Audio: Guy Waters on Church Membership

One aspect of Reformed theology, piety, and practice that distnguishes confessional Protestantism from broad evangelicalism is a high view of the visible, institutional church. Calvin spent most of book 4 of the Institutes on the visible church. The Belgic Confession spends two . . . Continue reading →

The Church: The Christ-Confessing Covenant Community

When one talks about the church what is at stake is the way in which the Christian life is organized. I believe that the Bible teaches us that believers should be united to the visible community of the redeemed meeting for worship, instruction, and fellowship in an organized, disciplined, way. If I am wrong, then millions of dollars and millions of hours and lives are being sadly misspent. Continue reading →

I’ve Had It With Organized Religion

Had I a nickel for every time someone has said “I’ve had it with the church” or “I’ve had it with organized religion” as they walked away from the visible church, I could retire the national debt. Walking away from the visible . . . Continue reading →

Should The Visible Church, As An Institution, Form And Express An Opinion On Political Violence?

s noted here previously, the mainline (liberal) PCUSA has adopted more than 120 positions on a bewildering variety of issues. The temptation to use the visible church to achieve one’s desired social goals is almost irresistible. Continue reading →

Christianity Today Is Not A Ministry

One of the episodes of Christianity Today‘s Mars Hill podcast series was actually about the problem of sexual harassment at Christianity Today (to their credit, after exposing the cultic nature of Mark Driscoll’s control over Mars Hill–in the sense that Jim Jones . . . Continue reading →