The Theological Logic of Worship
There once was a time – within living memory for many of us – when you could go to a place of worship and have a reasonable sense of what to expect during a service and not be taken aback…
Tag The Church
Brilliana Harley – Wife, Mother, and Fighter
In March 1643, Lady Brilliana Harley received a formal demand to surrender her castle to the royalists. Her husband, Sir Robert Harley, was in London. He had been there since the start of the civil war, leaving her to…
The 39: Church Discipline (2)
Article 33 on excommunication is an excellent example of the second principle we have underlined throughout our study in how the Anglican confession is the sum of the historical formularies. XXXIII — OF EXCOMMUNICATE PERSONS, HOW THEY ARE TO BE…
A List of Tops!
The New Year is a time for lists. Top ten lists of this and top one hundred lists of that! So, at Place for Truth we decided to make our own list of tops. The first is a list of…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: Preaching
During the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers came to the conclusion, in the face of defection and departure from biblical orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and doxology within the medieval Roman Catholic Church, that there needed to be a means whereby…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: The Offices of Christ
All that the church is can be found in her union with Christ. As John Calvin has so memorably put it, “we must remember that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him,…
Word, Sacrament, and Discipline: Discipline, a Means & Sign of True Body Life
Discussing the three marks of a true church during a seminary class (preaching the Word, administering the sacraments, and disciplining members), our professor emphasized the third by rhetorically asking, “How many true churches are there today?” His implication was, where…
Love or Hype?
Several years ago I worked for a funeral director. On one occasion I travelled with him to another city in order to recover a body. The person, a younger person, had traveled and died while out of town. On the…
Guns in the Church
Guns in Church When I was a pastor, ten years ago, I learned that a married couple, both FBI agents, joined my church. We already had two police officers in attendance, but I welcomed the news in a day…
Worship in Redemptive History
The ‘wars’ that have raged around ‘worship’ are anything but new. Even though they may only been expressed explicitly in these terms in the recent history of the church, they are as old as the church. Indeed they are as…