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Posts Tagged ‘theology’

RPM: Why am I raising funds?

Posted in Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, tagged , , , , on November 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

My role under presbytery is twofold. First is a conventional, pastoral one. I join my elders in pastoring our local congregation in S. Jersey, and I preach on average 1 out of every 2 of our Lord’s day services throughout the year. We are blessed with edifying pulpit supply for the balance of the pastoral ministry. The congregation is able to support me to a certain degree.

Second, I have what may be called a ‘home mission’ function. In 2023, presbytery formally approved my raising of funds for Reformed Parish Mission under the oversight and with accountability to our denominational missions committee. My presbytery also has committed to a measure of monetary support, but has limited means to do more. Together, those means are less than half of what my family and I require.

While not the ideal from a Presbyterian point of view (such missionaries would receive their full support from their own denomination), practical considerations lead me to raise funds for myself in a fashion similar to independent evangelicals. I am too convinced of the worthiness of the cause to allow it to wither for lack of funding; and so I have overcome my natural inhibitions and actively solicit funds for Reformed Parish Mission from friends, family, and churches within and beyond the Presbyterian Reformed Church.

Please pray for me. And if you could contribute—or even commit to monthly support—I would be in your debt. The Lord bless you and yours.

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Micro-presbyterians & church planting

Posted in Catholicity, Connectionalism & Conciliarism, Missiology, Parish in American Context, Parish Theory & Practice, Thomas Chalmers, WPE Editor, tagged , , , , on July 20, 2024| 1 Comment »

Micro-presbyterians study hard to get things right. We dot our i’s and cross our t’s. And yet for all our learning, we can miss some pretty big things—in fact, some pretty big presbyterian things. Church-planting would definitely be one of them.

I speak from experience. For nearly the entirety of my 29-year Reformed career, I’ve been a ‘micro-presbyterian.’ I skipped the 1689 thing, past the (relatively) big-tent Reformed bodies, going straight into the Presbyterian Reformed Church, a very small psalm-singing body formed in 1965. I rather distaste the term ‘micro-presbyterian,’ especially with its connotations of over-scrupulosity and cantankerousness; and, the term may be a little dated. But in any case, God put me here, and I love my denomination. (And getting a gorgeous wife and elder’s daughter out of deal didn’t hurt either!).

I also think it has come a long way over the years. I feel that we have matured simultaneously, from a kind of cage-stage to something more balanced, stable, and seasoned. It has also helped, quite frankly, that we decided to join NAPARC some years back. Sure, it made us a pariah with many who might otherwise have sought us out. But often, those very types would never be happy in any case until they were safe in the embrace of an ecclesiastical micromanager or worshipping every Lord’s day in their own living-room.

I know we all have learned the hard way from many mistakes, missteps, and quite frankly, sins. “In many things, we offend all.” While we cannot deny the light that the Lord has graciously shown us, but embrace and follow on in it; while we cannot but press forward to the higher and better attainments of the First and Second Reformations and maintain them with diligence and zeal, we must also humbly acknowledge where we have mixed holy with unholy fire, and where we have in fact justified means by ends. Sometimes in our earnestness for truth we have cut corners; sometimes we’ve cut far more than just corners. But two wrongs do not make a right. And we may never “do evil that good may come.”

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