What is a Psalm Paraphrase?

This Sunday’s worship at Christ Reformed DC is something of a case study on psalm paraphrases.

[Full disclosure, I’m not musically trained, and I’m not an historian of music. I’m just a pastor who loves congregational singing, and celebrates the psalm singing element of our Reformed tradition. These are my reflections as a worship leader and song selector in a Reformed church.]

Our sermon text this week is Psalm 79, and we’ll be singing two different settings of this psalm from the Trinity Psalter Hymnal (TPH). For our Psalm of Confession we’ll be singing “Remember Not, O God” (79B), which is a parphrase, and for our Psalm of Response we’ll be singing “God, the Nations Have Invaded” (79A), which is a literal rendering of the psalm in meter.

We’ll also be singing “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” which is found in the hymn section of our psalter hymnal, but which is in fact a paraphrase of Psalm 87, as the scripture index in the back of the book makes clear.

What is a Psalm Paraphrase?

So, what’s a psalm paraphrase? And why does it mattter?

To paraphrase, obviously, is to restate a text in a different form. Psalm paraphrases are loose translations of psalms that restate them in different terms. They can be close paraphrases, or extremely broad. Often, paraphrases are also partial, which means, they only paraphrase a certain part of a psalm.

Why do they exist?

Well, when you set a biblical psalm to music, you have a few choices.

You can chant it, which requires little or no alteration of a standard translation of the Hebrew text. Chants don’t have to rhyme, and they don’t have to conform to a particular rhythm or meter. These are, arguably, points in favor of chanting psalms.

Much psalm singing since the Protestant Reformation, however, has been metrical. “Meter” is a number that refers to the number of syllables in each line of a hymn. Psalm 79A is set to the meter 8.7.8.7.D, which means that each line of a stanza consists of 8, then 7, then 8, then 7, then D, which is short for “Doubled,” so do it again, i.e., 8.7.8.7.8.7.8.7.

Needless to say, English translations of the psalms don’t consist of a regularly alternating number of syllables in each line. Sometimes the Hebrew text itself has a particular meter, but, depending on who you talk to, this is rather inconsistent through the Psalter, and it doesn’t ranslate into English.

So when we marry a psalm to a hymn tune for the purposes of singing, we have to standardize or regularize the meter. I’ve attempted this once in my life, with mediocre results. I set Psalm 43 to the same meter as the tune Genevan 42, so they could be sung together. It’s not too difficult, but you have to substitute words and syllables to synchronize them with the lines of the tune.

All of which is a rather long way of saying, any psalm sung to a standard hymn tune has been altered somewhat. All English metrical psalms are, to some degree, paraphrases. However, since this process became widespread in the Protestant Reformation — notably, Calvin was an innovator in Geneva — different strategies have been pursued. Some have sought to set psalms to meter with the fewest possible departures from a literal translation, while others have been quite loose and free in this process.

A Case Study on Psalm Paraphrases: Psalm 79

Which brings us to this Sunday at Christ Reformed DC.

My personal bias is toward singing more literal settings of the psalms. A big argument in favor of singing psalms is that you are actually singing the inspired text of Scripture, and thereby familiarizing yourself with it. It is a very practical way of letting “the word of Christ dwell in you richly… singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16). The closer the text of the metrical psalm coheres with the biblical text, the more this benefit is enjoyed.

This brings me to one of the great advantages of the TPH. The TPH includes a literal setting of every single one of the 150 psalms in the psalter, and this isn’t necessarily true of all psalm collections available today. If there is a single setting of a psalm, such as Psalm 96, it is always a literal setting. If there are multiple settings of a psalm, such as Psalm 22, then the first setting is always a literal setting. So Psalm 22A, “My God, My God, O Why Have You Forsaken Me,” is a complete, literal setting of the psalm. Psalms 22B, 22C, and 22D are each “partial” settings, which may be more or less literal as well.

In the case of Psalm 79 this week, 79A is a new setting drafted by the OPC/URCNA committee in 2016, which is indicated clearly by the copyright in the lower left corner of the page. The production of the TPH triggered the resetting of a number of psalms, and a great deal of effort was invested in the production of texts that were both faithful to the Hebrew original and wedded to appropriate musical accompaniment. It is quite fitting, indeed, to sing Psalm 79A to the same tune as the hymn “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted” (O MEIN JESU, ICH MUSS STERBEN).

Normally, if we sing the literal setting of a psalm, we won’t also sing a paraphrase of the same psalm in the same service. That’s a bit much even for a psalm junkie such as myself, when there’s so much other great music to sing. But in the case of Psalm 79B, “Remember Not, O God,” this paraphrase zeroes in on the second half of the psalm, 79:8 and following: “

Do not remember against us our former iniquities;
    let your compassion come speedily to meet us,
    for we are brought very low.
Help us, O God of our salvation,
    for the glory of your name;
deliver us, and atone for our sins,
    for your name's sake!

These words are well suited to be sung during our confession of sin, which is a regular feature of our liturgy. Furthermore, this paraphrase is appropriately set to a beautiful and moving tune by Beethoven. According to hymnary.org, The Psalter of 1912 set these words to GORTON, a tune derived from the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23, Opus 57, written in 1807.

According to my (mostly complete) records, in fifteen years of singing a psalm of confession in our service, we have only sung this setting of Psalm 79 once. This is a shame, and reflects the fact that I am a relative neophyte to psalm singing. Hopefully, it will now enter our regular rotation. This is one of the benefits of preaching through the psalter! Listen to these beautiful words that lead us in confession:

Remember not, O God,
the sins of long ago;
in tender mercy visit us,
distressed and humbled low.

O Lord, our Savior, help,
and glorify your name;
deliver us from all our sins
and take away our shame.

In your compassion hear
your pris'ner's plaintive sigh,
and in the greatness of your pow'r
save those about to die.

Then, safe within your fold,
we will exalt your name;
our thankful hearts with songs of joy
your goodness will proclaim. 

While I have a large personal bias toward singing literal settings of the psalms, this is an excellent application of the paraphrase approach, and it illustrates why the editors of the TPH wisely included both. Furthermore, many of these paraphrases are traditional and beloved in our churches. By including both literal and paraphrased psalms, the TPH helps unite multiple generations of our church around a common songbook.

Hymns and Psalm Paraphrases

This brief blog post has already expanded beyond its original scope, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention another song we are singing this Sunday, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” TPH #403, a hymn credited to John Newton. This “hymn” is largely a paraphrase of Psalm 87, and illustrates how fluid these categories are, especially in the 18th century hymn writing of the likes of the Wesleys and Newton.

Normally, I would rather sing a literal setting of Psalm 87, rather than a paraphrastic hymn, in keeping with our church order that gives psalms “priority of place” to psalms in our congregational singing. I look to the psalms first, and to hymns later, in selecting appropriate songs to sing in our corporate worship. However, in this case, neither of the tunes of Psalm 87A nor 87B are familiar to our congregation. Nor are they particularly pleasing to my ear — de gustibus nils disputandem! This is a personal disappointment to me, as I love Psalm 87! However, Newton’s hymn is a wonderful alternative, and a classic hymn that we delight to sing.

Psalm 79 is in large part a lament for the destruction of Jerusalem. The temple is in ruins, the bodies of God’s servants are given to the birds for food, their blood runs in the streets, and there is no one left even to bury them. This is a tragic picture of a dark battle day in the spiritual warfare that God’s pilgrim people are called to engage in. The promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ is, after all, also a promise that they will continually try to do so.

As Jeremiah lamented for Jerusalem, fallen, often we are called to lament for the church, wounded. And at the heart of this is a lament for our sins, which so often lead the church astray. So we confess, with Psalm 79B. We lament, with Psalm 79A. And, as members of the church of Jesus Christ, we celebrate, with Psalm 84B “O Lord of Hosts How Lovely,” and “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken” (Psalm 87), and “The Church’s One Foundation.”

Paraphrase, Psalm, Hymn. What a privilege for the saints to sing within the gates of God’s temple, wherein one day excels a thousand hence.

A Poem for Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday

by Rev. Brian Lee

God in a grave

Creator destroyed

Divinity dead

The Word silent.

Human flesh lifeless

True God True Man True Death

Still. Dark. Cold.

For us.

I AM the Resurrection and the Life

A sermon on the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11),
preached By Rev. Brian Lee October 19, 2008
AUDIO

Death is an awesome power in our lives. Mortality — the certainty of our physical death — hangs over each and every one of us, just as it has hung over every man and woman that has ever walked the face of the earth. It is a true universal fact of human existence.

From the first, man has fled death with a dread fear, but in the modern world, we have become more adept at suppressing our mortality. Even the energy and resources we invest in trying to forget, to ignore our mortality testifies to its continued fearful power. We have banished the bodies of the dead from our homes, from our churchyards, and more and more, even from their own funerals. We have pushed our mortality further and further over the horizon of the future, all but eradicating the pervasive death of infants, the pervasive death of mothers in childbirth, the pervasive death of the ill. Indeed, a serious illness that did not lead to death was a relative rarity before the last century.

While death has receded from our day to day existence, it is useful, and most Christian, to name the name of death. The catechism teaches us that we must know how great our sin and misery is in order to enjoy the comfort of the Gospel — the only true comfort afforded us in this world. We are not instructed to love our lives, to live joy-filled lives, or to have our best lives now. We are instructed to know our sin and misery, to know how great, how powerful, how awesome a thing it is. At the end of the day, all the little fears, wants, and uncertainties that infest our modern existence are masking one great fear — the fear of death. Men seek power, wealth, fame, to ward off death. Women seek security, possessions, relationships to ward off death. Even our children seek our affection, our proximity, our care, to keep away death.

The Good News, brothers and sisters, is that Jesus came to conquer death. His victory over sin was not a clinical exercise. This victory was achieved through a most gruesome battle. It may have resulted in the forensic, courtroom verdict of “not guilty” — a verdict that by law is our very own possession —  but that verdict was the judgment of a referee raising the hand of a bloodied and beaten, though victorious, boxer. In our text today, on the very eve of that fateful Passover when he would do battle, our champion is confronted with his foe. As Calvin noted on this text, “Christ does not come to the sepulcher of his friend Lazarus as an idle spectator, but like a wrestler preparing for a contest. Therefore no wonder that He groans yet again, for the violent tyranny of death that He had to overcome stands before his eyes.”

Death, stinking, wretched death, is on display for us in this text. Dear Christian, behold your death in this text. See your fear in the fear of the sisters: “Lord, hurry, the one you love is ill.” Death is creeping even now upon our loved ones. See your fear in the fear of the disciples: “Lord, the Jews are seeking to stone you… don’t go to Judea… if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” See their resignation in the face of death: “Let us also go with Him, that we may die with him.”

But the most remarkable picture of death’s dread power is found in our Lord himself. It has been remarked that this text portrays the emotional life of our Lord like no other, even, if possible, more starkly than that dread night passed in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Neither the translation before us nor our prevailing, romantic view of Christ allows us to fully grasp the picture that this text is painting. When Jesus sees the weeping of his friend Mary, and the weeping of the mourners — and we should picture here the ululating howl of middle-eastern mourners that you have perhaps seen on television news — when Jesus sees this weeping, our text says he was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled,” but these words barely capture what could more accurately be described as a visceral rage and anger of our Lord in the face of death. The greek word here is used outside of the bible for the snorting and whinnying of horses, it is an expression of indignation, even disgust.

In the history of the church, many have effectively stripped Jesus of human emotion, under the influence of the classical view that the passions were inherently uncontrollable and therefore sinful. If our Lord did indeed “suffer” in his passion, as the word implies, then he did so stoically, impassively, as one whose knowledge of the greater good to be gained allowed him to coldly calculate the benefits of that suffering. And fear, certainly, would be unseemly to the divinity of our Lord. Yet Jesus is fully human, and he experienced all those emotions that are so characteristic of our humanity, yet without sin, and he did so “in his spirit,” that is, with a proper degree of self-control and appropriate outward expression, and outward expression which included tears of great lament. Indeed, regardless how measured or controlled the expression of his grief and rage may have been, it was noted by those Jews who observed him: “See how he loved him!”

Note that this reaction of our Lord is not primarily an outburst of sympathy, though that is doubtless on display here as well. But it is not ultimately the grief of his loved ones that drives our Lord to grief; it is death itself. John notes emphatically that our Lord again was deeply moved when he came to the tomb, a cave which had been covered by a stone. This cave contained a dead man, a man four days dead, and it probably stunk. Jesus confronts, and is enraged by, death and the destroyer who brings it. The emotion is further expressed in his loud exclamation, “Lazarus! Come out.” Again, this is no polite request, but the dread scream of a parent whose child is toddling into the path of oncoming traffic. It is the emotional scream that empties ones lungs before you know what has happened. Lazarus! Get out of there!

Not only does this last and greatest sign that Jesus performed on the eve of the Passover prefigure his own resurrection, but it graphically portrays our own salvation. Jesus, moved by love, turns toward the grave on our behalf, he breathes in the stench of our death, and breathes out the very breath of life upon us. We are dead in our sins and trespasses, but he calls us forth; the power of his voice — no touch is required — creates anew life in us, and we are bidden to unbind ourselves from all that keeps us in the grave. He rages against our foe, and in his victory he swallows death whole, swallows it down, removes the sting of sin and its power in the law, tearing up its dread curse against us, setting it aside. And this connection between the resurrection of Lazarus and Christ’s own death and resurrection is emphasized by the reaction of the chief priests and Pharisees, who not only plot in concrete to kill him as a result of this sign, but also prophesied unknowingly in their councils that Jesus would die for the nation and to gather up all the children of God who are scattered abroad.

Now, if the climax of this story is Jesus’ emotional encounter with death on the eve of his own death, all of the tension and narrative advancement of the story is bound up in the matter of Christ’s delay, and the glorification of God through Lazarus’ death and resurrection. Mary and Martha send for Jesus when Lazarus falls ill, and his delay is explained by his knowledge that the sickness is not unto death, but unto the greater glory of God and the Son of Man. His eventual decision to finally go to Judea… Bethany being a short walk from Jerusalem, is misunderstood as a death wish by his disciples, and triggers another discussion of the necessity of laboring while it is daylight. Both sisters come to Jesus with the same expression of faith wrapped in a complaint: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Why did Jesus delay?  He tells his disciples, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.” Once again, Jesus signs are performed so that we may believe, and they are recorded for us by John for this same reason. The death and resurrection of Lazarus present for us the belief, and unbelief, of his disciples, whose own faltering faith is only gradually coming to full expression. Even Martha’s expression of confidence “…but even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you,” is undermined by her doubting of Jesus’ knowledge of the situation, and his power to save him even by remote command, as he had demonstrated elsewhere. The ambiguity of Martha’s faith is heightened by Christ’s claim, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha’s confidence in the final resurrection on the last day is not the final expression of faith that Jesus is looking for. The death of Lazarus is ultimately the opportunity for Jesus to reveal himself as something far more than a prophet of the coming Day of the Lord: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Indeed, this is the central teaching of this text, another great “I Am” statement of Jesus where he expresses the deep truth that he not only brings with him resurrection and life, but he IS resurrection and life. Jesus, the long-expected Messiah, brings the resurrection, brings life, in a way that no Jew could comprehend.

Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

This is Jesus’ question for Martha, and it is his question for us. Note these two parallel statements both affirm the same truth, though from different perspectives. The believer who dies, yet shall live; the living believer shall never die. There is a future resurrection, yes, and Lazarus’ resurrection is a token and guarantee of that. Even more, Jesus’ own resurrection. But Jesus power is far greater than that. The one who believes will indeed die a physical death, but in a far more important sense the believer shall never die. The sickness unto death — the sickness of sin that haunts us every living moment from the grave that awaits us — the sickness unto death has been defeated. Lazarus sickness physically killed him, yet it was not unto death, it was not irreversible, for his sickness of sin had already met its match, the great physician had conquered it. In his apocalypse, John writes of this second death, the death that swallows the damned as they go down to judgment, and he writes that this death has no power over us.

Jesus was delivered up because of our transgressions, but he was raised because of our justification, according to the Apostle. Because of our justification. Because of his victory over sin, the grave could not hold him. Because of his victory over sin, the grave could not hold Lazarus — our Lord’s command was undergirded by the power of the creator, yes, but more importantly by the power of the redeemer. Lazarus, you must come forth. Lazarus, the grave clothes do not, cannot, bind you.

Dear, Beloved, Christian:

Death — horrible, stinking, wretched death — rightfully grieved and feared, is no match for your Lord.

"If A Puppy Were Born There Would Be Some Little Stir..."

Martin Luther’s has some fine sermons on Christmas, and some of his finest are collected in Martin Luther’s Christmas Book, edited by Roland Bainton.

This passage about the Wise Men coming to Jerusalem jumped out to me this morning, perhaps because we have a new puppy in the house:

When the Wise Men received the divine revelation that the king of the Jews was born, they made straight for Jerusalem, for, of course, they expected to find him at the capital in a lordly castle and a golden chamber. Where else would common sense expect to find a king? But because they were so sure of themselves, the star left them. Then they were sorely tried, and had they relied solely on human wisdom, would surely have said: "Confound it! We have come all this way for nothing. The star has deceived us. The devil has led us by an apparition. If a king had been born, would he not be in the capital and in a palace? But when we come, the star disappears and we find no one who knows anything about him. Can it be that we foreigns should be the first to have news of him in the royal city? Everyone is so cold and unfriendly that no one offers to go with us and show us the child. They do not believe themselves that to them a king is born, and shall we come and find him? How desolate for the birth of a king! If a puppy were born there would be some little stir, and here a king is supposed to be born and everything is so still. One of our shepherds makes more fuss over the birth of a babe, and when a cow calves more people know about it than have heard of this king. Should not the people be singing, capering, lighting lamps and torches, bedecking the streets with roses and mayflowers? What a miserable king we are seeking! What fools we have been to let ourselves start on this quest!"

Nature wants to feel and be certain before believing, but grace will believe before she feels. Faith steps gaily into the darkness, trusting simply in the Word.

—Martin Luther's Christmas Book, p. 50 - 51.

The Old Testament Background to Christmas

Please join us for our 15th Annual Festival of Lessons and Carols
December 12th at 5:00 pm

Since 1918, it has been the tradition to hold a festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Kings College Cambridge, on Christmas Eve.

It is a service of surpassing beauty and power. This is due in part to the setting of Kings College Chapel, an architectural gem with perhaps with the finest stained glass and choral acoustics known to the world. It is due in part to the glorious singing of the choir, which is likewise world-renowned.

But it is finally due to the surpassing power of the service itself, a power that is derived from its simplicity. Nine lessons are read straight from the scriptures, four from the old testament, five from the new, with appropriate carols interspersed, and a simple opening and closing prayer. 

Listen to the classic lines of the opening prayer, which capture the force of the event:

Belovèd in Christ, be it this Christmas Eve our care and delight to prepare ourselves to hear again the message of the angels: in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and with the shepherds and the wise men adore the Child lying in his Mother's arms.

Let us read and mark in Holy Scripture the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience unto the glorious Redemption brought us by this Holy Child; and in company with the whole Church let us make this chapel, dedicated to his pure and lowly Mother, glad with our carols of praise, etc. 

The Nine Lessons are powerful, because they underline the simple truth that the story of Christmas begins in the Old Testament. We understand the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as Good News — the Gospel — only when we enter into the experience of those longsuffering Jews who had been waiting so many generations for their deliverer, when we hear the message of the angels as Mary heard it, as Zechariah and Elizabeth heard it, as the shepherds heard it. 

When Christmas is untethered from the Old Testament, from the covenantal promises it fulfilled, is when it is most susceptible to the empty, romantic notions that typify the holiday celebration of not only our broader culture, but of far too many Christmas sermons. You know the list of themes that are comfortably conveyed in Christmas cards: Joy, Peace, Love. It is not enough to insist that Jesus is the reason for the season, if all he is merely a symbol of love, peace, and joy. Yet, in a day of great and growing biblical illiteracy, even in the church, this is what we are too often left with.

That the story of Christmas — the Gospel itself — begins in the Old Testament is abundantly clear from each of the Four Gospels, which each present the coming of the Son of God as the fulfillment of the Old Testament in their own, distinctive way.

• John begins his story of the incarnation of the Word “in the beginning,” establishing his roots in the opening verses of Genesis.

• Mark announces “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” by quoting the prophet Isaiah, and describing the ministry of John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord.

• Matthew begins with a genealogy, which causes the eyes of many modern readers to glaze over with the likes of Amminadab, Nahshon, Jeconiah, Shealtiel, and Eliakim. But to the Jew, or the knowing Christian, this genealogy of the Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham conjures in a few quick penstrokes the entire sweep of Old Testament history, and more importantly, the tale of the loving purposes of God as expressed in the covenants made with Abraham, and David, and kept by the Lord through the exile, and through the many generations. Count them, three groups of fourteen, six sevens, with the seventh seven, the sabbath of sabbaths, coming in Christ.

• And likewise, Luke, the researcher, the chronicler, the historian. A gentile convert, Luke’s Gospel leaves little doubt that he was catechized into a thorough understanding of the Old Testament, and that the Apostle Paul, with whom he traveled, proclaimed Jesus as the righteous seed, long ago promised to Abraham.

Luke’s telling of the birth of Christ is both more historical, and more narrative and lyrical. After his prologue, Luke’s opening verse sets the birth of Christ in its historical context, and then immediately introduces us to Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, and her husband Zachariah, a priest who we meet ministering before the altar in the temple of Jerusalem.

Both Elizabeth and Zechariah are of the priestly tribe of Aaron, and both of them, as well as the temple itself play a prominent role in the opening scenes of Luke’s Gospel — one thinks of the prophecy of Malachi, “and the Lord, whome you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant in whom you deligth, behold, he is coming, says the lord of hosts.”

Their names are not insignificant: Elizabeth means “God is an Oath,” and Zechariah means “Yahweh remembers.” Immediately upon being introduced to them, one wonders what it is that Yahweh remembers, what oath has been given that reveals god’s presence with his people. This name, Zechariah, is an extremely common one in the Old Testament, occurring 29 times, and reflecting the same reality we find in Matthew’s geneaology, that generation after generation had celebrated the Lord’s faithfulness to his covenant promises, and looked forward to the day of their fulfillment. 

This post was taken from a sermon by Brian Lee, “Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?”, originally preached on November 30, 2008.

Our 15th Annual Festival of Lessons and Carols

All are invited to join us
for our 15th annual Lessons and Carols service
on Sunday, December 12, at 5:00 pm
at the Capitol Hill Adventist Church, where we hold our Sunday Services.

Since our founding in 2007, Christ Reformed Church has celebrated the Advent season with a traditional “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,” which is patterned very closely on the annual service held at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge since 1918. We read the same nine texts, but substitute congregational singing instead of choral performance.

Over the course of the next five Sundays, we will be preaching through the nine traditional scripture readings from this service in a series called “Why Lessons and Carols”? In this series we’ll explore not only the rich pattern of promise and fulfillment that these Old and New Testament lessons illustrate, but also consider how the Reformed tradition exhibits a unique grasp of the unity of the scriptures around the covenantal promises fulfilled in the birth of Christ. We’ll also spend a bit of time considering the unique view of the church calendar held by the continental Reformed tradition, and defend it as a via media between the extremes of Puritanism and superstition.

A number of years ago I wrote an article at The Federalist in which I described this service in greater detail and explained its value called, “Keeping Christmas in Christianity: A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols”:

The Lessons and Carols service reminds us of a basic interpretive key: Jesus is the center of the whole Bible, and that truth should guide how we read and apply these texts. Promise and fulfillment is the basic pattern of the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. Jesus and his apostles viewed his coming as the fulfillment of centuries of promises delivered to the people of God, and the New Testament was written in support of this case. In an age of biblical illiteracy, we mustn’t underestimate the value of this simple lesson.

Lessons and Carols is a service of nine scripture readings, or “lessons,” interspersed with the singing of Christmas carols. (You can get more background and examples here). The carols typically vary each year, but the nine readings are fairly well fixed, with some small variety. The first four are drawn from the Old Testament, the last five from the New.

Each reading is prefaced with a brief explanatory rubric, something which we desperately need in our current dark age of Bible reading. Thus we begin by reading Genesis 3, with this introduction: “God tells sinful Adam that he has lost the life of Paradise and that his seed [offspring] will bruise the serpent’s head.” The lessons proceed to speak of this promise of a coming “Seed” as it was extended to Abraham in Genesis 22, with the expansion that “in this Seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

In the final two Old Testament readings, we are reminded that the basic outlines of the Christmas story derive in the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah (drawn from chapters 7, 9, or 11), that a coming Savior would be born of a virgin, in the town of Bethlehem, and would bring in his train a universal peace not just for the people of Israel, but for all the earth.

New Testament lessons focus on how these Old Testament promises of a coming redeemer are fulfilled in the birth narratives of Christ, with readings drawn from Luke 1 and 2 and Matthew 2. Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds, and wise men, all of these are not merely random characters in the Christmas play. They each are instrumental to teaching us that in the birth of this human child, Jesus, God has fulfilled his promise of the ages and “saved his people from their sins.”

Finally, the closing reading is always drawn from John 1, reflecting on the theological significance of the eternal Word becoming flesh. The famous prologue makes explicit the deep theological truth implicit through the prophecies: This is no ordinary child, this is the divine Word made flesh. (read more)

The reception after our Lessons and Carols service has always been something of our annual Christmas party and celebration, and we have welcomed may wonderful visitors and guests over the years. We hope you will join us on December 12th. Click here for more information.

25 Reasons to Buy the Trinity Psalter Hymnal App

I never buy apps for my iPhone. I’ve probably purchased fewer than five total over the last ten years. 

But it took me all of three seconds to open my virtual wallet and spend $9.99 on the app version of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal (TPH) app. Buy it now.

I didn’t have to run through reasons pro or con on whether to spend the ten bucks. But maybe you do. So here is a list of the reasons I’ve come up with since the app has resided on my phone. Hopefully one or more of them will nudge you to purchase the app if you haven’t already done so. 

And in addition to buying the TPH app, you should also share it on social media, and encourage others in your church to buy it. And for those of you who are not on an Apple device, the Android version should be out this summer. 

1. It fits in your pocket. A portable hymnal is awesome. Having a worship song handy when the mood or the need strikes you is a huge benefit. Ideally, you’d have some songs memorized, so you could sing at crucial moments without a crutch — like the Reformation martyrs who sang psalms as they were burned at the stake. Sadly, few today have more than one or two songs down by heart. Over my first two weeks owning the TPH app, I’ve probably sung a song from it every day or two at unplanned moments. 

2. The app helps you sing more at home. We should sing more worship songs in the home, throughout the week. Modern worship has been professionalized, it has become performance-driven with worship leaders who overwhelm the congregation’s voices in gathered worship. Sadly, this can make singing at home seem even more awkward and lame. The TPH app is a great tool to encourage more singing outside of public worship.

3. The app includes musical accompaniment. We encourage every member of our church to keep a hymnal in the home. But most of us aren’t musical enough to enjoy the sound of our own voices singing a cappella, nor are we musical enough to play an instrument and sing. As a result, I’m willing to guess that the vast majority of print hymnals in the home are under-utilized. The TPH app solves that problem by providing professional piano accompaniment for every single song in the book. 

   You can also set the music to repeat, so it will play for all the stanzas in a song.

4. …and full sheet music. There are two views for each song, either lyrics only, or full sheet music. If you are viewing the lyrics and turn your phone to landscape, the app switches automatically to the sheet music, but you can toggle back and forth. I haven’t yet had a chance to view the app on an iPad, but if it scales well I should think you could use the sheet music for playing a keyboard. 

5. Psalms. There, I said it. The Psalter is an inspired songbook that has been sung by believers for the last three thousand years. It is the definition of intergenerational worship. It is the most chronologically and geographically catholic songbook around. It is great to sing scripture as praise and prayer to the Lord. Yet the psalms are woefully neglected in worship today.

   You don’t have to be a hymn hater to be a psalm singer. The TPH is proof that you don’t have to sing songs exclusively to sing psalms well. By owning a virtual hymnal that incorporates both psalms and hymns, and by reaching a broader audience, the TPH app can contribute to a revival of psalm-singing.

6. Search. The TPH has a search feature that provides a keyword search of every lyric, title, tune name, or composer or author. If you’ve ever struggled to remember the name of that familiar hymn, this search feature is a great way to quickly find the song you’re looking for, even if you can only remember a snippet of a line. And it is a far more comprehensive tool than the subject index in the back of the print hymnal for finding songs that address particular themes. Searching the word “prayer,” for instance, turns up scores of hits. 

7. It helps worship leaders select songs. The TPH Hymn Tune page is the most trafficked page on our website, and I’m sure that much of that traffic is worship leaders trying to decide what songs to sing on any given Sunday. In recent weeks, I have found myself using my TPH app instead, and the combination of the search feature, the navigation, and the music has made it an indispensable tool for selecting songs for worship. Buy it for your pastor today, or share it with him. 

8. Bookmarks. Every church sings a subset of its songbook. At Christ Reformed, we have a psalm of the month, which we sing repeatedly to learn and familiarize ourselves. The bookmark feature in the app makes it easy to keep track of the top 10 or 50 songs in your repertoire and pull them up in a moment. 

9. The app is cheaper than a print hymnal. I love print hymnals, and print media in general (and I have about 80 boxes in storage to prove it). If your church uses a hymnal, you should own a home copy. But the print TPH costs $23.00 from Great Commission Publications (and it’s currently out of stock). 

