As I looked over this list, I realize that these aren’t things which are exclusive to being Presbyterian but they are found within Presbyterianism.

5 Good Things:

Connections – Being a leader in a Presbyterian church means that you have taken vows to care for other leaders in your church and denomination. The ability to leverage these relationships is one of the best parts of being Presbyterian. Presbyterianism encourages leaders to feel comfortable reaching out to other leaders for assistance. Churches in different cultural situations can see each other at deeply connected, and can request help and/or advice when they need it.

Resources – Presbyterians are committed to helping each other with time and money. This means that while a small church might never have the resources to start a new ministry alone, it is able to partner with other churches that will make new ministries possible.

Accountability – In some church systems when a problem arises at the local level it’s stuck. In Presbyterianism leaders are protected for bogus charges. At the same time the higher you go up in dealing with an issue the more people are involved. This means church members are protected from a few powerful leaders covering up inappropriate actions. Every members of a Presbyterian church has the right to ask other churches to intervene in a conflict.

Prayer – Being connected means that one church might be able to ask 10 or 15 churches to prayer for a specific issue, this means that you might have hundreds or thousands of people praying for a specific concern.

Methodical – Everyone has experienced making a mistake because you’ve rushed to make a decision. Bringing many leaders into a discussion means that there are more opportunities for reflection, and this often leads to a healthier and steady pace of action, with less regret.

5 Bad Things

Suspicion – Trust is an earned commodity. Sometimes camps form within Presbyterian denominations, and its easier to foster relationships along these lines. When this happens trust is primarily given to people who are similar to you, and sometimes suspicion is held toward people that are less known.

Jealously - Because church leaders interact on a regular basis and are sharing about how things are going, sometimes people can become jealous of other’s success.

Culturally Confined – while it isn’t a necessity, most Presbyterians exist in the context of middle class Europeans (and their descendants). I don’t think there is something peculiar to Presbyterianism that causes this other than the fact that Presbyterians haven’t been good at interacting with other cultures.

Sluggish – sometimes being methodical can lead to dragging you feet, and when that happens things slow down too much, and we unintentionally deter healthy progress.

Polity Over Personal Interactions – Sometimes we forget that our discussion at a formal level work best when they are preceded by numerous informal discussions. When we skip the informal we sometimes fall into the habit of caring more about following certain procedural rules rather than making sure we are best taking care of each other.

I know this isn’t an exhaustive list, and I hope what I’ve said makes sense. If not please drop me a note.

Remember, These aren’t things which are exclusive to being Presbyterian but they are found within Presbyterianism.

At RPTS I was told that the purpose of the New Testament Church, was to worship. Even in seminary, I saw some flaws in this understanding. Over the last year I have become more convince that worship is not the purpose of the church. Here is why I do not see the worship as the purpose of the church, it presupposes that the culmination of Chris’t kingdom has already happened. While, I do think it is appropriate to say that we were created with the purpose of worshipping God, making this the purpose of the church does not take into account the impact of sin, and the plan of redemption. Please don’t think that I trying to remove the importance of worship in the life of the church.

Some theologians have spoken about the importance of recognizing the already and the not yet. Christ’s kingdom has already come, though it is not yet fulfilled. We have already been redeemed by Christ’s work, but we have not yet been made perfect. To suppose that the current purpose of the church is worship, wrongly assumes that the not yet has already come, when it has not.

I think it would be more appropriate to see that the primary purpose of the church is mission, while remembering that a major component of mission is coming together to worship God and celebrate how he has been at work.

