My 2018 journal article, “Desert Rose: Thomas Chalmers’ West Port Experiment (1844-1847),” published in the 2018 edition of The Confessional Presbyterian. Images used by permission. To purchase a copy, click here.
Archive for the ‘WPE Editor’ Category
The original “West Port” story
Posted in Articles, Free Church of Scotland, Locality & the Law of Residence, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Theology of Community, Theology of Place, Thomas Chalmers, Vignettes from 19th Century District Visitation, Visitation Evangelism, West Port experiment, WPE Editor on April 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Wise-as-serpent evangelism
Posted in Church of Scotland, Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Family Religion, Free Church of Scotland, Gospel Tactics, Locality & the Law of Residence, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, Vignettes from 19th Century District Visitation, Visitation Evangelism, WPE Editor on April 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »
“As to the attendance of the people on the Sabbath ministrations of the missionary, you will doubtless find that they will give you very fair promises. They may all say they will go to church; but by many of them the promises will not be kept. In such circumstances, a very good plan, which I would recommend to you, would be this, — Let either the agent of the district, or some person on whom he can depend, after the hour at which the various churches go in, go to the district where the defaulters, — reside, and entering one of their houses, beg to be allowed to conduct a family exercise, to which the neighbours may be called in. Depend upon it, they will take it very well. They will of course feel themselves caught . . . but still they will tolerate you, and make their escape next Sabbath, by going to the place of worship. That’s one of a variety of doing the thing. It will bring them in contact with the gospel at any rate. The great matter is to get them into the habit of church-going.”
-Thomas Chalmers, 1844 lecture on the eve of the West Port Experiment
[image]
Services during COVID-19?
Posted in Articles, Sabbatarianism & the Church Calendar, Sacred & Secular, Two Kingdoms Theology, WPE Editor on March 25, 2020| 6 Comments »
During the recent COVID-19 crisis, many Christian churches have closed their doors, cancelling regular public worships services, though often utilizing telecommunications to facilitate God’s worship in private home contexts. What principles do confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian elders consider when making their decision? These are the ones that factored in to my mind.
1. Worship is priority number one. God’s honor comes before man’s honor, His being before ours. “Thy love is better than life.” We should sooner join the three Hebrew children and lay down our lives than surrender an inch of God’s worship. The First Table comes before the Second, and if there is an apparent conflict, the general rule is to surrender our own interests.
RPM: Fatima & the ratios of Jesus
Posted in Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, WPE Editor on March 3, 2020| 1 Comment »
Some time back, my fellow elder and I met “Fatima” in my parish. Since then, I have had multiple opportunities to visit her with my wife and family, have her over to our house, and once she has come to church. As an Iraqi refugee, she’s experienced hardship; and things have not always been easy adjusting as a “stranger in a strange land.” She is a very sweet, special lady, who is hungry for friendship. And our hope is that she will find that greatest of all friends, the Friend who laid down His life for His friends.
RPM: More on “Tyrone” and “Leah”
Posted in Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, WPE Editor on February 22, 2020| 3 Comments »
One apartment, two stories. Way back, I had met “Tyrone,” a truly broken soul who has been in and out of jail. Now that he’s back in jail, I’ve heard from him and have gone to pay him a visit. I wasn’t able to take a Bible in, or anything for that matter. So for about an hour I preached the Gospel to him from texts in my head as we sat without privacy in a large, open room with others, seated in our little tête-à-tête. We were one of many, but here was conversation into which the angels desired to look.
Among other things, I spoke of our Lord being about His “Father’s business” from Luke 2. Who was His Father after all? Was it Joseph? No. Joseph had nothing to do with Jesus’ conception. He was formed by the Spirit, coming down upon upon the Virgin. He was formed as the God-man, with two distinct natures in one person. Why was this? The Savior who had come for him, to save Tyrone’s soul, had to stand on both sides of the equation. He had to reconcile. What is reconciliation? Bringing hostile parties together; and in this case, bringing offenders, spiritual criminals, back into a right relation with the offended God. O Lord, make this seed sown to bear forth fruit unto righteousness and praise!
RPM: Another season closes
Posted in Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, Uncategorized, WPE Editor on December 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Yesterday I finished the last round through my parishes for the season. As the air gets chillier, my hands and ears get colder, so doorstep conversations turn less pleasant for all involved. For the winter, I turn to revisit folks who will likely have me in, reach out to other contacts outside the district, and resume and start up one-on-one Bible studies.