   The app is much cheaper than six print hymnals. Because the TPH app supports “Family Sharing” on iOS, it can be used by up to six connected accounts with a single purchase. So even if you have a print hymnal in the home, the TPH app makes it easier and more cost-effective for your whole family to sing together. At $9.99, it is 93% cheaper than owning 6 hymnals. 

10. Better yet, it’s FREE for URCNA pastors. OK, so this is kind of inside baseball, but if you are a pastor in the URCNA, a kind donor has offered to reimburse the $10 purchase price. If you want the details, contact us. 

11. It’s also FREE to all members of OPC and URCNA churches. OK, technically, this isn’t true. But it can be if your deacons agree to subsidize the purchase price for anyone who wants to download it. If your people aren’t singing at home and don’t own hymnals, this might be a reasonable investment for a local church to make. 

12. The TPH is ecumenical. The TPH is a joint publication of the United Reformed Churches of North America (URCNA) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). Working with a sister church requires compromises, and a few were made. But there is always wisdom in many counselors, and this worship tool was greatly enriched by bringing together the strong psalm-singing tradition of the URCNA and the English language hymnody of the OPC. The print version is perhaps the first hymnal ever printed to include the confessions of both traditions in one volume, the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards. The app makes the best music of these two traditions to a huge audience of folks who would never attend one of these churches.

13. The TPH is not just for the OPC and URCNA! I know of one local Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) congregation that uses the TPH in their worship (and since writing this post I’ve heard of a few more). It is the prayer of our songbook committee that this hymnal will be a resource to other churches as well, and by creating a lower-cost, virtual version, we increase the chances that the use of the TPH will spread. 

14. Buy it for your children. By creating and promoting the TPH in our churches, we are building a shared tradition of reformed worship. The more the URC and OPC adopt and promote a shared songbook  — and sing from it at home — the greater the odds are that our kids will find a familiar and faithful place of worship when they go off to college or move away to take their first job. The songs we sing in worship unify us and bind us together, and singing the songs of the TPH is a beneficial part of catechizing and raising our kids to be faithful church members in the future. 

15. It’s evangelistic. Lex orandi, lex credendi — The law of prayer is the law of faith. It is our prayer that by exposing believers to a rich worshiping tradition, new believers will seek out and join biblical, confessional, Reformed churches such as the OPC and URCNA (and others). When members of OPC and URCNA churches invest in the TPH app, promote it, and share it with their friends, they help grow the brand of these faithful, confessional churches. 

16. It’s green. Singing from an app reduces paper waste.

17. The app encourages singing in-home study groups. Every Wednesday night we close our weekly study by singing a psalm or a hymn, but to do so requires us to leave a bunch of hymnals at our elder’s house. This is far more convenient if members all have the apps on their phones. 

18. It’s great for the mission field. If you are a part of a church plant or other mission work where folks have access to phones or iPads, it is an easy way to introduce the songs of the church to your group before it is feasible to purchase or store hymnals — or ship them around the world.

19. It’s available offline. While the music doesn’t currently play when your device is offline — perhaps in a future upgrade or premium edition, it will? — the lyrics and the sheet music are available offline. 

20. The app bridges the gap to our virtual world. Let’s face it, hymn singing is passé. It’s even more passé if the only way you can do it is by holding a big fat print hardcover in your hands. The TPH app can introduce great church music to churches and individuals who are not inclined to use hymnals. 

21. Be prepared for the next pandemic. Sadly, many of us have been locked out of our houses of worship over the last year. It may happen again. Having a songbook in your pocket is a great encouragement during times of isolation, and aid in maintaining family worship or streaming services. 

22. TPH brings great worship music to a broader audience. Contemporary worship music is abysmal, with a few exceptions. And there are a lot of believers interested in being broadly reformed who will never pick up a hymnal. The TPH app is a way to expose this massive audience to 500 years of great worship music.

23. Paying for the app is better than getting it free. Ten bucks is a good investment in a lasting resource. The committee overseeing the hymnal invested significant resources in building a top-notch resource for both Apple and (in time) Android, and the proceeds from the sale will help maintain and improve the project over time. I have already submitted feedback to the creators of the app and received a reply indicating that work is underway on an update. Updates and maintenance that ensure the TPH remain a lasting resource are well worth the investment. 

24. Redeem the time. Ever pull out your phone and look at social media to fill a few minutes while you’re standing in line or waiting for a bus? Maybe you play a quick game. Why not pull up the TPH app and sing a psalm or a hymn instead? No, you don’t have to sing out loud — that could be weird. But you can still worship by singing a song silently in your head. 

25. You too can be shouted down for singing church music at your next party! We found out the TPH app was released during a recent church cigar night. We all quickly downloaded it and proceeded to sing a few boisterous songs. Perhaps it was a little too late for singing, and perhaps the singing was a little too boisterous. We were promptly shouted down by a neighbor in the apartment building, presumably the same neighbor who posted the note below the following day. 

    What could be more counter-cultural than singing hymns at your next gathering? 

With the TPH app, you too can upset your neighbors with a late-night hymn sing at your next party.

Thanks to Kyle Lee and Luke Gossett for their contributions to this list.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Trinity Psalter Hymnal Official Website

• Trinity Psalter Hymnal Tunes

Prayer for Good Friday

Good Friday provides an opportunity to meditate on our need for Easter. When we survey the wondrous cross, we pour contempt on our pride, and come with sharpened hunger to the festal table the risen Christ spreads for us on Easter morn.

If you are in the Washington, DC, area during Holy Week, you are welcome to join us for our Good Friday service, which is usually held at 6:00 pm. Please check our website to confirm service times this year (2021 Good Friday service details here). 

Prayer for Good Friday

Included in the Liturgical Forms and Prayers of the URCNA is a prayer for use in a Good Friday service. Though intended for public worship, this prayer is also commended for personal or family use as well:

Our Father, who so loved the world that You gave Your only begotten Son, we acknowledge and marvel at Your mercy. Even while we were enemies, You reconciled us; even while we were strangers, You made us fellow heirs with Christ of all eternal blessings; even while we stood condemned, You redeemed us; even while we were imprisoned, You delivered us from the tyranny of sin, death, and the devil. On this solemn occasion, we loathe our miserable estate and celebrate Your marvelous grace. Beneath the cross of Christ, we come to know that ours is the guilt, but Yours the forgiveness; ours the condemnation, but Yours the gift of justification; ours the bondage, yet Yours the freedom of adoption and new obedience. Even the faith with which we confess our dear Savior’s sacrifice was won for us by His death. Therefore, we cry out to You in sorrow for our sins and in thanksgiving for Your gift. Give us the grace, we pray, to receive again this word of the cross, which alone can refresh us on our pilgrim way, and send us out again into the world as witnesses to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Amen.

Many American Christians tend to be a bit allergic to written prayers, but they are an important part of the Reformed tradition on the European continent. While such prayers are for voluntary use — our Church Order doesn’t require them — they are a valued resource. While they are suitable to be read in the home or for a service, they can also serve as useful outlines for more extemporaneous prayers.

What follows is a brief commentary on our Good Friday prayer.

Commentary

Our Father, who so loved the world that You gave Your only begotten Son, we acknowledge and marvel at Your mercy. 

Our prayer opens by addressing God as Father, as Jesus instructed us in Matthew 6:9, and acknowledging the great mercy he showed us by sending his Son to die for us on the cross. Our Heidelberg Catechism reminds us that the Creator God “is my God and Father for the sake of Christ his Son.” The death of Jesus secured our adoption as sons and daughters so that we pray to God as our Father. 

Even while we were enemies, You reconciled us; even while we were strangers, You made us fellow heirs with Christ of all eternal blessings; even while we stood condemned, You redeemed us; even while we were imprisoned, You delivered us from the tyranny of sin, death, and the devil. 

The first petition, as it were, is a confession of sorts acknowledging the fallen state we find ourselves in apart from God’s mercy: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God sent Jesus to die for us while we were enemies, strangers, condemned, imprisoned, and under the tyranny of sin, death, and the devil. By beginning our prayer with this humble approach, we acknowledge the magnitude of God’s gift given on Good Friday.

This is always a wonderful way to start our prayers to a holy God, and this form provides an excellent model for us.

On this solemn occasion, we loathe our miserable estate and celebrate Your marvelous grace. Beneath the cross of Christ, we come to know that ours is the guilt, but Yours the forgiveness; ours the condemnation, but Yours the gift of justification; ours the bondage, yet Yours the freedom of adoption and new obedience. Even the faith with which we confess our dear Savior’s sacrifice was won for us by His death. 

Next, the prayer moves to the particular occasion for which it is offered, Good Friday.

Good Friday is one of the “evangelical feast days” that celebrate the saving works of our savior. Reformed Christians don’t hold to a church calendar, per se. We desire our worship to be biblical, and we do not believe the New Testament teaches us that keeping a calendar of feast days is a useful pattern for the people of God in the new covenant (Colossians 2:16). Rather, we hold that the weekly rhythm of the Lord’s Day is the most important liturgical rhythm for saints under the new covenant and that Christians should celebrate the resurrection every Sunday. 

And yet, we acknowledge that it is reasonable and permissible to regularly, even annually, acknowledge key anniversaries in the history of redemption. Good Friday is one such “solemn occasion.” We should “preach Christ and him crucified” in every sermon, but on Good Friday we are able to dwell on the weighty message of the cross. Thus, on Good Friday the purpose of the cross of Christ, in particular, is highlighted, namely, our great sin which required such a great sacrifice. 

The special services Reformed Christians mark are called “evangelical feast days” because they are based on the crucial gospel (evangelical) events in our Savior’s life. We believe Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the spirit may be celebrated with annual services that focus on Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. Reformed Christians preserved these ancient celebrations because they were not man-made or man-focused, unlike the medieval church calendar’s celebration of saints’ days and other feasts.

One of the benefits of marking Good Friday is that it allows for a robust celebration and focus on the resurrection on Easter Sunday. There is no Easter joy without Good Friday sorrow — the story of the cross and the tomb are intertwined. But celebrating both of these radical extremes in a single service can be quite difficult. As a result, Easter in the modern church often skims over the bad news of the cross. We believe there is wisdom and richness in given each moment in Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection its due attention.

Therefore, we cry out to You in sorrow for our sins and in thanksgiving for Your gift. Give us the grace, we pray, to receive again this word of the cross, which alone can refresh us on our pilgrim way, and send us out again into the world as witnesses to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Amen.

Again I say: Good Friday provides an opportunity to meditate on our need for Easter. Confess your sin, pour contempt on your pride, and come with a sharpened hunger for the festal table the risen Christ spreads for you on Easter morn.

We hope you’ll join us for our Good Friday service at Christ Reformed Church.

Calvin on Christmas

It is good to set aside one day out of the year in which we are reminded of all the good that has occurred because of Christ’s birth in the world, and in which we hear the story of his birth retold…

which will be done Sunday.

From John Calvin’s sermon preached on Christmas day 1551 in John Calvin, Sermons on the Book of Micah, trans. Benjamin Wirt Farley (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2003), 302–04. (H/T R. Scott Clark at The Heidelblog).

Top Nine Reasons for Christmas "Lessons & Carols"

You are invited to join us for our
Lessons & Carols service on

Sunday, December 13th

5:00 pm.

In years past I have written about the importance of keeping Christmas in Christianity. For those who don’t aren’t interested in reading the full article at The Federalist, I have distilled below the Top Nine Reasons for celebrating a “Lessons & Carols” service this holiday season, in countdown style à la Letterman.

9. Lessons & Carols reminds us that the story of Jesus is at the center of the Bible.

8. Because due to COVID the public can’t attend Lessons & Carols at Kings College, Cambridge.

7. You can’t understand the Christmas story apart from the Old Testament prophecies of Christ.

6. Where else do you get to sing the fourth stanza of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”:

Come, Desire of nations, come,
fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display Thy saving power,
ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

5. The best carols remind us that Jesus was born to die:

Good Christian, fear; for sinners here
the silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear, shall pierce him through;
the cross be borne for me, for you;
hail, hail the Word made flesh,
the babe, the son of Mary.

4. To remind romantics and moralists that Christmas is not about our charity, but God’s work of salvation

3. Eggnog.

(Not technically a part of the Lessons & Carols liturgy.)

2. To brush up on your Latin by singing “Adeste, Fideles.”

And, the Number 1 reason to celebrate “Lessons & Carols” this Christmas:

1. To annoy the puritans among us.

(I’m joking… some of my best friends are puritans.)

A Guide to Thanksgiving Day Prayer

It is good to acknowledge our limits, and all of us have endured a mediocre prayer or two before digging in to our Thanksgiving Day feast.

Of course, the Lord welcomes all faithful prayer, and the Spirit interprets our groanings. But leading a group in public prayer is a skill that is developed through practice, Scripture study, and theological reflection. Not all of us are equally gifted, and it can be nerve-wracking to be called upon to pray when you are unprepared.

 One of the great benefits of being a member of a confessionally Reformed church is the ability to draw on a rich liturgical tradition, including a Book of Forms and Prayers that dates to the sixteenth century reformation. The United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA) have made their book available in full online at www.formsandprayers.com, so a theologically rich prayer is never more than a few screen taps away. These prayers can profitably be read verbatim, or used as a model or guide, providing an outline for a beautiful prayer. 

Our book includes liturgical forms and prayers for the Lord’s Day worship, as well as additional prayers for special services such as Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. There are also prayers for ecclesiastical assemblies and for personal and family use.

Here are a few thoughts on the Thanksgiving Day Prayer:

Our Sovereign God, who created all things for Your pleasure and who gives to all life, breath, and every good thing, we thank You for our creation, our preservation, and all the blessings of this life. 

 The doctrine of creation is the foundation of much biblical thanksgiving. Our prayer opens by reminding us that all things were created for God’s pleasure, and that his work of creation continues in his current work of preservation. All good things come to us from God.

For rain and sunshine, in abundance and in lack, we acknowledge that our times are in Your hands. You supply all of Your creatures with Your good gifts, the just and the unjust alike. 

 We thank God not only for good things and abundance, but for his supervision of our lack. Our comfort in all circumstances comes from the knowledge that “our times are in His hands.”

Nevertheless, we especially give You praise for the surpassing greatness of Your saving grace, which You have shown to us in Christ Jesus our Savior. For our election in Him before the foundation of the world, for our redemption by Him in His life, death, and resurrection, for our effectual calling, justification, sanctification, and all of the blessings of our union with Him, we give You our heartfelt thanks. 

 While creation may be the foundation of our thanksgiving, God’s redeeming work is deserving of special mention. Apart from redemption our hearts would be darkened and we would not be able to truly thank God for anything. This work of redemption started in eternity past, and continues until his return in glory.

Often, at Thanksgiving Day celebrations we find ourselves in mixed company. It is a national, secular holiday. Reading a prayer is a helpful way of articulating a doctrine of redemption in a fashion that might be slightly less personally offensive in mixed company, if it is introduced as a prayer used by the church in thanking God.

