Speaker Bios

Doctor Tom Hicks

Dr. Tom Hicks serves as the Senior Pastor at First Baptist of Clinton, Louisiana. He is married to Joy, and they have four children: Sophie, Karlie, Rebekah and David. He received his MDiv and PhD degrees from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, with a major in Church History, emphasis on Baptists, and with a minor in Systematic Theology. He is the author of The Doctrine of Justification in the Theologies of Richard Baxter and Benjamin Keach (PhD diss, SBTS).

Pastor Steve Meister

Steve Meister (M.Div., The Master’s Seminary) has served as a pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Sacramento, CA, since 2014, is devoted to expositional preaching, theological education, and leadership training in the local church. He also serves on the boards of Bible Translation Fellowship (bibletranslationfellowship.org) and Cornerstone Christian School (cornerstonechristian.org). Steve and his wife, Jenn, have been married for 23 years and are the grateful parents of 4 children — 2 boys and 2 girls — from 16 to 11 years old.

Doctor James Renihan

After a ministry of church planting in central Massachusetts, Dr. James Renihan and his family moved to Escondido, CA in 1998 to begin serving as Dean of the newly formed Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. He led that work for 20 years, and when it became IRBS Theological Seminary in 2018 was appointed the first president. He has served as a pastor of churches in Massachusetts, New York and California. He is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (PhD), Seminary of the East (MDiv), Trinity Ministerial Academy, and Liberty Baptist College (BS). His academic work has focused on the Second London Baptist Confession and the broader Puritan theological context from which it arose.

Doctor Samuel Renihan

Samuel Renihan is pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in La Mirada, California where he lives with his wife, Kim, and their son, Owen. He graduated MDiv from Westminster Seminary California and PhD from the Free University of Amsterdam. Sam is the author of various articles and books in English and Spanish, such as The Mystery of Christ, his Covenant, and his Kingdom (2019), Deity and Decree (2020), and Crux, Mors, Inferi: A Primer and Reader on the Descent of Christ (2021).

Doctor David VanDrunen

Dr. VanDrunen is a minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He has taught at Westminster Seminary California since 2001. He was formerly a pastor of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Hanover Park, IL, and has served on the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s Committee on Christian Education since 2005. He was the recipient of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award (2004), a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University (2009), a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology (2016-2017), and Research Fellow at the Protestant Theological University in The Netherlands (2022).

Dr. VanDrunen is the author or editor of thirteen books, including Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World (Zondervan Academic, 2020), named Book of the Year (2021) in Politics and Public Life by Christianity Today. His scholarly articles have appeared in many journals, including Journal of Reformed Theology, Journal of Law and Religion, and Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Dr. VanDrunen and his wife, Katherine, a WSC alumna, have one son and reside in Escondido.