Our hosts, the Caugheys, were superb a…

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As I come to the end of my three-year term as Presiding Minister of Council, I would like to reiterate some of our ideals. I know I have been repetitive these last 36 months, so to change things up, I will be liturgically repetitive this time. The reason for this is that I have no novelty to convey; I have only ideals to preserve.

While the CREC continues to grow—to be precise, 150% since 2020—it’s significant to guard our gates. Yes, we are gate-keepers! We take the cherubic Word of God and our distinct vision and seek to preserve them. Some wish to see the CREC as a big tent Reformed 4th of July party, and others wish to preserve our Westminsterian tradition with the added paedocommunion bonus. Still others would like to see a more eclectic confederation operating under “leave-us-alone” principles. The latter group has changed, adapted, or realized that it is rather too difficult to preserve a vision under libertarian worldviews.

Either way, as I have stated before, the purpose of the CREC is not to be the PCA without Tim Keller (or Kellerites) or the OPC without cranks like D.G. Hart. We reject third-wayism and dualism and Escondido-ism, but there is much more that comprises who we are. We are not some kind of GOP headquarters. Our interest is D.C., but it is also classrooms, coffee shops, and culture.

We are a communion of Reformed churches deeply interested in cultural renewal within the church and the home; as one of our founding fathers has stated, we want a theology that comes out of our fingertips. In short, we desire a liturgy that enriches God’s people with joy.

Even though our confessions, diverse yet unified, reflect our catholicity, there are identifiable distinctives that truly define us. We acknowledge that these may differ from the trajectory of other Reformed bodies, but they are the pillars of our 150+ churches. I will offer the big categories here and then elaborate on them. They are our eschatology, epistemology, and ecclesiology.

Our Eschatological Instinct

Our postmillennialism is deeply embedded in our lives. This is more than a preference for historical optimism. Postmillennialism is how we see the Bible moving. It is far from a mere academic discussion. In fact, it would not be easy to function happily in the CREC without that eschatological predisposition. It impacts everything from our preaching/teaching to our education and interpretation of the times, and our desire to recapture and build institutions.

We believe Christ is reigning now, and that fact changes the way we preach, teach, build, educate, and raise our children. We do not treat the Great Commission as an impossible dream. We don’t spiritualize it. We do not look at history as though Jesus were waiting to become King. He is King, and the nations belong to Him.

That confidence is not triumphalism. It is obedience with a future. It is the reason we can labor without panic, build without apology, and teach our children to sing Psalms as heirs rather than refugees.

Our Scriptural Starting Point

But connected to that eschatological vision are our starting presuppositions. The CREC asserts that we are not ashamed of the Word of God or its language. The language of the Scriptures is the vocabulary of heaven, and we submit to its wisdom in totality. It further gives us confidence in affirming doctrines like six-day creationism, though many consider us fundamentalists. It is nearly impossible to enter the CREC while denying the Genesis paradigm.

By affirming our commitment to biblical revelation, we are not belittling tradition but restoring tradition to its rightful place. The testimony of the church and tradition leads us to a high and reverent esteem for the Sacred Scriptures. In light of that, we find trajectories towards Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy to be more than dogmatic errors, but soul-errors that may, and have, damaged our Christian legacy and our Christian vision. The CREC is commitedly Protestant.

We do not begin with neutrality. We do not ask an autonomous man to approve the first sentence of Genesis before we believe it. We receive the Scriptures as the Word of the living God and then order our thinking, worship, homes, schools, and public witness accordingly.

Our Covenantal Table

Finally, our paedocommunion practice is fundamental to our existence as a whole. While this is the practice of the CREC everywhere, or at least 99% of our churches, it’s crucial to note that without the communing of baptized children, the CREC would fail to offer the grounds for our covenantal theology. Covenant communion is the way we enflesh our theology of children.

We affirm that baptized children shall receive all the covenant benefits. We also believe that they are integral members of the body of Christ, without whom worship would be incomplete. While some congregations can function outside this system, they must understand that they are co-laboring with an undeniable majority who believe life and table, water and word, bread and wine, worship, and participation belong unto them.

This is not a small liturgical preference. It is tied to how we view the covenant, the church, worship, children, and the promises of God. Our children are not spectators of the faith. They are not tolerated in the assembly until they become useful. They are members of Christ’s body, and the Table is part of their inheritance.

We are happy to form fraternal relations with many denominations, and we have a growing sense of unity with a host of institutions and denominations that share our conservative political convictions against the insanity of the leftist ideologues. The goal is to build much more on those in the months and years ahead.

But fraternity does not mean confusion. We can labor alongside brothers in other communions without pretending we are the same institution. We should be grateful for shared causes, but we should not be embarrassed by our own commitments.

While we wish to continue growing, we understand that not every church is a good fit for the CREC. While we cherish the hundreds of inquiries we receive worldwide and the overwhelming interest in our communion, we also want to grow in a manner that honors who we are without diluting the principles that have made us who we are.

Growth is good, but growth without clarity is not health. We do not want to become a generic conservative Reformed landing place. We want churches that understand our grammar: postmillennial, presuppositional, covenantal, liturgical, catholic, and cheerful under the reign of Christ.

In short, we are Contra mundum, pro Christo, which is not merely a motto. It is a way of seeing the world, loving the church, raising our children, and laboring for the kingdom. This is who we are. This is the CREC!

Notations

At Eden, the way to the tree was closed by sin. At Calvary, the way was opened by blood. In the Supper, the church begins to taste that life now. In the New Jerusalem, she eats of it forever.

Adam fell because he reached for the gift before the gift was his. He sought to coronate himself before the Lord of heaven crowned him.

The growing interest in Africa and South America for the CREC is a testament to the fact that good liturgy is translatable and adaptable.

Our trip was splendid. Our gracious hosts were sublime, the music flowed, and I am now the proud father of a high school graduate. God is kind.

It was great to see old friends in Moscow, make new ones, and fellowship with all sorts of good people. Moscow continues to thrive in hospitality and projects. If things continue on this trajectory, the only purple hairs available in town will be in the portraits of the museum of lost cultures.

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The most beautiful rhythms of our lives were developed through persistence. But we have grown to believe that life needs to be dramatic and unpredictable; that we need a cycle of shock and awe to get us through the day. But this is not how God formed the world, and it is not how he forms his people.

The common is the thing that shapes our experiences. We are made to be liturgical creatures because God created a world of order from the beginning. He created seasons. He established time to guide our rhythms. He offered the world the gift of 6×1: work and sabbath, labor and rest, creation and consecration.

Liturgy shapes our rhythms and rituals. It trains our loves before we can explain them. It gives the body a grammar of faith. It teaches us when to kneel, when to rise, when to confess, when to feast, when to mourn, and when to sing.

The Psalter teaches us that there are seasons to lament and seasons to rejoice; and sometimes seasons to lament and rejoice within a very short period of time. It teaches us the language of life in all its dimensions. It gives words to grief, melody to gratitude, courage to the weak, and praise to the weary. The Psalms do not allow us to live in one emotional key. They teach us to sing the whole of life before the face of God.