Sometimes we also find ourselves praying with extended family who nominally express faith in God but aren’t actively a part of a worshiping community. This prayer enumerates specific blessings of God’s saving work, and we should be prepared to reflect further on them if they become a point of dinnertime conversation.

And we look with great anticipation toward that day when You will raise us to life everlasting, glorified and confirmed in righteousness, so that we may sing Your praises without the defilement of our present weaknesses, distractions, and sins. 

Americans can sometimes slip into the error that the fullness of God’s blessings are known here and now in the U.S. of A. Our prayer reminds us that we look forward in “great anticipation” for God’s greatest blessings, and this confidence in future blessings is perhaps our greatest blessing.

Also, this prayer reminds us of the importance of confessing our sins, even in a prayer of thanksgiving. 

As You have given us these gifts, we ask that You would give us grateful hearts, so that we may serve our neighbors in love. 

Our gratitude is a result of God’s saving work in our hearts, and this saving work results in a grateful response toward God and neighbor. May this thanksgiving holiday serve as a spur and a reminder of how we are called to share God’s blessings with those around us.

This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, who taught us to pray, saying: 

Our Father Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever.
Amen.

Closing a prayer with the Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful way to invite all members of your Thanksgiving Day celebration to join their voices together. It is an invitation to pray to God.

Here’s a pro tip: you can give your group advanced warning that you’ll close with the Lord’s Prayer and prepare them to join you. Sometimes it’s worth mentioning whether you go with “debts” or “trespasses” to avoid a brief moment of awkwardness. 

By closing with the Lord’s Prayer, you may give a struggling sinner the opportunity to take their first stumbling steps to calling out to God for forgiveness. 

I still remember a number of years ago when I was praying at an ordinary family dinner. My father was not a churchgoing man, and I don’t think I had ever heard him pray. But when I closed with the Lord’s Prayer, he joined in, for it triggered a deep memory he had from his youth. It was one of the few times I ever heard him pray. 

Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.  

Amen.

Discipleship and Discipline: The Most Distinctive Mark

This article was originally published in two parts in Christian Renewal magazine, December 2019.

It is perhaps a silly question to ask what is the most distinctive among the three marks of the true church that are set forth in Article 29 of the Belgic Confession.

After all, we are not living in a golden age of preaching, and the sacramental theology of the Belgic confession has rarely held sway in the Reformed churches, much less broad protestant Christianity. The pure preaching of the gospel and the pure administration of the sacraments are surely distinctive marks in our day. 

Yet I think I can make a case that church discipline may be the most distinctive, and perhaps the most overlooked, of the three marks. It may also be the most poorly understood, even among members of Reformed churches that are formally committed to its practice. 

Discipline and Discipleship

Recently, I’ve had a reason to think long and hard about church discipline here at our church in Washington, DC, and I’d like to spend a few columns sharing those thoughts with you. 

No, I haven’t been thinking about church discipline because we are in the middle of a messy discipline case or have a greater than usual need for “correcting faults” at the moment. Rather, I’ve been thinking about discipline as I wrestle with the challenge of recruiting, training, and retaining church officers at our church in DC, particularly elders. As I’ve reflected on the role of elders and their necessity in a Reformed church, I keep coming back to the mark of discipline.

Like virtually every small church I know, Washington DC has struggled to ordain a sufficient number of men to serve as elders. We organized with a single elder in 2016, and in 2018, when this elder moved away, we were able to ordain three new elders. That lasted less than eighteen months, and now two more elders are moving away. The standard challenge of a small Reformed congregation is exacerbated in an urban context. With very few stable residents, and few older retired men, and very few members who grew up in a Reformed church, the challenge is severe. 

So why does it matter? Why do we need elders, anyway? If elders are just a governing board for the church, as a non-profit board, why can’t anyone serve in this capacity? 

Well, one answer to that question is the Reformed conviction that “church discipline” is a mark of the true church. 

One of our elders put it best when he noted that the shepherding role of elders is ultimately much more powerful when it functions in a proactive, formative fashion, encouraging and nurturing praiseworthy behavior. This is far more effective than punishing errant behavior, responding to faults among God’s people in a reactive and corrective fashion. As the old adage goes, you catch more flies with honey, and as every parent knows, positive feedback that praises good behavior is a far more effective manner of formation than negative feedback that seeks to correct faults. Like water flowing over a rock, positive encouragement shapes God’s people gradually, consistently, and effectively over time. 

Another way to say this is that discipleship — walking daily with God’s people — is the positive side of discipline. Discipline and discipleship are thus two sides of the same coin, the one positive and the other negative. The close relationship between these two concepts is reflected conveniently in the close relationship of the two words. 

Now, in saying this I’m sure I’m not saying anything in the least novel or radical. Any elder worth his salt would say that this is obviously the case. However, it is a basic point that isn’t very often taught and explained to God’s people, which is unfortunate. While discussing church discipline in a recent officer training session, someone mentioned that they typically thought of discipline as the bad or negative mark. And anything that is perceived as being negative will naturally not attract our attention or our affection. 

What church wants to be known as the discipline church? None, really. But, in contrast, what if you said that you were a church that took discipleship seriously? That committed serious efforts and training to this positive, pastoral, and formative practice?

The Nature of the Relationship Between Discipline and Discipleship

When we understand that discipline and discipleship go hand in hand — that the one is the positive expression and the other the negative expression of the same reality — this opens up new perspectives on the distinctively Reformed understanding of the work of the elder in the true church.

Positive discipleship as a daily practice is the essential building block of faithful church discipline. You see this when you consider what Matthew 18 teaches about church discipline. The familiar steps of discipline emphasize the importance of discipleship: First, take your offense directly to your brother; second, take trusted, neutral witnesses to confront your brother; third (and only third), tell it to the church. 

When “church discipline” is understood merely as the formal, churchly matter of step three, it is overwhelming in a negative, and often a punitive, matter. By the time it has gotten to that stage, the sinner has been confronted with the ugliness of his sin on at least two occasions. He’s dug in his heels over his offensive behavior, which was serious enough in the first place to deserve a loving rebuke. 

But properly understood, “church discipline” also includes the first two steps. Church discipline includes the first faithful act of going and telling a brother his fault, keeping matters “between you and him alone.” This act is premised upon a relationship, upon the faithful daily prayer and practice of forgiving debts as they have been forgiven. This requires a vital and trusting relationship between two members of the body of Christ — be they friends, spouses, parent and child, or mere acquaintances. Church discipline requires eschewing gossip and griping. It requires courage to confront. It requires daily practice of repentance, daily confession of sin.

This first step of discipline — telling your brother his fault — is closer to our idea of discipleship, than our traditional concept of “discipline.” Think about it in terms of frequency. Church discipline, in this sense, should occur daily in your church, not once a year or once a decade. When church discipline is understood holistically, including the first step with the third, it becomes a mark of the church that should be on display each and every day. 

Elders, Discipleship, and Discipline

So where do the elders fit in with this first step of discipline? 

First of all, this first step of discipline requires the presence of the gospel, and the elders are the front line in assuring that the gospel is the heart of the church’s pulpit ministry. Believers can only confess and confront one another with their sins when they have a healthy sense that God justifies the wicked, that they are sinners saved by grace. Every preacher, even the best preacher, needs the regular oversight and accountability of faithful elders. Reminding him when he hits the mark, warning him when he veers off into moralism or topical preaching that obscures Christ and him crucified. When our preaching reminds us all daily that we are “simultaneously sinners and saints,” we will be more inclined to hear and receive the loving rebuke in joy. Elders must take seriously their role in ensuring the pure preaching of the word. 

Second, this preached word needs to be subjectively applied in the church, which is a related but distinct task to overseeing the objective content of the word. Elders are the key eyes and ears of the body of Christ, as they engage in relationships with God’s people. Ask any pastor, it can be very difficult to get a clear read on how effective your preaching is: “Great sermon, pastor!” Faithful elders, however, can discern through conversation exactly what pulpit message is cutting through the haze and being received by God’s people. They can only do this when they have established vibrant, discipling relationships with the flock under their care. Not only does this provide feedback to the preacher in his pulpit ministry, it allows the elder to himself magnify and apply the message to the flock. 

The third aspect of the Elder’s role in discipline is hospitality. You are only going to feel free to confront, and to confess, your sins to a brother when a close and intimate relationship has been established. It is necessary that believers come to know one another as family, as brothers and sisters in the Lord. And that bond is ultimately forged in the radical practice of Christian hospitality.

Rosaria Butterfield describes Christian hospitality as making space for outsiders and insiders alike to enter into a uniquely Christian community, to be vulnerable, and to share our burdens with one another. I do not mean by this to exclude the pastor from the practice and modeling of hospitality, but as a simple matter of scale, the elders are required to extend and model this ministry throughout the body of the church. Thus, all faithful under-shepherds become the hands and feet of our Lord, modeling the loving, caring relationships in the church that are willing to cut through the superficial relationships of our entertainment age. This happens over the breaking of bread and through the shedding of tears. It is largely in the practice of hospitality that the preached word is embodied and carried and applied in the life of the church. 

Think again of the subject of frequency we addressed above. When we think only of the third, or extreme, phase of discipline, it is an infrequent and occasional practice in the church. How important can that be to the daily life of the church? But when we incorporate the first phase of discipline, it is a regular practice of the church. It is in the elders that the congregation sees mature believers receiving the preached word and putting it into practice in their daily life. The pastor, a preacher, cannot daily model that receiving and enacting behavior. 

The Most Distinctive Mark

How faithfully is the first step of discipline — daily confrontation, confession, and forgiveness — practiced in Presbyterian and Reformed churches? How distinctive is this discipline, when it is faithfully practiced? How self-consciously do our elders understand the nature of their task as the hands and feet of the Lord, receiving God’s gospel word, putting it into practice, and through Christian hospitality and discipleship creating the space for repentance and forgiveness?

In my view, this is a radically overlooked, and under-appreciated mark of the church. But connecting discipline with discipleship, and teasing out the elder’s role in this work, is really only the first step in restore discipline to its rightful place alongside word and sacrament. 

In the remainder of this article, we’ll explore the vital connection between the first step of discipline, and the final or extreme step. Perhaps our weakness in attending to the first phase of discipline explains why the third phase isn’t often practiced in our churches and often doesn’t go well when it is. We’ll also see how the mark of discipline is also properly entailed in the mark of pure sacraments, and how the Lord’s Supper is the manifestation of the church’s discipling and disciplined relationship with her people.  

Private Repentance is Also a Manifestation of Church Discipline

The URCNA Church Order teaches us that Christian discipline is spiritual in nature. When properly exercised; God is glorified, sinners are reconciled with God, neighbor, and church; and the offense is removed from the church of Christ. These are spiritual blessings, wrought by the Holy Spirit through the power of the gospel applied to God’s people through the preached word and the sacraments (Article 51).

Subsequently, we are taught that in the case of private sins, the rule taught in Matthew 18 shall be followed. This passage is well known among believers, but it is worth quoting the key portion in full:

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matt 18:15 – 17)

I think we tend to think of church discipline as only the final phase of Christ’s instruction when the sin of an obstinate brother is told to the church. In the Reformed tradition, the consistory represents “the church” in this proceeding. Perhaps it might even be the case that we only think church discipline is occurring when someone receives the sanction, i.e., “is disciplined.” But this is too negative a view. We should understand “discipline” to be everything up to and including the sanction, when necessary.

I think a plain reading of both Matthew 18 and our church order should acknowledge that the private interaction between a sinner and his offended brother is a part of church discipline, as well as the case where one or two witnesses are involved. Indeed, it is impossible to reach the ultimate phase of discipline without first working through these first phases. Furthermore, when successful, these first two phases are indeed accomplishing the ultimate goals of discipline: God is glorified, reconciliation takes place, and the offense is removed from the church of Christ. All of this takes place without the consistory even being aware (CO Article 53).

How then might we know it is happening? Well, it is far more likely that we will know when it is not happening, and often it is not. Christ’s instructions for addressing private sins are simple, but that doesn’t mean they are easy. Indeed, this is the fruit of much gospel ministry, when victims of sin respond not in anger but in love, humbly and lovingly seeking repentance. It is a miraculous work of the Spirit every time a sinner receives a reproof in love and repents of his sin. These simple acts — which, given our great sinfulness, should occur frequently — are incredibly difficult. They are fruits of the Spirit… not fruits of our own efforts.

Indeed, in my last column, I pointed out the importance of Elders as faithful under-shepherds in cultivating these regular acts of discipline in the church. Often, I think pastors and elders will need to model and encourage private discipline among their flock. Preaching alone may drive some of this activity, but a great deal more will occur through the faithful guidance of Elders discipling the church in the work of private discipline.

Private Discipline and the Ultimate Phase of Discipline

It should be obvious that a church that regularly practices private discipline among its members will in all likelihood experience the ultimate phase of discipline — excommunication — less frequently. Little sins do give birth to bigger ones. The more aware we are that sin is ever crouching at the door, the more faithful we can be in repenting from it and averting its advance.

Perhaps not as obvious is that church discipline will likely go much better at the consistory level when the preceding steps have faithfully been attended to. It may in fact be the case that more matters are reported to the Consistory if more private confrontation is taking place. The more private sins that are dealt with, the more private sins will eventually make their way before the elders of the church. 

Let’s take an example from church history. We possess the rather copious minutes of the Genevan Consistory during Calvin’s tenure as pastor, and Reformation historians often chuckle at some of the cases that made their way before consistory. For instance, the man named his dog after Calvin. By our standards today, this seems like a rather petty matter, and perhaps it seems a bit invasive that the church should become involved in such a case. But in context, this matter was a rather public offense, meant to humiliate an officer of the church precisely because of how he was exercising the spiritual authority of the pulpit. When conflict like this is tolerated or excused, greater offenses, greater disparagement of the church’s authority are sure to follow. 

Perhaps if we addressed conflict more faithfully, more regularly, even when it seems a bit petty, we could avoid some of the full-flowering of this conflict when it develops? Perhaps faithful discipline, in both the earlier and later phases, could soften hearts and reconcile sinners.

Discipline and the Sacraments

Faithful church discipline — private and public — is crucial to reaping one of the central benefits of the sacraments, namely, their ability to seal the gospel promises unto us.

Our confessions teach that sacraments are “visible signs and seals of something internal and invisible” (Belgic Confession Article 33), they help us understand the promise of the gospel and seal that promise (Heidelberg Catechism 66). In my experience, it’s pretty easy to grasp the “sign” aspect of the sacraments. They are pictures of God’s gospel: the washing away of our sins in baptism by the blood of Christ, the broken body, and the shed blood in the supper portray the work of the cross.

