» Feature: Sermon O' the Weekend

This weekend's featured sermon comes from Tenth Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Philadelphia, PA. Pastor D. Marion Clark delivered the sermon "Fellowship of the Gospel" on Phillipians 1:27-30. The sermon is available at SermonAudio in both audio and video format.

» News: PCA General Assembly Wrap-Up

Complete archives of the PCA General Assembly videocast are now available in Windows Media format. This format is playable on both Windows and Mac computers.

The assembly finished its work on Thursday. As previously reported, on Wednesday the PCA voted by a large majority (90 to 95% by most estimates observed online) to adopt the recommendations of the Federal Vision / New Perspectives Study Committee. The Assembly's adoption of the recommendations has the following effects: 1. The assembly commends the committee's report to the PCA for consideration, 2. The assembly reminds the PCA of the role of the Westminster Standards "as standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture in relation to both faith and practice", 3. The assembly commends the 9 declarations of the report to the denomination as "a faithful exposition of the Westminster Standards" and calls upon ruling and teaching elders to inform "their courts" (i.e., sessions, presbyteries) of any differences between their views and the 9 declarations, 4. The assembly reminds Sessions and Presbyteries of its duty to exercise doctrinal oversight, and 5. The assembly dismisses the study committee with thanks.

The nine declarations of the report now become the focus of the PCA's consideration. The declarations each have the form of stating that a particular view associated with either the Federal Vision or New Perspectives on Paul is contrary to the Westinster Standards. Two questions confront Presbyteries as they examine elders who are either accused of holding suspect views or elders who submit their views to Presbyteries for consideration: a. do their views in fact fall under one of nine disallowed views, and b. if so, will their views be considered allowable exceptions or become grounds for further discipline. Currently the PCA does not have uniformity with regards to what exceptions are allowable or disallowable by every presbytery. One case is presently before the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) that tangentially involves the Federal Vision issues; it relates to the procedures used by one presbytery in its examination and exoneration of a minister accused of holding views associated with the Federal Vision that are out of accord with the Westminster Standards. As a result of the SJC's inquiry, the presbytery, Louisiana Presbytery, conducted a reexamination of the minister in question, Steve Wilkins, in accordance with the SJC's instructions to keep minutes and record the examination (recordings available in MP3 - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). On January 20th, the Louisiana Presbytery met to consider the issue and voted to forward its decision that there is no "no strong presumption of guilt" against Wilkins, together with a copy of the oral exam transcript, recording, and Wilkins's written responses. The next action in this case will come from the SJC and we will report any action when it occurs. The only other judicial case arising from challenges to ministers based upon alleged violations of the Westminster Standards with regard to the issues associated with the Federal Vision was handled by the Pacific Northwest Presbytery in the case of Peter Leithart (report pdf). The Northwest Presbytery examined Leithart and issued its report, stating the need to devote further time to investigating the issues involved with the Federal Vision perspective. It did not find sufficient warrant to discipline Leithart, but recommended studying the issues further.

The General Assembly is not specifically a time for theological controversy - by far the vast majority of floor time at the General Assembly is spent reviewing the ministries and activities of the church. Commissioners heard reports from the denominational seminary, Covenant Seminary, as well as the various missions committees of the church - Mission to North America, and Mission to the World. A video presentation highlighted two PCA works that seek racial reconciliation and community integration between caucasians, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans.

In the Thursday morning report of Covenant Seminary Bryan Chapell noted that 250,000 people per month download the seminary's online courses. The seminary has experienced 17 consecutive years of annual record enrollment. Chapell showed photographs of the building process of "Founders Hall" - a new addition to the campus, doubling the number of classrooms. Chapell noted that 300 hours of supervised field work are now required of M.Div. students. Covenant's placement rate is over 90% in the last decade for those seeking ministry positions with the school's recommendation. The retention rate (for the first 5 years in ministry) is four times the seminary average in North Ameirca. One in four M.Div. graduates will plant a new church within 8 years of graduation. Chapell emphasized that the seminary teaches from a "grace perspective" - love for Christ overcomes love of sin; redemption is more than freedom from guilt, it is freedom from the alluring power of sin. Chapell emphasized the qualities of this generation of incoming students - most are concerned to break down walls of prejudice, antipathy and class, wanting to teach confessional theology beyond traditional social boundaries.

