Introduction

This spring on the plains of Kansas, the Lord brought together four RPCNA pastors to answer the question, “Why am I a Reformed Presbyterian?” with a studious group of nearly 20 young people. LifeFocus is a one week, live-in discipleship program training high school and college students to stand confidently for Christ in a hostile world. Hosted by the elders of the Topeka, Kan., RPC, participants pursued transformation in Christ. The mission of LifeFocus is to glorify God by training students to feed on the Scriptures and focus their understanding of Jesus’ unique purpose for their lives, loves, and vocations. Pastors Brad, Noah, Joel, and John come from widely different backgrounds but stand united in the persuasion of the authority of God’s Word as “the only infallible rule for faith and life.” Over four days, we sought to answer that question—Why am I a Reformed Presbyterian?—from the Word of God, around an assigned topic (Scripture, History, Worship, and Missions), and related through the story of our personal biography. We labored to impart the Reformed faith to the young people of LifeFocus 2012. You can see and hear some of the results at www.lifefocusweek.info

Pastor Brad Johnston on Scripture

Iwas born into the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I have never been a member of any other. But I have always resisted—and at times resented—the notion that I belong to this branch of Christ’s church by mere tradition or familial association. Few things have raised my ire more, for I labored diligently to understand the Word of God, and to do it. I came to cherish this denomination as I learned just how much the Bridegroom loves His Bride (the Church), and when I saw in the RPCNA a committed and fervent love for her Lord. By His grace, I intend to live out my days in the RPCNA locking arms with a brotherhood bound together by a common faith in Christ and in His enduring and abiding Word.

I am a Reformed Presbyterian because God is three Persons in one substance. Practically, this means that the Father loved me in Christ before the foundation of the world. I made a personal profession of faith in my youth, and a more clarified commitment at age 12 when I publicly professed the Covenant of Church Membership before the elders of Christ’s church. In my college years the Lord brought me once again to a place of entrusting myself to the glorious promises of His inerrant Word. As I grew, I more fully understood how my Father in heaven was effectually calling me to Himself by His Word and Spirit.

There’s another key reason I love being a Reformed Presbyterian. In my youth I saw a vibrant attention to the details of biblical doctrine integrated with a deep commitment to the Great Commission that Jesus gave to His apostles to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing [and] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). Even today I am amazed at how God is using our tiny denomination (with our tiny budget) to plant and support churches in very tough ground around this planet.

Growing up in central Indiana, I was privileged to watch Jesus build His church as two Indiana RPCNA churches grew to nearly a dozen churches. I watched as the gospel was proclaimed and people were called to count the cost of following Jesus and honoring His Word. I was blessed to observe many (including my own father) stay rooted in the text as they sought to impart the gospel of Christ—and their own selves—to many others in the form of man-to-man discipleship, Bible studies, regular retreats and conferences, and, above all, through the ordinary means of grace present in the Lord’s Day assembly of the saints.

In my teenage years I interacted more broadly with various branches of the visible church. I learned of the confusion and controversy surrounding the Person of the Holy Spirit. I began to more fully understand His ongoing work in the Church—and in me—to transform sinful people and make them like their Master. It was during this time that I discovered a favorite passage in the Reformed Presbyterian Testimony (2:6-12). These articles summarize in a most beautiful way how the Holy Spirit works “secretly, supernaturally and effectually” to bring about the regeneration of the elect. “He prepares for the reception of the Word and accompanies it with His persuasive power.” I more fully understood the radical nature of being “born again,” and that this new birth was something that had not been in any way accomplished by me, but sola gratia, by God’s grace alone.

In study with a theological mentor in the year 2000, the contours of the Reformed faith congealed into hardening conviction and strengthening passion in me “for Christ’s Crown and Covenant.” I had entered my college years casually Reformed, but it was during this time that I learned of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and discovered the five solas of the Protestant Reformation. Here I found the message of Luther (sola fide, sola Scriptura), Calvin (sola Christus, sola gratia), and the Covenanters (soli Deo gloria) brought together in a systematic way. As I began to more earnestly study the Westminster Standards, I saw a system of doctrine and manner of worship that were faithful to the Scriptures. I discovered the importance of the covenant of grace (“Christ’s Covenant” on the Blue Banner) and the unique way the Covenanters had articulated Christ’s mediatorial kingship over both the church and the state (“For Christ’s Crown”).

I learned in evangelism the importance of holding to a confession that does not go beyond the Scriptures and that is at every point exegetically rooted in the text of God’s own book. More and more I understood that in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms I had an accurate summary of the Reformation faith. In the (then recently revised) Reformed Presbyterian Testimony I had been entrusted with a document that interacted in a summary way with key contemporary and cultural questions based on the Word of God.

It was during these years that I worked as a newspaper reporter, and quickly learned that a Christian who lives “in the world” in an intelligent way must have a comprehensive and systematic world view. I discovered that the Covenanters in America had on May 21, 1871, signed an articulate and convicting “world view document” committing themselves and the RPCNA to “henceforth, by our prayers, pecuniary contributions, and personal exertions, seek the revival of pure and undefiled religion, the conversion of Jews and Gentiles to Christ, that all men may be blessed in Him, and that all nations may call Him blessed.”

This departed generation had set their hearts and economic fortunes to press the claims of Christ in this world. They were intent on blazing a trail by which they and their physical and spiritual descendants might labor over decades and centuries to bring the whole gospel to the whole world. I wanted to serve God like that. I began to see more clearly that I existed for God’s purposes, that there was not one stray atom in the cosmos, and that Jesus stood over the entire universe and pronounced of it, “Mine.”

Humanly speaking, a key reason I have settled down in the RPCNA is because my parents were committed to presbytery and national conferences. Through the ups and downs of my local church’s life (and my subjective perceptions of that life), I was learning that the church is not the building or a solitary congregation of people. In fact, there was one Church in the world—the elect—and she ought to aspire and labor, “trusting that all divisions shall cease, and the people of God become one Catholic church over all the earth…on the basis of truth and Scriptural order” (The Covenant of 1871, par. 4). It was at the yearly presbytery conferences and national conferences, which my parents made sure we attended, that I got a foretaste of this unity in diversity. I began to understand that the church is huge, and that the one true God was at work by ordained means in all of His people.

During these summer conferences I got to know dozens of pastors and elders and regular church members across my presbytery and the denomination. I fell in love existentially with God’s songs in the psalter. I made important commitments to the Lord and began to labor in the church in various administrative capacities. I did not come from one of those “true-blue Covenanter” families. But at those conferences I learned to think two, five and a hundred generations into the future, and pray that the triune God would be God to me and to my descendants after me.

In hindsight, I see that at these conferences I saw the glorious “truth in love” dimension of the church. I saw rigorous and biblical doctrine solidly embedded within a network of vibrant, growing, Christlike relationships. It was doctrinal meat that fueled a militant church in its mission of worship and evangelism. It was here that I had solid friends. It was here that I belonged.

Finally, I am a part of the RPCNA because it is the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The Lord directed me to the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 2002. There I learned from wise and godly seminary professors about the “regulative principle of church government.” Jesus had promised that He would build His Church. That means that He was the King—the Head—of His church, and had in Scripture appointed officers within His church as He saw fit. This meant that we could not add layers of bureaucracy—such as a Pope—to His biblically established offices of elder and deacon. I learned of the foundational importance of the apostolic office, and that to be faithful to Scripture is to follow those apostles whom Jesus appointed.

I learned from men like Dr. Roy Blackwood how the Roman church departed from these biblical foundations during the Medieval period, and how God raised up a generation who were dedicated to the primacy of Scripture. I learned from men like Dr. Wayne Spear of the historical circumstances and wisdom of the Westminster divines, who articulated the Reformation principles of law and gospel with a new clarity around the covenant of grace. Most importantly, I am a Presbyterian because the church is not built on the wisdom or agendas or personalities of men. Christ is the Ruler of His church, and throughout her history He has entrusted her governance to a plurality of elders. This establishes a unity within the visible church, and preserves the focus upon Christ that is at the core of the gospel.

