Posts with the tag “church”

Let’s return to having worship services each morning, Tuesday to Thursday…They can be held from 8:30-9:30 or thereabouts…. Each evening General Assembly could host a concert. Choirs, soloists, and musicians all across the sacred music spectrum could perform. These concerts could be held from 7:00-8:00 or thereabouts. I might dare to hope that this two-pronged approach would make everyone happy. An...  Read More

It has been surprising to see the speed with which the churches have shut down public operations and shifted their ministries online. Having this online capacity is a wonderful provision during an epidemic, one unavailable to previous generations. Live streaming allows the church to do something when the alternative might have been to do nothing, to provide some spiritual food when circumstances m...  Read More

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

“Modest dress is required, in keeping with the dignity of the place as well as the solemnity of the occasion. Whatever you strip off the wedding dress afterward to turn it into a party dress is not at issue; one does not show up for a religious ceremony in a plunging neckline or strapless party dress.” –Miss MannersOh Miss Manners, in the years since you wrote those words, the issue of modest dres...  Read More

The PCA is a land of liturgical anarchy driven by a Trotyskesque philosophy of perpetual liturgical revolution and accelerated by the rapid mutations of popular culture to which it is pegged and with which our ecclesiastical trendsetters feel duty-bound to keep pace.One summer when our children were young our family was doing our usual summer ritual of attending out-of-town PCA churches. Frankly, ...  Read More