THE SECOND FLOOR On the first floor, you can find your groceries for the day.The bodega, although not very big, has just about every ordinary food you might need.If you go to the third floor, you can find a machine to work out just about every muscle in your body.The cost of membership is a little steep, but it is an excellent gym.If you went into the second floor just a ...
Keep ReadingI can't remember the last time I heard someone get excited about a verb tense. Grammar isn't often the source of real excitement. At its best, perhaps, grammar is used to express great truth that excites However, perhaps the grammar itself is in the background in those moments. What excites us is the truth and not the grammar that was used to express it. There are mome...
Keep ReadingI want to close this series out with one last reminder abouthowthe Session needs to go about its work in church discipline.Because the Session is motivated by lovelove for Christ, love for the Church, and love for the sinnerlove must punctuate all that the Session says and does. Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 13that"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; ...
Keep ReadingBefore we can dive into many of the questions people often have about church discipline, we need to be clear about what it is and what it is not.Broadly speaking, there is a sense in which all of the teaching and exhortation ministry of the church is a kind of church discipline. We teach the standard for Christian living according to God's Word and call our members to live...
Keep ReadingFew subjects create more anxiety, confusion, and even anger than the subject of church discipline. For most people, they have either never seen it done, or they've seen it done poorly. Mix in some rugged American individualism and the heart's natural dislike of being called to repentance, and you get a very thorough dislike and mistrust of church discipline on the part of ...
Keep ReadingDear All Saints Family, The Session is writing to you today to update you on our COVID policy for Worship on Sunday mornings. We continue to be grateful to Christ Community for hosting us on Sunday mornings and to you for your patience with the Session as we do our best to navigate our current circumstances. We also want to remind you that our primary concern as we regul...
Keep ReadingIt feels like such a long time since we worshiped in person as a congregation! I'm very happy to announce that Christ Community Church in Franklin has generously offered to let us use some of their space to worship on Sunday mornings! We will begin June 7. Worship will begin at 10:00 a.m. and we are asking everyone to arrive between 8:45and 9:00 a.m.Who should join us? Wha...
Keep ReadingContinuing our series on the order of worship, we now come to the doxology and prayer of thanksgiving. We have heard the assurance of pardon, the gospel preached, and the truth of who God is and what he has done in Christ in the Creed.Now it is time to praise God for these things and give thanks.We praise God using the traditional Doxology most Sundays. This Doxology is a ...
Keep ReadingThe subject of worship and how to conduct it is too often a contentious one. In recent decades, it has even given us the term "worship wars." Many Christians choose their church home based more on the style of worship than the doctrine that is believed and taught. Nonetheless, each church must make a decision about how it will conduct its worship. As we read Scripture, we ...
Keep ReadingOne of the principles of worship I mentioned last week is the dialogical principleworship is a dialogue between God and his people. We see this in the worship described in Exodus 1924, for example. Appropriately, the dialogue begins with God calling his people to worship and only then do his people respond.This principle has two practical impacts on our worship. First, our...
Keep Reading