Our Worship, chapters 1, 4–5, 9–12 If, as my last Outlook series claimed, our culture’s crises of identity, community, and tradition threaten the survival of the Reformed church in the twenty-first century, what part can a small and vulnerable community of faith such as ours play in stemming such a mighty flood? We have already […]
Dating Differently: A Guide to Reformed Dating Joshua Engelsma. Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2019. Paperback. 160 pages. $16.95. rfpa.org Some years ago, in the 1990s, a book appeared entitled I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It was part of the so-called purity movement, which advocated that young people remain sexually pure and virgin […]
When I told my son, who is twenty-two, I was going to write an article with this title, he asked how I could do that, as I never worked. What did you feel or think when you read this title? How has culture, your upbringing, and/or Scripture influenced your thinking about work? In this article […]
“No One Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” God does, and he not only knows it but is guiding you through it. Our son, when he was a young teenager, participated in a local church’s Bible-quizzing program. It took him all around the country, beginning first as a quizzer, but then later as a judge at […]
We were gathered for a Saturday evening coffee under the big tree. We had invited the neighbors to join us. The Methodist couple came. The folks from Ada Bible Church were there. And the widow from the RCA was in her usual spot. Somehow the conversation drifted to the celebration of Holy Communion. It was […]
By God’s grace I’ve been preaching now for twenty years, and I’ve had the privilege of preaching for different churches (usually Baptist, Presbyterian, and Reformed congregations). While these churches have many things in common, they also have their own distinct emphases in belief and practice. For instance, they differ in the way they worship God […]
Burning Incense Imagine you experienced a reeling personal failure. You were fired from your job, your boyfriend said you were too clingy and broke up with you, your child retreats from you and your controlling clutches. What is your response? Do you desperately try to get back that which you lost? Do you call your […]
In his colossal work on the preaching and teaching of Jesus, Herman Ridderbos states, “The central theme of Jesus’ message, as it has come down to us in the synoptic gospels, is the coming of the kingdom of God. . . . It may be rightly said that the whole of the preaching of Jesus […]
It was summer vacation 2010, and I was sitting on a lakeshore in Montana with T. David Gordon’s new book in hand, Why Johnny Can’t Preach. As I opened the book and read the first page of the introduction, I yelled to my father, “Hey, listen to what this Gordon guy says about preaching today: […]
Rev. Edward J. Knott, age 97, passed away Friday night, November 29, 2019 due to complications from a fall. He was preceded in death by his wife, Harriet, infant son Fred, and granddaughter Sandy Lautenbach. Surviving are his children Kathy (John) De Leeuw, Edward (Marcia) Knott, and Fred (Deb) Knott, his 8 grandchildren and 15 […]