A few highlights from the last couple of outings. In my Warwick parish, I returned to a house where last year where I had a very interesting, long talk. But it wasn’t ‘John.’ Instead, ‘Jake’ answered the door with his 10 year old daughter, ‘Emily.’ I asked about John and found out that he had moved and was renting the place out to them. But clearly they were friends and had been cut out of the same cultural cloth. Jake was a skeptic, a self-styled pagan. Since I had recently finished a book that addressed the case for the resurrection, I made a brief case for it as well as the reliability of the NT. What a privilege it is to communicate the witness of those who witnessed glory. “We have not followed cunningly devised fables.” Emily was pretty precocious. Clearly, she had been religiously catechized. A rather outspoken atheist, Emily was a believer in ‘science.’ Heartbreaking. O Jesus, make them as Saul of Tarsus. Arrest them by your grace! (more…)
RPM: Latin firstfruits?
Posted in Parish in American Context, Parish Theory & Practice, Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, Uncategorized, WPE Editor on September 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
“I will come by you into Spain.” (Rom. 15:28)
Ever since I turned my sights to South Providence, there was no looking back. While conversions have been slow in coming (O come, Holy Spirit!), yet there has been a striking openness, especially among the Hispanic community there. I have been invited into the homes of many families and sweet, little old ladies, proclaiming the timeless truth of Jesus with my rather flawed, Gringo-Spanish. I have many an open door to read Scripture, expound, exhort, and pray. And of course, I’m keen to introduce the richness of the Reformed faith where there is quite a range of sub-par ‘Christianities.’
The struggle, of course, has been that our regular services have only been in English. With our slender resources, we’ve done various things to bridge the gap. We’ve had special midweek meetings with translation. And we’ve attempted on and off to have our services translated into Spanish. But because I can’t predict when someone will take up the offer to worship with us, it has really put a damper on that project.
Well, in recent weeks, things have changed. One Hispanic family – we’ll give them the surname here, “Ortega” – has started coming. Last Lord’s day was the second time in three weeks, and they seem rather interested. A brother in our church and I had met them doing door to door a couple of years back, and they were quite receptive. Finally, something clicked. They came to our uber-Presbyterian, psalm-singing, KJV-reading church … and they weren’t scared away. They seem to track with and appreciate the preaching. It is a young unmarried couple with a little boy and a grandmother. The couple is evidently unconverted, whatever their opinions of their state might be. The grandmother seems to be a devout Bible reader, judging from her very used copy.
The couple is bilingual, but the grandmother is not. So we’re working on some kind of translation of my sermons, which is not straightforward. If you are bilingual, Reformed, and willing to help from a distance, please drop us a note!
And please keep these folks in prayer. They could easily lose interest and drift away. I’m quite prepared for that, as I’ve seen in my day many promising starts fizzling out. Please pray ultimately for a regenerating baptism of the Spirit of God, clothing the Word with power.
We were also struck that a Liberian sister who joined our church from the outreach saw the young lady and realized that they were good friends from high school. Perhaps I shouldn’t read too much into that. But a coincidence? I think not.
A handheld Ebenezer
Posted in Articles, Psalmody, Psalmody in Culture, Transgenerational Faith, Worship, True & False, WPE Editor on July 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »
A few years back, our family traveled to the U.K. by way of Holland. One of my daughters became entranced by all things Dutch while aboard a KLM flight, with tall, blonde and brunette stewardesses speaking freely in their mother tongue. While she had little firsthand experience of modern Dutch culture, she already had some exposure to the richness of Dutch Christianity, having read Brother Andrew’s God’s Smuggler (re-read chapter 1!) and Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place. And it wasn’t long before she started trying to learn Dutch online. So when I found myself back in Grand Rapids, I had my antennae up, on the lookout for a trinket for my Lowlands-smitten girl.
I was staying for a week at my hosts, the Kamps, the dearest Christian seniors you will ever meet. When my daughter came up in conversation, they really rose to the occasion. Mrs. Kamp right then and there hopped up, and busily rifled through her very tidy house (are there any messy Hollanders?). I would have been quite content with a cheap curio, something easily parted with and forgotten. While she did hand me a few inexpensive momentos, I was profoundly humbled that she offered the old book above without so much as a blink.