RN will report on the outcome of the various overtures in a future story.

» Feature: Sermon O' the Weekend

This weekend's featured sermon comes from Pastor Danny Hyde of Oceanside United Reformed Church, a church in the United Reformed Churches in North America in Oceanside, California. The Biblical text is Genesis 2:4-25 and the sermon is titled "The Garden of God." Download an mp3 here.

» Feature: Sermon O' the Weekend

The theme for today is ordination sermons. Ordination, in Reformed churches, usually consists of a "manual imposition" - laying on of hands - of the minister by other ministers, and there are usually "ordination sermons." Another lost tradition is the "ordination brew" but we'll leave that aside for now. A similar service takes place for ministers, elders, and deacons. All of today's sermons have been preached recently at ordination ceremonies: ordination service of Chad Van Dixhoorn (MP3), Cambridge Presbyterian Church; ordination sermon for Jamison Galt (MP3), Park Slope Presbyterian Church; Deacon ordination service in Lafayette, IN; and finally, a deacon's ordination service at a Reformed Baptist congregation in Easley, South Carolina.

» Feature: Sermon O' the Weekend

Our featured sermon comes from Pastor Ralph Davis of Woodland Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Hattiesburg, MS. Provacatively titled "Damned Religion", Davis's sermon covers Judges 17 through 18. (WMA Link). The church's sermon page also contains additional sermons.

» Feature: Weekend News Roundup

Calvin College gets some good press in Christianity Today for its focus on the Environment.

Peter Lillback continues as president of Westminster Theological Seminary, Pastor Andrew Webb (PCA) asks about a schism in the faculty. We have no hard information on this situation, but there have been several board meetings lately, and the new volume Justified in Christ contains all faculty authors, but no authors from the biblical studies faculty. We continue to monitor the situation.

The Mid-America Seminary faculty testimony on the issues related to justification has received heavy discussion this week here. Professor Alan Strange (OPC) of Mid-America participated in defending the faculty report against allegations of "violating the 9th commandment" by Douglas Wilson (CREC). The debate contains some interesting information about the history of the seminary and Norman Shepherd's part in that history.

We continue to monitor the Gospel Coalition website for updates - this conference appears to have been an interesting exercise in pan-Reformed relations and we look forward to reading the consensus confessional document as well as hear the seminars. Christianity Today provides report on the conference from a participant.

The Against Heresies blog has been serializing interviews with Carl Trueman (OPC), R. Scott Clark (URC), and others. This is an interesting blog because we've found so far in our attempts to cover the Reformed world that people tend to only grant interviews to friendly organizations, and it is helpful for all of us to be able to "listen in" on such conversations. RN attempts to be unbiased and so far commands no "clout" in getting responses to our questions. But we will press on, and try to prove our good intentions by our coverage.

Covenant Radio will also be interviewing many people from the Reformed world in the coming months. June 7, they will interview a roundtable of PCA ministers about the upcoming Federal Vision report and Pastor Jeffrey J. Meyers's response to the same. See their website for interviews scheduled into July. These interviews are audio podcasts.

5th Installment of Hitchens / Wilson debate posted at Christianity Today site. There will be one more exchange in the series.

PCA: The PCA's By Faith Online weekly newsletter contained many good items of interest: rebuilding in the MS Gulf Coast, pre-General Assembly WCF Conference, VBS materials based upon the Children's Catechism, November Mission to the World Conference. You can subscribe to By Faith's beautiful print publication here and the By Faith website contains a signup form for their informative weekly email newsletter.

Acts 29: Announces a new church planting boot camp in September.

ARP: (News Site) Mission church in Alabama finds meeting place for June 3 kickoff, Adams Farm Community Church ( Jamestown, N.C.) conducts AIDS benefit on June 9th to benefit Kenyan AIDS relief. Erskine College has created a prayer garden - the site promises instructions for how to create this devotional tool in its print news publication.

CREC: 4th Annual Conference on the Family, June 19, Lynchburg, VA. Great photograph, at that link, of a pastor and his extended family.

