REFORMED WORSffiP

The growing confusion about worship was the occasion for the address of Dr. John R. Sittema, of Pella, Iowa , at the April 28 South Holland Concerned Conference. Noting that the similarity in worship that used to characterize our churches has disappeared, he found reasons for the change in a variety of influences. Prominent among them were the sensational style of television evangelists tending to turn worship into a show with the preacher as star and the congregation into an audience to be entertained. Charismatic movements have tended to downgrade Holy Scripture as our guide and its proclamation as the center of our worship, and to replace it with individual human experience. The Bible, instead of being accepted as the authority that it is, has been relativized by “scholars” who want to filter everything it says through their “interpretations” in the light of its own and their “cultural conditioning.” Under the influence of a relativism exemplified by Karl Jaspers, they lose all sense of an absolute and unchanging truth—to become today’s kind of “blind leaders of the blind.” Thus preaching of the gospel gives way to “discussion.” Most lamentable is the fact that even traditional and conservative churches have tended to separate their Sunday worship from their way of living. Instead of being guided by God’s Word and Spirit, we tend to be ruled by the “creeping secularism” that conforms to our world.

From this current demoralization of our worship we need to be rescued by listening to God’s Word. It summons us to worship Him , not our own “experience:” That worship must be “covenantal,” responding to God’s revelation of His works and words. As such, it must include the children who are part of the covenant which God made with believers and their children, and who must be taught His gospel. Reformed worship is guided by God’s Word and therefore must be dignified and authoritative, featuring the proclamation of the text of God’s Word. Such preaching characterized the daily labors of John Calvin. Elders must insist on such preaching and support it by exercising the discipline of that Word. They must require music and liturgy that serves that Word rather than that competes with or replaces it. Church members need to demand of preachers and elders such faithful preaching of God’s Words, and if they cannot obtain it in one church, seek another that will provide it.

WHAT KIND OF CHURCH?

In an address entitled “A Reformed Work for Today,” the following morning, Dr. Cornelis P. Venema, of Ontario, California, spoke about what Reformed Churches must be. As churches called to listen to and confess God’s Word, they are to be free from enslavement to opposing authorities.

I. A Listening Church

“The first mark or indispensible feature of a Reformed church is that it seeks always to listen reverently and obediently to the Word of God in Scripture. A Reformed church is born of the Word of God and listens not to the voice of any stranger: Martin Luther, when called to recant by hostile church authorities, appealed to the Bible, saying that his conscience was captive only to the Word of God. Calvin in his commentary on 2 Peter 1:20 observed that one cannot properly read the Bible except with “the conviction that it is God who speaks with us and not mortal men.”

Since the real church is marked by its listening to the Word of God, (1) the only measure of its reformation or progress is its faithfulness to the written Word. We need to see our many church problems in the light of this principle. The issue of women in office is a vexing one because it is being promoted in defiance of what the Bible says is the law of God, the practice of Christ’s church and the order of creation (1 Cor. 14:33–38; 1 Tim. 2:11–3:15). The current abuses of our quota system are objectionable for the same reason.

(2) “We must reject any appeal to the ‘leading of the Spirit’ which comes outside of or apart from a careful listening to the voice of the Lord in His Word.” In the Reformation time Roman Catholics maintained that the Spirit given to the church speaks beyond the Scriptures through church decisions–the idea assumed by many of our church members, that we must unconditionally accept whatever a synod decides. Against this error the Reformers properly insisted that the Word of God is the exclusive authority in the church. Against those who claimed that the Spirit was giving new light and revelation beyond the Bible–a notion equally prevalent today-they also insisted on the written Word of God as the only authority—It is the “sword of the Spirit.”

(3) We may never adopt a higher-critical approach to the Scripture. The vitality and well-being of the church depends on its obedience to God’s Word. By that word we are “born again” (James 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23) and by it we must grow (1 Pet. 2:2; 1 Thess. 2:13). To depart from that Word is fatal to a church (Isaiah 8:20).

II. A Confessing Church

A Reformed church is distinguished as a “confessing church.” Its unity and mission is founded on its common confession of the Word of God. It does not depend on its history or ethnic character. It holds that “no Scripture is of private interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20), and its common statements of faith in that Word in its creeds are its “forms of unity.”

(1) Such a confessing church must require its teachers to defend and promote the truth it confesses. This requirement may not be challenged, as it is today, by appeal to an assumed “academic freedom.” A teacher called to teach what the church confesses has n o right to attack that confession, as many among us are doing today.

(2) We cannot continue to be united in what we do if we are no longer united in what we believe and confess. Mere common traditions, “denominational loyalty,” customs or habits may not keep together people who no longer share a common faith. People who deny our confession may not demand our support.

III. A Free Church

Because a Reformed church listens only to the voice of its Head and King in His Word, and is united only by its common confession of that Word, it remains free from obedience to anyone or anything that contradicts that Word. This Biblical teaching is echoed in the Belgic Confession Article 32, in which “we reject all human inventions and all laws which men would introduce into the worship of God, thereby to bind and compel and conscience in any manner whatsoever.”

This compels us to oppose every kind of developing chu rch hierarchy. It moves us to recover and exercise locally the high office of ruling elders and teachers in the church. It is not their duty to impose upon the churches whatever decisions a denominational assembly may try to order. These are to be obeyed and acknowledged only if they agree with the Word of God and promote the unity and good order of the church.

We need to face the question whether some features of our “quota” system are not an “unlawful” imposition upon the consciences of free sons and daughters of Christ who is the only King over His people.

The church reformation and renewal for which we need to pray is one of obedient listening to the confessing the Word of the Lord and of liberation from every yoke but that of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the recurring note sounded by Dr. Venema and other conference speakers.

PDJ

Tapes of the Concerned Conference addresses can be obtained for $3.00 a piece ($24 for all 9 of them) + $1.00 far handling and postage. Address: CMCRC Tapes , 16304 South Park Ave. South Holland, Illinois 60473