Rob Braun
I've been active member in the CRC since 1992. I've been part of and clerked for the Classical Home Missions Commitee here in Classis Lake Superior. I was a Licensed Exhorter. Before that I was a minister in an independent Charismatic Church for ten years. Presently I am a Ministry Associate at Bethel CRC in Princeton, Mn. I occasionally write articles for the Banner's "Reformed Matters". I love to read and write. I'll do op-ed pieces in a variety of local newspapers. I'm in the process of publishing a novel. I coached hockey here in Princeton for over tens years. And I was baptized and confirmed in the ELCA. I studied under Dr. Francis Schaeffer at L'Abri in Switzerland and lived in a Kibbutz in Israel were I studied Hebrew during the Yom Kippor War.
Posted in: How has the Article 7 change affected those seeking to become Ministers of the Word?
I find your discussion ironic concerning Article 7 candidates yet all the while we as a denomination are attempting to lower our standards for officers of the church in general by not requiring them to sign and endorse our church confessions. I agree that we went too far when it came to Article 7 but sadly in the dozen or so seminary graduate examinations I’ve witnessed here in my Classis over the last twenty years very few of them have shown their theological competency equal to the many brothers and sisters I’ve seen examined as Licensed Exhorters. In fact I’ve often raised my deep concern over the seeming lack of basic theological knowledge of many of these Calvin Seminary graduates. They rarely did very good when asked basic doctrinal and biblical questions and yet Classis would simply rubber stamp them through because, well, they are our Seminary graduates.
Again, perhaps I’m going off track here on the discussion concerning Article 7 but I believe our requirements of theological education for all officers of the church generally has fallen on hard times. It does concern me very deeply and makes me wonder about the nature of sermon writing going on in our denomination with our doctrinal and biblical standards seemingly being lowered in general.
Posted in: A New Way to Marry
It is food for thought, Sunday worship weddings. Your idea is to make the wedding ceremony much like the practice of baptism, that is Covenant, and what could be most biblically identified with the idea of covenant than a wedding. I both like it and endorse it, particularly where, as with baptism, we exhort the congregation to do their part to see this marriage spiritually prosper and succeed. It is a question the church needs to ask itself especially when the divorce rate among professing Christians hardly differs from the divorce rate among non-Christians. It is probably fair to day the church has lost the cultural war on marriage because the covenantal view of marriage has been lost to the church.
Posted in: Affirm the Belhar? Yes, but Not as a Doctrinal Standard
"let‟s recall the genre distinction made above between the historic Confessions that are doctrinal standards and recent declarations about social-political issues. BC clearly fits the latter, not the former, whatever it was named."
For me this is the heart of the issue, is the Belhar truely a Confessional statement on par with the Three Forms of unity or is it a social-politial statement that sounds really good? I don't think it rates on the level of the Three Forms of Unity and am a bit distressed that we as a denomination would so quickly and willingly make it equal to them. I agree with Coop that it should be received as a statement that we indorse but not on the level of our Confessions and Creeds. Coop also makes a good point that one reason we may be so willing to allow them equal status with our other Confessions and Creeds is because an appretiation of those Confessions and Creeds have fallen on hard times in our denomination.
Posted in: Affirm the Belhar? Yes, but Not as a Doctrinal Standard
Hey Steve;
My concern with adopting the BC is: Will it force us somewhere down the road into a situation where we wil either have to accept same sex marriages or be deemed as practicing injustice and prejudice against homosexuals according to the BC? I say this because as John Cooper pointed out the BC language has been used to do just that in other denominations. We live in a world where "Tolerance" is the cultural religion of the day and can easily be used against us as it has in the church affiliated schools in Canada. It is something to seriously think about. The wording of the BC is so open to interpretation that I have some serious concerns how it could be used, or more to the point, how it already has been used. It isn't a theological treaties by any stretch of the imagination. It is clearly a religious-social-political statement. I'm not sure I'd even want to see it used even as a testimonial.