I praise the Lord for the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. She is a church pursuing faithful biblical interpretation, Reformation theology, and a God-honoring form of worship. She has her roots sunk deeply into God’s special revelation, but with an eye to the missionary endeavor the Lord has put before us. At home and among the nations the RPCNA is presenting the claims of Christ and seeing a witness raised up for Christ’s crown and covenant. #

Pastor Noah Bailey on History

Coldenham Covenanters The Wallkill River winds its way through the Hudson Valley in Eastern New York, running parallel to its more famous partner, the Hudson River. Its swelling each spring has sweetened the soil of the valley for generations. In 1748, James Rainey moved his family from Philadelphia to the fertile farmland of the Wallkill Valley. They were Covenanters. The church they built in that valley still stands. They still sing psalms and they still preach Christ. On a cool spring evening several years ago, I joined those Covenanters at the request of my high school sweetheart (now my bride). I was unnerved by a cappella psalmody and relaxed by the family environment. I did not know that my story would become interwoven with James Rainey’s. I would become a Covenanter.

James Rainey was an immigrant, the son of immigrants. By 1748, Ulster Scots, or Scots Irish, had been crossing the Atlantic Ocean by the thousands. Before the American Revolution would end, tens of thousands more made the journey. These Ulster Scots transplanted many of their “folkways” (i.e. beliefs and behaviors) to America. The young nation was transformed by these folkways, and many of these folkways were transformed by the nation. The Covenanter folkways are a narrow branch of the Ulster Scots’ folkways. Some Covenanter folkways faded and fell into disuse. Some occasionally revived, and some folkways are entirely new. Of the many folkways that have come and gone, none were as formative or foundational as the Covenanters’ uncompromising commitment to the Bible. Even as the winding Wallkill River drew James Rainey to its fertile fields, so this one folkway, winding its way through centuries of Covenanter history, has drawn me to the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

Scottish Covenanters The headwaters of the Covenanters’ commitment to the Bible can be found in the heather hills and moors of Scotland. Ministers such as Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, and John Knox carried the gospel, which Martin Luther and John Calvin preached in Europe, to Scotland. They preached and lived the message of Jesus Christ at great personal cost and with inspiring commitment. Ministers after them carried on the tradition of preaching and living the Gospel expensively. Even the ordinary people of Scotland shared this uncompromising devotion. Pastors died for their faith and teenagers and farmers joined them. Covenanter commitment to the Bible was deep and demanding.

This commitment was also broad. The Covenanters’ sense of the gospel was not a narrow, individualistic message, but a command to bring every sphere of creation into total submission to Christ. Kings were servants of Jesus, as John Knox and Andrew Melville regularly reminded their monarchs. Donald Cargill, Richard Cameron, and James Renwick each took turns disavowing their monarchs for unrepentant sins. The nobility and the parliament also owed service to Christ. They were to endorse and enforce the nation’s covenants. They were to fund the reforming influence in the church, giving generous support to the Westminster Assembly, among other things. Every earthly resource belonged to Jesus and should be employed in His service.

Such a broad commitment stretched to heights of power, to monarchs and parliaments, but it also reached the most common, ordinary man. Forgotten farmers and fishermen affixed their names to the National Covenant, right beside nobles, pastors, and later a king. When Robert Leighton toured southwest Scotland, seeking to persuade Covenanters to compromise with the king, he reported that the poorest commoner humbled his bishops and professors with their knowledge of the Bible. George Wood was a 16-year-old farmer who read his Bible during his lunch break, and it cost him his life.

Covenanters were convinced that every person, regardless of rank or office, must share an uncompromising commitment to the Bible. By the 1690s, many Covenanters began to fear that Scotland would never again share their conviction. So, they sought a new opportunity to build a biblical kingdom.

Immigrant Covenanters Like so many Ulster-Scots, the Covenanters found the journey across the Atlantic perilous. Many folkways did not survive, and many were radically reshaped. Yet, their uncompromising commitment to the Bible endured. Most of the Covenanters who arrived in America came through Ulster. In the northwest corner of Ireland they learned to survive in small but hardy praying societies. Lay leaders facilitated psalm singing, Bible study, and prayer while waiting for ordained ministry. The praying societies transplanted the Covenanter faith to America. They were the embers that continually rekindled the uncompromising commitment to the Bible. They endured while ordained ministers came and went.

