“God's mercy, on which the salvation of us all depends; his judgment, which he daily visits on the wicked, and which awaits them with even greater rigour, to their eternal shame; and his righteousness, by which his faithful people are generously preserved." (Calvin's Institutes, 1541, p. 28)
We invite you to visit us and learn more about what it means to be Christians holding to the Reformed creeds and confessions which have been studied, refined, and passed down through the generations.
What does it mean to be Reformed? Are you just learning about the Reformed tradition? We'd love to explain this to you in person but over the next while I (Pastor Norm) will be posting more thoughts on what it means to be a Reformed Church in Vancouver, BC and what the implications are for us when we declare publicly that we are a self-consciously Reformed church. We are laying claim to a tradition that is longstanding and robustly biblical in our doctrine and practice of personal piety.
Dr. R. Scott Clark helpfully explains,
“What makes us Reformed is how we understand Scripture, and this understanding is summarized in our confession. If we thought that our confession was not biblical, we would not use it, and if anyone can show that our confession is unbiblical, the church ought to revise it to bring it into conformity with Scripture.”
― R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession: Our Theology, Piety, and Practice
We believe that preaching must get to the heart of the matter... which is the heart. As the Puritan Thomas Watson put it, "Until sin be bitter, Christ is not sweet." This means that our sermons won't feel 'light' or 'fluffy' because the problem of sin in us is so great and the good news of Christ's ministry to us is so glorious!
J. Gresham Machen’s words have particular resonance for our view of biblical preaching:
“The very center and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God—the grace of God which depends not one whit upon anything that is in man, but is absolutely undeserved, resistless and sovereign. The theologians of the Church can be placed in an ascending scale according as they have grasped that one great central doctrine, that doctrine that gives consistency to all the rest; and Christian experience also depends for its depth and for its power upon the way in which that blessed doctrine is cherished in the depths of the heart. The center of the Bible, and the center of Christianity, is found in the grace of God; and the necessary corollary of the grace of God is salvation through faith alone.”
Quote in Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Grand Rapids, 1955), page 396.
Please visit us this coming Lord’s Day if you are searching for a church that values biblical preaching. We can promise you that we are profoundly committed to the faithful preaching of the whole counsel of God’s Word.
Check out our ‘Sermons’ page for more of an explanation of our view of biblical preaching
Quick thought: The City of Vancouver (and cities more broadly) is grappling with the problem of loneliness and isolation. Perhaps you're experiencing this problem in a very personal way - if so, you're not alone in feeling awfully alone. Some call it a "loneliness crisis" and it's worth exploring the reasons why this is happening.
Our sermon series through the letters to Thessalonian church have been prompting me to think a lot about the way that the love experienced within a Christian church represents such a wonderful expression of God's love to us. When you come to worship services and join us for Bible studies and make a point of devoting some of your time to the gatherings we initiate, you will discover this rich gift of Christian fellowship.
One Great Article to Get You Started: https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06/why-a-city-block-can-be-one-of-the-loneliest-places-on-earth/531852/
““One guy said the worst invention there ever was the garage door opener,” Ms. Wightman said over lunch recently. “It allowed people to go into their homes without having to talk to their neighbours.”
Vancouver has had a reputation as one of the most aloof, least friendly cities in Canada for years now. That beyond the superficial smiles a visitor or newcomer to town will get, there isn’t much.”
Looking at Loneliness in Vancouver:
A 2012 Study by the Vancouver Foundation: https://www.vancouverfoundation.ca/about-us/publications/connections-and-engagement-reports/connections-engagement-closer-look
A 2012 Article in the Georgia Straight: http://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-study-city-loneliness-and-unfriendliness
A 2017 Article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/vancouver-loneliness-engaged-city-taskforce-canada
A 2013 Article in The Globe and Mail: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/life-of-solitude-a-loneliness-crisis-is-looming/article15573187/?page=all
A great Article by Gary Mason from 2011: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/alone-so-alone-in-vancouver/article4201039/
And finally, an article in the WestEnder about building relationships: http://www.westender.com/news-issues/vancouver-shakedown/lonely-vancouver-just-say-hello-1.2261772
Carl Trueman, Professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, writes...
"in our church practice, we need to take the Old Testament more seriously. It astounds me, given the overwhelming use of psalms as central to gathered worship in the first four centuries, the absolute importance given to psalmody for the first two centuries of the post-Reformation Reformed churches, and the fact that the Book of Psalms is the only hymn book which can claim to be universal in its acceptance by the whole of Christendom and utterly inspired in all of its statements - it astounds me, I say, that so few psalms are sung in our worship services today.
Moreover, often nothing seems to earn the scorn and derision of others more than the suggestion that more psalms should be sung in worship. Indeed, the last few years have seen a number of writers strike out against exclusive psalmody. Given that life is too short to engage in pointless polemics, I am left wondering which parallel universe these guys come from, where the most pressing and dangerous worship issue is clearly that people sing too much of the Bible in their services. How terrifying a prospect that would be.
Imagine: people actually singing songs that express the full range of human emotion in their worship using words of which God has explicitly said, 'These are mine.'