As it is a somewhat nebulous term, some might wonder how I would define mission. I would define mission as the commanded response to bring the redemption that Christ accomplished to a broken world.
It is important to see the connection between Christ’s work of Redemption, and the mission on which he as sent his Church. While Christ has completed plan of redemption, the application of that redemptions has not yet fully been realized. God has decide that he will use the church to help bring about that application, and this is what sets the church on mission.
Some verses that have shaped my thinking:
2 Corinthians 4:15, 1 Peter 2:11, Matthew 28:18-20, Ephesians 2:19-22

“I worry that a movement built on megachurches, megaconferences, and megaleaders, does the church a disservice in one very important way that is often missed amid all the pizzazz and excitement: it creates the idea that church life is always going to be big, loud, and exhilarating and thus gives church members and ministerial candidates unrealistic expectations of the normal Christian life. In the real world, many, perhaps most, of us worship and work in churches of 100 people or less; life is not loud and exciting; big things do not happen every Sunday; budgets are incredibly tight and barely provide enough for a pastor’s modest salary; each Lord’s Day we go through the same routines of worship services, of hearing the gospel proclaimed, of taking the Lord’s Supper, of teaching Sunday School; perhaps several times a year we do leaflet drops in the neighbourhood with very few results; at Christmas time we carol sing in the high street and hand out invitations to church and maybe two or three people actually come along as a result; but no matter — we keep going, giving, and praying as we can; we try to be faithful in the little entrusted to us. It’s boring, it’s routine, and it’s the same, year in, year out.

Therefore, in a world where excitement, celebrity, and cultural power are the ideal, it is tempting amidst the circumstances of ordinary church life to forget that this, the routine of the ordinary, the boring, the plodding, is actually the norm for church life and has been so throughout most places for most of the history of the church; that mega-whatevers are the exception, not the rule; and that the church has survived throughout the ages not just – or even primarily – because of the high profile firework displays of the great and the good, but because of the day to day faithfulness of the mundane, anonymous, non-descript people who constitute most of the church, and who do the grunt work and the tedious jobs that need to be done. History does not generally record their names; but the likelihood is that you worship in a church which owes everything, humanly speaking, to such people.”

The entire post can be found here.

This will not make me a popular person with many people, but I think that there might be some really dangers associated with using a liturgy in worship.

There seems to be a good trend in some churches today, and especially church plants where the worship gathering is becoming less of a show and more of an event that all Christians participate in. Many churches are using liturgies to accomplish this kind of participation. The type of liturgy that I am speaking about, is the one which I am most familiar with, that of the presbyterian and reformed variety. Worship that might fit into this category includes one or more of the following parts: 1, a call to worship. 2, antiphonal(back and forth) readings. 3, an extending readings said in unison. 4, the reading of a historic creed.

Though I am very encouraged by this continuing shift, I do think it brings some dangers.
I want to spend sometime addressing what I perceive is a potential danger using a liturgical pattern in worship.

It needs to said that I am a minister in a church that uses a liturgy, and I love the worship at my church. When I speak about the dangers associated with liturgies, I am not saying that they are dangerous in the same way that a rattle snake is dangerous. Instead, I think they can become dangerous when certain assumptions about worship grow beside them. I am not saying that all churches that use a liturgy have this problem, but I do think that many people who attend such churches are in danger of beginning to think in a dangerous way.

I want to address what I think might be the greatest dangers of using a liturgy: the educational assumptions that follow many liturgies.

One major problem associated with these types of liturgies is that often a person needs to have a certain educational level to properly participate in worship.
Some might argue that to do anything less would be to “dumb down” the worship of God, yet this is a poorly thought out excuse. Especially when it comes from people tied to the reformed tradition, specifically the Westminster Confession of Faith. The protestant reformation in many ways is the history of God’s word being unsealed and made accessible to the “common people”.

During the reformation the Catholic Church insisted that services be conducted in latin, as it was the high language of the day. Some thought that to offer worship in the peoples language, might degrade the service. This view extended to the reading of scripture as well. The reformers realized that God’s word had been sealed up.
When the Westminster Assembly wrote their confession they specifically spoke against worship that was done in such a way that only the highly educated could keep up. (See
Westminster Confession Chapter I Section VII & VIII.) The reformers were in favor of making God’s word accessible.

If you look at many of the churches that are using a higher liturgical pattern, they often are centered in business areas, with young professionals, or in university communities. At the very least they are among middle-class americans with some college.

