Entries categorized as 'Pastoral Theology'
Ya Better Read This One
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Categories: Liturgical Theology · Pastoral Theology
The Holy Cleansing of Confession
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“What is the purpose of the holy cleansing of confession, if not to unload the weight of sin, and the remorse it involves, into the very bosom of our Lord, obtaining with absolution a new and airy lightness of soul, such as to make us forget the body tormented by wickedness?”
–Adso, in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose
Categories: Lessons in Liturgy · Pastoral Theology · Quotes · Theology
Introduction to the Book of Confessions
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Introduction: Why a Book of Confessions?
We are a confessional church. All this means is that we acknowledge the value and necessity of making systematic statements about what the Scripture teaches and what we believe. It is, of course, impossible not to have a confession. Those who claim “No book but the Bible, no creed but Christ” have painted themselves into an impossible corner. When asked what they believe the Bible teaches, or who Christ is, they must either speak only the words of Scripture uninterpreted (begging the question) or proclaim their creed. So everyone who would seek to explain their Christian faith necessarily has a creed or a confession. The problem is that those who eschew confessionalism end up with a confession held to by one church, or even one individual! The alternative is to confess the great creedal statements created and compiled by the church down through the ages—to acknowledge that our understanding of the Bible and the Christian faith did not happen in a vacuum but rather that we stand in a tradition. Therefore we commend this Book of Confessions to the saints of Trinity Covenant Church as the very best of those attempts by the church to clearly explain some of what the Bible teaches and what the church believes. (more…)
Categories: Pastoral Theology · TCC
Why the Collar?
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I have been asked numerous times since I began at Trinity Covenant Church why I wear a clerical collar. This is a brief attempt to explain why (which is itself a revision of an article I posted on my old Xanga account about a year ago). (more…)
Categories: Life and Times · Pastoral Theology
A Pastoral Theology
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One of the things that I think has been lost in all the FV hubbub is the fact that the conference where all this began was a Pastor’s Conference. Of course it didn’t really begin there, but that’s where some folks noticed that there were people in Reformed Churches that were talking like Calvin again.
I suspect that at least some of the “talking past each other” that we’ve witnessed for the last several years could be traced to this. The anti-FV folks want to make abstract hypothetical propositions about what happens in the ordo salutis, and the FV folks are discussing what the Bible calls them as pastors to say to Mr. and Mrs. M. who sit in the fourth row of seats in the middle section with all their children. This is surely an oversimplification, and doesn’t begin to account for the whole disagreement. But I am convinced that at the heart of the disagreement is a failure to understand that we are trying to recover a theology that is pastorally useful and consistent with the way the Apostles and Prophets address God’s people.
Categories: FV Controversy · Pastoral Theology
TR Horticulture
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I have a fruit tree in my back yard. Last year it dropped some fruit on the ground, and I left it there. This year, a young sapling has grown up next to my fruit tree. I watered it once. I am not sure if it is a good tree or not, though, so when I go to water my fruit tree, I make sure not to get any on the sapling. When I fertilize my fruit tree, I make sure that none of the fertilizer gets on the sapling. I even built a little shed over the sapling so that no rain or sunshine would get on it. I want to see if it bears any fruit before I tend it. It did grow a flower once, but it’s just a sapling, so it couldn’t have been a real flower. So I plucked it off.
Categories: FV Controversy · Pastoral Theology · Satire
Infrequent Communion Horticulture
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I have a fruit tree in my back yard. I hired a gardener to take care of my fruit tree. Later, I found out he was only watering my fruit tree twice a year. When I asked him why, he said, “If I watered it any more than that, it wouldn’t seem as special.” I don’t want my fruit tree to take the water for granted.
Categories: Pastoral Theology · Satire
Baptist Horticulture
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I have a fruit tree in my back yard. Last year it dropped some fruit on the ground, and I left it there. This year, a young sapling has grown up next to my fruit tree. I am not sure if it is a good tree or not, though, so when I go to water my fruit tree, I make sure not to get any on the sapling. When I fertilize my fruit tree, I make sure that none of the fertilizer gets on the sapling. I even built a little shed over the sapling so that no rain or sunshine would get on it. I want to see if it bears any fruit before I tend it.
Categories: Pastoral Theology · Satire