Covenanters in the new world borrowed their leadership. Until the 1850s, American-born pastors were the minority in the RP Church. Pastors from Scotland and Ireland sustained the church. Covenanters struggled to keep their pastors. Some left for other denominations. Some were even defrocked for drunkenness. John Cuthbertson ministered to the Covenanters for more than three decades. He traveled up and down the colonies, visiting Covenanters in Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont. He kept a journal in which he regularly reported that he was fessus, fessus valde (“tired, very tired”). In 1782, he led many of the Covenanters into the Associate Reformed Church. The American Revolution, some argued, nullified the need to be Covenanters.

David Rainey (son of the late James Rainey) and a stark minority of Covenanters disagreed. They returned to their praying societies and begged Scotland and Ireland to send more pastors. In 1793, Irish pastor James McKinney crossed the Atlantic. He traveled the circuit, visiting all the praying societies as Cuthbertson had before him, eventually settling his family near Albany, N.Y. McKinney wrote “An Act for a Fast,” in which he assaulted the Constitution for ignoring Jesus and the Bible. He urged Covenanters to dissent from the political process until the nation acknowledged King Jesus and His Word. The Covenanters had an American cause. Before the new century dawned, they also had an American presbytery. In 1809, they had a Synod with three presbyteries, and in 1810, they had a seminary for making American pastors. The Covenanters became an American church, but they still longed for an America based upon the Bible.

American Covenanters The Covenanters of the Wallkill Valley called Alexander McLeod to be their pastor in 1799. He declined. He did not object to the compensation or to the burden of pastoring two congregations 70 miles apart. He refused to minister to a slave-holding congregation. The Covenanters freed their slaves and McLeod accepted their new call. The Reformed Presbytery adopted an anti-slavery position as a condition for membership in 1801, the second church in America to do so.

Covenanters always expressed their commitment to the Bible publicly and politically. In the 1800s, however, they possessed a particular passion for assaulting systemic sins. In the early half of the century they battled slavery, and in the latter half they took on the issue of drunkenness.

Covenanters preached against slavery and they fought against slavery. Their churches, parsonages, and denominational college provided stops on the Underground Railroad. Covenanters fled the slave-holding stronghold of South Carolina for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New York, even Iowa and Kansas. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1851, Synod passed a resolution requiring disobedience to the law. When the Civil War came, Covenanters served. The Oakdale RP Church sent 50 young men and their pastor off to war. After the war, the energy once directed toward abolition was redirected toward prohibition. Fearing the drunkenness destroying the American home in industrial and urban regions, the Covenanters joined the women’s movements of the day in calling for the total prohibition of alcohol.

Covenanter commitment to a biblical society required more than abolition and prohibition; it required a growing church. Since the 1850s, the Covenanters launched and sustained global and domestic missions. They worked around the Mediterranean Sea and in Asia. They ministered to the edges of society: Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chinese immigrants in Oakland, freed slaves in Selma, and transplanted Native Americans in Oklahoma. For Covenanters, however, missions was not the only mark of a biblical church. Covenanting also evidenced a thriving church. Successfully forging a common confession revealed unity and purpose. In 1871, after seven decades of failed attempts, the Covenanters made an American Covenant.

Unfortunately, this moment of unity is easily overshadowed by seasons of division. Nothing divided Covenanters like political dissent. The church divided in 1833, in part, over a disagreement concerning dissent. Some argued that political dissent was a matter of liberty; some said that it was essential. Dissent and division rocked the church again in 1891 when supporters of the East End Platform were suspended from the ministry. They too argued that political dissent was a matter of Christian liberty. In 1967, Synod ruled that political dissent was indeed a matter for Christian liberty, ending the division. The Covenanters believed a biblical commitment occasionally called for division and occasionally for change; but, both division and change depended on biblical conviction.

Contemporary Covenanters James Rainey would barely recognize his descendants. They are more ethnically and theologically diverse than ever before. They have a global identity. They wrestle with three legacies: the Covenanter, the Confessional, and the Evangelical. The Covenanter seeks a public and political expression of the Bible. The Confessional seeks a precise, systematic expression of the Bible. The Evangelical seeks a personal and familial expression of the Bible. All of these streams flow out of the Bible.