The volume is a late 19th century Dutch New Testament, a metrical Psalter set to the grand old Geneva tunes, and at the end, the Three Forms of Unity. The book exudes the “beauty of holiness” from the best of their heritage and serves as a handheld Ebenezer of God’s covenant faithfulness. As I hold it in my latecomer, ‘Gentile’ hands, I glory in a rich tradition I now own. In it, I hear the voice of generations past, confessing the true, Reformed religion, their “only comfort in life and in death.” I hear the august psalmody of the venerable dead, the spirits of just men made perfect who have gone to their reward. I hear their roaring thunder as they, the great cloud of witnesses, cheer us on while we yet run the race that is set before us.
I have been grafted into the good olive tree, as the Dutch, the Scots, the English, and many others before me. And my children, by covenant, are now holy to the Lord. May they too own “their father’s God.” May they never reject what they have received, selling their birthright for a full stomach. And may they cherish this volume and all that is stands for in an age that is fast losing its way.
For more images, visit here.
RPM: Hope for the shattered
Posted in Articles, Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, Uncategorized, WPE Editor on January 8, 2019| 2 Comments »
A brother and I were making our way through a street in our district some years back. We came up to a black fellow in his 30’s as he was standing outside his apartment complex. We struck up a conversation and spoke to him about God, the soul, and the judgment to come. Out of nowhere – or so it seemed to us – this fellow broke down and wept. He confessed a deep sense of his sin, especially his sinful and violent anger. It was very touching and a more hopeful sign that God was not done with this sinner and was striving with him by His Spirit then and there.
He was soon in church, under the preaching of the Word, law and Gospel. He came with his girlfriend (something of a common law wife?) and two special children. Around that time, our family visited them in their apartment. We opened God’s Word, spoke with them about the “one thing needful,” and prayed with them. I came back frequently, as their door was always open.
“Charlene” was very engaged, hopeful that we could be of help to “Tyrone.” She explained that he would be gentle as a lamb when sober and was a very hard worker. But when he drank, the storm broke loose. He could be abusive and had been in and out of jail. It became clear to me that Tyrone had had a very troubled childhood and tried to drown his painful memories in drink. During this time, he was holding down a construction job and seemed to manage well enough. But eventually the wheels came off. Charlene had to call the police on him in one drunken outburst, and he ran. He was caught and thrown in jail.
Eventually, Charlene had enough. She left with the children and went to New York. Tyrone drifted along. Occasionally I’d reach out to him, or he’d call me. Thankfully his number never dropped, or I might have lost him for good. I learned that he found another girlfriend and began living with her. She called me one day a few months ago to tell me that he was in jail again, so I went and visited him. I spoke frankly with him about his soul and His need to get right with God through Christ.
This last Saturday, he was released. I went to visit and pray with him that night, then took him to church in the morning. I decided to break with my series in Exodus that Lord’s day to deliver a message that would be clearer for him, so I preached on the Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price. O that the Father would savingly draw this poor prodigal to His Son and begin to heal all the brokenness that sin and Satan have wrought!
An “open door?” Rethinking door-to-door evangelism
Posted in Articles, Benevolence & the Diaconate, Contemporary Parochialism, Parish in American Context, Parish in Perspective (Qualifications), Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Theology of Place, Visitation Evangelism, WPE Editor on December 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »
“Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it” (Rev. 3:8).
I do door-to-door evangelism and actually believe in it – in 2018. In making that admission, I suppose I should feel like Sarah Sanders trying to tap-dance around a newly minted presidential tweet. But I simply don’t.
I’m not a JW or a Mormon. Nor am I a Fundamentalist Baptist. I’m a confessional Presbyterian, relatively well educated, and (somewhat) comfortably middle-class. So why embrace what many Reformed and evangelicals consider pointless at best and counterproductive at worst?
Since I was converted back in the early 90s, I’ve practiced a number of methods of evangelism. I do not consider any one of them ‘the’ silver-bullet, nor do I think that door-to-door is always and in every case the most ideal method. But for the last thirteen years, I’ve engaged in regular, door-to-door evangelism as key part of my overall outreach effort. I do not presume to have the final answer on all questions, nor can I boast impressive success. Do I do this perfectly? Not at all. I’m always going to be on a learning curve. And consequently, I’m open to other suggestions and critiques. But after these many years and after many, many discouragements, I still keep coming back. I still plod and hope.
Here are a number of reasons why I believe it’s worth a serious re-think.
(more…)
West Port Experiment 