EPC: General Assembly Information - GA to be held June 20-23 in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Pittsburgh EPC church buys out local "nuissance bar" and turns it into ice cream parlor and coffee shop (full story PDF).

PCUSA: Prof. Daniel Kirk (Biblical Seminary) transfers membership from PCA to PCUSA, Confessing Church Movement now reports 1,317 congregations with 435,954 members, though their website looks to not have been updated in some time. PCUSA estimates per-capita budget will decline by 5% this year. Montreat (NC) congregation splits into two, by a vote of 189 to 69. A portion of the congregation will remain in the PCUSA while the rest will join the EPC.

RCA: General Synod meets June 7-12 in Pella, Iowa

As always, send us any news tips or links that need reporting; this roundup's length and content is limited each week only by the time of the editors (who have day jobs), and we can magnify our reach by enlisting your help in finding all the news that's fit to blog.

» Feature: Sermon O' the Weekend

This week's featured sermon was delivered by Dan Doriani of Central Presbyterian Church, a congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The title of the sermon is "Courage" and the text is Acts 4. You can download an mp3 of the sermon here. Dan Doriani holds a Ph.D. and M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary and has been a minister in the EPC for about four years following a long career in academics.

Monday's feature - 'Sermon O' the Weekend' - highlights a sermon preached the weekend before in a Reformed congregation. If you heard a great sermon this weekend, and we know you all did, feel free to paste a link to the sermon in the comments section of this post.

» Feature: Friday Blogosphere Roundup - Saturday Edition

The Reformed blogosphere this week continues with many of the same themes discussed last week.

Federal Vision: Discussions of the PCA's proposed report dominated the early part of the week; Green Baggins continues a point by point series on the reply written by Jeff Meyers (87 post long discussion at Meyers's blog as well). As noted yesterday here on RN, the revised edition of the report contained a change concerning which the committee members declined to comment. BarlowFarms contained a lengthy post attempting to substantiate the claim that the committee's composition was biased. The post contains much of the same information compiled by Joel Hunter at the blog "Boar's Head Tavern" back in August of 2006. Barlow's post contained links to essays by committee member and Covenant Seminary professor Sean Lucas that he wrote in critique of Wilson and Leithart. Lucas released an apology for the tone of his reviews, and Leithart and Wilson issued responses to the content of his reviews while accepting the apologies for their tone (Leithart, Wilson 1, Wilson 2). The post at BarlowFarms also contained a link to a timeline claiming to track the history of the creation of the Mississippi Vally Presbytery report concerning the Federal Vision and NPP controveries. We are researching the claims made in the timeline and hope to report more on this issue next week. Later in the week, Mid-America Reformed Seminary released its own faculty and board report (PDF) on the Federal Vision (and NPP), and discussion of that report is now being carried out at Blog and Mablog with the seminary's position being defended by Mid-America professor, Alan Strange. New York presbytery member Matthew Buccheri has also weighed in on the controversy with his "Brief Open Letter to Moderate TEs and REs in the PCA" in which he advocates voting against adopting the study committee's recommendations.

Race: Some blogs this week contained rumblings about a racial situation in a church in Memphis, TN. We at RN are researching the situation and are loathe to pour gas on the flames by prematurely reporting or even linking to the blog discussions. Hopefully we will be able to put together a story on this that reflects the proper balance. The story involves a pastoral transition, and it is notoriously difficult to sort out the various interpretations of why a pastor has decided to resign.

Gender: BaylyBlog continues to discuss the issue of gender roles in the church, and has added a link to the full text (PDF) of Downing's report referenced last Friday.

Reformed Catholicity: Sean Lucas has posted a series of articles on the concept of reformed catholicism and has seen interaction with, among others, PCA pastors Greg Thompson and Tim Keller (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3)

Jerry Falwell: The death of Jerry Falwell provoked various reactions in the Reformed blogging community. Some samples: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

Blogging Proper: Tim Challies has wrapped up a series of posts discussing blogging itself (Post 1, 2, 3, 4)

Misc: Heidelblog takes on Garrison Keillor's criticism of Calvinism.