Worship and Evangelism: Some much-needed Clarity

Our worship services should make unbelievers - the unchurched, the unbaptized - welcome.  We should not make them comfortable ... welcome but not comfortable.  They shouldn't be able to sit through a service and say, 'This doesn't touch me; I don't mind this.'  They ought to hear the reality of sin; they ought to hear the warnings, but they ought to say, 'If these strong warnings are preached to God's people, how much more me?  Because I'm not one of them!'  And they ought to long for that assurance and the blessings that are given to the people of God.  And they are being taught, as they watch us worship, about God calling us, cleansing us as we confess our sin, and equipping us to live in the world.  They are being taught the gospel through our liturgy.

- John Barach, The Covenant and Evangelism, Auburn Avenue Conference

Sheepskins and Fleeces

What's a Degree Really Worth?
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
by Mary Pilon [abridged]
Monday, February 1, 2010

A college education may not be worth as much as you think.

For years, higher education was touted as a safe path to professional and financial success. Student loans helped parents and students finance degrees, with the implication that in the long run, a graduate would be able to build solid careers that would earn them far more than their high-school educated counterparts.
The nonprofit College Board touted the difference in lifetime earnings at $800,000, a widely circulated figure. Other estimates topped $1 million.But now, as tuition continues to skyrocket and many seeking to change careers are heading back to school, some researchers are questioning the high projections.

Us: In Perspective

Has is ever occurred to any of us that ten thousand years from now, historians might be writing about the first two thousand years [and all of us] as “the early Church”.  And some poor seminary student will be studying and trying to figure out: " Now, who came first?  Was it Athanasius or Cornelius Van Til?  Those guys … they all run together!”

- D.W.

Presuppositional Apologetics: Monty Python-Style

Presuppositional apololgetics always engages in an "internal critique" of an unbeliever's worldview to show its inherent, destructive self-contradiction... you must show the unbeliever where his presuppositions lead: to epistemological futility.

-Greg Bahnsen, Pushing the Antithesis

Deformed and Deforming

How many "good" Reformed congregations would invite St. James back to preach if he stood behind the pulpit and quoted his epistle as his sermon?  How many would invite Peter back if he told them in his sermon that baptism saves [like he did in his first epistle]?  So the 2 questions are: 1.  At what point are we more "Reformed" than Biblical.  and 2. How might we get back on track?

A study in Contrasts

Sola Theologica?

Had our God wanted us to be systematicians first and Christians second, He would’ve given us the Bible in the form of systematic theology and told us to memorize it.  As it is, we reconstruct the material and make it systematic. Now – I’m not anti-systematic – no – I’m very much systematic, I depend on it in my argumentation and presuppose it in several critical occasions.  But I do not mistake systematics for the inspired narrative and Word of God and exposition and application of that Word.  So we must keep the distinctions in mind that lead to sanity and not insanity.  … at times when we’re opposed by unbelievers and they come up with systems, we are justified in returning a system that demolishes theirs.  But we should not then forget the narrative!  We always return to the narrative! …

-Steve Schlissel, role playing as the Apostle Paul