Articles
The Ebb & Flow of Lectio Continua Bible Reading In the English-Speaking Reformed Churches 1539-2000
A history and defense of chapter by chapter Bible reading in Worship services. more...
The Christian Use of Visual Art in Worship Today
A defense for the visually simple and reverent Worship. more...
Abortion and the Christian Church
The question that faces the church is forced onto us by the 6th Commandment and the Christian understanding of the sanctity of human life. God calls the church to the aid of the weak and helpless, to be their help and defender. Since Scripture regards unborn life as human life, we cannot but take up their cause... more...
An Evangelical and Reformed Faith
We are at once catholic, Protestant, and Reformed. more...
Childrearing in a Hostile Culture
It is almost unbelievable to me how crude America's public life has become. It has become so bad that even secular commentators are concerned (e.g., recent issue of U.S. News and World Report). Perhaps we have been newly sensitized to vulgarity by the recent spat of Jane Austin movies, which portray life in a more restrained, genteel, well-mannered era. Indeed life then was so different from our life today that one commentator likened it to a visit to Mars, to a culture utterly unlike our own. Does the Christian community have an interest in promoting a more polite society, or is this a matter of indifference to us? more...
Core Values for Church Planting
We are in a transitional time for the Christian Church in modern culture, and in particular for Presbyterianism. Many mainline churches around us have fallen prey to liberalism of various types, while many evangelical churches look more like the culture than the church. more...
God Gave Us Bodies
Much of the religious thought of the world goes something like this: The real world is the invisible, "spiritual" world. The physical, material world that we see is either an illusion, or evil, or in some other sense a barrier to the soul's welfare. Spiritual progress is made by denying the "flesh" its appetites in order to focus one's energy upon the spiritual. more...
Learning and Loving the Trinity Psalter
Among the many ambitions that the creators of the Trinity Psalter have for their work is that the tunes recommended become known and beloved. more...
Living Wisely
For sometime now I have been thinking about how Christians must largely live their lives in the land "between the lines" of Scripture's explicit statements. There are relatively few commands which directly address specific behavior. more...
What is Man?
"What is man," the Psalmist asked long, long ago. His answer was exuberant: "Thou has made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty!" The answer that is being given today is not so clear. Then as now, there is no more important question for our civilization to answer than this one. more...
A Consistent Ethic of Life
There is a growing and increasingly damaging disconnect between the 6th and 7th Commandments. The sixth, forbidding murder, is based on the larger principle of the sanctity of life; the seventh, forbidding adultery, is based on the larger principle of the sanctity of marriage. These two Commandments are mutually dependent--they do not and cannot stand alone. more...
Human Nature and Law
"Who are you to impose your morality on us?" snarled an angry radio talk show host, repeating a question that is asked a thousand times a day. The assumption behind the question is that moral choices are entirely a matter of personal choice and preference. The pervasiveness of moral relation is well known and frequently lamented in our circles. more...
The Worship of the Ancient Church
The elements from the ancient Church of preaching, public reading of Scripture, prayer, hymnody and psalmody, and the Lord's Supper, as well as the observance of the Lord's Day and the development of feast days, will be examined and developments evaluated. more...
Modesty
Modest dress is required, in keeping with the dignity of the place as well as the solemnity of the occasion. Whatever you strip off the wedding dress afterward to turn it into a party dress is not at issue... more...
Observing the Sabbath
We have allowed the pendulum to swing from legalism right on over to libertinism, and have all but completely thrown out the Fourth Commandment. Methodist Bishop Arthur Moore observed that his grandfather's generation referred to Sunday as the "holy Sabbath," his father's to the "Sabbath," and his to "Sunday." more...
Scotland, Psalms, and the Garden of Good and Evil
The psalmist warns of a time when the "foundations" are destroyed, when the principles upon which a civilization is based are eroded and give way. The civilization of Scotland was a great civilization. "Britannia ruled the Waves" for several hundred years, and Scotland played an important role in British world dominance. What were its strengths? What were its foundations? more...
Sonship: An Adequate Psychology of Christian Experience?
"It's just a matter of emphasis," the defenders of the Sonship program claim. But a growing number of PCA pastors see not emphasis but harmful imbalance and error. The endeavor to highlight one aspect of Christian truth may in itself be legitimate. It only becomes problematic when its counterpoint is not merely de-emphasized, but inaccurately represented. more...