But sealing is another matter. I think the key to understanding the sealing function of the sacraments is their particularity. The preaching of the gospel is general; it is heard far and wide. Anyone can hear it, a passerby on the street (if the church door or windows are open), or a family visitor or guest attending a relative’s baptism. 

In contrast, the sacraments are particular — they literally touch particular individuals. They come in physical contact only with those covenant members who properly receive them from the hands of Christ’s ministers. The sacraments thus discriminate, and the ministers of the church are called upon to apply the discriminatory criteria of Christ our Lord in determining who should receive them. Herein lies the sealing function of the sacraments.

When you receive a sacrament — most frequently the Lord’s Supper, but also one’s own baptism, even if primarily in the recollection of the thing — you are receiving not only the elements themselves but also the pledge and blessing of the church. The sacramental recipient is told through the rite that he is a member of Christ, a member in good standing of the covenant community. 

Do you ever doubt the gospel? Of course. Do you ever doubt that the preached word applies to you? Perhaps. Can it really be true? Can the Father really love me that much, would he, if he knew my darkest sins? 

The sacraments come to us in all their particularity and tell us “this gospel is true of you, this spiritual reality has touched even you.” That is the sealing function of the sacraments. They function like an embossed seal on a birth certificate that ensures that it is an official government document, which proves that this piece of paper has come in contact with a certain government official, namely, the one who wields the seal and has authority to make the document official. Thus, the gospel touches us, is authenticated in us, in the sealing of the sacraments.

That is a beautiful, profound, and comforting truth. God knows the weakness of our faith and gives sacraments as crutches to support it.

Do you see now how the sealing function depends in large part upon the faithful exercise of discipline in the church? The ministers of Christ church administer the sacraments faithfully, and in a trustworthy fashion, only insofar as the church exhibits the mark of discipline. For their application of the sacrament to this sinner to truly seal the sacramental blessing it is necessary that they know that this sinner has been born in a covenant home (in the case of baptism), or has made a credible profession of faith and is living as a repentant sinner in the sure hope the grace of Christ (in the case of the supper).

In other words, for the sacrament to seal, discipline and discipling must be taking place in the church. So in our Reformed understanding, the ordinary fencing of the table is an essential element of a well-disciplined church, and it is important for the sacraments to accomplish their aim. Also, the extreme sanction of discipline — exclusion from the supper and even excommunication — is to the benefit of both the unrepentant sinner and of those who come faithfully to the supper. They thus know the pledge of the church concerning their faith is sincere. We may have healthy disagreements about how we fence the table, but Reformed churches must remain committed to doing so.

Conclusion: The Virtuous Cycle of Word, Sacrament, Discipline

When the promises of the gospel are sacramentally sealed to sinners on a regular basis — and when this sealing function is empowered by the faithful discipline of the church — sinners are in a much better position to regularly confront and repent of sins, both their sins and the sins of other. They know they are sinner-saints, covered by the blood of Jesus, and grow in this confidence. The word preached resonates more strongly. Thus our Lord’s Supper form says, 

“As the Word has promised us God’s favor, so also our heavenly Father has added this confirmation of His unchangeable promise. So come, believing sinners, for the Table is ready. “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” ”

— URCNA Forms and Prayers, “Celebration of the Lord’s Supper: Short Form 1”

The promises proclaimed by the word preached are confirmed by the sacrament and applied in our lives by both private and public discipline. Forgiveness is heard, felt, and experienced. It is given and received, first from God in Christ, and then among the members within his body.

Our flocks should be encouraged to practice discipline by confronting offenses from a brother, by repenting when confronted, and by forgiving one another. This is a mark which they, as much as the officers of the church, must pursue in their daily lives. Would that the Lord would give us the grace to practice this kind of discipline in our churches. Then our churches would truly be distinctively places where the Gospel is known, through this most distinctive mark.

Election Day and The Lesser of Two Weevils

Four years ago, when many Christians were first considering whether or how they could justify voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, I wrote an article at The Federalist addressing the vote: “9 Reasons Christians Don’t Need to Vote for the Lesser of Evils.” I revisited that article this week, given the considerable back and forth over John Piper’s recent article on the 2020 election: “Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin.”

What obligations do Christians have in the voting booth?

A common assumption behind all of these arguments is that Christians have a duty to vote, and that the failure to exercise this duty makes one responsible for the results. Not voting, or voting for a third-party candidate, is morally equivalent to positively voting for the other team. (Footnote: Christians in Germany could have stopped Hitler’s rise if they weren’t so submissive.)

This argument fails to grasp that the morality of a Christian’s vote is upstream of “Clinton versus Trump.” While the New Testament doesn’t directly address the question of how a Christian should vote, it does nonetheless present a uniquely Christian approach to civic engagement. Over the coming weeks, as we make our long, slow march to the polls, Christians should take this opportunity to reflect upon their unique callings in this world, and the deeper meaning and morality of the act of voting.

To wit, here are a few theological reflections on Christian duty at the ballot box, and why we need not vote for the lesser of evils.

This article isn’t a rejoinder to Piper, nor is it an affirmation of his views. But I do think it is interesting to see two different approaches to Christians and the state and our engagement in politics.

One key difference is perhaps a different view of Christian Liberty:

As a pastor, I often emphasize this “Christian liberty” in matters where God’s word is silent, such as voting. Christians are free to wrestle with their consciences in this matter, yet as a minister of God’s word, I have no authority to bind their conscience, other than to urge them to walk in love, which “does no wrong.”

Christian liberty keeps us humble. It reminds us there isn’t necessarily a proper “Christian way” to do everything. Our duties as followers of Christ are specific, limited, and mostly local. Very often, the way of love is the way of not doing harm.

Christian leaders should recapture the humility and wisdom of Christian liberty before they give counsel on how to vote.

God calls us to faithfulness as citizens, but our primary duty is submitting to those rulers God puts in charge. All authority is from him. This should be a great comfort as we face the great unknowns of the coming days (and weeks?):

The Bible tells us God used revolutions, poisonous mushrooms, and loyal secretaries to get his man (or woman) in office. The Apostle Paul wrote to Christians living in the eternal city during Nero’s reign, telling them that “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”

God is in charge. Today in America, he uses votes. It might seem more civilized to us, but it is no different. The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

God is in charge. Praise God.

(You can read the entire article at The Federalist.)

On a lighter note, the “lesser of two evils” always reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite literary works, Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Maturin series of novels (which was well-captured on screen in the movie, Master and Commander):

“Two weevils crept from the crumbs. 'You see those weevils, Stephen?' said Jack solemnly.
I do.'
Which would you choose?'
There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.'
But suppose you had to choose?'
Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.'
There I have you,' cried Jack. 'You are bit - you are completely dished. Don't you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Whether in the British Navy, or in the voting booth, remember that you need not always choose the lesser of two weevils.

Celebrating Reformation Day: The Affair of the Sausages

Reformation Day is traditionally celebrated on October 31st, marking the date in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed the “95 Theses” on the door of the church in Wittenburg, sparking a theological debate that continues to this day.

Luther was most influential due to the way that his ideas spurred many diverse reform movements across Europe, including that of Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich. A number of years ago I wrote about Zwingli’s initial reforms as it related to the observation of Lent:

Ironically, it was the preaching of Martin Luther that inspired one of the most famous incidents of Lenten non-observance, almost 500 years ago. In 1522, the “Affair of the Sausages” launched the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland. Huldrych Zwingli, Pastor in Zurich, attended and later defended, even blessed, a Lenten feast of meaty sausages, verboten vittles during the obligatory fast.

Zwingli’s concern was twofold: Christian liberty, and Christian sanctification. Regarding liberty, since the Scriptures did not command fasting, Zwingli felt a Christian was free to fast, or free to not fast.

Jesus himself had declared all foods to be clean: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him” (Mark 7:18). For a church to forbid the eating of foods without biblical warrant was to play the Pharisee, to lay a burden upon a man’s conscience that God himself had not commanded. This would be in direct violation of Paul’s injunction to “let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Colossians 2:16).

Through the rediscovery of the Gospel, Luther and company reminded the church of the great blessings of Christian Liberty. Freed from obedience to the Law as a source of righteousness, believers are no longer bound to observe the regulations of man to attain righteousness before God. Christ alone is the true source of our righteousness before the divine throne, his obedience alone — credited to our account by faith alone — passes muster before the divine bar. As a result, our only comfort in life and death is based upon the fact that Jesus has paid for all our sins with his precious blood.

Christian liberty doesn’t mean we are free to live as libertines. It means that because Christ has satisfied God’s justice for us, we are now free to love others as he has loved us:

Christians are called to suffer as Christ suffered, that is, with the same purpose. We are called to suffer not for ourselves, but for others. When we engage in fasting in his image, but for the purpose of purifying ourselves, we invert that image. Such penitence is ultimately focused on self, not on the other.

Jesus’s passion was an act of love for us: “We love, because he first loved us.” We needn’t invent any obligation not laid upon us by the Lord, who summarized all the Law and Prophets (and ceremonies and fasts) of the Old Testament with this simple command: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” The most powerful reminders and signs and seals of that love, are the ones Jesus gave us: The preaching of Christ crucified, and the water and bread and wine of his holy sacraments.

Reformation Day is a day to remember these gospel truths with the Protestant Reformation clarified and called forth again to the forefront of the church’s consciousness.

Happy Reformation Day!

(You can read the full article at The Federalist, where it originally appeared: “Repent of Lent: How Spiritual Disciplines Can Be Bad for Your Soul.”)

Our Trouble With Submission: Grace Community Church

This article was originally published in Christian Renewal Magazine.

The Case of Grace Community Church

Much has already been said about the decision of Grace Community Church (GCC) and Pastor John MacArthur to defy the state’s COVID decrees by gathering indoors for public worship. I’d like to try to say something different about this issue, something that I hope constructively adds to this conversation. (In Part II of this article, I’ll follow up by addressing a few of the more practical issues related to COVID and worship)

First, quick background. After about twenty weeks of obeying California COVID ordinances against large indoor public gatherings, GCC announced that they would once again begin meeting in person, which they did in August. GCC is a large mega-church, with weekly worship numbering in the thousands. Legal action has ensued, including threats of fines and imprisonment from Los Angeles County health board. A judge has preliminarily ruled that the church may gather without threat, but a full hearing is still in the future. 

The question arising from this situation is whether and when a church should disobey the edicts of the state? Per Romans 13, obedience to the civil ruler is a good thing. Yet virtually every Christian agrees that we must obey God rather than man, and that there is a line which, when crossed, compels the believer to disobey. 

The difficulty comes in discerning where that that line lies. The vast majority of commentary on this issue in the COVID era has dived into the various details of how we much flexibility we should exhibit in our worship in an effort to remain compliant with the edicts of the state, while still fulfilling our mission as a worshiping body of Christ.

Here is where I want to depart from that well worn path and pursue the matter from a different perspective.

The Biblical Case for Submission

Submission is hard. 

The first sin in the Garden comes down to “Has God really said?” What did he really say, and what do you really have to do, especially when you’re really hungry and the fruit looks so delicious. Should you follow your heart, or God’s commands? 

When God sought to replant his people in the garden a second time — a land flowing with milk and honey — one of their biggest problems was their incessant tendency to grumble. I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. Are we there yet? Who does Moses think he is? Obedience to Joshua and the Judges wasn’t much easier, and it was these same people who of all things cried out for a King. And it went downhill from there. 

Paul’s teaching on submission to the civil authorities in Romans 13 is not in the context of relative peace and calm. Recall that five times he had received from the Jews the forty lashes less one. It was, in short, not an uncommon occurrence for him to be beaten within an inch of his life, and even if the Jews weren’t in a formal position of authority over him in the Roman empire, that empire had permitted such ruthless behavior and given Paul little protection. 

In Romans 12, Paul reminds us to “Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them.” Further, never be wise in your own sight. Do what is honorable in the eyes of all. So far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. 

Note for a moment what a radical departure this is from the mission statement of the nation of Israel, who was to take the land by force, utterly destroy their persecutors, and reflect God’s holy dominion in their rule of that land on the battlefield. Paul’s turn in Romans 13 is a radical reorientation for the people of God around the heavenly kingdom that has come in the death and resurrection of their Messiah. Now they were not to occupy a physical territory between the river and sea, but to go forth and bring the blessings of a spiritual kingdom wherever they might dwell.

And this kingdom was not to have a revolutionary impact on the societies in which it dwelt. Do you remember the line in Acts 17:6 “These men have who have upset the world have come here also?” That was a slander of the Jews spoken against Paul and Silas, blaming the Christians for the riot they had started. 

Against this backdrop, Paul writes one of the most difficult commands in the New Testament: Bless those who persecute you. And further, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities… for those that exist have been instituted by God.” God has established the Los Angeles City Council, Governor Newsome, the Health Board. Just as much as he has instituted Nero, the vicious persecutor of the church. Just as he instituted Pilate, and the soldiers who drove the nails into Christ’s hands and feet. 

Be subject to the governing authorities. Not just the good ones. Not just the fair ones, not only the ones who share your estimation of the danger of the novel coronavirus. 

The problem isn’t that most authorities are on balance quite good and every once and awhile we have to put up with a stinker. No. Every individual that has ever been in a position of authority over another human being has always been a sinner. And while some may on occasion be good, many are unjust. This is why our catechism tells us to “be patient with their failings” in its teaching on the fifth commandment (Heidelberg Catechism 104). This is in the spirit of Peter, “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust” (1 Peter 2:18).

Submission is hard, especially submission to foolish and unjust rulers. But we’re not given a hall pass for the difficult situations. We are not commanded to submit when it’s easy, or when it makes sense, or when the rulers are doing the proper thing. We are commanded to submit. There is of course the exception of Acts 5:29 — “We must obey God rather than man.” In context, we must preach the gospel, rather than be silent. But notice that Paul doesn’t articulate an exception in Romans 13. 

Our Trouble With Submission

America’s original sin is rebellion. No matter how justified you might believe the American Revolution was, it ultimately comes down to the claim that the authority of the King was unjust, and therefore was no longer worthy of submitting to. But Peter commands Christians to be subject to unjust masters. 

The modern spirit of freedom is expressed politically in the American Revolution, and it now infests us all. It is the air we breath. Our freedoms are sacred to us — interesting expression, no? — and we don’t question the regular need to rebel. Compounded with radical individualism and deep suspicion of institutions of all shapes and sizes, and the result is that the modern believer has a chronic problem of rebellion. 

Spiritual rebellion may be an unfortunate byproduct of political freedom.

Consider the matter of submission to Christ’s lawful authority expressed in the local church. In every single new member’s class and membership interview I have ever sat in, every single believer has agreed with the principle that Christ exercises his authority in the local church through elders and ministers. They have all agreed in their membership vows to “submit to the admonition and discipline of the government of the church.” 

Yet, if you ask elders how regularly members submit cheerfully to their admonition and discipline when it is needed, I’m sure you would get a consistent reply. Rarely, if ever. The church’s authority is good and fine, until it tells me something I don’t want to hear. Has God really said? Well, maybe, but the fruit looks so tasty and I’m so hungry. Surely he didn’t want me to starve and eat the same thing every day. 

