Thus, it is the Congregationalists who also believed in a gathered church of visible saints. It is true that they continued to practice paedobaptism, but the fact is that they, by their statement of faith, believed that only those who were visible saints who were visibly repenting of sin and visibly turning to Christ were the only proper subjects for church membership. It was also the Congregationalists who, like the Baptists, embraced the completeness of the local church in such a way that connectionalism in the Presbyterian sense is not needed and not Biblical.

Now I married a blond, green-eyed Baptist. This does not put me in the category of Hosea, but it does say that what I saw trumped theological differences. Moreover, I have had and have quite a few Baptist friends. (In the South one would be hard up for friends if he did not include Baptists.) I have also had Baptists preach in my pulpit a number of times

Why are so many of our churches small and dying? Why do we baptize so few new believers? Why don't we have more large churches welcoming thousands of new members? Why does so much of our supposed growth come from church transfers? More importantly, what's our solution?

Recently I had an exchange of FB messages with a PCA Teaching Elder concerning the story we published a few days ago on The Aquila Report entitled ‘Ad Interim Study Committee on Insider Movements Overwhelmingly Approved’   While not willing to have his entire message reprinted, he did state this purpose for writing:   The... Continue Reading

We must not only affirm the gospel when having it presented to us. We must teach our people to articulate it. We must sing it strong and preach it loud. We must be passionate about clarity and be clear with our passions.

Apart from God's gift of grace I would make up my own laws, worship the creation, sacrifice only for what would bring me personal comfort and pleasure, and seek to be served rather than looking for ways to serve others.

"One of the most resilient and cherished myths of parenting is that parenting creates the child…Many Christian writers and parents have…drifted into what could be called spiritual determinism. We have absorbed the cultural belief in psychological determinism but spiritualized it with Bible verses, and one verse in particular." --Leslie Fields

So the eclipse of Presbyterians in the evangelical world's adoption of the term 'Reformed' is probably in large part a function of the transformation of the term's meaning by the contemporary evangelical scene. This is not something I myself will lose any sleep over.

In the 1980s and 1990s when I was first introduced to Reformed theology three names dominated the seen were James Montgomery Boice (Senior Minister at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia), Sinclair Ferguson who was teaching full-time at the time at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and R.C. Sproul. They are all Presbyterians. In those days "Calvinism"/"Reformed" and Presbyterian were synonyms.

"Hell is not filled with people who are deeply sorry for their sins," Carson stated. "It is filled with people who for all eternity still shake their puny fist in the face of God almighty in an endless existence of evil, and corruption, and shame, and the wrath of God."