We are entering a year of milestones: the 30th anniversary of the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA)1, the 75th anniversary of Reformed Fellowship, and the 150th anniversary of the congregation I grew up in, West Sayville Reformed Bible Church—not to mention the 250th anniversary of the United States of America. The church in West Sayville […]
The Unknown Hour: Biblical Signs Warnings, Hope and Peace, edited by Gaylord Haan and Jerome Julien. Grand Rapids: Reformed Fellowship, 2020. Paperback. 248 pages. $18.95. It is far easier to fill a bookshelf with hyperbolic predictions and conspiracy theories about the end of the world from ostensibly Christian authors than it is to locate a […]
While I was preparing last year’s series on liturgy, a paragraph in Abraham Kuyper’s Our Worship caught my attention for an entirely different reason. Kuyper writes: It is not until individual believers gather together around one table and eat of the same bread and drink from the same cup that they enjoy the unity of […]
This spring, I joined my friend André Knevel in Ontario for organ concerts at a Free Reformed Church and a Canadian Reformed Church. Both programs included congregational psalm-singing, yet the differences in singing style were notable, requiring us to adjust our playing accordingly. André, who grew up in the Netherlands, noted how the rhythms of […]
Rev. Dr. Timothy R. Scheuers, Pastor of Congregational Life at First United Reformed Church in Chino, CA, recently published a scholarly book entitled Consciences and the Reformation: Scruples over Oaths and Confessions in the Era of Calvin and His Contemporaries (Oxford University Press, 2023). Reformed Fellowship board member Michael Kearney interviewed Rev. Scheuers about practical […]
Review of Brian G. Najapfour, Joseph Hart (1712–1768), Eighteenth-Century Hymnody, and the British Evangelical Movement Does your reading pile grow and grow like mine? Every month there is another devotional or magazine in our church mailbox; every week new books by outstanding authors on important topics appear; every day blog posts, newsletters, and podcasts proliferate […]
Our Worship, chapters 32–39 What is the highest point of Christian worship? Ask today’s evangelical megachurches and you might get a variety of answers: altar calls, faith-healing demonstrations, amped-up praise-and-worship sessions, or perhaps the offering. Many Reformed folk would scoff at such ideas, claiming instead that only the sermon, the preached Word of God, ought […]
Our Worship, Chapters 14, 24–29 Worship is a holy conversation between God and his people. The previous installment of this series on Abraham Kuyper’s book Our Worship considered several elements of worship in which the congregation speaks to God: through prayers, songs, and offerings. Meanwhile, God speaks to the congregation primarily through the reading of […]
Our Worship, chapters 6–8, 21, 31 Within the last few years, two important books for United Reformed worship have appeared: the Trinity Psalter Hymnal and the Forms and Prayers. As Abraham Kuyper’s discussion of liturgy suggests, these publications demonstrate a fundamental commitment of Reformed worship: providing a distinct and definite vocabulary with which the assembly […]
Our Worship, chapters 2–3, 13, 15–17, 30 Our examination of liturgy in the last issue of The Outlook emphasized that worship communicates. The design of a church’s building, the arrangement of its sanctuary, and the attire of its worshipers are all clues to the content of its faith. But this is not all. At a […]