To put it directly: if it can be demonstrated that even the “least of these” can articulate faith, then the defense of infant baptism becomes robust and compelling. The premise is not simply: “Parents stand for the children,” but “each child stands for himself.”

The question is not whether infants can pass a theological exam. The question is whether God recognizes, receives, blesses, incorporates, and gives faith to covenant children before they possess mature intellectual self-awareness. And the testimony of Scripture is that He does.

The premises that must be met are the following:

a) There must be examples of a covenant people that manifest faith in their infancy as a society.

Israel is called God’s son from infancy: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son” (Hosea 11:1). The entire nation, including nursing infants and little ones, is brought through the waters of deliverance and constituted as a redeemed people. Paul later says that “all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (I Corinthians 10:1–2). This includes the children in the covenantal passage from death to life.

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My town of Pensacola reserves one day a year, namely, Memorial Day, to parade homosexual perversion in our world-renown beaches. Today (Monday, as I write), the rain was pervasive on Memorial Day, and I believe it was God’s kindness to keep that display of sodom-ism away. Instead of honoring those who gave their lives, we honor the perverse who take the meaning of life away with their actions. But I have not yet heard of any major events in the downtown area. And thanks be to God for his providence!

The Apostle Paul has a response to such debauchery. But it is worth exploring it in a broader context here in the Perspectivalist. My proposal is simple: that marriage is public. And that our response needs to have a legislative dimension, but ultimately, it’s our lived-out marriages that speak louder.

Paul wrote in Romans 1 not only against the homosexual practices of the day, but also in a way that liberated those who were being sexually abused by their masters. And this needs to be the source of our response: the Gospel is liberating. It does not merely liberate man spiritually, as if salvation were only a rescue of disembodied souls from the ruins of creation; it also liberates men and women from destructive lifestyles, false worship, and enslaving desires. It frees the captive and the enslaved. It saves the whole man. The moment we begin to proclaim a gospel that only saves the soul, we are proclaiming a mediocre gospel, a gospel that does not reach the very heart of human idolatry. The Gospel is not a private sentiment tucked away safely in the inner chamber of the heart. It is the announcement that Jesus is Lord, that the powers have been judged, that sin has been dethroned, and that all of life is now summoned to bow before the King. This is what my town and many others oppressed by this darkness need to understand.

Unfortunately, what is happening is indeed a threat to the sacred definition of marriage. And it is not only coming from without the Church, as we might expect, but also from within the Church. Mainline denominations, though decreasing in staggering numbers over the years, continue to pursue a redefinition of marriage. In 2014, the 221st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved a change to the denomination’s Book of Order redefining marriage from “between a woman and a man” to “between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.” That amendment was then sent to the presbyteries and received the required majority approval in March 2015. The change took effect in June 2015. The PCUSA has chosen the way of death long ago, but now they are dwelling in death itself.

But the issue is not merely that another denomination has capitulated to the spirit of the age. The deeper issue is that many Christians have forgotten that when God defines something, He defines reality. Marriage is not ours to reshape. It is not a lump of cultural clay to be molded by courts, committees, or therapeutic slogans. Marriage is a creational ordinance, echoed by Jesus, fulfilled in Christ and His Church, and embodied in faithful homes.

Courage, Not Silence

It is not uncommon for many to be silent in this day and age. Pastors, known for strong gospel proclamation, often remove themselves from these political matters for fear of being drawn into controversy. But the gospel is good news for us because it means Caesar has been deposed and Jesus is the New King of the World. We are already controversial by nature.

Jesus could have remained on His preaching tour, going from synagogue to synagogue each Sabbath, telling people that their sins were forgiven and that the kingdom of God was at hand. If that had been the entire essence of His public ministry, it is possible that our Lord would have died a typical Jewish death in His sixties or seventies. But our Lord did more than talk about the gospel. He lived the gospel. And that entailed confronting the civil magistrates of the day, the religious leaders of the day, and even the entire social structure of civilization by announcing that His kingdom was not composed of one ethnic group but of Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, male and female. The work of our Lord was very public. It is possible that as our culture becomes more transparently un-Christian, Christians are becoming transparently cowardly in their witness.

Before the Second World War, the rise of Adolf Hitler forced German Christians to make a choice. Some attempted to make peace with the Nazis, engaging in dialogue and endless discussions, and many ended up allowing their churches to become accomplices. Others advocated staying on the sidelines and simply obeying the government, arguing that gospel witness was too important to be muddied up with controversial political stances. This is not to make a simplistic comparison between marriage and the barbaric actions of Hitler, but it is to point out that when Christians take the silence route, they lose everything they have cherished. Silence is never neutral. Refusing to speak truth to a world built on lies is not humility; it is surrender disguised as prudence.

A pastor can tell his congregation that marriage is between a man and a woman. He can articulate the biblical rationale better than anyone. But if, in the end, he says that marriage is only a truth for us and not for the world, he has not done his job well. God did not create marriage for Christians only. He created marriage for the human race. Adam and Eve were not members of a denominational committee. They were the father and mother of mankind, which means that marriage is not merely an ecclesiastical arrangement; it is woven into the architecture of creation. Therefore, when we say that marriage is between one man and one woman, we are not making a sectarian claim. We are confessing a universal reality.

Marriage, Reality, and the Failure of Left and Right

Allow me to be bi-partisan for a moment, and by that I mean to critique the left and the right on this issue. The left, by which I mean those inclined to make a mockery of marriage, has continually pursued the end of it. They have sought to redefine it. Of course, there are those on the left who remain skeptical of their fellow leftists’ policies, but the progressive impulse in our country has not sought the common good of marriage. Some defend marriage in theory while remaining open to legislating any other form of relationship and calling it marriage. But God defines reality. No politician, court, or Supreme Court decision defines reality. Jesus is Lord, whether the world recognizes Him or not. While we fight to defend marriage, and while we offer a robust defense and response to those who oppose God’s only ordained definition of marriage, we must remember that marriage is marriage as God sees it, not as society determines.

At the same time, those of us in the more conservative strand of American politics have our own faults. Rich Lusk has observed that while we might expect liberals to attack marriage, what is surprising and disappointing is the inability of conservatives, including conservative Christians, to defend marriage as an institution. In the last few years, some of the “Family Values” politicians and leaders fell into deep sexual sin. Those who stood firm against President Clinton’s sexual sins were later caught in the same sins. In many ways, the failure of many who were strong advocates of marriage has destroyed conservatives’ credibility on the marriage question. But this is precisely the point: our defense of marriage must be embodied. We cannot merely say true things about marriage. We must live beautifully within it.

