Westminster & Ordination: The Vows
The men whom we mean are seeking not membership in the Church, but a place in the ministry, and they desire not to learn but to teach. … Whether it be desirable or not, the ordination declaration is part of…
Tag Church Polity
Westminster & Ordination: The Directory of Worship
Contemporary efforts to enrich public worship inevitably emphasize increased “congregational participation”. This may mean employing special music, or returning to set prayers in which congregation has a unison voice, but the desire is to move beyond a feeling of clerical…
Westminster & Ordination: A Persistent Task
The Westminster Assembly, which met at the behest the English parliament from 1643-1653, while not properly speaking a church court (i.e., a session/consistery, presbytery/classis, or general assembly/synod), did perform functions which we now rightly associate with the presbytery or classis…
Westminster & Preaching: The Work of Preaching
The work of the Westminster Assembly (1643-1653) in London, England involved the furtherance of the gains of the Protestant Reformation in the domains of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Called by Parliament amidst a civil war between parliament and the king…
A Healthy Church: The Aim of Discipline
Discipline is hard–giving it and receiving it. Knowing the reasons and realities behind it doesn’t necessarily help, either. Perhaps you’ve cringed when reading: “Endure discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a…
A Healthy Church: A Disciplined People
The term discipline is an elastic term. We can speak of the discipline of a particular subject, activity or skill, such as the discipline of music, or running, or brick laying. Still further we can speak of discipline in terms…
Calvin’s Life: To Geneva & Back Again
The reformer John Calvin has often been portrayed as a legalistic tyrant who endeavored to rule the city of Geneva with an “iron fist”. This characterization has, unfortunately, come to have the status of an unquestioned historical fact. People…
Calvin’s Life: Lessons from Geneva
John Calvin arrived in Geneva in June 1536.[1] He intended to stay one night. Fleeing from persecution in his homeland of France, he planned to take up a scholar’s life in Strasbourg, but war forced him to take an unusual…
The Ruling Elder: An Indispensable Element of a Well-Ordered Church
The Minister has been in the forefront of Protestant church leadership since the Reformers recovered the primacy of preaching as the means of creating and deepening faith, having dethroned the priest, who was seen by Rome as the central actor…
A God Thing
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination…