Family, Church and Worship, What's the Difference Sunday School Series
Questions from SS Less. 4/22
by Jeff Miller
Continue reading
Family, Church and Worship, What's the Difference Sunday School Series
What’s the Difference Lesson #3 Prep
by Jeff Miller
The next lesson we will watch on Sunday is the section on Male Headship acc. to the Bible.
Continue reading
Family, Church and Worship, What's the Difference Sunday School Series
What’s the Difference Lesson Two Prep
by Jeff Miller
Ok,
Next week, Clay Staggs will lead the lesson from the WTD series concerning Complementarity as God's Design for Marriage
Continue reading
Family, Church and Worship
Recap of Lesson one of What’s the Difference
by Jeff Miller
Here's a recap of the main points covered on 3/4/12:
Continue reading
Family, Relationships, Church and Worship
RPC Sunday School for 3/4
by Jeff Miller
If you have downloaded the What's the Difference Study Guide, you'll want to work through Lesson 5 (pp. 61-77) before Sun, Mar 4.
Continue reading
Family, Relationships, Church and Worship
What’s the Difference Sunday School Resources
by Jeff Miller
Here are links to resources described in the Intro to What's the Difference Sunday School series.
What's The Difference Study guide (download or purchase)
Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Amazon)
What's the Difference DVD (B&N)
Continue reading
Pastoral Musings, Church and Worship
Partying Towards Holiness
by Tim Lien
Parties matter. How people party can tell you quite a bit about them. One of the most surprising aspects of our series in Leviticus was how God goes about changing an entire people group towards himself. Or put another way: How does God enact a massive melting of hearts across communities of family and nation?
Continue reading
Church and Worship
for our day
by Peggy Drinkard
here is a wonderful hymn by G.K. Chesterton. Certainly appropriate to out day:
O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry, our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die; the walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide, take not thy thunder …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Reasons Not To Come To a Reformed Church
by Tim Lien
Relax, everybody.
Read this, it’s funny.
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Relevant, Hip, and Cool Churches
by Tim Lien
In an attempt to pull people to the Gospel, many ministers think they must add a little spice. “Surely,” they think, “I need to make it appealing.” And they do make something appealing. And they do draw quite a group of people who like that sort of thing. But it …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Hip to be Square, or Confessions of a CCM junkie
by Jeff Miller
I grew up in the remains of the Jesus movement. I saw the growth and expansion of Contemporary Christian Culture. This was, in large part, driven by the Contemporary Christian Music scene. I was heavily involved in that arena from 1980 to 2001 as a consumer, enthusiast and purveyor. I …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Do You Do Church? Rethink This.
by Tim Lien
“Yet church is, first and foremost, something which God does. It is primarily and in origin an act of his grace, not an act of human response.” -Carl Trueman
[on the Confession of Sin and Assurance of Forgiveness] “We are reminded of the entire gospel, from fall to redemption to …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
The Church & Charlie Sheen
by Clay Staggs
Here is a recent submission to Riverwood’s website. I will withhold the name of the author.
Your area has been through a devastating tornado, but even so, to see your police and National Guardsmen pose in newpaper photos with Charlie Sheen is sickening to me. Aside from his obvious …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
no longer slaves
by Peggy Drinkard
In chapter 5 of Deuteronomy Moses reiterates the 10 Commandments to Israel. Concerning the observance of the Sabbath day of rest, he reasons, “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Hell? Yes.
by Jeff Miller
I don’t know if Hell is everlasting torment of literal fire, etc. combined with separation from God or if it’s only the latter. I have a hunch that the fire won’t matter so much since the latter remains true. There’s been much discussion about Hell in …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Evangelical ain’t what it used to be…..
by Jeff Miller
Sometimes we at RPC are more aware of what’s going on in the secular culture than in the church culture around us. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s often hard to tell the evangelical church from much of anything else of late. There is …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
“The president is obviously a Christian. He prays everyday.”
by Clay Staggs
So says presidential spokesman Bill Burton, in response to a question from a reporter today relating to a recent poll where nearly one in four people surveyed expressed the opinion that Obama is a Muslim.
It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant some people are about religion. Burton’s …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
baby baptism
by Peggy Drinkard
I am reading Lauren Winner’s book, Girl meets God. I enjoy her fresh and honest observations of some aspects of Christianity and the Christian life. I couldn’t agree more with this one about infant baptisms, which she declares she loves, and explains why. I do too, and for …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Radical giving….radical joy.
by Peggy Drinkard
If nothing else, and of course there is much, much else, Jesus is a RADICAL with a capital R. In connection with our church’s capital campaign, our pastors have been teaching us what the Word of God has to say about giving. My own impressions from these sermons are …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Lost in Translation
by Clay Staggs
This week, I’ve read (on the strong recommendation of everyone in the Riverwood book club) D.G. Hart’s The Lost Soul of American Protestantism. It is a fantastic read, and I join the book club in heartily recommending it to everyone. The thesis of the book is that …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Paging Bryan Bond…
by Clay Staggs
Those reading this post who weren’t at Riverwood when Bryan Bond was the pastor probably don’t know this, but he really hated church sign boards. In fact, he used to collect them - the worse they were, the better for the collection.