The whole article (here: https://www.monergism.com/marcions-have-landed-warning-evangelicals) is worthwhile reading as it deals with the broader concern that we should have for the way in which much of the contemporary church has succumbed to the basic tendencies of a Marcionite theology. Check it out!
Our hearts cry out that there is a gap between what we need to make us feel at peace and what our actual circumstances are.
This is the chasm that keeps us up at night – or brings us down during the day.
What we need to make us feel at peace seems at odds with what our actual circumstances are on any given day.
As Proverbs 12:25 says, “Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down.”
The Lord Jesus Christ knows well that we are weighed down by anxieties and fears of many kinds. He speaks with Kingly authority and Shepherd-like tenderness in Matthew 6:24ff to teach us how to find peace in a tumultuous life.
Join us this Lord's Day as we meditate together on God's righteous care for His holy people.
I want to give attention to the simple beauty of the liturgy of Reformed churches. This plainness is not because of a cultural aversion to beauty or sentiment. The popular art and music of Reformed communities express beauty and sentiment in equal measure. Nonetheless the sacred worship services of the Reformed are intentionally limited to the prescribed elements of worship contained in the Scriptures.
These elements of the worship service are divinely ordained in the pattern of the covenant renewal ceremony between God and his people in which he “promises to make the new creation a reality among his people.” This covenantal ceremony includes all the congregants as “the story of divine creation and faithfulness is followed by the unfaithfulness of the covenant partner, which in turn is met with divine solidarity to overcome the sin and unbelief of his people through his messiah.” I rehearse these crucial components of Reformed worship to emphasize that the liturgy of Reformed churches is simple because there is so much contained within it. It does not need embellishment or dramatization to be improved upon. In a rightly constituted worship service, the following profound encounter occurs after the votum and singing of the congregation:
"Representing God once more, the minister intercedes on behalf of the covenant people who have thus experienced the drama of the exodus again for themselves. They too have passed from death to life in this liturgical drama, from alienation and despair to the assurance of reconciliation and the response of praise from their side of the covenant – and on that basis they enter the Holy of Holies in this semirealized eschatology. With their covenant mediator and advocate representing their case in heaven, the community's intercession is effective, and the people are prepared to hear God's word in the sermon."
Finally, the last word of the service is “reserved for God, and his parting word is once more the word of Gospel, as God's blessing is laid upon the covenant people in the benediction.” The structure of this divine service is predicated on the principle that worship occurs in a dialogue between God and his people. The dialogical principle serves several purposes: it simplifies the service by removing any extraneous human inventions, it clarifies the service by assigning a clear role to each partner, and it affirms a covenantal relationship which God makes with his church.
Hughes Oliphant Old characterizes Reformed convictions about worship as convictions which arise from the first four commandments. The first commandment directs that “our worship, our deepest devotion, our most ardent love is to be directed to God rather than to ourselves.” John Calvin drew on the first commandment the Christian's obligation “with true and zealous godliness... to contemplate, fear, and worship, his majesty; to participate in his blessings; to seek his help at all times; to recognize, and by praises to celebrate, the greatness of his works – as the only goal of all the activities of this life.” The abundance of the Christian's desire to serve and praise God is particularly expressed in the worship which takes place on the Lord's Day in the house of God. Old comments that the “single greatest contribution that the Reformed liturgical heritage can make to contemporary American Protestantism is its sense of the majesty and sovereignty of God, its sense of reverence and simple dignity, its conviction that worship must above all serve the praise of God.” I also want to draw attention to a commandment that does not receive much recognition in the context of worship, namely the third commandment. Old writes, “the third commandment tells us that were are not to use the Lord's name in vain. Vain means “empty.” The commandment teaches us to worship God sincerely and honestly, to worship God “in spirit and in truth,” to use the words of Jesus.” Worship is of first importance in the Reformed churches. It occupies the entirety of the corporate, public worship service.
(Resources cited: Edmund P. Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995); Michael Horton, Covenant and Eschatology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship: Reformed According to Scripture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 2, 2 vols., The Library of Christian Classics 21 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960)
“Did Jesus make salvation possible for all or did he actually save his people from their sins?”
That is the profoundly important question that Dr. Michael Horton took up in his plenary session at the 2019 Westminster Seminary Faculty Conference in Escondido, CA on January 19, 2019.
Watch Dr. Michael Horton's plenary session from the 2019 Faculty Conference here: https://wscal.edu/resourc…/a-real-atonement-for-real-sinners
I (Pastor Norm), was in attendance at this conference and was tremendously blessed in my heart and soul by Dr. Horton’s message. We were richly fed from the Word of God concerning the Lord’s eternal plan of salvation for his people and the indispensable nature of the doctrine of the definite atonement.
This doctrine, contained in the teachings of the Christian church throughout the centuries and featured in our Reformed and Presbyterian confessions, is also known as the doctrine of the limited atonement (focusing on the actual # of the redeemed who have been bought with a price by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ).
May the LORD nourish your heart and soul through His glorious ministry of grace and kindness to you in Jesus Christ our Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for his sheep.
Thank you to Westminster Seminary California for making this video available for the building up of Christ’s Church!
Thank you to Mingheras Cosmin on Unsplash for the most appropriate photo!