God instituted marriage in creation. Jesus echoed creation to defend marriage in the Gospels. Christ and the Church serve as the ultimate marriage. Indeed, the Bible is a great story of marriage. But it appears that while we vociferously defend it, we are failing to embody it. We do hope, work, and pray toward the day when the definition of marriage will not be disputed in Washington or anywhere else. We do hope that legislation will reflect what God has already determined to be very good. However, the issue will ultimately not be won on the political battlefield but in the bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms, and family rooms of our homes. The best defense of marriage we can offer is our own. If the Church is not known as a place where married life is practiced with holy joy and where spouses warmly cherish one another in lifelong fidelity, then nothing we say in defense of marriage will gain traction. Our public defense of marriage must be wedded to the practice of prizing marriage in our homes.

Marriage Embodied in the Home

So, talking about marriage is different than living out your marriage. When we defend marriage, the world will listen more attentively when we are clearly living it out. What is marriage for? Christian marriage is a Spirit-filled song and dance; as with all dances, the man leads and the woman follows. Together, their lives blend into one as they make the music of the Spirit. Singing the music of the Spirit transforms your character. Marriage gives us new opportunities to learn the fine art of forgiveness. When your spouse sins against you, God is giving you an opportunity to show mercy and learn to forgive as you have been forgiven. Marriage is a mutual transformation. Every time your spouse sins, you have a golden opportunity to grow spiritually.

But marriage also teaches humility by exposing our own sin. Marriage does not simply change who we are; it reveals who we are. It leaves us with no place to hide. It exposes our selfishness, pride, impatience, and other assorted vices in a deeper way than almost any other human relationship. But each time sin is exposed, we have a new opportunity to repent and therefore to grow and mature as believers.

Marriage also teaches wisdom. Men and women are different. Though men and women are viewed as equals in creation and redemption, they are not identical. Husbands and wives must learn to appreciate their differences in perspective. Proverbs ends with the wise king reigning with his wise queen by his side, as his trusted friend, confidant, and counselor. This is exactly what Christian marriage should look like. As two Christian spouses get to know one another deeply, they learn to see the world the way the other sees it. The best way to grow in wisdom is to listen to and learn from your spouse.

But this takes effort and patience. If a man constantly interrupts his wife or refuses to listen to her, he will be a bigger fool in the future than he is today. He must humble himself and come to appreciate her way of seeing things. Many men scoff at their wives’ perspectives and fears. But he must treat her as Lady Wisdom, his own personal tutor in prudence. As Pastor Rich Lusk puts it: “Men, God did not give you a ‘feminine side,’ as you hear so often today; instead, He has given you a wife. You need to get in touch with her if you want to be wise.”

The Future of Pensacola

The rain on Memorial Day may have washed over Pensacola’s beaches, but it cannot wash away the deeper question before us: will the Church speak clearly when the world speaks falsely? Will we simply accept this as the status quo of our city? Will we confess that Christ is Lord not only over the sanctuary, but over the city, the home, the body, the marriage bed, and the public square?

Marriage is public because creation is public. Marriage is public because the Gospel is public. And if the Gospel is truly good news for the whole man, then it must be good news for our loves, our bodies, our homes, and our cities. There is plenty to criticize in our day, and we should do so with courage. But our most powerful apologetic will be homes filled with fidelity, forgiveness, fruitfulness, and joy. Let us therefore live marriage as God desires, not merely so that we may win arguments, but so that marriage may once again shine as a testimony to Christ and His Bride before the watching world.

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Whatever wisdom I offer may stem from the incalculable amount of hours I have spent reading on parenting over the last 20 years and, hopefully and primarily, from a heavy dose of biblical wisdom. But as we all know, the entire process is a flurry of unexpectedness. Parenting is not formulaic; it is relational adjustments momentarily and momentously. Parenting is the art of adjusting well to changing circumstances.

As a member of the hated patriarch, I support a healthy dose of rituals that shape a home. Some things ought to be consistent, like a Curry mid-court three-pointer. Family worship should happen consistently, but not rigidly like a Puritan songbook. Table dinners together should happen as frequently as possible. Still, none of these things are Gospel necessities. We are not saved by food or singing, but by faith alone. Faith manifests itself in food, singing, Bible reading, and table fellowship, but those are not the final ingredients of justification. Of course, my entire public writing history is a history of encouraging those endeavors as unto the Lord, but I hope I have not treated them as a self-help manual.

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One of the joys of speaking loudly on Substack is that I get to see some fine china break in real time. For those of you unfamiliar with my world, that’s a metaphor for views being shattered and given a facelift.

What is that thing broken and replaced? The thing broken is a variation of pessimistic eschatology, and it is being replaced with some happy postmillennialism. Mind you, I am not so much concerned with loyalty to the systematic category as with the heart of the matter.

It pleases me to see folks going through that radical transformation and sending me notes about it. It is amazing to plant seeds and wait a long time to see them bear fruit. God seems to work like that on many occasions. I believe we are reaching a stage of massive theological re-shiftings, and I have alluded to some of these factors before, but the postmil conversion is a fruitful blossoming of many seeds planted long ago. I have been harping on the postmil “C” chord for a really long time, and I think postmil eschatology is beginning to see a resurgence.

This may be the result of ecclesiastical behavior over the past two years. In fact, I will go so far as to say that many of the conservative churches growing numerically have seen the sundry silliness of our society and grown some postmil backbones, which means they are functionally acting like us. Now, lots of other non-postmil flocks have come alongside our efforts, or later decided to peek behind the curtain, but the reality is that the majority of pastors I know who decided to fight the tide named one of their kids or their dogs, B.B. Warfield.

The reason this happens is not that dispensationalists are gnostic pirates, but because theology and ideas matter. A theology that urges the Christian population to shut down or cave in cannot be a theology that says, “Jesus shall reign where’r the sun doth his successive journeys run!” It simply can’t!

As the old line goes, lex orandi, lex credendi; the way we worship eventually forms the way we believe. And the way we believe eventually forms the way we act. Or, as Abraham Kuyper famously observed, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!” A shrinking kingdom instinct simply does not harmonize with that declaration.

Now, yes, there are peoples of all eschatological stripes who act inconsistently with their theologies and opine like disciples of John Murray, but by and large, those who compromise on their political convictions in our day believe and affirm a spiritualized kingdom only, one that was content with, “If the ship is sinking, why polish the brass!”

The Postmillennial Vision: Gospel on the Offensive

Postmillennial eschatology is a direct contact-sport eschatology. It’s not flag football; it’s the result of a baby created by rugby and Constantinian religion. It’s real. It’s fleshly. It’s in your face. And wherever it goes, it carries three main affirmations:

First, it affirms that the Christian faith is rooted in the proto-evangelium (Gen. 3:15). It believes that the first Gospel preached was a Gospel that de-throned disciples of the Serpent and moved forward on the offense against religious and political tyrants (II Cor. 10:5). The seed of the woman shall crush the head of the serpent in tangible ways, which necessitates the confrontation of institutions and systems that do not harmonize with the kingdom of heaven.

