Perhaps your congregation, like mine, has used in its adult education program the Bible Studies on I Corinthians published early this year in The Banner by the Christian Reformed Church’s Board of Publications. Perhaps you are presently using these materials or are considering using them in the near future. If so, it is with you […]
Should Calvin Seminary be training women to serve in the office of minister of the Word? The Synod of 1985 has stated that the biblical headship principle implies that only male members of the church shall be admitted to the office of minister and elder. If only males shall be admitted to the offices then […]
When boards and agencies operate outside the authority and control of local consistories, they are bureaucracies. The CRC is bureaucracy-ridden. But bodies which avoid consistorial control cannot be doing work as the Church. That is “what’s wrong” with bureaucracy in the CRC. So far this series has come. We noted that bureaucracy violates our conception […]
The May-June issue of the conservative Mennonite magazine, Guidelines for Today, contains an address of its editor, Sanford G. Shetler, delivered at the meeting of the Fellowship of Concerned Mennonites at Landisville, PA, September 5, 6, 1984. He observed that it was the “rapid change in beliefs and practices that brought into being this organization […]
CHURCHES, ESPECIALLY CRC CONGREGATIONS, LACK LOVE – Someone sent me a clipping from the Detroit News under date of May 3, 1986 in which Kate DeSmet, “religion writer,” reports on a survey conducted by the Institute for Church Growth in Pasadena, CA. In this report the Christian Reformed Church is alleged to be marked by […]
ADAM AND EVOLUTION (May, 1986) Dear Readers: In a recent issue of The Outlook (May 1986, page 12) the following question was asked: What are we to do with the fossils that are found in God’s world? In a magazine whose front cover proclaims that it is “Devoted to the exposition and defense of the […]
“Interpreting Scripture in the Reformed Community Today” was the title of the second conference sponsored by Redeemer College of Hamilton, Ontario, on May 29–31, 1986. Dr. David Holwerda began the conference with an address aimed at answering the question, “How does the Reformed community interpret Scripture today?” He sketched first the broad area of agreement, […]