The Covenanters in America have always been a haven for Scots-Irish immigrants searching for familiar folkways. Today, they are a haven for ecclesiastical immigrants seeking an uncompromising commitment to the Bible. I am such an immigrant. James Rainey and I have little in common, but we have enough to make us Covenanters. We sang, heard, and loved God’s Word in Coldenham, N.Y.

I am a descendent of Scots-Irish immigrants, but that is not why I am a Covenanter. I am married to a daughter of the RP church, but that is not why I am a Covenanter. I know and cherish the stories of the church, but that is not why I am a Covenanter. I share many of the convictions of the church, but that is not why I am a Covenanter. I have an uncompromising commitment to the Bible, and that is why I am a Covenanter.

Pastor Joel Wood on Worship

When I arrived at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in fall 2002, I was clueless. As I believe he does with every incoming non-RP student, Dr. Jerry O’Neill faithfully sat me down and explained that “we view worship differently here.” Being a worship leader, I had already served in church ministry full time for 3 years since my graduation from Moody Bible Institute. Worship was always important to me, especially the musical part. I regularly grappled with the questions: What is worship? Why is worship important? and Why do you worship?

While a student at RPTS, I enjoyed chapel services, and was even able to worship in an RP Congregation a time or two. However, I continued in my naive, humanistic understanding of worship. Worship is what I do for God, I thought. Worship is important because we’re commanded to do it. It shows how much we love God, especially when we’re creative enough. And I worship to show God that I’m serious about my commitments to Him.

Those simple, and simplistic, answers, which would vary from time to time, made me not only non-creative, but also, and more frighteningly, non-biblical. It was my time at RPTS and my continued contact with my brothers from that era of my life that caused me to adjust the questions slightly to What [does the Bible say] is worship? Why [does the Bible say] worship is important? Why [does the Bible say] you worship? This was the challenge before the students at LifeFocus2012.

First, the pitfalls must be considered. We know from texts like Judges 17:6 and Proverbs 21:2 that our human inclination is to see ourselves as right, and that apparent rightness is not necessarily godly or biblical. Even thought we were created in God’s image, and, with that image comes a sense of the divine in this life, our fallen human nature drives us further from the Creator into His creation. Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1.3.1), puts it this way:

That there exists in the human minds and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God Himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of His Godhead, the memory of which He constantly renews and occasionally enlarges, that all to a man being aware that there is a God, and that He is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship Him nor consecrate their lives to His service.

Therefore, when he chooses to worship wood and stone rather than be thought to have no God, it is evident how very strong this impression of a Deity must be; since it is more difficult to obliterate it from the mind of man, than to break down the feelings of his nature—these certainly being broken down, when, in opposition to his natural haughtiness, he spontaneously humbles himself before the meanest object as an act of reverence to God. That’s what we do. We worship wood and stone, rather than their Maker. We’d rather be caught worshiping dirt than caught worshiping no God at all. We even see this from God’s people in Exodus 32. Seriously, folks? The Golden Cow thing made sense? Really, our hearts are dead to God. Any conception we have of worship will be dead also. Consequently, we and our conception of worship need to be awakened.

And how does the Lord do this? He vivifies us by the Holy Spirit and His application of the Word to our hearts. Yes, our worship needs the Spirit and the Word. We are dead. The Spirit must make us alive. And God does this via Scripture. This is why we must rediscover Reformed worship, which is, simply stated, the worship of God rooted in the Word of God.

From the beginning, God has dictated human/divine interaction by His Word. Indeed, the very fall of humanity came about when we ignored God’s pure Word, distorted it into our own word, and followed that distorted word. We fell. But the promise was given, and, from that point on we were reminded to follow God’s Word, and God’s Word alone. Deuteronomy 5:32-33 summarizes this beautifully: “You shall be careful therefore to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.”

While, through the ages, men and women were to trust the spoken Word of God, as it came from His mouth, then through the prophets, we are to trust the written Word, as we see the fullness of the ministry of the Word in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

So what [does the Bible say] is WORSHIP? In Worship in the Presence of God, Frank J. Smith gives a simple, yet comprehensive, definition of worship: our heart response to the greatness and worthiness of God. One might also find Denny Prutow’s definition helpful: Coming into God’s special presence, listening to Him, responding to Him in commanded acts of faith and love. These definitions, while “short and sweet,” give the summary ideas of God’s Word in regard to worship.