I drove by one today that is …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
A Challies to Drink From
by Tim Lien
My wife sent me an old-rerun-blog by Tim Challies, (link here) describing an emergent Christian.
For anyone over 45, this may not resonate. But for you younguns it will make you grin and might also kick you in the shins a bit.
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Good Thing We’ve Got That New Sanctuary Going…
by Clay Staggs
…because if we had decided to rent out an auditorium in a public school instead, Tim’s sermon yesterday might have gotten us kicked out!
Such is the fate that may befall the New Hope Church in Melbourne, Florida. Because their current facility is too small to accommodate their recent …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Is Food the New Sex?
by Jimmy Hopper
This is a question asked and examined by Mary Eberstadt in Policy Review, a publication of the prestigous Hoover Institution of Stanford University. It was referenced by Pastor Matt Brown on the Park Slope Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn web site. In it, Ms. Eberstadt examines the idea that the moral …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Covering Up Jesus
by Clay Staggs
On Tuesday of this week, President Obama delivered a speech at Georgetown University on the state of the economy. The speech was given in Gaston Hall, which has behind the dais the seal of the university and, above that, the letters IHS - a fairly common (though perhaps more commonly Roman …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
“Talking about sex ain’t gonna get nobody to heaven.”
by Clay Staggs
Thus sayeth Evangelist Roland Belew, commenting on a series of sermons being preached at the Daystar Church in Good Hope, Alabama (in Cullman County). The series is entitled “Great Sex God’s Way,” and the church has taken out billboard with the sermon title on it throughout the town. You …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
An Atheist, But A Lutheran In His Soul
by Clay Staggs
There’s an interesting article on the NYT website about the morality and religion of the Danes and Swedes. The article reports on the findings of Phil Zuckerman, who teaches sociology at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. Mr. Zuckerman spent over a year in Denmark and Sweden studying how their …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
I’ll See Your Megachurch Pastor and Raise You a Gay Bishop
by Clay Staggs
I didn’t have the chance to comment on it when the news broke over the holidays, but I suppose by now everyone knows that at Obama’s swearing-in ceremony, Rick Warren will deliver the invocation. Predictably, given Warren’s support of the California initiative to ban gay marriage, many …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Calvinism: Making Pat Robertson Seem Warm and Fuzzy
by Clay Staggs
So says the New York Times in a profile of Mark Driscoll, his church in Seattle, and that wacky Calvinism he preaches.
Read the whole thing here. It’s not entirely accurate about Calvinism (would you really expect differently from the NYT?), but neither does it shy away from some …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Lessons & Carols Service
by Jeff Miller
Next Sunday we will have our annual Christmas musical worship service. This will be the third year that we have centered around the format known commonly as Lessons and Carols. The L&C service was started in England in the late 1800s and was popularized in the early 20th century …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Saturday Evening Post
by Clay Staggs
A couple of thoughts I wanted to post this Saturday evening. It may seem as though I’m going to harsh on the Methodists; this is purely coincidental. It just so happens that these anecdotes, showing the modern church’s two frequent errors, both come from Methodist churches.
Today, we …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
The Beauty of Traditional Liturgy
by Tim Lien
I like change. I really do. I just want things that should change, to be the things that do the changing. I donâ??t want trees to stay the same. They grow, they go through seasonal cycles, and then they rot, die, and fall on my roof. I want to …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Rejected
by Clay Staggs
Here’s a story about a Baptist church in Florida who has a member who won $6 million in the Florida lottery. The member then wanted to tithe and contribute $600,000 from the winnings. The pastor rejected the money.
My first reaction is that this is silly legalism of …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
An Unpopular Appeal for the Big Three
by Tim Lien
Jimmy Hopper sent me this NYT article on â??praise rock.â? Itâ??s an article about larger churches spending time building a musical culture adapted specifically to the various generations reflected in their church.
You can read it here.
A quotation from the article:
â??When you start a …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
From the Mud Room to the Library
by Blake Johnson
In an upcoming Salt and Light article, I will be addressing the issue of how we as Reformed and Presbyterian Christians should interact with the wider Christian world. Reformed Christians in America have an upleasant history infighting and sectarianism (see Machen’s Warrior Children). In my view, whatever one thinks …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
The Concert
by Jimmy Hopper
There was a very significant musical event in Tuscaloosa Sunday night when the Music Department of Riverwood presented the Fall Concert under the overall direction of our Director of Music, Jeff Miller. It is now 48 hours later and when I think of the beauty, emotion and delight of the …
Continue reading
Church and Worship
Last Sunday at Riverwood
by Jimmy Hopper
What a great, great day of worship last Sunday was at Riverwood! Pastor Lien’s sermon has been on my mind literally since he finished. He brought us yet again to the mighty Gospel of God, this time cutting through the cant of self glorifying religiousity to see it again …