Presbyterians put great stock in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper as an ordinary means of grace. In it, believers feed upon Christ by his Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father. But the Lord’s Supper is not…
The first Psalm sets the stage for the entire Psalter. Its attention on the covenant God and covenant blessing and cursing, as well as its preoccupation with God’s Word as the source for our understanding, focus the entire Psalter. In…
I am a Presbyterian minister. Having served in the courts of the church now for 14 years, I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that Proverb s 29:25 speaks to every presbyter: The fear of man lays a snare, but…
In the Protestant family of churches, the phrase “church tradition” raises a red flag and is almost immediately rejected as an assault on the Bible’s authority. After all, sola Scriptura is a key Protestant rallying cry. At the same time,…
Some words are difficult to like. Do you know what I mean? Maybe I am not being clear. There are various reasons why we may not like this word or that. Some may be on unfriendly terms with a word…
Men and women were created in the image of God.[i] The image of God consists of true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.[ii] In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had true knowledge. Their minds could understand the mind of God…
Jesus thinks reading is a big deal. After all, he wrote a book. And Jesus thinks reading his book is a big deal, because, well, he is. For a blog post on the sufficiency of Scripture and biblical scholarship this…
In this final post (see part 1 and part 2 of this series), I would like to raise three challenges to the dominance of the extrovert and entrepreneurial ideals for pastoral ministry in the American church. First, the…
For the less adventurous among us who don’t like to take many risks, especially big ones, how handy it would be if God would give us a clear, detailed roadmap for our life and a smartphone app that guarantees we…
Adam McHugh, plainly and accurately states that the “slant towards extroversion in the larger culture has also infiltrated the church.”[1] (See part 1 of this series for more on how this ‘slant’ came to be.) Not only has this slant…
