for one of the speakers are these folks, and they wrote it before they hit the road to go to the Generations Conference. We saw several people post comments to that article asking them to give a report on the conference when they got back. According to what they're stating they got back from the conference on May 8, but they have yet to post anything about their conference experience. That may not necessarily mean anything, but what's significant is the fact that they deleted the comments of people who had asked them for a conference report, and they've now disabled commenting altogether! Now if that's not sending a message. . .
We have no doubt that if RC Sproul Jr had done the honorable thing and removed himself from the speaker's lineup it could have been a good conference. But RC Sproul Jr's presence there spoiled it for a lot of people.
A number of conference attendees weren't even aware that RC Sproul Jr had been defrocked until they got to the conference and overheard other conference attendees talking about it. Imagine their shock! Now there's a great way to put a damper on a conference that otherwise had high potential. No doubt a lot of folks felt duped and cheated.
As we've already stated:
"In principle the theme of the conference is a good one. There's a very big fly in the ointment though -- RC Sproul, Jr. How is RC Jr in any way qualified to address the subject of "honor" when he's brought so much dishonor to his family name?"
There's not much now that RC Sproul Jr can do about salvaging the family name of Sproul. But he could at least stop embarrassing himself and his family by continuing to draw attention to himself. The right thing to do is to cease teaching and preaching, at least until he can arrange to get his name cleared and get himself reordained. Better still a defrocked preacher just needs to find himself another line of work -- at least that's what those men do who have any genuine regard for honor.
The honorable thing for RC Sproul Jr to have done would have been to remove himself from the conference lineup. If only RC Sproul Jr were capable of doing the honorable thing.
*Now that we've posted this, you can count on Doug Phillips to post a lengthy article on his blog with an over-the-top report gushing about how incredibly wonderful, edifying and warm and fuzzy the Generations Conference was, and what an incredibly honorable guy RC Sproul Jr is. It's part of Doug's MO. He just can't help coming to the defense of defrocked ministers like RC Sproul Jr.
Take for example what Doug Phillips posted on his blog -- pictures, pictures, pictures, and. . . well you get the point. Lots of fluff, no substance. Why isn't Doug telling us anything? He probably has good reason for that.
The only folks who are actually saying much of anything at all is a Highlands Study Center employee and his wife (and of course we can count on them to be honest and objective). They've posted several articles on the Generations Conference. Funny thing is they expend most of their time talking about things completely unrelated to the actual conference, like eating supper with the Sprouls and Phillips in RC Jr's home in Mendotaville. Yet they tell us next to nothing about the actual conference. The most extensive article is by Amy Howard, and the title of Amy Howard's article is (now get this), "Dinner After The Conference... An Historic Event."
We're sure glad that the Howard family had "an historic event" over supper at RC Jr's home. It would've been great if all the conference attendees could've shared in the "historic event" with you. But if you think the conference itself was an historic event you're sadly mistaken. We've heard from more than one attendee how utterly unimpressed they were -- the conference was a dud -- an historic disappointment.*
Around 600 people attended (that includes children), far less than the 1000-plus they had planned for. Considering the Highlands Study Center conference had over 400 attendees last year with just Doug Phillips and RC Sproul Jr, and they only brought the figures up by 200 by adding the legendary Dr. RC Sproul and Howard Phillips, that's not very impressive. We're told they lost quite a bit of money on last year's conference, and it's likely they lost money again. Poor planning (like overinflating your attendee estimates) will do that.
Nothing was mentioned at the conference about RC Sproul Jr's recent defrocking. In fact that was a subject that was carefully avoided. One way to avoid the subject is to prevent anyone from asking any embarrassing questions. We're told that the speakers kept themselves at a distance from the audience, with the exception of when the speakers made brief appearances at their book tables. A number of "ushers" prevented audience members from approaching the speakers during breaks, so it was all but impossible to ask any of them any questions, especially the dreaded, "Sir, what are you doing speaking at a conference with a defrocked minister?"
Oddly enough there's been nothing said anywhere on the internet since the conference. It's almost as if the people that attended were so unimpressed that they're embarrassed to admit they were there. If it had been a great conference we'd expect to see something posted about it somewhere -- anywhere. Well, there is this, which not coincidentally looks remarkably like Doug Phillips' blog content. Doug trains his boys well -- when you're trying to avoid an embarrassing subject, don't say anything of any substance, but post lots of pictures.
The one and only blog article we can find not written by someone who's either a Generations Conference speaker or working for one of the speakers are these folks, and they wrote it before they hit the road to go to the Generations Conference. We saw several people post comments to that article asking them to give a report on the conference when they got back. According to what they're stating they got back from the conference on May 8, but they have yet to post anything about their conference experience. That may not necessarily mean anything, but what's significant is the fact that they deleted the comments of people who had asked them for a conference report, and they've now disabled commenting altogether! Now if that's not sending a message. . .
We have no doubt that if RC Sproul Jr had done the honorable thing and removed himself from the speaker's lineup it could have been a good conference. But RC Sproul Jr's presence there spoiled it for a lot of people.
A number of conference attendees weren't even aware that RC Sproul Jr had been defrocked until they got to the conference and overheard other conference attendees talking about it. Imagine their shock! Now there's a great way to put a damper on a conference that otherwise had high potential. No doubt a lot of folks felt duped and cheated.
As we've already stated:
There's not much now that RC Sproul Jr can do about salvaging the family name of Sproul. But he could at least stop embarrassing himself and his family by continuing to draw attention to himself. The right thing to do is to cease teaching and preaching, at least until he can arrange to get his name cleared and get himself reordained. Better still a defrocked preacher just needs to find himself another line of work -- at least that's what those men do who have any genuine regard for honor.
The honorable thing for RC Sproul Jr to have done would have been to remove himself from the conference lineup. If only RC Sproul Jr were capable of doing the honorable thing.
*Now that we've posted this, you can count on Doug Phillips to post a lengthy article on his blog with an over-the-top report gushing about how incredibly wonderful, edifying and warm and fuzzy the Generations Conference was, and what an incredibly honorable guy RC Sproul Jr is. It's part of Doug's MO. He just can't help coming to the defense of defrocked ministers like RC Sproul Jr.
This post first appeared on Spinderella Sproul: Lessons In Spin With Spinmeist, please read the originial post: here