This is not an accidental feature of the Gospel; it is part of its original announcement. The first Gospel is also the first declaration of war.

As one hymn puts it:

“He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free,
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity.”

Second, it affirms the centrality of the Cultural and Great Commissions (Gen. 1:26-28; Matt. 28:18-20). Postmil is not an eschatology of guesses; it’s an eschatology of certainty. We don’t walk around wondering whether the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven; we affirm the kingdom shall come on earth as it is in heaven in history and time. Heck, we even pray the Lord’s Prayer like we mean it!

Christ shall return to receive a glorified bride, not a defeated bride. The great feast is a glorious feast of victorious proclamations (Rev. 7:12). What God commands shall be fulfilled, and there are no nuances to that.

As Jonathan Edwards once wrote, “The kingdom of Christ shall be raised from the greatest depression to the greatest height and glory.” That expectation is not optimism for optimism’s sake. It is confidence in the promises of God.

Sacrifice, Worship, and the Building of a Christian World

Finally, it affirms a bodily sacrificial life before the watching world (Rom. 12:1-2). The certainty of postmil eschatology is not naive about suffering and pain. In fact, it triumphs through our suffering and pain. It sees the sacrifice of the Church as a sacrifice towards something; a symphonic movement reaching its finale.

Postmil doesn’t tolerate political shenanigans because they keep us from forming a Christ-shaped society in our churches, homes, and cultures. It moves through sacrificial acts of worship first on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7) and then throughout the rest of time (I Cor 10:31).

The movement begins at the Table and extends into the world. Worship is not retreat; it is formation for conquest.

Or as Chesterton put it, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Postmillennialism assumes the difficult task and presses forward anyway.

Postmillennialism breaks the fine china of the non-threatening spiritual church and calls her to take up the sword in one hand and the shovel in the other (Neh. 4:18). That means we will protect our right to worship the Triune God, and we will work as unto the Lord, and we will strive with all our hearts to ensure that our children and our children’s children seek the good of the city until that day.

Because the Church is not polishing brass on a sinking ship.

She is building an ark.

One way you know you have a good friend is whether after analyzing your relationship over a certain span of time you can detect that he or she has moved you to overcome certain realities (I John 4:4). If, however, you determine that your “friend” has only perpetuated a status of weakness in you and has not sought or encouraged your movement towards the good, true, and beautiful, you have been fooled by a false embrace.

Chesterton once observed that friendship is founded on the joyful discovery that another person sees the same truth you see. Friendship is not merely proximity or shared grievances; it is companionship in pursuit of what is lovely and eternal. There are certain friendships that transgress, let’s say, the boundaries of common courtesy. If those friendships have not made you love the good and the eternal over a period of time, then it’s time to move on to other friendships.

Everyone needs to realize that certain friendships are seasonal. And when I say, “move on,” I don’t mean that you cease to be courteous or kind or congenial, or a basic human being. I mean that the bulk of your investment shifts to others who may provide a deeper life for you at this stage. And we can also say that it’s likely that those former friendships may blossom again in the future. Sometimes these dynamics are cyclical rather than permanent.

So, what’s a true friend like? Well, true friends weep and grieve, but they do not allow you to remain in a state of constant victimization; they do not tolerate your place of despair as a place to be, but a place to flee. Good friends do not offer you rationales to stay where you are because, after all, that’s where other people are. Good friends do not send you texts that encourage more of the same lingering malaise. Good friends do not turn you against people who are growing, but push you towards them.

Friendships are not untouched icons; some are meant to be broken down with the force of an iconoclast. As I have already mentioned, friendships change over time, and sometimes we are the ones who need to make the change. It is true that some friendships endure long distances and differences, but most friendships, especially youthful ones, change. Some will suck your time and energy with vampiric zeal; they will add little and take too much. There are seasons where you are to give more, but you need to determine whether this season has been the entire time frame of your relationship.

Friendship as Mutual Joy

When young folks seek counsel from me about present relationships, I remind them that God moves us from glory to glory, and certain people are fairly committed to not moving along with us; in fact, they want you to stay with them in their misery and apathy. But one of the fundamental means of maturity and wisdom is the gift of friendship. It’s embedded in David’s Psalms, in Paul’s letters, and in the great warnings of Scripture. Chesterton understood this well because he viewed friendship as one of God’s great rebellions against loneliness and meaninglessness. Friendship reminds us that sanctification is not merely private endurance, but more like a shared pilgrimage through life. Others can attest that I am no fan of camping. But I also know that when I camp with friends, even for a day, I return home closer to them in some way.

No relationship is as important as your sanctification. Friendships that show little interest in mutual love for the holy are not rooted in God’s view of communion with one another.

If you find yourself in the middle of a relationship where your life is being drained, your spirituality is being stifled, and your zeal is being stolen, reconsider that friendship. Friendships are not atonement experiences where you are the only one called to die and serve. No, Jesus is the only Friend who did that! Friendships are experiences in mutual self-giving. They are meant to offer refreshment through laughter and merriment, as well as tears and sorrow.

Nor are we going to persuade women that the professionalization of their futures is harmful to society by turning social media into a theater of contempt. Men who spend their days mocking women, ridiculing femininity, and cultivating a constant spirit of irritation are not building a Christian culture. They are revealing a failure of mission, or better yet, a failure to define mission.

The biblical pattern is not male bellicosity...the biblical pattern is male headship rooted in sacrifice, clarity, and purpose. That’s why St. Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25, NKJV). The burden placed on men is not first domination, but a cruciform leadership (side note: I refuse to use the language of “servant leadership” because it fails to connote the good death the Bible speaks of. Good Friday was not Christ’s service to the world, but his victory as a gift to the world through sacrifice. Thus, “cruciform leadership addresses this more biblically, in my estimation).

A husband is called to create a world of order, fruitfulness, protection, and worship into which a wife gladly enters. Men are to be cultivators before they are critics. I still find Luther’s exhortation one of the most memorable and meaningful for households:

“Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.”

For all of Luther’s righteous anger toward the papacy, he did more than perhaps any figure of his era to restore the dignity of marriage and household life. Luther understood that masculinity is not proven in loudness or perpetual criticism, but in building a home marked by affection, stability, joy, and duty. He offers a healthy masculine vision rooted in responsibility rather than resentment.

This is one reason Genesis presents Adam as the one charged with guarding and tending the garden before Eve is brought to him (Genesis 2:15). The mission precedes the helper. The calling precedes the companionship. Eve is brought into Adam’s task, not as a servant to his laziness or an audience to his online frustrations, but as a co-laborer in the cultivation of glory. Read that last line again.

A woman is far more likely to follow a man whose life possesses direction, wisdom, stability, and conviction than a man who merely complains about feminism on the internet.