While we should not turn off our brains when entering into worship, we must not forget that worship is not an intellectual exercise which someone should hope to one day participate in. People that expect that all Christians will be comfortable reading at a 11th or 12th grade level are in danger of reserving Christianity for a select few. This thinking is also at risk of ostracizing the old, the young and the mentally challenged.
While I assume that they exist, I have yet to see or hear of a church which relies on a antiphonal liturgy that is changed every week. I would be very interested in hearing about such worship expressions.

Total Church

Many people might read that summation and say: “well thats not one church, thats 10 churches” But Harbor has one board of elders, and one role of membership.
The challenge of Harbors model is that it is so different from what churches have done in the last 100 years that it doesn’t seem to make sense.

The question is what makes a church a church?

During a breakout session, Dick Kaufmann recalled that when they were organizing Harbor that they were wrestling with this city-wide model of church. Dick said that he called Ed Clowney, and asked for some advice, and Clowney’s response was that he wrote a section of his book The Church for situations like Harbor’s.
When I got home I grab my copy of the book and tried to figure out what section Dick was referring to, after flipping around for about an hour I came to the section:“Perspectives on the church: local and universal” In that section, found on page 111-112, Clowney concludes with the following remarks:

“How can one term[“church”] be used with such flexibility? Simply because it is no the geographical size or location that defines it. Even those committed to local-church definition much ask which is the local church in the New Testament. Is it the house church, or is it the city church? We do better to conclude that the church can be expressed at more than one level: in smaller or larger fellowships, even in gatherings like that in Jerusalem (Acts 15), representing the whole church, in order to deal with issues that concern all.”

Clowney’s conclusion comes from looking at several texts in the new testament including Romans 16:3-5; Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15, Philemon 1:2, and Acts 8:1.

• That “Paul mentions the house church in the same breath with the churches of the gentiles, or of Asia.”
• That “House churches are found in places where city churches are addressed (Rome Laodicea, Colosee)”
• That “the term ‘church’ may be applied not only to house and city fellowships, where the members could meet together, but also to the church in a province (Acts 9:31; 15:3)”

Do you agree with Clowney’s conclusions?

Does anyone know of any examples of this wider perspective on the church being used in the PCA outside of Harbor?

I know that historically some of the reformers argued that we should participate in other parts of the christian experience on days other than traditional liturgical days. Butzer argues in De Regno Christi, that we should not fast on Ash Wednesday, but instead have other times of fasting. In their defense, most people don’t want to look like the group that is persecuting you.

To be quite honest I can see both the benefits and dangers of participating in the liturgical calendar in general, and Ash Wednesday in particular.

Around the twittersphere lots of other church-folks have been talking about how or if they are participating in ash Wednesday.

Do you know of any Presbyterian Churches or Reformed Churches, that participate in Ash Wednesday or in the liturgical calendar more specifically?

I wanted to spend a few minutes explaining some of the reasons why I am really happy to be a part of the Presbyterian Church in America.

1. The PCA is full of people who care deeply about Jesus, and seek to honor him in all aspects of their life.
2. Churches all around the denomination are routinely asking themselves are we caring enough, and serving enough and submitting enough.
3. There are tons of great churches serving in every conceivable contexts. Here are some examples:
   • Mision Vida Nueva in Escondido, Ca.
   • All Souls Fellowship In Decatur, Ga.
   • The Liberti Churches in Philadelphia
   • St. Roch Community Church in New Orleans
   • City Church in Nashville
4. The PCA gives disagreeing men platforms to discuss things in a gracious and loving manor. See articles here and here
5. Some of the great christian thinkers have been in the PCA. (Francis Schaeffer, Ed Clowney, John Frame, Tim Keller and many others )

Now I understand that people have beefs with people in the PCA and therefore have biases again the denomination in general. But I am convinced that it is a good group of people. But these are a few of the reasons why I like the PCA

The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, button-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If out churches aren’t appealing to “younger brothers” they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.

Its held once every two years, and features pretty much every church guy that I would want to listen to speak.
I was planning on going with some other guys from the area.

Last week I got an email about the Multisite09 conference. Its a smaller and more focused conference, but I’ve heard that it is a great experience and place to network.

So this is my dilemma which conference should I go to? Anyone have any other suggestions?