Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock close out the first season on the thing NGA exists to do, which is train men for ministry inside a local church instead of sending them off to a school somewhere. Both of them were trained that way. They talk about what it gave them: sitting in on elders' meetings, hearing real pastoral situations talked through by the men handling them, preaching a first sermon to a congregation that would tell them afterward how it went. A man who has only been in a classroom, they say, is like a doctor who has never held a scalpel. They're also honest about what their model costs, and Aaron warns against assuming NGA is the only place doing this well. He calls that Tigger syndrome. The wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only one.

00:00 — What Aaron wishes he'd been told about conflict
02:21 — The marriage with no fighting in it
05:22 — Machen's warrior children and the swing away from conflict
11:38 — Jew and Greek: the conflict the apostles insisted on working through
13:58 — Luther at Worms, and the night of prayer before it
15:29 — Defining conflict: friction, from mild to disintegrating
18:30 — Battle mode at the seminary, battle mode at home
21:34 — Triaging the conflicts that aren't your fault
24:43 — Recovering backbone without losing gentleness
28:33 — Mark Dever on church discipline you've just learned
32:28 — Titus 1: certain men must be silenced
34:02 — If there's never conflict in the church, you're failing
39:23 — Students in elders' meetings, watching the mess
41:44 — The elder who raised his head over the parapet
44:49 — The sacraments and the freedom to have it out Thursday night
49:27 — Unanimity, uniformity, and unity
1:00:54 — Conflict-averse men, and the homes that made them
1:06:23 — Timothy's timidity, and Owen on grace changing nature
1:10:18 — Short-circuit conflict, short-circuit sanctification

Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com