Posted in: Who Was Adam?
I want to thank you for your thoughts here. First off, there’s nothing that you wrote that I wouldn’t agree with. I agree with it all. Also, like you, I feel the Genesis story is also based on real events and not a fable or some kind of parabolic poetry. The problem with English speakers is they don’t appreciate the depth of meaning found in the original Hebrew words of Genesis. There is so much more written in these texts than I have found in any English translation that I have ever read. All translations fall short of the original language. My advice to reading Genesis is to get a good Hebrew-English concordance of the Old Testament and with a little effort you can see what it is I’m talking about. And, as for all those articles pointing to a single woman’s Mitochondrial DNA as the origin of all of humanity I’ve also have read and agree, would seem to be evidence for the existence of a Hava or Eve, or Noah’s wife at the least. Also I’m not at all opposed to the idea that Eve may have been born miraculously from Adam. The problem is the text itself says there were other people at the time of Adam and Eve. Genesis chapters 4 and 6 speak to this. For example, in chapter 6 you have several curious texts that say the daughters of Adam were either married or taken by the Sons of Eloyim (which can mean a whole variety of things) and were also taken by the Nephalim or the fallen/ tyrannical ones. These two sets of people are not identified as sons of Adam, in fact both texts seem to imply it wasn’t a good thing that the daughters of Adam were married or taken by these people. There is such a wonderful bountiful depth here in Hebrew Bible that I wish more people could come to appreciate.
Posted in: Who Was Adam?
I don't know what Churck Missler means. To begin with, Alpha and Omega are Greek letters, not Hebrew. Maybe he's referring to the Greek Septuigent of the Old Testament. Could you help me out, do you have a specific point to make about the blog I wrote? I want to apologize, I didn't listen to the three hours of Chuck Missler's sermon or teaching. I'll listen when I get some extra time.
Posted in: Spiritual Discernment at Ecclesiastical Assemblies
So, any thoughts on how to go about this? Spiritual discernment as part of the work of Classis? I say this as a former Charismatic Minister, now a Ministry Associate in the CRC. Elaborate-please!
Posted in: Are We ignoring Elders at Synod?
I am an elder, well; I’m a “Commissioned Pastor”, but still an elder. I’ve tried to get to as many Classis meetings as I can. (At my last count over 25 in the past 20 years.) I’ve been an Elder representative at Synod. And, I can tell you first hand that yes, there is a definite prejudice in the treatment of elders at both the Classis level as well as at Synod in our church. Over and over again, I’ve witnessed Ministers of the Word stand up at these church assemblies and babble on over territory already discussed many, many times before and yet the chairs of those assemblies allow them their say. But, consistently, if an elder tried to do the same thing, the chairs of those church assemblies will try to cut them off. At Synod I was seated at a table were several ministers of the word voiced out loud that an elder who was expressing his view on a pertinent issue of the church that was being discussed on the floor of Synod should sit down and be quiet. I kid you not. It flabbergasted me. No one corrected them. On the other hand, I’ve been accused of being “disrespectful” of Ministers of the Word when I disagree with them on the floor of Classis or Synod. So yes, there is a definite intimidation factor at our church assemblies for the Elders who come and this needs to change.
Of course as Reformed believers we believe that “He who wants to be first should be last and he who wants to be master should be servant of all.” We believe this “De jur” but “De Facto” or in practice, it is another thing altogether. There is still a very strong “Domini” attitude in our church that prevents our Elders from airing their opinions in our church assemblies. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that this “Domini” attitude is a two way street. Nevertheless, this is the first thing that needs to change if we expect our Elders to be more of a real participant in these assemblies of our church. But, more importantly, I say this is the first thing to be changed because it is not a Reformed attitude. Our church order states in Article 85; “No church shall in any way lord it over another church, and no officebearer shall lord it over another officebearer.”
