If you watched any of my IG stories from Thursday to Saturday, you probably noticed that I was out of town and at some sort of big event. A couple of months ago, my best friend sent me the link to The Gospel Coalition Women’s (TGCW) Conference for 2018 asking if I wanted to go. Of course I wanted to go! We both love TGC for its reformed theology, loved and read many of the speakers, and it was a very doable drive from Alabama.
We headed out for Indianapolis before 7 AM on Thursday morning!
Our drive was relatively easy except for the insane amount of interstate construction in Indiana. It got so bad (and as a result would have made us late for the first speaker) at one point that we followed the detour Janie’s phone was suggesting and it ended up taking us on a gravel road through a corn field ha!
We got to the conference just before it began!! Not pictured was the sweat from hustling to get to the convention center 😂 This conference was the biggest one I had ever been to–there were OVER 8,000 women there!
During the course of the 3 day conference, we went through the book of Deuteronomy and listened to 7 speakers preach on different passages through the book. The main message of Deuteronomy–love God and love your neighbor. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to email me at saraheshaneyfelt@gmail.com
Mary Willson and Jackie Hill Perry (LOVED HER!!) were the two speakers that night!
Day 2 was Friday and we were pretty tired. Our hotel was about a 15-ish minute walk so not too bad, and the selling point was the fact that Starbucks was located right across the street. Unfortunately, the Starbucks line was way too long for us to wait in line for coffee and breakfast and still be able to make it before the conference began.
We had 3 speakers on Friday spread out throughout the day–Kristie Anyawabile, Don Caron (president of TGC), and Jen Wilkin. I had heard Jen speak at a smaller conference a couple of years ago and was excited to hear her again!
We also attended 3 hour-long workshops on Saturday in between speakers. These were workshops we were able to sign up for when we bought our ticket, and we were able to choose them based on their topics. Janie and I chose different workshops for our first 2, but we chose the same one for our last. Rosaria Butterfield just released a book on the gospel and hospitality so her workshop was centered around that. (Side note: I went to Nashville with some friends a few years ago to listen to Rosaria share her testimony. Her testimony is amazing and I would recommend looking her up on Youtube!)
We had great seats for Jen Wilkin Friday night!
This was from Saturday morning and we were EXHAUSTED!!! Conferences are so fun, but they are also so tiring. We got little sleep and took in lots of heavy information which made for exhausted brains haha! We were really excited about this day because our FAVORITE pastor and theologian was closing out the day.
Our speakers for Saturday were Kathleen Nielson and John Piper.
John Piper closed out the conference by preaching on Deuteronomy 29-30. He was even better in person than I could have imagined! If you don’t know who he is, he has multiple books, podcasts, and runs Desiring God–so check him out!
We had such a great time at this conference! Everyone needs to take a best friend trip every once in a while!
That sounds like a lot of fun!
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I'm guessing that detour was part of the Waze app LOL!! Glad you had such a great weekend with your friend! xo, Biana –BlovedBoston
I love, love, love Rosaria Butterfield, and those other speakers are pretty great too. I'm going to have to try to get to the women's conference one of these days.
So glad you guys had a great time at the conference!
You are SO right; Conferences are exhausting, but in the best way! This one sounds incredible though, and to go with a best friend sounds perfect. Glad y'all had a great weekend!
Happy you had a great time! I live right in the thick of that construction, south of Indy! It's a crazy mess!!
So fun! I didn't realize you were in Indiana. I live about an hour from Indy 🙂
Did you know you were 2 1/2 hours away from me? Had I not been in DC, I would’ve driven down and met you, I’m reading the other comments and didn’t realize they were from Indiana. This sounds like a great conference. Glad you got to go.