Submission is hard, and I believe it is even harder for us today. Culturally and politically we live in a moment where individual freedom is celebrated. And it hasn’t generally made us more faithful Christians. 

Submission: A Teaching Moment and Practical Reflections

I have argued above that this situation is an opportunity for us to revisit the difficult issue of submission. Since we in the modern west hold our personal freedoms as sacred, it is difficult for us to hear the clear teaching of Scripture about submitting to God’s authority, whether in the home, the church, or the civil sphere. While there are limits to the state’s authority, it is my view that GCC has significantly lowered that bar for the sake of convenience. Furthermore, with much future state interference and opposition on the horizon, now is the time for us to raise the bar, and think in fresh ways about the importance of our witness to a watching world, that we might do what is honorable in the eyes of all and live peaceably with all. All. (Romans 12:17 – 18).

What follows are a few more practical suggestions on how the church might proceed in these perilous times.

God calls us to submit to his will in the church, the home, and the civil sphere. How shall we expect Christians to submit to their God-given authority in the home or in their local church when the local church doesn’t submit to their God-given authority in the state? In Romans 13, Paul is adamant on this point:

For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Romans 13:1 – 2)

So, what shall we then do? 

Should we expect our rulers in the state to appreciate the essential nature of Christian worship, and privilege it as highly as the procurement of food from the grocer or medicine from the doctor? Of course not. The civil ruler, though given by God, is ignorant of the things of God. They are not merely naïve, but oppositional by definition to the concerns of the spirit, as opposed to the body. They have expressly by God been given care of our bodies, and that is precisely why they seek to exercise such dominion over them.

So we should not expect favor from the state, but rather, persecution, implicit and explicit. We should expect them to place burdens, not benefits, upon our worship. And yet as Paul says, while being persecuted we should bless them, and seek to live peaceably among them, while endeavoring to worship faithfully as foreigners in this strange land. I doubt Daniel expected that the other Babylonian satraps, prefects, and governors would respect his sacred diet, daily prayers, or his abstinence from idolatry. Yet he remained steadfast when necessary to obey God rather than man, and stood ready to either receive the punishment the Babylon dished out, or be miraculously delivered from it.

How does this relate to GCC and John MacArthur? I believe our bar should be very high for defying an order of the state. Here are four practical reflections on how to set and navigate this high bar

How Shall We Worship?

It is not in fact clear to me that by prohibiting large indoor gatherings the state of California was prohibiting GCC from worshiping, per se. It is true that the church may have not been treated equitably in the eyes of the law, and they should pursue justice on that front. But many other churches have adapted to the circumstances by conducting worship in person outdoors, in smaller home groups, or other permitted methods . I understand that such accommodations place a huge burden on the business model of a mega church which regularly gathers thousands inside an indoor auditorium. Yet, Paul doesn’t say “submit to the authority when it is convenient.” He says submit. 

There is a different way forward. Due to prohibitions in the District of Columbia, Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) has decided to worship outdoors at an alternate location and time. They are meeting on Sunday evenings at a sister church in Alexandria, Virginia. This is approximately a thirty minute drive away from their historic church building on Capitol Hill, and a tremendous burden on their membership and leadership. Doubtless it involves great sacrifices. Yet these sacrifices are a powerful witness to their desire to live peaceably — and healthfully — with their neighbors outside the church, and gives great respect and honor to the authorities God has placed over them, even when it may not seem warranted. This orderly submission has not kept them from petitioning government officials vigorously for the freedom to worship together on Sunday morning, and indeed has perhaps given those petitions a better chance of being heard in a positive light.

Perhaps we should be more willing to rethink our methods of gathering, and in particular, the challenges that large mega churches will face. Open air services, micro in-home services, breaking large churches into regional or neighborhood gatherings. Maybe we should pursue smaller congregations in principle to be more neighbor-friendly and live more peaceably with our communities. GCC’s action seems to condemn all of these alternatives as less than faithful. 

I do not believe that Christians must stand by idly while the freedoms we possess in the west are eroded. We should, like Paul, us the law of the land and the courts to defend the privileges we possess as citizens, while preserving honor and respect for the state as God’s servant. But we must also recognize that privileges will indeed likely be lost, and learn how to worship faithfully under a more restrictive regime, even as many of our sister churches around the globe worship faithfully today.

When Should the State Be Defied?

The GCC statement defending its actions argues that Romans 13 “does not include compliance when such officials attempt to subvert sound doctrine, corrupt biblical morality, exercise ecclesiastical authority, or supplant Christ as head of the church in any other way.” This, to me, seems to set the bar way too low for when the state may be defied. I expect most governments to behave this way most if not all the time, especially with regard to “corrupting biblical morality.” When Paul wrote these words, he clearly was mindful that the civil authorities God had placed over him were bound to corrupt biblical morality on a daily basis. Yet he does not qualify his command to submit. This is why the Heidelberg Catechism tells us to be “patient with their failings.” Patience means we submit, if possible, even when they fail..

The church should never cede doctrinal or ecclesiastical authority to the state. But the standard for open defiance of a state edict must be more than attempted interference or burdening of worship. The church must defy any edict that directly conflicts with God’s law. GCC hasn’t demonstrated that is the case in California.

GCC submitted to the ordinance for 20 weeks, and then insisted that in principle it could do so no longer. It then gave public notice that it was going to defy the order, without any clear evidence that they have petitioned the state in any way for relief from these burdens. Why not conduct a lawful and orderly appeal of the state to the fullest extent possible, before pursuing civil disobedience? Further, if the burden could be borne for 20 weeks, why not 21? Why was there a limit to the duration to which they were willing to submit? Does Scripture give us a statute of limitations on Romans 13?

Finally, GCC argues that the passage of time has demonstrated that fears about coronavirus were unfounded, and it is precisely here that I fear that GCC has overstepped its spiritual boundaries and transgressed in the domain of the state. It is the state which God gives authority over our physical well being, and I am not aware of the Scriptures — the sole basis for the church’s authority — giving any clear advice on the lethality of viral infections, or appropriate public policy responses to them. Yet GCC has reached such a determination, and stands in judgment over the state on that matter. 

To be clear on this final point, citizens are free to question the edicts of the state — perhaps especially emergency edicts for the supposed welfare of the citizens. We are free to question the supposed scientific and medical underpinnings of these edicts. But this is not the expertise — nor the authority — which the church possesses, and when she holds forth as a body on such determinations, she sets herself up for public embarrassment. This has the potential of damaging our gospel witness.

Conclusion

In the coming years, the church will increasingly find itself out of favor with the governing authorities in the western world. Historic privileges will be revoked. Courtesies will be withdrawn. We will revert to a state a lot closer to Rome under Nero than America under Reagan.

How shall we then live? How shall we demonstrate our care for neighbor, our desire to live peaceably? I have not explored in this article the many ways in which the church’s gospel witness may be harmed by wrongheaded civil disobedience. How may the gospel be set back when a church spreads infection, as occurred early on during COVID outbreak in South Korea? How may our love for neighbor be doubted with the unnecessary suffering or death of even a handful of visitors to our gatherings?

This is not about the true health danger of COVID. Individual opinions may and should be allowed to vary greatly, in the light of Christian liberty, and our individual behavior as believers may vary widely as well. My own opinions are far from accepted wisdom.

But the church as an organized expression of the body of Christ is not ultimately tasked with determining risks of transmitting infectious disease. We are tasked with preaching the gospel, and obeying our civil authorities as far as possible. This, it turns out, is a much more difficult task. 

Submission is hard. 

The Form for the Ordination of Ministers of Word and Sacrament

We are a liturgical church, in keeping with our Dutch Reformed tradition. In this post, we continue our series of blog entries providing commentary on the United Reformed Church’s liturgical forms contained in our Book of Forms and Prayers. All of these forms, including the form for the Ordination (or Installation) of Ministers of Word and Sacrament, can be found online at formsandprayers.com.

Ordination of Ministers is an essential work of the church, and this liturgical form, though infrequently used, contains a rich vein of instruction for Christ’s church. It is a valuable practice for the congregation to read through this form before an ordination service, that they might benefit all the more from the instruction they will receive during the ordination service.

Congregation of Jesus Christ, the Council has made known to you the name of our brother _________, who is now to be ordained to the ministry of the Word and sacraments (or: installed in the ministry to which he has been called).

The form begins by naming the “brother” to be ordained, because the United Reformed Churches of North America (URCNA), in keeping with the teaching of the word of God and the ancient practice of the Christian church, ordain only men to the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament. This is far from a universal practice today and definitely founded upon counter-cultural claims God’s work makes about the very nature of God’s creation and our humanity. God’s word clearly teaches that we are created “in the image of God,” “male and female.” Men and women thus equally reflect the image of God, and share in equality of nature (Genesis 1:26-27), but not without a diversity of callings and roles that is taught throughout scripture.

It is far outside the scope of this blog post to fully address the many issues related to gender, but it is important to reflect on how these issues are reflected in a church’s practice and teaching about ordination. It is important to note that the biblical teaching about the ordination of ministers throughout teaches that men are uniquely called to this office, and the bible furthermore teaches that this diversity of callings within the church is grounded in the creation order itself (1 Timothy 2:8-15). While many women played a crucial role ministering to the Lord during his earthly ministry (Mark 15:41) and served as the first witnesses to the resurrection (Mark 16:7), Christ called twelve men to serve as his Apostles (Mark 3:13-14). Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy clarifies that this is not merely due to the cultural biases of his time, but is grounded in the creation order itself.

While many in our age may disagree strongly with our practice, we are convinced that we must submit to the clear teaching of the Word of God on this matter. Furthermore, we should not abandon lightly this teaching of Christ and the Apostles which has been the longstanding practice of the church.

Note that a minister is only “ordained” once. When he takes up the office of Minister in a new church, he is “installed” in that office. This form is used for both of those services.

The Holy Scriptures teach us that Christ Jesus gathers, protects, and preserves for Himself a church out of the corrupt race of men for life eternal and gives to His church such teaching and care that she may grow in faith, love, and service. For this work, Christ, by a particular grace, uses men, appointing them to the preaching of the gospel and for the building up of His body. The apostle Paul solemnly charged Timothy to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2), and our Lord Jesus charged His disciples to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). The apostle Paul declares that the Lord Jesus Christ has given “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-12). For this reason, the church has recognized the distinct office of the minister of the Word.

The work of ordination is the work of Christ himself. It is his work of growing and building the church, which is uniquely the place of his saving activity in this fallen world. So our understanding of ordination is first grounded upon our understanding of the church itself. For a fuller appreciation of what we confess about the church, see our Belgic Confession, Articles 27 – 35).

A man may not and cannot set himself apart from this work. Because ordination is Christ’s work, it is not merely the work or credential of the man being ordained. Rather, Christ is through the church making a “solemn approval of and attestation to a man’s inward call, his gifts, and his calling by the church” (Book of Order, XX.2, Orthodox Presbyterian Church).

The URCNA, along with most Reformed churches which had their roots in continental Europe, understand the Minister of the Word to be a distinct office from Elder, as opposed to a “Teaching Elder” that is a subset of this office. While this is not a major difference, it is reflected in our form.

The minister of the Word is called by the command of God to preach the gospel of His kingdom. This preaching has the twofold object of calling sinners to reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ and nurturing believers in the faith and life of the kingdom of God. Ministers are called “ambassadors for Christ,” as though He were pleading by them, “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). Therefore, this preaching must be addressed to all people. The preaching of the gospel must especially be addressed to the gathered congregation for the nurturing of Christian faith and life and for strengthening them against all error. Paul charged Timothy “in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus …: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:1-2). And he charged Titus that a minister “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). The minister of the Word is called to administer the sacraments which the Lord has instituted as signs and seals of His grace. Christ gave this charge to His apostles, and through them to all ministers of the Word, when He commanded them to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19), and when He said of the Lord’s Supper: “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24-25). The minister of the Word is called to the service of prayer. In speaking of their calling, the apostles say, “We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). So, too, it is the calling of all God’s ministers to lead the people of God in “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings … for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions” (1 Tim. 2:1-2).

The first calling of the minister is to preach to the gospel of the Kingdom, which has a twofold object. The minister must address sinners outside the church, calling them to faith in Christ and reconciliation with God. Further, the minister must nurture believers In their faith and life in the Kingdom.

As suggested by the title of this office, “Minister of Word and Sacrament,” the minister is also called to administer the sacraments. The Apostles were commanded to baptize and to “do this in remembrance of me” with regard to the Lord’s Supper. John Calvin called the sacraments “a visible word,” and their administration is the special charge of the minister because the sacraments depend upon the preaching of the word. They cannot be celebrated apart from the ministry of the word, and the proper celebration of the sacraments entails the instruction of the Word. They are Christ’s sacraments, and therefore, to be administered by his ministers.

Finally, the minister is called to prayer. This includes both prayer for God’s people and the leading of prayer with God’s people. The pastoral prayer, though sadly a fading practice in the Christian church, is a crucial ministry of Christ among his people here at Christ Reformed Church.

The minister of the Word is called, together with the elders, to shepherd the people of God in their Christian life, giving guidance and counsel in all that they need, exhorting them to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and keeping the church of God in good order and discipline. They are pastors, appointed to shepherd the church of Christ, which He purchased with His own blood, in keeping with the Lord’s command: “Feed my lambs.… Feed my sheep” (John 21:15,17). They, together with the elders, watch over the house of God for the right and fruitful ordering of the faith and life and worship of the people of God. In their exercise of the keys of the kingdom, what they “bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” and what they “loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 18:18).

While all believers have a duty and obligation to care for one another in the church, the body of Christ, ministers along with elders have a special obligation to do so. They must know their sheep, their needs, their burdens, their weaknesses, so they may care for them faithfully. They also exercise the keys of the kingdom, with discipline being one of the marks of the church (Belgic Confession, Article 29). When the minster spreads the Lord’s table for a member of Christ’s church, he is publicly affirming that this individual believer is, according to their known doctrine and life, a child of God and a member of the body of Christ.

At this point, the Ordination Form provides different paragraphs for different offices unto which ministers may be ordained:

1. As a pastor of an established congregation

2. A foreign missionary

3. A home missionary (or church planter)

4. A teacher of theology (in a theological school or seminary)

5. Someone called to another task, such as a chaplaincy

Here we will look at the portion of the form dealing with a man called to pastor an established congregation.

We now proceed to ordain [or: install] brother _______ as a minister of the Word and sacraments in this congregation. We rejoice that the Lord Jesus, in His faithful love, has provided a minister to serve as pastor and teacher to this people, and also as their leader in the missionary calling of this church. We receive this servant of our Lord from the hand and heart of the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. We are grateful that our Savior has committed preaching, teaching, and pastoral care to the office of the minister of the Word, and that He will continue to use sinful men for such high and holy purposes until the day of His return.

