Revealed: Who Invited Dever, Piper, Mohler, and Duncan to ShepCon 2026, and Why
Grace to You Executive Director Phil Johnson has shed light on the choice of speakers for the upcoming 2026 Shepherds Conference, revealing that the decision to have Mark Dever, John Piper, Albert Mohler, and Ligon Duncan speak was made by John MacArthur prior to his death.
The choice of these men to speak has raised eyebrows for many, given the perception that they have compromised on the faith and developed some progressive leanings—something not typically associated with Shepherds Conference or Grace Community Church.
For example, Ligon Duncan took a pot shot at John MacArthur for telling Beth Moore to ‘go home’ a few years ago, partnered with gay priests at conference events, had a CRT syllabus at his University, said there is great wisdom in a pastor never letting congregants know which side of a political conflict he leans or where he stands on major political issues, and famously lamented that his black friends have a really good reason not to trust him: because he was a white man.
In particular, many have pointed to the tense exchange over the Dallas Statement at Shepherds Conference 2019, where Mohler, Duncan, and Dever pushed back against Phil Johnson’s questioning of their commitment to social justice, with Mohler going so far to call MacArthur’s Dallas Statement “problematic.”
Ultimately, MacArthur acknowledged that while many were unhappy with his decision to invite this trio, he was glad he did, concluding, “I’ll fight error, but I won’t fight my friends.”
Responding to questions about their upcoming presence at the conference, seven years after most of them last attended, Phil Johnson shared at The Master’s Fellowship regional meeting in Denver:
I like all of those guys. Al Mohler is the most interesting conversationalist I’ve ever shared a meal with. And I like him. I don’t agree with him on everything, obviously. And that’s true of the other guys as well. Ligon Duncan is the most gracious and friendly. I mean, you can’t not love him if you know him. And Mark Dever has probably done more to disciple young guys than anybody else.
And again, I don’t agree with all of his ideas, and I’m sorry he blended wokeness into what he was training as young men, I think that was a huge mistake. So I have disagreements with all those guys, but I love them.
Turning to whose decision it was to invite these men, with some suggesting they were asked only after MacArthur’s passing, Phil reveals that it was John himself who sought to have them speak:
People should know that the choice of having those men come back to this year’s Shepherds Conference was actually John MacArthur’s. It’s not like- you see in social media people saying, “well John died and now they’re bringing back all these guys that didn’t agree with John on things. So what are the elders thinking?”
It wasn’t like that at all. It was John. mean he brought back Piper last year. And Piper gave what I thought was the best eulogy on John MacArthur at his memorial service. So these guys are capable of delivering solid biblical stuff. That’s what they’ll do at the Shepherds Conference. They’re not gonna come in and peddle social justice or any of that. I’m not fearful of that, and I’m not opposed to having them.
He continues:
They’re men who for years worked alongside John and agreed with him on many things. And this is their opportunity to express their agreements with John, and I think they’ll do that. None of them are going to… When the suggestion was made in an elders meeting, let’s bring these guys back and let them do a panel discussion where they talk about their memories of John MacArthur.
Some of them had done this, they had done this in some context with R.C. Sproul, where these men who had worked closely alongside him were giving their memories of Sproul, and it was a great hour of really edifying reminiscences about how effective Sproul was and why he was effective.
They wanted to do that for John, you know, so let’s get the guys who he labored most closely with, who were his best friends, and these are those guys. The one exception would be Sproul, he’s already dead, so he can’t be part of the panel.
Johnson continues fleshing it out:
So they said, what if we do this? And in an elders meeting, they looked across at me and said…Phil, what do you think of this? And I said, I’m all in favor of it if you let me be the moderator of the discussion. And of course, everybody just laughed at that, like, that’s a bad idea. So I don’t think that’s going to happen.
But I’m not discouraged by it. I think it’s a nice move. It shows that we can disagree with people without totally severing our fellowship with them.
Then concludes:
John …was especially magnanimous towards other men. When he’d see somebody like Piper who’s having a great influence in a certain realm. Although he had, Piper’s probably the one of those guys who John would disagree with the most, whose charismatic views, even some of his notions about hedonism and all that, John would differ with him.
And Piper, for a long time, whenever he’d come to Grace Church, it seemed to me like he’d take the opportunity to say something to express his disagreements with John. Almost rude, you know? So Piper’s the one guy there that I would have been more inclined to say, ‘yeah let’s not have him back.’
But he was the first guy John wanted back last year at Shepard’s conference. And I think it was because John just wanted to demonstrate that ‘although you know I don’t agree with this man on everything, we do agree on the gospel and we do agree on what we’re preaching about in this conference. And we’re not enemies.’
The refusal to separate from error because of doctrinal minimalism was what defined neo-evangelicals like Billy Graham and Carl Henry. Sad to see that MacArthur fell into the same trap.
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