Additionally, the Scriptures repeatedly insist that women are to be treated with honor, not as objects of perpetual suspicion or targets of generalized scorn. Peter writes, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel” (I Peter 3:7, NKJV). Of course, honor does not mean flattery or the refusal to speak truth. Scripture itself mocks folly, rebellion, and covenantal unfaithfulness. We should note various forms of feminine rebellion that deserve direct confrontation and even ridicule in the prophetic sense. But biblical correction always addresses particular sins and actual disorders. It is not a perpetual disposition of sneering at women as women.

Much of the online masculine rhetoric of our age lacks fatherliness. It attacks women, sometimes even godly women, like a high school frat party. It lacks gravitas. It lacks the kind of mature strength that builds households and civilizations. The Church does not need more men who know how to provoke reactions online…needlessly. The Church needs men who can lead prayer at the dinner table, disciple children, love their wives with tenderness and firmness, establish economies of hospitality, and labor faithfully in their vocation. In other words, men whose masculinity is persuasive because it bears fruit.

The Christian answer to confusion between the sexes is not mockery as a lifestyle. It is the recovery of mission. Men must build something beautiful enough that women desire to join themselves to it. That’s the best way for headship to become attractive— when it resembles Christ: sacrificial, ordered, courageous, fruitful, and full of joy. The goal is not the humiliation of women, but the restoration of men and women together under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

We transitioned from the “Gospel-Centered” movement of the early 2000s, which held that our natural loves were actually idolatrous, to the “Gospel-Rare” movement of our day, which suggests that our natural loves require the Gospel only in rare spiritual experiences.

The Gospel-centered movement chastised anyone who maximized the natural order of the Bible. Remember Tim Keller’s words: “If your partner is your ‘everything,’ then any shortcoming in him or her becomes a major threat to you.” Or, “To make an idol out of marriage is to put too much pressure on your spouse and on the institution itself.” Not to be overly dramatic, but I simply can’t envision marriage counseling where I am dealing with an ever-increasing number of wives idolizing their husbands so much that it threatens the gospel message. We don’t have an overemphasis on the family; we have the death of the family, which means such analysis can only damage the pursuit of wholeness in our society.

These same gospelizers offered pilgrimages towards absolution if only we loved family less and Jesus more. But the result of such a dangerous bifurcation was an idolatrous view that minimized the spheres of society in favor of some nebulous piety.

On the other hand, the “Gospel-rare” movement holds that the Gospel is not wholly necessary for a nation's salvation. The earthly good of a people is not tied to the Gospel. You can begin to see this in Christian Nationalism postings:

To which I replied,

I don’t think Stephen and I will come to an agreement, but I do think the ultimate issue is that, for many CN’ers, divorcing Politics from the Gospel reduces the Gospel to merely a message about eternal life. They limit the Gospel to spiritual realities. The Amillennialists, especially in the Dutch tradition, want to make sure that we don’t make that sacred pulpit a place for dismantling the nanny state.

However, the Apostle Paul views the Gospel, particularly the promise of the Resurrection, as deeply rooted in the conquest of the nations (I Cor 15:24-26). For the nations to come to Christ, we need neither a distorted view of the Gospel that minimizes our earthly concerns nor to divorce it from its political implications. We need the whole Gospel to speak of the necessary virtues for all our civil officers. Yes, indeed, the Gospel offers all of that!

The Gospel is a full-orbed, redemptive-historical message that draws people to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and turns our affections rightly to our families and friends, as well as to the victory over principalities and powers in D.C. Therefore, we need to avoid both ditches and see the Gospel for what it is: the declaration that Christ is Lord over all!

Reading in 2026

It has been a fruitful reading season for me in these past four months. While I am constantly in the writing business perusing commentaries and research books, I find myself more and more enjoying reading good books with friends. 2026 is the year of greater consistently in reading good fiction…intentionally.

The year began with Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which I have read for the second time. Eco developed a theology of sacrifice by the end that was hard to forget. If an institution is corrupt and murderous, it must all go down in flames, and so must all the memories fade. James B. Jordan was the one who set my heart towards Eco back in 2025. I have intended to work through Baudolino next, but there are just too many other books.

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When I first heard of the book, it carried an aura of divinity. Several folks spoke glowingly of the work. I was somewhat surprised to discover that the author, Allen Levi, is debuting as a novelist. That fact did not derail my interest. So, after overhearing some passing comments about the work and being chastened by some to do so, I decided to press on. This effort received greater confirmation when my trusted deacon recommended the book for our book study.

Two and three witnesses abounded.

My desire here is not to offer the narrative of the thing, but why the thing created this narrative.

Theo as Solomon

We concluded a lovely discussion last night with some parishioners and a pleasant bottle of Port (here’s to you, Theo!). The discussion centered on various fragments of the book and some of Theo's memorable encounters with characters (Ellen, Asher, Basil, etc.). The compelling feature of Theo is not simply that he redeemed broken humans, but also that he found redemption a crucial part of his role as a human.

For Theo, the telos of life was to give, and when the giving felt sufficient, he gave some more…of himself, and then of the self he didn’t think he had. Theo (the root of Theos, for “God”) functioned as a kingly figure eager to embody wisdom. Even his place at the Ponder house was an illustration that he looked down on the affairs of man from the highest place in town.

In some ways, Theo was a man with no last name. We do find out who he is at the end, but throughout, we have no sense of who he actually is, except to say that he enters a town into which he is a complete stranger. In Golden, he begins to survey the city and detects that humans need a touch of the divine to see themselves rightly. And Theo went about this task with rapid interest to meet those needs. From the young professional female who longed to ultimately be a mother, to the musician whose life needed a transcendent sound to make sense of his own rhythms.

Theo knew that he needed to restore these saintly figures. He knew that they needed a picture of themselves, a portrait of a reality they had forsaken, a portrait of someone they had forgotten. Nevertheless, Theo gave them, themselves, a better vision of themselves, which meant their real selves.

As a solomonic figure, Theo offered vignettes and pictures of the good life; a life that is not unattainable, but one that will, however, require some earnest work to arrive at and achieve. And those who listened to Theo found a sense of belonging and being again. But those who trampled on his art faced his wrath. The 86-year-old Portuguese man overthrew tables, not because he wanted disarray, but because those who hated decency and beauty deserved to be rebuked. But those who gave beauty a chance received a new opportunity to live.

Theo as Eschatological Man

But there is one final element to note (before my time runs out): Theo is an eschatological man. He is a form of a metaphysical man who is dogmatic about his purposes. He walks into an unknown town knowing much about virtually everyone (Asher, Ponder, etc.), but he is received with remarkable skepticism by everyone. Some even doubted his motives. Others were bewildered that such a man would attempt to play the role of charity in their midst.

But once they were exposed to the man, they gained a new affection for him, but more than that, they gained an affection for the role of charity again; things that were uncertain about their futures now found good and true meaning.

And that ultimately is Theo’s role: to give those in Golden a purposeful future; to live intentionally in the task of loving and serving; even if it means being at odds with the expectations of society. Theo walks around in an itinerant fashion: healing, talking, admiring, encouraging, and exhorting. But he never walks around Golden as the chief hero. He walks around the town from space to space, redeeming every square inch dripping with wild humility and virtue. In fact, we may even say that his end is a form of cry for deliverance to those who are suffering and under the feet of oppressors.

