“Church is not supposed to be a pep rally. It’s meant to be a worship service,”

The pulpit of Saint Andrew’s Chapel isn’t off to one side in deference to the altar, as it is in a Catholic church. It isn’t a lectern wheeled onto the stage after the Christian rock band sits down, as it is in many nondenominational megachurches.

The pulpit that conservative evangelist R.C. Sproul ascends every Sunday is a large, imposing wooden centerpiece in a church designed to embody his throwback theology. Opened a year ago, Saint Andrew’s Chapel is modeled after the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, just as Sproul’s preaching is a return to the days of John Calvin and Martin Luther.

At 71, Sproul is one of the old guard in what’s known as the “New Calvinism” movement, which Time magazine identified in 2009 as one of the “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.” Sproul has influenced a generation of younger conservative evangelists and this month announced the creation of a Bible college on his Sanford compound that could extend his influence for generations.

Sproul’s Reformed theology is a return to Scripture-based worship. It is the opposite of church made to feel more like a music concert than a religious service….

Sproul has no tolerance for the liberal tilt of a secular society, religion influenced by culture or a government that tries to take religion out of the schools. He is equally dismissive of ministers who preach the “prosperity gospel…”

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