On his blog, Ray Ortlund, Jr. suggests that God may be doing something special these days, and The Gospel Coalition is one indication of that. After returning from the national conference, he wrote:

Clearly, the Lord is at work. He is creating new conditions for the future. In the 90s, we had nothing of the magnitude of The Gospel Coalition, Together For The Gospel, Acts 29 and other obvious indicators of a new movement of God. We did have, say, Promise Keepers, which helped many. But PK was not explicitly gospel-centered, not aggressively theological. Its impact was unsustainable. But now the Lord is giving us something new, something better. Let’s be thankful to him. This doesn’t come along every day. Let’s steward the blessing well. If we bungle this, I doubt we will see it again in our time. But if we are wise, not intruding our own self-centered complications but humbly keeping Christ first, the blessing will grow. And maybe, in the mercy of God, we will see awakening in our time.

I was privileged to be in a small meeting in Chicago this week where Ray said something very similar to this (and he said it with tears). I thought then, Ray is in such a unique position to make a comment like this: he has dozens of years of ministry experience in various ministries and denominations, and has been thinking about and praying for revival through it all. I certainly don’t have the length of experience or depth of thought that Ray has, but, for what it’s worth, this is absolutely consistent with what I’ve seen in just 13 years of being in the ministry. Things have indeed changed. There is a new inter-denominational cooperation in the gospel of the reformation and partnership in ministry and hope for revival that seems to be a special gift from the Lord.