This is all good and well, but, for our young collegians, the rub comes when interacting with a culture of worship rooted on what gives the greatest psychological and emotional satisfaction, that which is the most “relevant” and “contemporary.” This view of worship spawns a culture of distrust of anything pre-1980. While it is much older than 1980, the song that can often describe the modern droning and marketing of “worship” music is found in the 1950 hit song, “Music! Music! Music!” which says:

 Put another nickel in
In the nickelodeon
All I want is having you
And music, music, music…

I’d do anything for you
Anything you’d want me to
All I want is kissing you
And music, music, music.

Lest any offense be taken, I’m not overstating the point. Consider this lyric from a modern day “worship” tune:

We are His portion and He is our prize, Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes, If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking. So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss, And the heart turns violently inside of my chest, I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, When I think about, the way… He loves us…

At this point, it might be difficult for a “worshiper” to differentiate between sovereign grace and a junior high dance. So we are compelled to help our young people move beyond their culture and learn to biblically express love to God through worship. And by “their culture” we mean more than just the secular milieu in which modern paganism is presently thriving.

Even in the gospel-centered church, our students see worship leaders basing their methods and means on human speculation and market desirability. Some are struck as they hear one man say: “I can think of no better way to meditate on the gospel than to listen to Watts lyrics all day.” This writer can think of a way—how about meditating on the gospel! Or even in the Reformed camp, we find Dr. R.C. Sproul and his faculty advertise for their new bachelor of arts in church music at Reformation Bible College. When giving the theological rationale for their degree program, Martin Luther was the only theologian mentioned. Are we telling our young people they should be Lutherans when it comes to their understanding of worship and church music?

Working through the “contemporary” issue, we first grapple with the relationship of time and eternity and worship’s place in that mix. We do this with the (in)famous illustration of (booming voice): “The Cosmic Doughnut of Time in Relation to Eternity!” We first dispel the notion that God exists in an eternity which is a state of existence with an infinite number of successive moments. (Imagine a line extending infinitely into either direction and time being a portion of that line.) If this were the case, God could have never arrived at the first moment of creation, because He would have had an infinite number of moments to progress through before he could have made the world. An impossibility!

Time exists within eternity, a state of existence without successive moments. Time connects to eternity at each moment (imagine eternity either in the doughnut “hole” or outside of it, either one) at the same time. With this basic premise in place, we develop the idea that God is eternal, and we, for the time being, are time-bound. Therefore, the worship of God spans time and eternity. It was decreed in eternity but takes place in time and is experienced by God in eternity. Hebrews 9 makes this clear.

As we settle into this reality of Word-centered, God-commanded, Eternity-spawned and experienced worship, we look at texts like 2 Kings 16 and 2 Chronicles 29, exposing what happens when we give in to our fallen nature to make our worship pagan and me-centered, finding in it amusement rather than making it biblical, God-centered, and finding in it holy awe and reverence. And for those who are tempted to give in to the cultural pressures around them, we encourage them to let go of all THEY want them to be and become all HE wants them to be.

We warn them to guard their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Col. 3:12-17; Rom. 12:2; Gal. 5; and Phil. 4), to embrace the totality of New Testament worship through the Word (read and preached), the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s supper), the singing (from the psalter with the human voice), the prayers (solitary and corporate), and the Sabbath (both private and public observance). And through all of this, they should build a life-rhythm of worship: daily (Scripture reading, prayer, and family worship), weekly (Sabbath worship with God’s people including the sacraments), monthly (reading a book per month to encourage depth of thought, theological growth, and personal devotion), quarterly (communion seasons, retreats with God’s people, personal retreat) and annually (camps, conferences, and vacations).

Endnotes 1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997). 2 “Music! Music! Music!” Stephen Weiss and Bernie Baum, 1949. 3 “How He Loves.” John Mark McMillan, 2002.

Pastor John McFarland on Missions

Pastor John McFarland

The Reformed caricature is that we are frozen chosen—serious Christians who are dour, joyless, and more interested in keeping our traditions than evangelizing neighbors or the world. Some say Protestants were disobedient to the Great Commission until William Carey came along. But Carey was a Calvinist, his opponents were hyper-Calvinists, and his missionary heart was motivated by his theology.

