“Our moderator, Rev. Jamie Hunt, made two books available to the delegates attending the meeting: Joel Beeke’s Developing Healthy Spiritual Growth and Encouragement for Today’s Pastors by Joel Beeke and Terry Slachter (the RPCNA also provided copies of Dennis Prutow’s Public Worship 101). The subtitle of Encouragement for Today’s Pastors is Help from the Puritans. I began reading this book and have already found it to be profitable.”

I just recently returned from the 2015 meeting of General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Overall, it was a good meeting, and I am especially thankful for the fact that it was a concurrent synod with the brothers in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. It was good spending time with them. There were joint worship services (Dr. Richard Gamble’s sermon on Romans 13 was especially good; a motion that I made to have the sermon be made available to all ARP churches passed, so hopefully I can post a link to audio of the sermon very soon), and there were other rich times of more informal fellowship as well.

Our moderator, Rev. Jamie Hunt, made two books available to the delegates attending the meeting: Joel Beeke’s Developing Healthy Spiritual Growth and Encouragement for Today’s Pastors by Joel Beeke and Terry Slachter (the RPCNA also provided copies of Dennis Prutow’s Public Worship 101). The subtitle of Encouragement for Today’s Pastors is Help from the Puritans. I began reading this book and have already found it to be profitable. In particular the following words from a section entitled “Hold Fast” are particularly good. If anyone wishes to know about the struggles pastors frequently go through, the following will give you an idea:

Some of us face opposition, perhaps from peers within our own denomination or from members in the pews who want us to join them in abandoning the historic doctrines of Reformation Christianity or to downplay the necessity to experience those doctrines in a personal and spiritual way. Brothers, we are called to “hold fast our profession” and the profession of our forefathers. A Christianity that is only a vague theory about the nature of things or a program for personal improvement and/or the amelioration of social evils is really no threat to the world or anything like “the power of God unto salvation.”

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