This Christmas Eve will be my congregation’s fifteenth annual Festival of Lessons & Carols service. I know, that sounds so positively Puritan! We use a slight adaptation of the renowned “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” first used in 1918…
What is the true test of sound doctrine? In a previous post, I introduced readers to the recent translation of Johannes Cocceius’ work on covenant theology. In that post, I noted in passing that Cocceius argued that Romans 11:33-36 should…
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…
When one surveys the ever-growing secondary literature on John Owen (1616–1683) the conclusion that can be legitimately drawn is that worship or liturgical theology was just not a major concern for him. Our own Ryan McGraw did his PhD on Owen’s…
Like me, many young reformers of my generation and even younger came out of a myriad of non-Reformed but evangelical churches into a Reformed church. Recall the struggles. One of them, no doubt, was over the theology and practice of…
Thanks to our friends at Crown & Covenant Publications, we have two (2) copies of Bradley Johnston’s, 150 Questions About the Psalter: What You Need to Know About the Songs God Wrote. USA addreses only. One entry per person. Deadline is…
One of my favorite Puritans is William Ames (1576–1633). Not only are his writings precise and to the point, he was so Puritan that as an English-speaker he was exiled amidst the Dutch Reformed! Sounds like someone I know. In…
Too many churches never sing the psalms in public worship. Despite the fact the two direct injunctions that relate to singing in the New Testament place psalms at the head of the list of what Christians ought to sing as…
The Situation Today There exists much confusion about worship today. This remains true even in churches that claim the title “reformed” and those claiming the phrase reformata, semper reformanda (“reformed and always reforming”). Typically, the approach of most churches has…
Herein lies that which all the beauty of the world fades before, and becomes as a thing of nought,—which brings all the outward pomp of ceremonious worship into contempt;—I mean the glory and excellence that lies in the spiritual communion…