So, this is how it ends…

I do not wish to give away the ending, but I do wish to say that Theo is a connoisseur of life. He is the traveler of old worlds, he is the appreciator of beauties, he is the lover at the dance, and he is the healer of Golden. And all these things are accomplished not through some incantation, but merely through the art of giving; through the imitative display of being: being like God, being like the true man.

Theo sees all things, again, not because he is divine, but because a life of suffering and a degree of shame, and repentance of many sorts make you and your gray hair symbols of tasty Port. So, in my three minutes remaining, I offer a toast to Theo….

And this, good people, leads me to this topic.

I have a couple of talks in 2027 on the role of AI in sermon writing for the Strawbridge Forum of Pastoral Theology, so these thoughts have been ruminating for some time. But here is a bit of an addendum on something more personal: Al’s role in prayer.

No one would deny that AI helps us write. But the end result and the overarching concern are that it quietly presses us toward sameness. Others have pointed this out as well.

And sameness is the enemy of voice. The more we lean on it, the more we risk sounding like something assembled rather than something lived.

I just finished reading Allen Levi’s excellent novel, Theo of Golden. Even after listening to his epilogue, I knew I was reading Levi’s experience lived out, even as I listened to his accent. Theo was this eschatological figure that he longed to be like. So, what I want, when I read a man, is not polish or flourish for its own sake. I want to hear the marks of formation. I want to know this is someone who has been trained—who has wrestled with texts, learned how to argue, and knows how to carry a thought from beginning to end without borrowing a personality along the way. I am not looking for someone who specializes in sounding impressive. I am looking for someone who sounds like himself.

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The old Moral Majority, for all its energy and influence, mistook the fruit for the root; it sought cultural transformation without sufficiently grounding that transformation in the ecclesia. But if Church and worship are disoriented, society loses its capacity to function with any real order. The answer to our cultural decay is not first political; it is ecclesiastical.

The Church is not an accessory to public life; she is the genesis of a moral vocabulary shaped by the Sacred Scriptures. Without her, we do not merely lose transcendence; we lose definition. If we no longer know what a woman is, it is because the Church has failed to catechize the world in the grammar of creation. That failure is not accidental; it is theological, liturgical, and ecclesial.

For too long, the Church has played nice; she has sought to minimize offense and, in doing so, has forfeited her voice. When asked whether we are too polarized, the instinct is to lament division, but the deeper problem is that we are not polarized enough. The Church has refused to show up for the family portrait. Instead, she has become the distant relative, present at formal ceremonies and absent from formation. Yet she must be present; not merely present, but central in the formation of the culture around us.

The Idol of Individualism and the Silence of the Church

A new moral majority will not emerge from think tanks or campaign platforms; it will emerge from pulpits and tables, from Word and Sacrament, from a people shaped week after week by the rhythms of worship. The Church is the paradigmatic institution; she does not borrow her authority from the state, rather the state borrows its legitimacy from a moral order that the Church proclaims.

The great obstacle to this vision is not first external opposition; it is internal corruption. The modern Church has been catechized by individualism; this spirit has turned her inward, privatized her mission, and reduced her to a therapeutic community of self-expression. And as Carl Trueman has observed, “the modern self assumes the authority of inner feelings to define what is real.” That is the social imaginary in its purest form; a world in which identity is no longer received from God but constructed from within. When the Church refuses to confront that assumption, she quietly baptizes it.

In this social imaginary, the self becomes the arbiter of truth; reality is no longer received, it is constructed. The Church, instead of confronting this rebellion, has often accommodated it. She has embraced a navel-gazing pietism and mistaken introspection for holiness. But a Church that does not speak to the nations is a Church that has forgotten her calling.

This was made clear in recent years. When crisis came, many churches relinquished the corporeal necessity of worship; they traded the gathered assembly for digital substitutes. The result was predictable; a de-churched Church. When liturgical bones are not exercised, they atrophy; when the Church ceases to practice her story, she forgets who she is (see my essay in “Failed Church” edited by Andrew Sandlin).

What followed was not neutrality; it was silence. And that silence bore fruit; instead of forming a people resistant to tyranny, many churches surrendered their sacred time and their sacred practices. The consequence is a Church unsure of her authority and hesitant in her witness.

The Rise of an Ecclesial Majority

A new moral majority must begin with a renewed commitment to worship; the first day of the week must again become central for the formation of political thinking and cultural engagement. Before we are citizens, we are worshipers; before we engage the public square, we ascend the heavenly one.

Ecclesial conservatism begins here; we think first as churchmen and only then as citizens. Our loyalty is first as worshipers; the political flows from the liturgical, not the reverse. We refuse to place the civic calendar above the Christian calendar; we will not allow the flag to eclipse the cross or the pledges of men to replace the creeds of the Church.

This vision restores prayer to its rightful place; not as a sentimental or even pietistic way of approaching God, but as action. The Church must pray for her leaders as Scripture commands; not as a formality, but as a means of shaping reality. Prayer is not withdrawal. At the very center, it is engagement at the deepest level.

Further, this ecclesial majority does not flee politics; it redeems it. It rejects the secularism that divorces faith from public life and the reductionism that makes politics ultimate. This is not a call to revolution by arms; it is a call to revolution by armor. The Church advances through worship, hospitality, feasting, and faithfulness; she forms a people whose life together embodies an alternative society, a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven.

The public square is indeed a battleground of the gods, but Christians have too often entered that battlefield unarmed, having neglected the very means by which God forms his people. The result has been confusion, compromise, and defeat. What we need, then, is not merely a louder conservative movement; we need a holier Church. Not merely a stronger voting bloc, but a stronger ecclesia. Not merely a moral majority, but a moral-moral majority, a people whose morality is not borrowed from tradition alone, but generated from the living worship of the Triune God.

The Church must once again become the beating heart of cultural renewal; she must sing again with angels and archangels, proclaim again the unchanging Word, and gather again as the visible society of God’s redeemed people.

Only then will a true moral majority emerge: not as a political accident, but as the inevitable fruit of a faithful Church.

Nuntium

My time in Michigan was also a tour of Michigan. We arrived in Detroit on Wednesday and made our way to Shelby, MI, with Pastor Jeff Swanson. We had a splendid time, and then we headed over to the Southeastern region of Michigan, to a lovely town called Howell. The downtown area was delightful.

The congregation, Christ Church of Livingston County, has been part of the CREC for many years. They are currently in search of a new pastor, but with some solid pulpit supply as they conclude their search. I gave a talk on the CREC, followed by a delightful Q&A session. The congregation was full of hospitality and eager to serve their community.

But in the meantime, as a pastor arrives, some of the men are starting a classical school in Howell. And they are enthusiastic for its mission.

