Seventeen82

Good Morning, Recently a friend of mine compiled a list of churches, presbytery-by-presbytery, in the Presbyterian Church in America who offer a second service (whether that be in the afternoon or in the evening) on the Lord’s Day. The PCA currently has 1,930 worshipping congregations. 238 of them have morning and evening services on the Sabbath, or roughly 11% of the denomination. Not to be left behind I went about and did my own sleuthing to see what the situation looks like in our beloved Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Similar work done for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (the OPC) and the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (the RPCNA) showed in those respective communions a near/above 60% rate for evening worship. Our Dutch Reformed brothers (CanRC, URC, etc...) are closer to 90%. I figured we would not be anywhere near those numbers, and I was correct. As with all investigative reporting I am sure my findings are not 100% on the nose accurate, however, I thi

Hey, what is an Associate Reformed Presbyterian?” Hollered the man from his car to the ARP Pastor. The pastor, without missing a beat replied, “Well, if you're not reformed we don’t associate with you”. That clever answer was met with a laugh, and the man did visit, did join, and eventually become an elder. He eventually found out what an Associate Reformed was and decided he wanted to be one. Why did you? At the heart of any organization’s health is its identity. Who are we? What is an Associate Reformed Presbyterian? Well, good news, the ARP’s churches, presbyteries, and Synod have done a great deal of strategic planning throughout the years. A 2007 Vision report presented to Synod gave way to the 2008 strategic planning committee to answer this question. Great resources were expended to produce a plan that I am not sure many read. This is evidenced by a motion that was brought this year to do it again. That motion failed mainly because many did not know what happened with the 20

  2 Timothy 4:2 “… preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. ”   We are just past the middle of August.  I’m sitting on my sunporch in upstate South Carolina having experienced several days of extreme heat and finding it hard to believe that we’re just a few weeks away from the changing of the seasons.  Fall is about to begin.  If you don’t believe me, just walk in any Hobby Lobby!     Generally, people are good at recognizing changing seasons and changing times.  Retail stores provide us with some of the first tangible evidence that there is a change on the horizon.  Television programming provides another.   The type of sports being played is another.   And the weather provides another.     But what about spiritual seasons?  One cannot read through the Old Testament or the history of the Church without recognizing there have been seasons of spiritual growth and strength and seasons of decay and decline.  L

  Some may think there were fireworks at this year’s meeting of General Synod, but the ARP   C hurch  has nothing on the Southern  Baptists. One of the sensationalistic stories emerging from this summer’s meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention was the ousting of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, primarily over the issue of female pastors.  Just yesterday, however, I was directed to a separate article, written by Carl Trueman, that highlights potentially bigger issues at Saddleback Church (and the church in general).  Like so many other things theological, the issue of women’s ordination is not an issue in isolation, but a symptom of another, more central concern. In the latter article, Dr. Trueman’s concern stem s  from a recent worship  service  at Saddleback, where  the two pastors leading the service (a husband and wife) dressed like characters from the movie  Toy Story . He notes that this was childish and a trivialization of worship. He writes: “Such trivialization of worship r

    As a Christian pastor, my first duty is to tell people the bad news that they are all sinners, and  that  the  wages  of sin  is death. But thankfully , my  second duty is to tell people the good news of the gospel, that although they are sinners, they can be forgiven of their sins, regardless of how many and how terrible they are ,  and have eternal life through faith alone in Jesus Christ. I often say that there is no sin so terrible that the blood of Christ cannot wash its stain away. But we are about to  read that there is one  sin that is so terrible that it cannot be forgiven, and I have encountered many Christians who  were  worried that they  were guilty of  it.  For instance ,  I  used to  meet on a weekly basis with two men  (both of whom have since passed away)  who  we re in the State Veterans home and on my second visit with one of them ,  this man at death’s door shared with me that he thought that he had committed this sin when he was a young man in the army, and tha