No one is able to fulfill this holy ministry in his own strength; therefore, we set our hope on Jesus Christ our Lord, who said: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

I love how we are reminded yet again that the minister is received “from the hand and heart of the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls.” Furthermore, ministers are sinful men. Their ordination does not reflect superhuman piety or gifting. They are members of the body of Christ, like every other believer, but they have been called and set apart for a special task. Ministers are like the Levites in the Old Testament, who didn’t receive an inheritance in the land — that is, a common calling of farming and laboring in the world — but rather were set apart to guard and keep the temple and worship of the Lord.

Now, in order that it may appear that you, ______, are willing to accept this office, you are requested to stand, and in the presence of God and His church give your answer to the following questions:

1. Do you believe that in the call of this congregation you are called by God Himself to this holy ministry?

2. Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and do you reject every doctrine in conflict with them?

3. Do you promise to discharge the duties of your office faithfully, to conduct yourself worthily of this calling, and to submit yourself to the government and discipline of the church?

Answer: I do so believe and promise, God helping me.

The ordinand here publicly testifies of their personal agreement with the call of God in and through the call of the congregation. In speaking of the call to ministry, we distinguish between the subjective call and the objective call. A minister’s call isn’t merely a feeling he has of a personal purpose and opinion of his own gifts. Indeed, a call isn’t real until it is received “in the call of the congregation.”

Furthermore, the ordinand indicates their agreement with God’s word and rejects all doctrines in conflict with them. URCNA Church Order Article 6 makes clear that at this point in the service, “before the laying on of hands,” the ordinand is to sign the Form of Subscription. Those who sign the Form of Subscription not only commit to teach and defend the doctrine of Scripture and the confessions, they also commit themselves to reject all errors that militate against it. This includes admitting to one’s elders any disagreements with the church’s doctrine which may arise at any time and submitting honestly to the review of the church.

The officiating minister shall then say (in the case of ordination: with the ceremony of the laying on of hands, other ministers present participating):

May God, our heavenly Father, who has called you to this holy office, enlighten you with His Spirit, strengthen you with His hand, and so govern you in your ministry that you may be engaged in it faithfully and fruitfully, to the glory of His name and the coming of the kingdom of His Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The laying on of hands is not a magical act that transfers power from one individual to another. It is an apostolic practice that symbolizes that the ordination comes not from Christ through his ministers (Acts 6:6,13:3, 1 Timothy 4:14,5:12). Christ’s servants, the ministers in the church, express their agreement and approval of this call, and the qualifications and gifts necessary to fulfill the call. This is why Paul instructs us to “not be hasty” in this act. Furthermore, it reflects the fact that Christ himself is calling this man to ministry through the entirety of the visible church, especially when visiting ministers and elders from other churches are able to participate in the act.

The officiating minister shall address the congregation:

Dear people of God and members of this church, since this solemn act involves obligations also on your part, I ask you before God:

1. Do you, in the name of the Lord, welcome this brother as your pastor?

2. Do you promise to receive the Word of God proclaimed by him and to encourage him in the discharge of his duty?

3. Will you pray that he may, in the power of the Spirit, equip you in the work of advancing God’s kingdom for the honor of Christ our Lord, the building up of His church, and the salvation of men?

To these questions, what is your answer?

Answer: We do, God helping us.

The local congregation has a role to play in the ordination of the minister as well and takes vows to fulfill this work. They will welcome him as their pastor, receive God’s word proclaimed by him, encourage him, and pray for him. Our Church Order stipulates that the Council of the local church can only call a man after having received the advice of the congregation, who therefore plays a crucial role in the selection of their pastor. Classis, the regional body, also plays a role, having examined those who become candidates for a call.

After the completion of the vows, an elder or minister issues a charge to the minister:

Beloved brother and fellow servant in Christ, take heed to yourself and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you a guardian, to feed the church of the Lord which He obtained with His own blood. Love Christ and feed His sheep, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, and not domineering over those in your charge, but humbly serving all. Set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Attend to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching, and to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have. Take heed to your teaching. Be patient in all trials. Be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will obtain the unfading crown of glory.

The ordination service is not only a milestone in the life of the church, it is a milestone in the life of the minister. It is his ministerial birthday. The charge impresses the significance of the call of Christ upon the new minister, echoing much of the language we see in Paul’s letters to Timothy.

It is followed by a corresponding charge to the congregation:

And you, beloved Christians, receive your minister in the Lord with all joy, and hold him in honor. Remember that through him God Himself speaks to you. Receive the Word that he, according to the Scripture, shall preach to you, not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the Word of God. Let the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, and bring the good news, be beautiful and pleasant to you. “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Heb. 13:17). If you do these things, the God of peace shall enter your homes. You who receive this man in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet’s reward, and through faith in Jesus Christ, the inheritance of eternal life.

Moderns Christians, and particularly Modern American Christians, are rugged individualists. We don’t take well to authority. The charge reminds us that, while Christ’s yoke is easy, and his burden is light — it is still a yoke. The Heidelberg Catechism’s teaching on the fifth commandment reminds us that we are to bear patiently with the failings of those God puts in authority over us (Heidelberg Catechism, 104).

Finally, the form closes by calling on God in prayer, which includes a congregational recitation of the Lord’s prayer.

No man is of himself sufficient for these things. Let us call upon the name of God:

Merciful Father, we are thankful that it pleases You by the ministry of men to gather Your church out of the lost human race to life eternal. We acknowledge the gift of this, Your servant, sent to this people as a messenger of Your peace. Send now the Holy Spirit upon him. Enlighten his mind to know the truth of Your Word. Give him the ability to make known the mystery of the gospel with boldness. Grant him the wisdom to care for and guide the people over whom he is placed. Through his ministry, build up Your holy church, and grant her increase in number and in virtue. Give Your servant courage through Your Spirit to fulfill his calling against every difficulty and to be steadfast to the end. We pray that this people will receive him as having been sent by You. May they receive his teaching and exhortation with all reverence, and believing in Christ through his word become partakers of eternal life. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for the sake of Your dear Son, in whose name we pray:

The congregation shall say:

Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.

Almost all of our liturgical forms close in prayer. Many believers today don’t appreciate the value of form prayers, but they are an important part of our Reformed tradition, and our book of forms and prayers is full of them. There are prayers for use in corporate worship and for personal use in the home. I commend these prayers to you, as they are a rich vein of instruction, and using them with regularity can deepen and strengthen our own prayer life, not to mention serve as excellent training for when we are called upon to pray in public.

Conclusion

Congratulations if you are still reading! The Form for the Ordination of a Minister is not a brief or an insignificant affair. I like to think of our liturgical forms as topical sermons, and it is wise to preach a shorter sermon on this occasion that merely complements the material contained in the form.

The form’s length and the instruction contained in it reflect the centrality of the church and the ministry of word and sacrament in the Reformed tradition. The ordination of a man to this ministry is a great celebration in the life of the church, and a momentous occasion in the life of the minister. It is not to be taken lightly.

Christian Meditation

On June 24, we launched a new Wednesday Night study through Christian Meditation, by Edmund Clowney. This study follows on our recent in-depth study of Psalm 119, and compares and contrasts the biblical call to “meditate day and night” on the law of God (Psalm 1).

Clowney introduces his study by explaining to us how transcendental meditation and eastern religious and philosophical thought are a challenge to the Christian church. The book was first published in 1977, when eastern religious thought and meditation in particular were somewhat new on the American scene. As a result, the language he uses to describe meditation might seem somewhat dated. But the concepts he addresses are as timely as when Clowney wrote, especially in our age when meditation has morphed into “mindfulness” and become a widely adopted strategy for healthy living.

The strength of Clowney’s book is in recognizing that properly understood, meditation as contemplation is fundamental to biblical faith. He charts three vectors on which Christian meditation differs from its Eastern imposter: truth, love, and praise.

Christian meditation is grounded in the truth of God… it responds to the love of God… The truth and love of God lead us to worship him; Christian meditation is an exercise in praise.

CHRISTIAN MEDITATION, P. 12

This is a short book of under 100 pages, but by developing our understanding of Christian meditation, it helps us to engage more fruitfully with the great book of meditation and praise found at the center of our Bibles: The Psalter. As a Reformed church deeply anchored in the Christian tradition of psalm singing and committed to giving the psalms the primary place in our sung worship, we are looking forward to spending time with Edmund Clowney’s book.

Our Wednesday study meets at 7:00 pm in an elder’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. We also welcome participation via Skype for those members of our community who may not be able to join us in person.

Intermittent Fasting in the COVID Era?

Originally featured on Modern Reformation on May 12, 2020.

In A Shepherd’s Life, real-world shepherd James Rebanks tells of the real-world value of the shepherd’s crook, a vital tool in caring for real-world sheep. The crook remains the best tool to catch a sheep and enables the Shepherd to draw skittish sheep near so he can care for them.

How shall spiritual shepherds guide their flocks when God’s common grace shepherds — doctors and presidents — enforce isolation and distance, real absence, upon God’s people? How can we shepherd when our crook is broken?

There are a few ingredients necessary to begin to make an answer at this question: honesty, context, and the means of grace.

Honesty

First, I think it is essential that we acknowledge that anyone writing pastoral guidance in the seventh week of a radically new circumstance doesn’t really yet know what they are talking about. The world is flying blind with minimal data in the face of the coronavirus, and spiritual leaders are equally ignorant in grappling with its fallout.

Including myself. Full stop.

However, like a true fool, allow me expand on my ignorance.

We must acknowledge that many of our guiding lights from Christian history faced plague and pestilence with less knowledge than we have today. Calvin and countless others often showed great compassion and courage in desiring to visit the plague-stricken. They knew there was personal danger, yet they were willing to entrust their lives into God’s hands for the sake of caring for others. In Calvin’s case, he was prohibited from visiting the sick by the Geneva city council, mindful of this risk to his life and his immense value as a teacher to the church.

But we know a lot more about infectious disease today. We know, for instance, that visiting a sick person during a plague endangers not only the visitor and those she lives with, but also the community. We also know that even visiting a well person poses widespread risk during a pandemic. They too may spread disease. Selfless risks taken by heroes of earlier ages may rightly be judged selfish today. Thus, the Christian minister faces a more widespread distancing and isolation today than ever before, with fewer options. No visitors at deathbeds, no graveside prayers at burials.

So any advice today is a best guess. We must return to first principles, humble ourselves, and be able and willing to learn quickly and adapt.

Context

Before the coronavirus struck we were already living in an age of extraordinary isolation and individualism. That is perhaps the key context we must grapple with.

Before “Alone Together” was the Orwellian motto of government medical experts, it was the title of an important book by Sherry Turkle.

Turkle chronicles the pandemic of isolation that a generation born into a digital world is facing. This book is worth re-visiting today. We are surrounded by ubiquitous communications devices that are designed by the marketplace to give us the stimulating patina of “connection” while further isolating us — and isolating our dollars from our wallets. Sadly, most of those born as “digital natives” prefer electronic communication to face to face conversations.

During this pandemic it has been a commonplace for commentators to worry about the impacts of isolation, but who are we fooling? Our response to this pandemic is merely accelerating what we have been proactively trying to accomplish with technology for the past century.

It is true, isolation flies in the face of fundamental human nature and our longing for physical presence, communication, and contact. But it is not true that it flies in the face of the denatured humanity that increasingly populates our sin-stained world. Digital media gives a whole new meaning to Augustine’s descriptive phrase for sin, “curved in on oneself.” The real danger of enforced isolation is not that it is contrary to our wills, but that it gives us just what we want by nudging us further within.

Case in point: One of the great pastoral challenges of my ministry before the pandemic was scheduling a coffee. Or actually trying to talk with someone on the phone. I know that I often would prefer sending a text or email to picking up the phone, or sitting down with someone, when confronting a touchy issue. Or even when just catching up. It’s so easy. I can check that box, now they know I care. No need to send a thank you note — I gave their text a thumb’s up!

One of my greatest worries about pandemic isolation is that it plays to my sloth, it runs concurrent with the ethos and ease of electronic communication. “Look, I finished all my pastoral visits and I’m still in my pajamas!”

So here’s a practical tip, that also serves as a warning.

One of the first things we did in our small church was assign a deacon or elder to every member of our church. We set a goal of contacting everyone at least once a week and built a shared spreadsheet online for tracking our contacts. But I worry, is it enough? Would a personal visit, perhaps from the front porch, though less frequent, be better?

How would we manage this crisis without technology? How would we manage if it were permanent? Perhaps it would be healthy for us to ask those questions, and seriously consider the old paths before celebrating the victories of the new.

This context makes me worry that even as much as we miss and complain about the loss of public worship, an extended isolation will not in fact make the heart grow fonder for it. It will in fact chisel away bit by bit, mortar from the crumbling façade. It will weaken the tenuous bonds we share with the church, the visible body of Christ on earth.

Means of Grace

Word, Sacrament, and Discipline. These are the old paths, the marks of Christ’s church on earth.

All three of these marks require physical presence. The sacrament anchors this truth, but the preached word as well requires that an assembly of sinners sit still and corporately receive the saving message of God’s envoy, together acknowledging that apart from this grace we are in the same sinking ship. Discipline, in its extreme exercise, is fundamentally exclusion from the sacrament and its shared presence.

I have probably thought more about the means of grace in the last two months than anything else. The two big questions are the flip sides of a coin: “How shall we keep people from them?” and “How shall we bring people to them?”

Reflecting upon our real absence from the means of grace, I was reminded that whatever workaround we can come up with in our human wisdom can’t compare, can’t replace the divine wisdom of the means of grace. They are unique, and irreplaceable.

Like many church leaders, our church initially scrambled to come up with solutions to canceled gatherings on the Lord’s Day. We wrestled with whether to stream the entire liturgy, or just send our members a pre-recorded sermon. We wondered, are people really participating in corporate worship from home, is there true communion of the saints at a distance? I think not. Then why stream a service? Don’t we risk leading the flock astray by encouraging them to emulate the divine service in their living room?

Perhaps the most counter-cultural claim here is that the preached word cannot be fully received remotely. It would require its own article to defend, but I think the claim is this: so long as the viewer at home is in control, he is not sitting under the word. He is in charge so long as he can pause and fast-forward and schedule his consumption, can dress and position and wander his body in whatever fashion pleases him, and need endure no limits on distractions. The sinner that remains in the drivers seat has not truly been summoned before the judgment seat of a holy God.

At the end of the day, I don’t think absence will make the heart grow fonder. I don’t believe the lack of the means of grace will strengthen our confidence in the means of grace. If these are God’s chosen methods of blessing his people, starving us of them can only lead to less blessing.

Yet there is an opportunity in this loss, an opportunity to teach via negativa. In streaming our services, it has therefore been a priority to convey to those at home what they are not receiving. Viewing a remote feed of a Christian worship service is not worship. You are not a participant in the divine dialogue, you cannot stand and renew your covenant oath, you cannot taste, smell, and feel your participation in Christ.