It was an honor to meet with the board and offer a lecture to those interested. My main premise was that institutions that are faithful and true are not merely preparing students for the future, but preparing them for a collection of enemies. From the talk:

You can check out their website for more information.

My time here in Michigan has been filled with wonderful glimpses of God’s providence. We arrived early Wednesday, got on our rental in Detroit, and happily made the 3-hour journey to West Michigan to visit Pastor Jeff Swanson, a delightful and larger-than-life figure. We received a tour of his farm and the Dairy plant where he works, learned about the good work done at Christ the King, and spent time with his dear family. It was a joy to experience CREC hospitality in this part of the country.

Rev. Swanson has been shepherding this CREC congregation for many years, and his imprint is all over it. The congregation has a true passion for the Word of our God and also shares the ambitious vision of raising men to take dominion and training young ladies to be lovers of the home.

It was a joy to spend the evening with a portion of his congregation, eating and drinking together, and to have the opportunity to speak about the CREC and our work worldwide. We had a lovely time in good fellowship; the kind of thing that CREC’ers do with excellent frequency. After my talk, we gathered for a picture outside their facility.

While the tide has been on our side for many years, we are slowly gaining momentum in acquiring buildings for our churches. The good folks in West Michigan own their building and use it joyfully for the edification of the saints. If you are ever in West Michigan, you should stop by Christ the King and visit the glorious Lake Michigan, a piece of artistic paradise that is splendid for all 350+ miles. It’s hard to express the glory of such a place! We breathed the crispness of the Lake Michigan air and gave thanks to God.

A little pastoral reflection may suit a few of you today. The more time I spend with fellow ministers, the more self-aware I become of the uniqueness of our calling. This uniqueness comes at different levels, and it moves men in profound ways depending largely on their personalities and predispositions. There is a kind of invisible labor in the pastoral office, one that does not always show itself in sermons or public duties, but in the quiet accumulation of relationships, prayers, and shared lives. Over time, a pastor does not merely preach to a people; he becomes bound to them.

That bond is not mechanical. It is deeply human and profoundly spiritual. It is formed in hospital rooms and fellowship halls, in late-night conversations and ordinary Lord’s Days, in the steady rhythm of Word and Sacrament. And because of this, the pastoral calling is not simply a vocation one performs, but a life one enters. It shapes the affections, deepens the burdens, and ties the minister’s heart to the people under his care in ways that are difficult to fully articulate.

The Joy and Burden of a Shared Life

One of those emotional bursts in the life of the minister happens when a saint leaves the local church. Church departures can be among the most emotional experiences for pastors and members alike. Since we live in a military community, we have seen our share of individuals and families leave our church who have consistently enriched our lives for a beautiful season. These saints add different gifts to the church and undoubtedly immense joy to the flock. Their presence becomes part of the church’s liturgy of life, their voices part of its song.

I am reminded by what the Apostle says in Hebrews 13:17. Members are to submit to their leaders so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you. Membership carries a weighty responsibility: to make the pastor’s job joyful rather than burdensome. This is not a call to flattery or superficial harmony (we don’t need that), but to a shared commitment to the health of the body, where encouragement, patience, and mutual care sustain the work of ministry.

When I wrote my doctoral dissertation some years ago, I wrote about the nature of longevity in the pastoral office. I observed that most pastors leave the ministry quite early due to a lack of encouragement from the flock, which leads to burdens, which burdens lead to misery, which misery leads to early departures from the ministry. In fact, the low rate of pastoral stay in churches, less than five years, is largely due to the Hebrews 13:17 factor. A congregation that understands its role in cultivating joy in its shepherd is not merely helping a man endure; it is strengthening the long-term stability and faithfulness of the church itself.

This, of course, is not to say that pastors live an error-free life. There are times when pastors fail to make their parishioners’ lives joyful and to fulfill their ministerial duties effectively. These all play a significant role in this conversation as well. Shepherds are not immune to weakness, and the same Scriptures that call members to faithful submission also call pastors to faithful oversight, humility, and repentance. The health of the church depends on both.

The Grief of Departure and the Hope of Reunion

Nevertheless, when families leave, it creates an immense void in the pastor's life. After all, we invest in their lives in Word and Sacrament, we host them in our homes, officiate weddings for their children, bring their children to the font, minister in times of crisis, eat, laugh, sing, worship together week after week in the calendar of the church, and much more. And when the reality hits that a family must leave for whatever reason, it feels like a form of death for a minister. It is not merely an organizational change. It is the quiet severing of a shared life.

Ministers pour into the lives of saints in a deeply emotional way. When Paul spoke of being a father to the Corinthians, this was no metaphor. For Paul, to watch little children grow up under your care, to see them suffer, to walk and live with them in the rhythm of the church calendar year after year, can only be described as a fatherly role. It is, in one sense, the feeling parents have when their children leave for college or the feeling a sister has when their best friend leaves for another state. It all reaches into the deepest places of human affection.

Changes happen. Things move. Chapters close. Kids grow up. But the absence of the following Sunday, when those chairs are no longer filled with the presence and humanity of those saints, carries a loss that is hard to articulate. Even when the departure stems from difficult relationships, theological differences, or a professional move, we, pastors, humbly called to serve and filled with our own insecurities, suffer the absence of those whom we loved in our local community. We, therefore, pray that our reunion one day will supply some of the joy that departed when they first left, trusting that the communion of saints is not ultimately broken, but only, for a time, scattered.

Notations

New Perspectivalist Episode

Great thanks to the ladies on The Feminine Glory Podcast for having me on.

How Does Kuyperianism Apply To Women?

Unlike some traditions, Providence Church practices paedocommunion, which means that every baptized child in this congregation is welcomed to the table of Jesus Christ. This is not a novelty for us, nor is it an attempt to be provocative. It is, rather, our attempt to take seriously what the Scriptures say about the nature of the Table and the nature of the Church.

The Apostle Paul tells us that one must “discern the body” before coming to the Table. But we must be careful not to turn that phrase into something foreign to the text. To “discern the body” is not to produce a theological dissertation on the atonement or to demonstrate a sophisticated grasp of Good Friday. Paul’s concern in I Corinthians 11 is not intellectual insufficiency, but relational disorder.

The Corinthians were dividing the Church. Some ate while others went hungry. Some feasted while others were humiliated. They had turned the Lord’s Supper into a display of status and fragmentation. As I have argued elsewhere, “the proof that a Christian—young or old—must display is his desire for unity in the body of Christ, not his performance of self-introspection.”

Paul’s rebuke is not aimed at the simple, but at the divisive. It is not the child who fails to discern the body, but the adult who despises it. Practically, all one has to do is bring a child to the center of a group. How do people react? Does it provide disunity? Or does it draw people closer? The answer is obvious. Children draw people together.

So, what does it mean to discern the body? It means to act in such a way that unites the body. It means to recognize that this Table is not a private meal, but a family feast. It means to come not as an isolated individual, but as a member of Christ’s people. If you are a divider of the body, if you harbor contempt for your brother, if you erect barriers where Christ has torn them down, then you are not discerning the body. And I would urge you to refrain.