What is the truth? Does our doctrine encourage missions? The five Reformation solas matter to missions. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to the Scriptures alone to God’s glory alone. Grace alone says we have news, the greatest news ever. GRACE = God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.

This message gives hope, standing against false gospels and foolish systems. Faith alone demands a turning away from self to rest in Jesus. God’s grace is the critical thing, while faith is like the riverbed through which God sends grace. But the faith-channel through which God sends His grace was carved into a once hard heart by grace. The grace is from God; so is the faith. Faith alone and missions simply magnifies the goodness of the good news we are commissioned to tell. Christ alone reminds missionaries that we do not bring to nations a Western way of life. Social justice, universal education, health care, and economic development are tools of entry and byproducts, but our mission is to preach Christ.

Scripture alone surprises as the most critical sola: Which of the other four come to our attention as we read Scripture? With one, we get five! So our fathers in missions emphasized Bible translation, trusting other treasures would develop. To God’s glory alone in everything: soteriology, sanctification, relationships…missions! The only faithful and effective motive for missions—giving, sending, and going—is God’s glory.

The familiar points of Calvinism matter for missions. Total depravity reminds us that fallen man will not fix his problems on his own through his good intentions. We have no better angels. We are encouraged to evangelize near and far when we consider the unlikelihood that lost ones will be saved without a clearly spoken truth, spoken by those who know truth, are being transformed by truth, commissioned to speak that truth. God utilizes means of grace to accomplish His purposes. “Means” means you, the church, going into all the world. Unconditional election, once appreciated, pushes us into the hard places because we remember that God has His chosen ones in all the nations. We send and go with confidence. God has His elect, and His particular choices are based on His desires and plans.

Limited, particular, specific atonement adds the great truth that there are folks all over for whom Jesus shed blood. Many of them do not know it yet! We have the privilege as His ambassadors to go into all of His world to find them. We will know who they are based upon their gospel responses. They will repent, believe, be baptized, and obedient. We are not sending and going to tell of the possibility, “Some might be saved!” God has ordained who will be saved and has ordained the means by which they will be gathered. I know God’s will for you: You must tell people about Christ and His work! This will be fruitful; the Word will accomplish God’s purpose.

Irresistible grace promises that God will surely draw His purchased ones. Once we move past the romance of missions into the hardships, poverty, resistance, and barriers, what is there to encourage us? We must lift our eyes off humans and results, onto Christ, who promises to draw all peoples to Himself through “the Hound of Heaven.” Our confidence keeps us focused on the gospel carefully explained and clearly understood, not tricks and techniques by which salesmen seek to win decisions from reluctant customers.

Perseverance of the (Spirit in the) saints assures us: Those whom God really rescues out of the lost world will be kept from the world, then brought into heavenly glory. If God has saved one, then that one has eternal life already; God would not call it eternal life if it was less. The Spirit will keep all His own. Those for whom Jesus accomplished redemption by His death will have that atonement applied through the Spirit’s effectual working. That same Spirit will keep the saints from now on. Our perseverance returns all glory to God. Missions and evangelism are subordinate to lifelong discipleship. Our confidence is in the Spirit who perseveres.

Five more emphases of our Reformed Presbyterian family of churches matter for missions: The priesthood of all believers releases us into the fields with gifts we have from God to be turned into worship of God. “Will I invest my years in sacred ministry or secular labors?” is a false dilemma. The restored creation/cultural mandate justifies our sacrificial diaconal labors, social justice concerns, and economic development strategies. The restored mandate emphasized in the Reformed faith and life legitimizes holistic Christian world view studies.

This will be a fruitful area of testimony to evangelicals. The mediatorial dominion of Christ is the only hope of nations for sustained blessing, giving weary ones something grand to demand full allegiance. I urge you to read and sing a new national anthem: South Sudan, Hooray! (explained further below). Jesus must be seen as worship leader. Our Maker knows our souls, what edifies them and what glorifies Himself. What a head start this gives us in assisting new churches in all nations! We teach, not the preferred style of the mother or daughter culture, but “Obey Jesus in worship!”

Finally, the King governs our churches by His Word; this points us to presbyterianism. We must consolidate gains as a church that thinks and serves together across miles and time. God, sovereign everywhere, must be heeded in His design for Christ’s temple.

