Seventeen82

The children of Jeremiah and Nancy Brown, expelled from Forsyth County, Georgia, in 1912.   (Credit: Charles Grogan) It was in the early 90s. I was working full-time at Delta Air Lines and taking seminary classes at a small, inner-city, Bible College – Seminary, ministry of the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship, called the Atlanta School of Biblical Studies. Along with five others, I was enrolled in Dr. Bill Iverson’s Systematic Theology class. Bill would come up for several weekends (Friday night and Saturday classes) per semester from Miami. One particular weekend was special for so many reasons. Bill had a friend who owned a large, multi-room, house in the North Georgia mountains, and he proposed that this particular weekend we would have a retreat there for our classwork.   So, off we went. The “we” was myself; Tim, a young white accountant; Katherine, a 30-something year old black lady from rural Louisiana; her future husband, Doug, a white brother from upstate Ne...

As the son of parents who grew up in Detroit, I watched with interest the demolition of the J.L. Hudson Company’s downtown store on October 24, 1998. The building, built in 1911 on Woodward Avenue, was the tallest department store in the world, with 29 stories. When it came down, the Hudson became the largest single building ever imploded. Its great plunge went exactly as planned.  Some demolitions go awry, but the goal is a controlled and contained collapse. Usually the takedown allows room for an improved space and newer building. The history of the renewal of Christ’s church is a mix of reformation and demolition.  The Reformation of the 16 th  century brought with it a rediscovery of the gospel, the centrality of God’s Word, God’s grace in salvation, and a Scripture-shaped corrective to worship. It also brought some demolition—a sudden and dramatic change of direction to some of the Medieval church’s structures and practices.   While certain habits must go when G...

               For someone who grew up in small, southern churches (mostly Baptist and a few non-denominational churches), the first time I attended a Presbyterian church was a unique and enlightening experience. For the first time in my life, there were people who not only understood and talked about their bibles, but who understood and talked about theology. Over the course of my late high school and early college years, I continued to attend the same church and was often challenged to think through the doctrines of our faith. I was presented with large, theological words like impassibility (God does not have human emotion) and aseity (God is self-existent or independent). Not only were those words used in casual conversation, they were explained and applied to my life.             Looking back now, I can see how such teaching was extremely important to my spiritual development. Not only d...

     I had the privilege of preaching the funeral service for a dear saint this past Wednesday, and leading another for someone I had never met prior to conducting his graveside memorial this last Saturday. In both cases there was a blessed commonality. The opportunity to show the blessings of faith in Christ, the hope that we have in the resurrection, and comfort found alone in the finished work of our Savior. But there was something more to what these somewhat disparate circumstances had in common than the blessings of the gospel message. In both services I had read from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and used forms which have left the lips of ministers for 350 years. Now, if you know anything about me you know that I disdain the Anglicization of Presbyterianism that has gone on over the past century or more, especially things like Holy Days, candles, vestments, and the like. However, when it comes to the rubric written out for the Burial of the Dead there is no pee...

As the turmoil grows more intense around our lives we are tempted to lose sight of the true reason for human history on our planet. What appears as chaos to our eyes is actually God being faithful to his promise to Eve and then to Abram. The first time human sin impact our world was in the garden. But God in his gracious, sovereign provision assured Eve that her offspring would crush the head of the serpent, thus giving hope and purpose for all mankind throughout history in his glorious covenant of grace! Centuries later, this promise was repeated to Abram as God established a nation based on faith in his great name in Genesis 12:1-3: 1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “ Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the ...

           Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! This is my first time writing for Seventeen82 and I am excited to be a contributor. Seeing as how this is my first article (and hopefully not my last), let me introduce myself. My name is Patrick Malphrus and I’ve been an ARP Minister since 2007. I am a member of Virginia Presbytery and pastor at Old Providence ARP Church in Steeles Tavern, Virginia. If you can’t locate Steeles Tavern on a map just know that we are in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. The Blue Ridge is on one side of our church and the Allegheny Mountains are on the other. And yes, our view is spectacular.   Admittedly though, living in the country has its disadvantages. Our closest Wal-Mart is 25 minutes away. The closest Hobby Lobby is nearly an hour away (good news for me and my wallet, bad news for my wife). Our internet is either cellular or satellite, both of which are poor substitutes for high-speed service...

  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. - Galatians 5:22 – 25 (ESV)                      The Fruit (singular) of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, kindness, gentleness, and self- control. This fruit is what God is producing in the Christian’s life. It is not just doing specific works, but it is developing attitudes that lead to particular actions.    It is not enough to do the right things. You need to do the right things for the right reasons.                    We can incorporate this teaching into...

July 17, 2020, marked the death of noted Christian author and theologian James I. Packer. Dr. Packer is probably best remembered for his book Knowing God , which was first published in 1973. However, my favorite of his works is one I once had read for a seminary class at Erskine: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. In that work, Dr. Packer lists four essential parts of any presentation of the gospel: 1) The gospel is a message about God; 2) The gospel is a message about sin; 3) The gospel is a message about Christ; 4) The gospel is a summons to faith and repentance. That is, any faithful presentation of a gospel message must tell the truth about God (the God has revealed Himself in Scripture), the truth that we are all sinners who are in need of His redemption, and the truth that it is only through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone that we can have forgiveness of sins and be reconciled with God. All that is well and good, and hopefully no Christian will disagree. However, it is tha...

There are times where I find myself explaining to people that I am a child of the 1980s (having been born in 1976, which also makes me a Bicentennial child!). This usually happens when I am waxing lyrical about something related to 80’s pop culture - music, movies, movies, toys, etc. And, by waxing lyrical, I mean explaining how superior 80’s pop culture is to most other decades and their culture!  Another part of being a child of the 80s relates to my being raised in an evangelical church, in particular the Southern Baptist church. Part of that time and culture revolves around the Moral Majority. If you are too young to know, the Moral Majority was a political movement supported by many American evangelical Christians. The goal of this group was to mobilize American evangelical Christians to vote for conservative politicians. In turn, these conservative politicians would be sensitive to issues that were important to evangelical Christians, namely abortion. To be an evangelical Chr...

It’s summertime and that means that many of us are using our grills regularly to cook food for our family and friends. There’s not much better than a hot, juicy cheeseburger grilled to perfection, is there?    In his cookbook,  Boy Meets Grill , celebrity chef Bobby Flay defined grilling as a means of “cooking food quickly over a very hot fire,” which gives the food a “seared, flavorful crust and a juicy interior.” That’s what makes it so good!    In many ways, I think our contemporary society can be defined as a grilling culture, and it’s not just because of the fun, the casual fellowship, and the relaxation that comes from gathering around the grill. It’s because we love things to come at us hot and fast. It suits our appetite.    We want our internet instantly, with its movies on demand and our news in small, manageable, fast-paced portions. We want immediate economic and political solutions to our greatest problems. We want systems changed overnigh...