The Church as it was Meant to be
Periodically, in the history of the church the cry has sounded to reform and cleanse the church, and to return it to the purity and simplicity of the apostolic era. While taking care not to overly idealize the first generation of Christians (after all, the church at Corinth was a branch of the early church!), we have grown to appreciate the appeal of such a return. What vitality was present in the apostolic church! What energy, what boldness, what progress, what success! more...
The Evangelical Faith
On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk nailed to the door of the Wittenburg Castle Church "95 Theses" or "Complaints" against abuses in the church of his day. Unwittingly Martin Luther started a revolution which forever altered the face of Western Civilization, and through it the world. In a word, the reformation led to freedom: The freedom of the individual conscience, freedom in the social order, and intellectual freedom. more...
The Five Points of Calvinism
The subjects of "Calvinism," "Puritanism," "predestination," and "election" do not have happy associations in the popular mind. Hear these terms and the mind imagines colorless landscapes, black suits and black hats, faces frowning under the weight of a hopeless fatalism, a joyless, harsh, critical, and legalistic religion. That this is an image created largely by an unsympathetic academic community seems not to be known by most. That it may be inaccurate and false seems not to have occurred to but a few. more...
The Kind of Government we Want
During each political season talk surfaces about a "religious" or "cultural" war that is being waged in the United States today. The press and media sometimes have responded to such language with shock and indignation, as though this were an ill-suited and inflammatory description of current political realities. Actually, thinking people have been talking of "culture war†for several years. more...
The Lord's Supper
Each Wednesday evening at Trinity College in Bristol, England, we observed Holy Communion. While walking down the old stone steps on the way to the chapel for that service, one of those discoveries began to unfold for me. It suddenly occurred to me to ask, "What are we doing?" I knew most of the theology of the sacrament, so what I was really asking was this: "What is it that I am supposed to be doing during the Communion Service?" I had been in Sunday School and Church all my life and yet I don't recall ever having it explained to me. What does one do during the Communion Service? And what is its meaning? more...
The Stones Cry Out
One hundred and seventy years ago the first sanctuary on this site was completed. The building which stands here today is a near replica of that first one, destroyed by fire in l889, and rebuilt in 1892. The question which I would like to pose for our consideration is this: why did those responsible for this edifice build as they did? Why is the architecture as it is? Are there reasons for the arrangement of the stones? more...
Why Plant and Grow PCA Churches?
The Presbyterian Church in America is putting enormous energy and resources into church planting these days. One has only to read the "Report of the Committee on Mission to North America to the 22nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America" in the Minutes of the Twenty-Second General Assembly (pp. 540-61) to verify this. In light of this fact, we-both of us ordained ministers in the PCA-want you to reflect with us on the simple question, Why? Why should the PCA bother? Why should a local PCA church support these MNA efforts with its "askings" and other benevolences? more...
Worship and Music Today
Amongst conservative Presbyterians these days a debate is heating up, and shall before long burst into open conflict over the worship of the church. While division is always a scandal in the church, this is one occasion when at least we can say that the subject is worthy of a good fight and even a denominational realignment. Nothing that we do is as important as our worship. more...
Why the Reformed Faith?
I would like for us to consider why one should be an adherent to the Reformed faith. By "Reformed" I mean that tradition which traces its roots back to Calvin, and perhaps, one might argue, Augustine before him. But mainly we refer to the 16th Century reforms of the corruptions of the late Medieval and Renaissance church, and the movement that it spawned. We refer to the Calvinistic heritage emanating from Geneva, resulting in the Swiss, Dutch, and German Reformed churches, and in the English-speaking world, the Scottish Reformed Church, known as Presbyterian, English Puritanism, New England Puritanism, and well, Old Princeton. more...
The History of Psalm Singing in the Christian Church
The canonical Book of Psalms properly may be viewed as the Bible's own devotional book. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made this point in his brief work, The Psalms - Prayer Book of the Bible. Indeed it is the primary source from which all other devotional books have drawn. "The Psalter is the great school of prayer," said Bonhoeffer elsewhere. Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), for example, quotes the Psalms more than the gospels in his The Imitation of Christ, "the most popular of all Christian devotional books." more...