But children, as in the days of Jesus, are welcomed. Their presence does not fracture the assembly; it strengthens it. They come not with agendas, but with open hands. They come not to assert themselves, but to receive. And many times, unlike many grown-ups, they have little difficulty desiring the good and unity of the body.

The Covenant Pattern of Faith and Formation

To understand why this is so, we must return to the basic pattern of Scripture. The Bible does not present faith as an abstract, self-generated achievement detached from relationships. It presents faith as something cultivated within the bonds God Himself has established.

As James Jordan has argued so forcefully, we must think back to the garden. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, their children would have grown up knowing the Lord. They would not have needed to “decide” for Him in some isolated, self-conscious moment. They would have been born into a world of fellowship, into a network of relationships that naturally directed them to God.

And even in a fallen world, we see glimpses of this restored pattern. John the Baptist, still in the womb, leaps for joy at the presence of Christ. That is not mere instinct; it is a response of faith. As Jordan puts it, “I believe a fetus can have faith.” Not a fully articulated theology, but a real, living orientation toward God.

This should not surprise us. God’s ordinary way of working is through households. Children are born into relationships. They begin by trusting what their parents say. And that is not a defect; it is God’s design. If God had intended otherwise, He could have created fully formed adults capable of making immediate, independent decisions. But He did not. He created infants who grow, who learn, who trust, and who gradually mature in their understanding.

As Jordan observes, children move through stages. They begin by relating to God as Father, climbing into His lap, so to speak. Later, they grow into deeper and more self-conscious forms of relationship. But the early stage is not inferior; it is foundational. It is the beginning of covenant life.

And if our children are truly part of that covenant, if they are genuinely members of the household of God, then we must ask: why would we exclude them from the family meal?

The Restoration of the Family Table

At its heart, the Lord’s Supper is a meal. And not just any meal, but a family meal. It is the place where Christ gathers His people and feeds them as one body.

In Corinth, that vision had been shattered. The architecture of their homes even reinforced division: the wealthy in the dining room, the poor in the atrium. The best food for some, scraps for others. It was, as Pliny the Younger described, a setting where “the best dishes were set in front of himself and a select few, and cheap scraps… before the rest.”

Paul will have none of it. The Supper is not a place for hierarchy, but for unity. It is a memorial, not in the sense of private nostalgia, but as a corporate proclamation of what God has done, is doing, and will do in Christ.

To come to the Table rightly is to recognize that Christ has broken down barriers. It is to see one another as participants in the same redemption. It is to eat and drink together as one people.

And this is precisely why the inclusion of children matters. The Church is not a collection of autonomous individuals, but a household. It is composed of young and old, mature and immature, all bound together in Christ. When we exclude children, we subtly communicate that they are not yet full participants in that body. But when we welcome them, we testify that Christ has united the whole Church into one great banquet.

This does not mean that all distinctions disappear. Children will grow. They will come to deeper understanding. They will wrestle, and some may rebel. But the starting point matters. They begin not as outsiders striving to gain entry, but as insiders being nurtured in grace.

So we bring them. We place the bread in their hands and the cup to their lips. Not because they understand everything, but because they belong. Not because they have mastered the faith, but because they are being formed by it.

And in doing so, we bear witness to the gospel itself: that Christ gathers a people, not merely individuals; that He restores what was broken; that He builds a household where all—young and old—are fed at His Table.

This is the Table that unites the body. And this is why we welcome the children.

It is generally agreed among scholars that Charles Finney brought the definitive catechism of revivalism into American culture. Its effects are lasting and still endure in evangelicalism. Not only was there a denial of the monergistic work of the Spirit, but also an emphasis upon the sinner to ask, cry, repent, receive, walk down the aisle, raise his hand, pray a prayer, and follow all the meticulous and intricate steps to finally arrive at a place where one can feel secure in salvation. Of course, after this series of sentimental experiences often comes the guilt years, which tend to arise during the teenage years for those who grow up in a typical evangelical home.

The Confusion of Gospel and Method

It may seem odd to think that such a series of decisions would be equivalent to the gospel. The reality is that this list of necessary occurrences for experiencing true salvation is foreign to the biblical text. It belittles the message of the cross and further enhances confusion in the already troubled evangelical mind.

There is no denial that revivals have brought about genuine conversions, but I do deny that they have been beneficial to the body as a whole. A multitude of souls is even too expensive a price in light of faithfulness to the truth.

Revivals can have their place, even an important one, much like emergency measures that can save a life in a moment of crisis. But they are not the ordinary means God has appointed to sustain and grow the life of His Church. They may awaken, but they do not ordinarily nourish. The regular health of the Christian life comes not through spiritual emergencies, but through the steady, appointed means of grace.

It is health we need. We have plenty of remedies, just not the right ones. As Steve Schlissel once put it, “There is too much evangelism today, just not the right kind.”

From Self-Reliance to Gospel Rest

For the gospel of grace to be preached effectively, we need to destroy the concept of self-reliance and resurrect the concept of dependence. It is God alone who brings about revivals, that is, a revival of the heart. Souls must be resurrected from their spiritual death. The author of resurrection is like the wind, and you cannot summon the wind to meet you on a cold evening at a tent revival.

The shocking consequences of this mentality have led some to atheism or to a modern form of Pelagianism. If we seek to be conformed to the standards of modern evangelicalism, we lose our biblical identity. But if we seek to apply gospel truth to our everyday lives, then we destroy our fleshly instincts. This is precisely what we are called to do: to lose our lives in order that we may walk according to the Spirit. The Christian may find rest in the gospel even now.

The calamity that has befallen the church is a direct result of a foundational misunderstanding of the good news: you can never get over it. You need it every day and every hour. If you want assurance of your faith, then trust in the gospel again and again. Taste the goodness of the vine at the table of our Lord. Abandon the hypocrisy of weekly re-commitments and embrace Christ once and for all

.

Nuntium

My energy is fairly limited as I prepare to head out to JFK back to Pensacola. We made it early to the airport after a fruitful 36 hours in New York City. A couple of quick pictures from my long walk in Central Park with a dear friend.

Notations

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But we are also at a stage where we are culturally, theologically, and liturgically self-aware. We are no longer in our infancy. The Lord has been kind to us. We have grown to produce godly and faithful pastors, and now our children and our children’s children are coming of age within our churches, offering remarkable gifts within their own spheres of influence. This is not accidental. It is the fruit of a shared life, a common confession, and a deliberate commitment to worship and practice.

And as you grow as an institution, it becomes imperative to establish and maintain boundaries. Growth without clarity is not maturity. It is significant that our culture is preserved, and that our theological and liturgical distinctives are not only articulated, but guarded and strengthened, even more so at the presbytery level. In other words, we can now afford to be careful. We can afford to be selective, not out of pride, but out of stewardship.

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