Why? Because I’m convinced if it’s not necessary it’s too difficult and not worth my time. Listening to sermons is hard and it’s not really my learning style. So, let’s quit. Singing is outdated and the thought of someone hearing me slightly off key or out of tune is unbearable. Let’s quit. Praying together is boring and I’m too easily distracted. Let’s quit. I have my own friends and family and people at church can be hard to get along with. Let’s quit. It’s also too time consuming. Saturday nights are too fun and I could function better on Monday if I could get a couple extra hours of sleep. Let’s quit. Besides, my schedule is too demanding with my weekly workload, studying and homework, sports games, and an unending shopping list. Let’s quit.

But there is one argument that credobaptist proponents, then and now, have often used as a kind of reductio ad absurdum: if you baptize infants, you ought also to give them the Lord's Supper. Calvin sees a serious flaw here. For while both baptism and the Supper point to Christ, they each point to different aspects of union with him. Baptism points to a once-and-for-all initiation into Christ. It is done to us, not done by us. We do not baptize ourselves, we are baptized. The Supper, however, is not a sacrament of initiation but of communion.

Of course, the ultimate goal of all ministry in a local church is “to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. However, there are five basic categories into which all of what we may call the “antepenultimate and penultimate ends” can be ordered. They are as follows:

It was 500 years ago that the Reformers were giving their lives and working diligently to get the Bible to the people in their language. When we consider the sacrifices, the advanced technology, the privileges we enjoy, and the fact that many people still don’t have the Bible in their own language, it makes sense that 2017 would be a wonderful year to make the commitment to read the entire Bible in twelve months.

In our culture of “anything goes,” we don’t like to think that there can be a right and wrong approach to something that feels so personal. However, when we let our own preferences dictate our prayers, they will be weak and ineffective, unlike the powerful prayers of the righteous (James 5:16).   Prayer is hard.... Continue Reading

The Top Men need to listen to the critique. They need to hear from the oppressed---and do something about it. They need to correct bad teaching and not believe their own hype. Instead of posing as social equals on social media and then amplifying the same celebrity voices over and over again, they should pepper unrecognized teachers in the mix---not merely ones they are grooming to begin headlining for the brand, but ones to offer a different perspective of their shared truths. What if Top Men were willing to learn themselves? Instead of talking about decreasing, they should actually try it sometimes.

Life can be wearying. New years with all their talk of fresh starts can be wearying – the same desires for improvement, the same desires to see the church grow, to see lost loved ones come to Christ – and another year comes and goes with no discernable change. Weariness can set in at individual and congregational level. And we crank back on the enthusiasm level, afraid to keep living with high expectations amidst low outcomes.

Yet there is hope for even the sexually immoral. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul discusses the purpose of God’s law and says the law was given for “the sexually immoral, [and] men who practice homosexuality” (1:10). God has made provision for all sinners! The law was graciously given to expose their sin, their desire to sin, and their inability to stop sinning. But, of course, the law was not enough, so Paul immediately switches from the goodness of the law to the goodness of the gospel, to what he refers to as “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.”

“In the first place it must impact the way we do theology. We handle the infallible truth of the divine revelation, but do so as those who ourselves are flawed in our ability to grasp that truth in its fullness and interconnectedness.”   It has been on my mind for quite a while to post... Continue Reading

“God’s decretive will refers to the secret, all-encompassing divine purpose according to which he foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. His preceptive will refers to the commands and prohibitions in Scripture.”   There is a reason I said God’s “Will(s)” (plural) instead of God’s “will” (singular). My focus in this installment of 10 things you should... Continue Reading