As some have said before in this discussion, most Elders may go to Classis or Synod two, three or four times in their lifetimes. This, probably more than anything else, compounds the intimidation problem as well and this too needs to change. We need to plug our Elders into the process of our church government in a more pro-active way. We need to hear them out. We need to include them as part of the process, yes, even to chair the church assembly, if need be. The present process now only disenfranchises them from feeling as if they are real participants. I’ve actually have heard it said that most of our church assemblies are simply union meetings for the pastors.
Posted in: The Old Rugged Cross
To begin with, the old Psalter, before 1936, was just that, only the Geneva Psalters. The CRC didn't sing hymns before that, or at least weren't supposed to. It was somewhere in this time period of the mid thirties that hymns were offically allowed in our churches. Also, because George Bennard was a Methodist preacher with a Salvation Army background this alone would automatically have raised all sorts of alarms in our Reformed movement no matter how great a hymn writer he may have been.
Posted in: Living Confessionally in Covenant
JIm,
I know your love for the confessions. I know it personally because I have witnessed your examination of Licensed Exhorters and Ministers of the Word when you were in my Classis as well in sermons in which I've heard you give. This I have absolutely no doubt about. My concern is by taking the route of a "Covenant" we are basically conceding that the Confessions are some how inadequate, or are too theologically obtuse to hold anyone's conscience obligated to them. Again, why did we feel we needed to go this route instead of putting into affect a program to promote the relevance of the confessions in our world today and help our people understand their simple theological beauty? As I pointed out before, the "Covenant" puts us on the wrong path going in the wrong direction. My fear is, if we keep going in this direction, we as a movement or denomination will become theologically irrelevant. We'll be mirroring the philosophy of the darkened world around us rather than shining the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And, this after all is the reason for the confessions-they are written to aid in making clear the simple meaning of the Gospel.
Posted in: Living Confessionally in Covenant
Bev,
I was a Charismatic Pastor for nearly 15 years and worked very closely with that movement with the blessing of my Classis for about 5 of those years, Believe it or not, the group I'm working with is very, very interested in Calvinism. Why not? Calvin is renown as the "Theologian of the Holy Spirit." In fact, a string of these churches I inter-act with even have a Bible School that teaches out of Berkhof's Systematic Theology and Calvin's Institutes. Also, some years back I was invited into a church to teach a church history class and then a theology class. The HIstory book was RB Kuiper's and the theology was from Berkhof's "Church in History". I also taught the Heidelberg Catechsim in one church. Along with this, there is an ever growing interest in Reformed theology in the Southern Baptist movement as well. Just take a look at Christianity Today on line. It is article after article about this growing trend among our Baptist brethern. We are sitting on the edge of an explosion of interest in Reformed teaching in the Evangelical church community. So, my simple point is; Why are we acting like we're getting tired of being Reformed right when everybody else around us is just getting excited about it? We need to appreciate what we have, getting excited ourselves about it's simple beauty and being prepared to explain the hope that is in us. We have answers that many, many fellow Christians are very interested in. We can help them by helping ourselves.
Posted in: Living Confessionally in Covenant
Jim;
I guess I haven't made my biggest concern over the CO. It is that it allows Office Bearers to not agree with the confessional doctrines of the church and yet still be allowed to "Guard the Table and the Pulpit." This is where I'm concerned the most. I guess I have been beating around the bush here way too much. My concern is that we could easily allow someone into the Eldership of the church that is a three point, two point, none point Calvinist. (5 point is a full Calvinist-Tulip-for those who were wondering). As a case in point: We even had to make a synodical statement on "Infant Baptism" at this very same Synod because it too is starting to lose favor for many in the CRC. Again, the Officers of the Church are there to protect the biblical, theological and confessional integrity of the church and its pulpit. How can they do that if they don't agree with, or simple don't know or understand, what it is we believe? (And whose fault is that they don't understand the confessions of the church?) In my opinion, we'll end up with the "King/Prophet Pastor" who alone declares and knows what it is that the church will believe. I've already been through that and I don't want to see or wish this experience on anyone else, especially for us in the CRC.