Over the years, I have noticed that "want ads" for pastors have changed quite remarkably. For most Reformed and Presbyterian bodies, as, I would imagine, most Lutheran and Southern Baptist churches, vacancies are advertised in denominational periodicals. Even there, the calls are advertised differently than in the past. Hoping to have my general impression tempered […]
"The Lord kills, and He makes alive; He brings down to Sheol, and He raises up again" (1 Sam. 2:6). "I form light and create darkness, I make wealth and create woe, I am the Lord who does all these things" (Isa. 45:7). Sin and grace; death and life. Even the novice reader of the […]
I was once a member of a church whose senior pastor had retired. A search committee was appointed to do what was necessary to find a suitable successor. The task seemed daunting since the retiring pastor was a gifted preacher under whose ministry people of widely diverse nationality and social backgrounds had been incorporated into […]
You may be surprised to learn that catechism preaching-long a weekly staple in Reformed churches-is enjoying an unprecedented revival in a broad cross-section of evangelical churches across America. Granted, the vast majority of contemporary catechism preachers rarely appreciate the grand tradition they have joined. In fact, these messages are rarely actually called catechism sermons. This […]
A catechism is a brief summary of Christian doctrine intended for the uninstructed, often put in a question-and-answer format. Since the earliest times in the church, converts were instructed in their basic understanding of the faith before being admitted to full fellowship in the sacraments of the church. The course of instruction in the ancient […]
Most American Christians today do not understand how listening to an hour of preaching can be an act of worship. This is because we tend to regard worship as something inherently emotional. Worship, we believe, is something that we feel. We like to be "lifted up to the Lord" in worship, which seems to require […]
The spirit of our age is very unfriendly towards dogmatic people. Folk whose opinions are clearly formulated and strongly held are not popular. A person of conviction, however intelligent, sincere and humble he may be, will be fortunate if he escapes the charge of being a bigot. Nowadays the really great mind is thought to […]
One of MR’s aims is to insist that “conservative/liberal” (or “fundamentalist/modernist”) is not the only important distinction to be drawn in the American Protestant landscape. For one thing, not all conservatives are as serious about Scripture as they claim to be. Nor are all so-called liberals actually as compromised as they might at first appear […]
How exactly has Calvin been accommodated? The title of Richard Muller's most recent book, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition, begs this question. Muller argues that twentieth-century Calvin scholarship suffered from a Barthian reading. Neo-Orthodox scholars routinely laid Calvin on their Procrustean beds, stretching and chopping the reformer's corpus until […]
Christian philosophers and theologians need each other. Christian philosophers who are poorly versed in biblically based systematic theology tend to reinvent old Christian heresies. Christian theologians who lack philosophical training often present the faith's great truths less clearly and cogently than they should. Vigorous orthodoxy benefits when the line between philosophy and theology is blurred. […]
The United Kingdom's Paternoster Press often publishes books of interest to our readers. Many of them are not available under any imprint in the United States, but it is easy to log on to Paternoster's Website (www.paternoster-publishing.com) and order them directly. In one sense, this particular work is aimed at the scholars among us. It […]
In comparing notes with others, I have found that my own experience is not uncommon: It was through reading C. S. Lewis's works that I learned to value Christian thinking, but it was through devouring J. I. Packer's writings that I came to love theology. These four volumes capture most of Packer's more significant fugitive […]