Why, then, provide a simulacrum of a service online? Ultimately, we believe even this image of a service can serve as a crutch, an extreme measure to be used only until one heals. A crutch is a temporary help that no healthy person ever wishes to adopt as a permanent means of conveyance.

The next phase of our response resulted from this experience and reflection upon real absence, and from the limitations being extended. We began to ask ourselves how we could provide the genuine means of grace even under severe constraints?

In our context, this has meant restoring the Lord’s Supper and holding two small communion services, feeding 17 saints each Lord’s Day (due to the order not to gather in groups of ten or more). We have been mindful to make attendance voluntary, preserving each member’s liberty to measure the risks of small gatherings and their potential risks to others. Theoretically, a church with multiple meeting spaces could easily multiply this number by two or four or six. In a month of Sundays our small church can spread a table in the wilderness for 68, though one can imagine other churches communing and gathering many more in small worshiping groups.

We may not be able to commune our entire congregation in a single gathering. But we can commune them once or twice a month, and in the intervening times reaffirm how important those irregular meals are. This is like intermittent fasting for the soul: real hunger satisfied with real food.

In the face of future restrictions, we are likely to move immediately to maximally preserving word and sacrament under limited offerings, rather than suspending the sacrament in total.

Yes, being a pastor is more than administering the means of grace: visiting, praying, counseling are all integral parts of wielding the crook. But the means of grace are the building blocks, the foundation, the medicine we feed our sheep when the crook draws them close. Without a regular flow of their life-giving power all our other efforts are in vain. The best counsel, the best prayer, ultimately relies upon the means of grace, it points sinners to Christ in them, and brings them closer to him in his word, his table, his holiness.

A pastor’s official title is Minister of Word and Sacrament. My provisional advice is simple: Pastors, do not abandon your post. Stand firm. Do your job.

The Socially Distanced Church

This article originally appeared in Christian Renewal Magazine.

It is odd to write for print these days, especially on the topic of coronavirus. This is an evolving situation, and things are changing fast.

If I had to guess, as you’re reading this little two-week-time-capsule message to the future, the White House restrictions of March 16 are, at a minimum, still in force. Even today, 8 days into a 15 day program, things have already gotten tighter in statewide shelter in place requirements in New York and California.

We are still adapting to social distancing. When we began this strategy, we may have thought it would last 15 days, or a month. But what if it endures much longer? Two months, six months, or until a coronavirus vaccine is developed, perhaps eighteen months for now? What does church look like during a season of social distancing, and what impact might that have on what the church looks like going forward?

I am not a prophet, but the following are some first thoughts on these questions I hope to develop, both in dialogue with our local church leadership and with other ministers in the church.

Shall We Hold Public Worship?

The single largest impact of social distancing is on our public worship. When the government is advising against or prohibiting gatherings larger than ten for the sake of public health, how are we to respond?

This is a new, rapidly developing situation, so it makes sense that reactions to this problem will vary. I have urged a healthy dose of Christian liberty in the early phases of this disease, as there are so many unknowns and so much difference of opinion, it is reasonable for faithful Christians to come to a wide range of different conclusions.

I understand those churches that initially felt it was essentially that they continue worshiping until absolutely forbidden to do so. Worship is an essential activity if there ever was one. If God commands us to worship, and man forbids, we must obey God rather than man. 

But of course, this is not merely a question of God’s law vs. Man’s law. God commands many things. God commands love of neighbor, as well as worship. He also commands submission to the governing authorities. If the governing authorities advise that public gatherings will harm public health, harm our neighbor, then we should listen to them. They are after all charged with maintaining public health — by God himself — and have gathered vastly more expertise to that end. 

We should halt our public services. This is not a time for civil disobedience. The disease was largely spread in South Korea because one of the first infected individuals attended a large gathering of a Christian cult, where failure to attend was strongly discouraged. Hundreds and ultimately thousands were thus infected. Though well contained in South Korea, COVID-19 to date has killed 126 there. In the face of growing knowledge about how this disease spreads, it is unloving and an exceedingly poor witness to a watching world.

One note of caution: We have many models of Church Fathers or Reformers selflessly ministering to the plague stricken. These heroes of the faith showed great courage in ministering gospel comfort to others at great risk of personal harm. We may be tempted to emulate them, both personally, and as church bodies, gathering for worship in the face of great personal risk. However, we know much more today about epidemiology and the spread of communicable disease. We know that violating a quarantine not only puts the individual at risk, but it puts the community at risk, it potentially harms our neighbor. I urge Christians to think carefully about how our actions will impact others. It may be that the most loving thing we can do is model submission to civil authorities on matters of self-quarantine, to love our neighbors by helping them to live.

How Shall We Worship?

Suspending worship for a week or two for the sake of public welfare is not unheard of. We have all done so for the sake of a blizzard or a storm. But what if this lasts for months? What if, after government restrictions are lifted, it remains extremely hazardous to attend large groups, creating good reason for people to stay home?

Obviously, under these circumstances, the church should encourage a greater reliance on private, home worship. There have been long seasons where the church was restricted to very small home gatherings, due to persecution, for instance, and the Christian faith has survived and thrived during these times.

Technology provides a wealth of options for us to feed our flocks during this time. Our first response in Washington, DC was to provide a live stream of our full Sunday liturgy for our members to view online, excluding the Lord’s Supper. Our hope is not to build a “virtual worship” experience, but to supplement home worship during this time. We plan to do this as long as necessary. Other churches have provided video messages of sermons or devotionals or song. 

While these resources may be useful, we need to carefully distinguish that they are not the same as gathering together, and that the church is by definition a worshiping assembly. As more and more areas of our work and school life transition to remote, online participations, Christians should stand firm that the breaking of bread and pouring of wine can’t take place over a Wi-Fi connection, and true Christian fellowship entails incarnate, bodily communion.

The individualistic, Gnosticizing impulse in modern religion is strong. Many for years have been pushing Christianity toward a personalized, virtual expression of the faith, and we need to be particularly wary of these tendencies during this time. Satan will seek to use this season of isolation to peel week sheep away from the flock, and watchful shepherds need to be on their guard. 

With these thoughts in mind, I urge pastors and elders to think deeply how they can maintain a virtual diet for their people — as well as for a watching world — that leads to thriving and faithfulness. I urge leaders to teach your flocks to long for gathered worship, put them on guard against the foe of virtual life. And perhaps, due to a flood of zoom conferences and Skype calls, God will use this season for our good, to instill a greater love, a greater longing for public worship and human fellowship that only the church of Christ can provide.

Song

God’s people need to sing. This is harder to do in private than in public, and we live in an age of waning musical talents. Singing alone at home is tough, yet we should encourage the saints to do so. 

During this season of increased isolation the church should identify this challenge and make an extra effort to exhort and enable the saints to maintain sung worship in the home. Pick a monthly psalm to memorize, provide musical accompaniment. At Christ Reformed, we have encouraged ownership of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, and during this season have loaned hymnals to those who don’t own it. We have a list of publicly available musical accompaniment at our church website (www.christreformeddc.org) and Facebook page. There are a lot of other resources available, and churches should be taking the lead in marshaling them to address this challenge.

Pastoral Care

My dad was a mediocre golfer, and in this respect the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But we used to enjoy watching the pros play golf on television, and I’d be a wealthy man if I had a nickel for every time he said “Drive for show, putt for dough” after a professional golfer missed an easy putt. It looks impressive to hit a golf ball a long way — drive for show — but mastering the short game is where the money is made — putt for dough.

Sunday morning worship is the pastor’s equivalent of a 300 yard “drive for show.” Public worship is the big show. But the short game is where great churches separate themselves from the pack. This is where the real harvest of pastoral ministry is reaped. This has always been the case, but in the age of the socially distanced church, our short game is going to be put to the test.

How does a church be a church without gathering for worship? How can we be the “called out ones” when we’re not responding to the call to worship publicly? One answer I would normally give to this challenge is Christian hospitality in the home. But for obvious reasons, the socially distanced church faces restrictions on that front as well. 

One initial thought is that we take advantage of technology to stay in contact as much as possible. At Christ Reformed, one of the first steps we took was dividing our membership list up among all our elders and deacons in an effort to ensure robust personal connection with each and every member. Technology helps us have lots of small points of contact, such as texts and emails. It also lets us have slightly more robust interactions such as phone and videoconference calls. In an age of cheap electronic communication — firing off a text takes seconds — we shouldn’t underestimate the value of the human voice and human face. In a phone call you can hear anxiety in a voice, ask follow up questions, trade stories and jokes, laugh together. 

Here’s one basic tool we developed at Christ Reformed. We have a Google document all our leadership can easily access that tells us when each member was last contacted, and keeps a running status report on their work, home, and other needs. I check this daily and make a few calls to those who haven’t heard from us in a while, just to ensure that no one falls through the cracks.

We must not forsake prayer during this time. Praying together, one on one or in small groups, will be very important. Continuing in prayer, as leadership, for the flock will be more essential than ever. 

Evangelism and Mission

It is challenging enough to think of shepherding a socially distanced church. But growing a socially distanced church through evangelism and outreach can seem impossible in times of limited personal contact.

Yet the world needs the gospel now more than ever. Times of loss reveal the fading power of worldly comfort. Death and disease will strike many and bring the final enemy near. The missionary call of the church to be salt and light is never more relevant than during times of plague. 

Public worship is a key tool in evangelism. It provides a place for a an interested party to meet with the church, hear the gospel, and observe Christian fellowship. With the loss of public worship, how do we reach and welcome the world into our midst? 

I must admit that I’m still wrestling with this challenge. Increased live streaming of public worship and gospel preaching means more may hear our message of hope and comfort. And yet, what action shall they take?  How and where will we meet them, come alongside them, bear their burdens, and catechize them to living faith?

Here are three initial thoughts on socially distanced evangelism:

First, works of love and mercy always bear witness to the power of Christ’s saving work in our hearts and in the world. There will be many opportunities for such service in the days ahead. We must all look to our closest neighbors and see how we can love and serve them. We love because he first loved us, and works of selfless love will be used by God to lead our neighbors to Christ. 

Second, many, many of our family members need Christ. The internet was full of humorous and yet tragic memes about how challenging and difficult it will be for many of us to live in close quarters with our wives, our parents, and other immediate and extended family members. Such is the world’s view of family. Ours is different. Yes, we are sinners living in close quarters. But we should embrace opportunities of Christian love and service, confession and forgiveness, within our own homes. More than ever, our households should be models of Christian love and reconciliation for the world to see. Let’s double down on family worship, catechesis, and reconciliation. 

Third, I am reminding our members during this time that we all have many callings in life. As our work and school lives are upended by self-quarantine, we must remember that being a Christian is a vocation, being a husband or wife, a child or a parent is a vocation. Being a neighbor is our vocation. As some vocations fall away, there are abundant opportunities in faithfulness in others. All of the members of our churches need to be activated to love and care for one another during this time of remote, distance church. Not only our leadership, but our membership, must learn to love one another in new ways. 

Conclusion

One of our central callings as Christians is prayer. It is a mark of gratitude, and a work of mission. We should be focused and diligent in our prayers both for the church, and for the world. 

Finally, we should note that this is a partial list. Many things about our church life — including finances, property, etc. — will have to change. We won’t be able to anticipate them all. We should pray that God would give us wisdom, and the strength and flexibility to adapt to a rapidly changing world. And, as always, that we would have boldness and courage in the work of Christ. Boldness to change our habits and traditions to suit the present circumstances.

Observing the Lord's Day

We kicked off 2020 with a seven-part series of catechism sermons on “Observing the Lord’s Day,” structured around the “Rules for Observing the Lord’s Day” issued by the Synod of Dort.

The Protestant Reformation was a reformation of worship as much as it was a reformation of doctrine, or rather, it was a reformation of worship because it was a reformation of doctrine. The key marks of a Reformed church were the pure preaching of the word, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the proper exercise of discipline. All three of these marks were most notably in evidence when the church assembled for public worship on the Lord’s Day.

While all Reformed Christians emphasized the importance of public worship on the Lord’s Day, there soon developed a diversity of opinions about the relationship of the Lord’s Day to the Old Testament Sabbath. Continental Reformed churches often emphasized the importance of the eternal Sabbath, taught in Hebrews 4. This is reflected in Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Question 103, “What is God’s will for you in the Fourth Commandment?”

First, that the gospel ministry and schools for it be maintained, and that, especially on the festive day of rest, I diligently attend the assembly of God’s people to learn what God’s Word teaches, to participate in the sacraments, to pray to the Lord publicly, and to bring Christian offerings for the poor. 

Second, that every day of my life I rest from my evil ways, let the Lord work in me through his Spirit, and so begin in this life the eternal Sabbath.

—HEIDELBERG CATECHISM, QUESTION & ANSWER 103

Fifty-six years later, the Synod of Dort took up the issue of the Lord’s Day after the dismissal of the international delegates, when it addressed a number of national matters. Recognizing that there were a diversity of views regarding the relation of the Lord’s day to the Sabbath, they quickly issued a brief series of six “Rules for Observing the Sabbath or Lord’s Day” — the “or” suggesting the two terms were interchangeable. Below is the new translation of the rules which appears in the book, Saving the Reformation, by W. Robert Godfrey, with a minor revision to the third rule in brackets. 

1. In the fourth Commandment of the divine law, part is ceremonial and part is moral. (audio)

2. The ceremonial was the rest of the seventh day after creation, and the rigid observance of that day prescribed particularly for the Jewish people. (audio)

3. The moral truly is that a certain and appointed day [should be]* fixed for the worship of God and so much rest as is necessary for the worship of God and for holy meditation on him. (audio)

4. Since the abrogation of the Sabbath of the Jews, the day of the Lord must be solemnly sanctified by Christians. (audio)

5. This day has always been observed since the time of the Apostles by the ancient catholic church. (audio)

6. This day must be so consecrated to divine worship that on it one ceases from all servile works, except those of love and present necessity; and also from all such refreshing activities as impede the worship of God. (audio)

—“REGULAE DE OBSERVATIONE SABBATHI, SEU DEI DOMINICI,” POST-ACTA OF THE SYNOD OF DORT, 1619

* “Should be fixed” replaces W. Robert Godfrey’s translation, “is fixed.” The Latin reads “destinatus sit,” which is in the subjunctive. Rules four and five proceed to explain how the Lord’s Day has been fixed — by human tradition, not by divine command — as the day of worship, subsequent to the abrogation of the Sabbath of the Jews. 

Together, the Heidelberg Catechism and the instruction from the Synod of Dort provide healthy guidance for Christians today wrestling with how we should observe the Lord’s Day in our own context. Each week, we will also take the time to address practical issues in Lord’s Day observance that challenge us today. We hope you will join us at Christ Reformed for this important series of lessons.