You will have heard of the "Benedict Option" for coping with the culture wars. I would like to propose to Reformed Protestants the "Zwinglian Option" for ending the worship wars: eliminate all music from our public services. Zwingli, the outstanding musician among the Reformers, removed all music from the church in Zurich. We wring our hands over our worship divisions. The two ends of liturgical s...  Read More

If Martin Bucer (1477-1548) is not an unsung hero of the Reformation, he is certainly an undersung hero. This particularly is the case when it comes to public worship. Bucer's fingerprints are all over Calvin's Form of Church Prayers (1542) as well as the Book of Common Prayer (1552, 1559, 1662). Calvin acknowledges that most of his Form was borrowed from Bucer, while Bucer's 50-page response to K...  Read More

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It can be argued that John Calvin is among the most important liturgists in the history of the Christian church. Indeed, I have attempted to make the case that his Genevan Psalter of 1542 and its Form of Church Prayers established a norm for worship.The Form’s stress on the ordinary means of grace (word, prayer, sacraments), its emphasis on preaching and congregational singing, its elimination of ...  Read More

Reformed churches not only have the regulative principle worship (RPW) to guide them regarding elements and forms, but they also, throughout their history, have had liturgies and directories. The liturgies were the more restrictive (e.g. Strasburg, Geneva, Amsterdam), the directories (Westminster Directory of Public Worship and the family of directories it spawned) less so, allowing more freedom, ...  Read More

Which is more likely today, liturgical sameness or liturgical strangeness? Which is more damaging to the integrity of Protestant denominations? Are we suffocating from liturgical uniformity--encountering the same old predictable things in the Reformed churches we attend? Or, are we unsettled by the unusual liturgical activity that we encounter in our sister churches and regional assemblies? Have w...  Read More

I’ve had a little more time to read several responses to my article “Worship in the PCA in 2017.” Since they likely represent a considerable body of opinion, it may be worthwhile to respond further for the sake of clarification.Reformed “tradition”I assume (perhaps wrongly) that it is understood that when we refer to the practices of the Reformed church, we are referring to a church whose foundati...  Read More

After the 2017 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, a 30-something church-planter asked me if I attended the worship services. I said I did. He asked, “Why?” Why do you torment yourself?” “Didn’t you attend?” I responded. “No, I never do.” Well, I thought, after hearing this same admission at the Assembly multiple times, this is a trend, isn’t it?When I joined the PCA nearly 40 ...  Read More

There can be no question that something extraordinary was happening spiritually at the end of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, just as Evangelical Times was beginning its ministry.Thousands of young people came to Christ, campus ministries exploded with growth, and hundreds of young men flooded into the seminaries. The year 1976 was named ‘The year of the evangelical’ by Time Magazine, and Jimm...  Read More

I left for England from Los Angeles in September 1977 because of one man and one book: J. I. Packer and Knowing God. Looking back, it was quite naïve of me to undertake such a journey knowing so little about my destination. As we were about to land in London, an English fellow noticed I was reading a biography of John Calvin (T. H. L. Parker's, as I recall). His curiosity led to a discussion of my...  Read More

By and large I have stayed out of the politics of the General Assembly (GA) for the past 34 years. Because I pastor at an independent Presbyterian church, I have not been motivated to educate myself--in a significant way--about the nuances of the BCO (Book of Church Order). If I'm honest, I have to admit that there is much that I do not understand about the RAO (Rules of Assembly Operation). Addit...  Read More

Tomorrow the remains of Hughes Oliphant Old (April 13, 1933 - May 24, 2016) will be interred at the Christian Street Cemetery in White River Junction, Vermont. A prince in Israel has died, leaving behind mourners who will miss both his genteel Christian piety and the vast body of knowledge that he will take with him to the grave. The reward in heaven for this humble servant of Christ will be great...  Read More