If you’ve ever visited an art museum with family members or friends, you know the experience well. You want to pause and admire the realistic works of Rembrandt; you’re impressed with his use of light and shadow, but others in your group eagerly urge you on to another wing of the museum. They’ve come especially […]

Music like all artistic expression is a gift of God to humankind. And like any of God’s gifts, music can be put to good use or to bad use; it can be used in holy ways or in unholy ways; it can be a power for virtue or for vice.                 […]

A former editor of a church periodical once referred to church music as the “War Department” of the church. He was writing about something most of us have experienced personally: disputes about “good” and “bad” church music. In some congregations these disputes center upon the tastes of a choir director or an organist. In the most […]

Setting down certain principles for evaluating the words of songs suitable for Reformed worship is a tricky business. On the one hand, these principles can be stated so generally that they are not at all helpful in evaluating any particular song. On the other hand, we can become so rigorous in our principles, setting law upon law, […]

Thirty years ago a pastor in southern California wrote what has become a Christian best-seller: Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth. Pastor Hal Lindsey’s main point was that Satan is exercising his rule over our planet and his influence is growing by leaps and bounds. In a later book, Planet Earth, 2000 A. […]

Many writers who reflect on the life of John Calvin are quick to criticize him and his later followers for their spiritual apathy, even coldness. These writers associate the Pastor of Geneva with a cold theology and a steely mind; rarely is he said to demonstrate a life of warmhearted devotion to God.     […]

In the introduction to his best-seller The Book of Virtue: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories William Bennett writes that “children must have at their disposal a stock of examples illustrating what we see to be right and wrong, good and bad.”1 By means of such stories, along with explicit exhortation and precept, we will […]

This article originally appeared in the October 1987 issue of The Outlook. Every pastor in the Christian Reformed Church ordinarily each Sunday must “preach the Word as summarized in the Heidelberg Catechism, following its sequence” (Church Order, Article 54). Whether every pastor does this is another matter, a matter to be addressed by the elders […]