The Sealing of the Covenant
Quarterly communion was the practice of the church in which I was reared. Like most low-church American Protestants we assumed a memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper. We suspected something significant was happening at communion, but that sense only slightly outweighed our annoyance at the extra 20-30 minutes required for its administration. It was for us an add-on, something extra in the life of the church but in no way occupying space in the center of our congregational life. more...
A Sad Day
It was a very sad day for the Christian church, for Protestantism, and particularly for Presbyterianism. May 10, 2011 the Presbytery of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, voted to remove all restrictions on practicing homosexuals (and practicing fornicators for that matter) from serving as clergy. Because it was the 87th Presbytery to do so, their vote to amend the church’s constitution confirmed the action last summer of the PCUSA’s General Assembly, opening the door for their ordination. The new policy will be effective July 10. How do things like this happen? How can it be that the denominational heirs of John Calvin and John Knox, of Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge, of B. B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen, have come to this? more...
Vacationland PCA
One summer when our children were young our family was doing our usual summer ritual of attending out-of- town PCA churches. Frankly, our children rarely enjoyed these visits to unfamiliar places filled with unfamiliar people doing unfamiliar things. One particularly unfamiliar moment featured a female soloist – not quite sequined but trending in that direction – making quite a production of herself all the while wearing a countenance of utmost earnestness. One of my children turned to me and asked, “Dad, should she be doing that?” Not a bad question for an 8-year-old. Stuffy Presbyterian churches like ours don’t place soloists on stages, up front, mic in hand, dressed-to- the-nines. The sight was jarring to his tender eyes. “Should she be doing that?” more...
The Grace Boys
I know a little about God’s grace. I’ve experienced God’s grace in Christ in my own life. I’ve written three books with grace in the title. I’ve preached grace as an ordained minister for 28 years. Yet I am disturbed by certain ministries that only preach grace. They proclaim no other message. They know no other motive for the Christian life. They recognize no other gospel and insist that any formulation of the gospel that differs from their own is no gospel at all. more...
Preaching Grace
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Eph. 2:8-10). more...
The Grace Balance
Let’s imagine Joe Bloggs, ruling elder at a local conservative Presbyterian church. One day Joe decides he likes his secretary more than his wife, leaves the latter and moves in with the former. What message does Joe need to hear? Some would say he needs more gospel. He needs to be told how much Christ has done for him. He needs more grace, more of God’s love, more of Christ’s beauty set before him. more...
In Defense of Irony
“You are already filled, you have already become rich, you have become kings without us; and indeed, I wish that you had become kings so that we also might reign with you.” (1 Cor 4:8) “For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.” (2 Cor 11:4) more...
Pastoral Malpractice
“Cheap grace” is the term that Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined to describe false grace, which he perceived in the persistent promise of grace wrongly extended by the church to those who had forfeited a claim to it. Like who? Like those professing believers who by false doctrines or bad behavior could no longer make a credible claim to genuine faith more...
Football and Life
There are four things that we cannot control in football, I’ve told my boys. No matter how good a player you might be, even if you might be the greatest player in the history of the sport, you cannot control these factors more...
Grace and Pastoral Practice
Among the great needs of the world today is for the ethics of Jesus to be lived out in the lives of His disciples. A people who are spiritually poor, spiritually hungry, who weep over evil, and are joyful in adversity; who love their enemies, who do good to those who hate them, who bless and pray for those who mistreat them, are so contrary to the ways of the world that their presence will transform it. more...
How Things Happen
•One of the smartest, kindest, most devoted men I know in the ministry had to leave his church last year amidst a cruelly divided congregation that was, ironically, of one mind regarding philosophy of ministry. •The man who arguably is the most outstanding preacher in the English language today was forced out of his church several years ago due to more...
Our Primary Identity
A promising young sportsman is identified as the next dominant multi-sport athlete. Through lower and middle school he excelled all his rivals in whatever competition he entered. He was popular with the boys and girls alike. High School coaches eagerly awaited his arrival. As he stood on the cusp of athletic achievement, he was cut down by a serious injury. Then another. And another. His dreams were shattered. So also was his identity... more...