The history of Reformed missions is anything but cold or lazy. John Calvin welcomed into Geneva many refugees for relief from oppression and for a season of continuing education in “the basic institutes of the Christian religion.” From Geneva, this word spread into Swiss cantons, France, Holland, Hungary, Britain (Scotland, England, colonies). Outreaching Puritans, Covenanters, and Huguenots were Calvinists. Consider too that Europe in the 16th Century was itself a mission field. Even in Geneva, Calvin was often resisted. Consolidating Reformation gains was critical, yet Calvin showed concern for the vast world around him. In Geneva, he sponsored the first Protestant university, reminding us that missionary-evangelists must be able to speak, and have something to say!

These brave ones ministered out of largely Reformed commitments: Guido de Bres, author of The Belgic Confession (classic Dutch testimony), died for taking truth to Spain. Jean Belmain’s tutoring of young English monarchs led into England’s Protestant-favoring future. John Eliot was a Puritan who preached to Native Americans in the future Massachusetts territory; Eliot donated land in “Boston” for a school, as long as Negroes and Indians…could attend…in the 1670s! Jonathan Edwards is usually regarded as our pre-nation’s greatest theologian, but he was also a missionary to natives. The posthumous biography of David Brainerd inspired thousands of missionaries in the century after his death. George Whitefield’s evangelism, which God used to effect the Great Awakening, was “foreign missions” for him. William Carey, widely regarded as the father of Protestant missions, was a Calvinist, stirred to action by a book written by Edwards. Andrew Bonar, a Scottish pastor-theologian, accompanied the young Robert M’Cheyne to Palestine to conduct Jewish evangelism. M’Cheyne died at age 29; Bonar wrote his famous biography. Hudson Taylor’s innovative ministries to inland China were supported by Charles Spurgeon. Loraine Boettner’s wisdom and generous spirit sparked Reformation Translation Fellowship and countless blessings for China; Boettner represents many Reformed scholars for whom there was no separation between careful doctrine and bold missions. J. I. Packer, the Englishman, blesses many Americans from his Canadian post; Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God proves a commitment to God’s sovereignty does not diminish missionary zeal. John Piper effectively sells this generation on passion for doctrine, history, “desiring God,” and joyous missions.

By God’s grace, our “little” RPCNA denomination need not be ashamed in the area of missions. From our earliest generations we were reaching out with the holistic gospel to Southeast “freedmen,” Jews in inner-city Philadelphia and Cincinnati, Native Americans in Oklahoma, and poor whites in Kentucky. We are running out of space here to tell of those grand visions, sacrifices, fruit, closures, or transitions into more normal ministries within national bounds.

In 1856 we began gospel labors in Syria, then Turkey, then Cyprus (the Levant). These ministries included schools, medical institutions, orphanages, churches, heroism, sacrifice, and even loss of life. Today, Trinity Christian Community Fellowship in Cyprus aims to bless the mixed-race couples and the refugees seeking freedom on “the happy island.” It is convicting to read Acts 11 with care, to observe that Cypriot Jews were among the first Christians to really “get it” about taking the gospel to Gentiles, which led to the founding of the missionary church of Antioch.

Our labors in China began in 1895 (entailing evangelistic, educational, medical, and industrial efforts). A church of 800 grew up, with outlying missions in the hill country. Westerners were expelled in the late 1940s due to the rise of Maoist communism. This disappointment led some to begin the work that is now a full presbytery in Japan. Another response became the Reformation Translation Fellowship, the vast fruits of which we are being harvested even now.

Notice that careful Reformation, God-glorifying doctrine continues to be central to the “success” of these ministries in the eyes of man and, we believe, God. In today’s RPCNA, we see members who have specific skills and callings moving into international settings where they are involved in ministry and sometimes tentmaking, hoping that one day official RPCNA works might begin. The most dramatic recent example of this is in Sudan, where a congregation, then a presbytery, and now our full denomination sponsors missionaries who proclaim that Cush (Ps. 68:31; 87:4) belongs to Christ. What a joy, to see Sudanese pastors and elders quickly and effectively taking up the shepherding work to bless 1,700 plus worshipers!

Where will this happen next? Where will you go, or send?