February 2016

When a friend was on a Fulbright in Switzerland, he and his wife were assigned a church by their address. Those who live in the parish go to the parish church and that's that.

Nothing so simple in other places. We choose our church, and choice is a burden older and wiser men find burdensome and seek to avoid if the avoidance is not abdication of responsibility.

"Honey, you want to go out to eat?"

"Sure, I'd be happy not to have to cook."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know. Where do YOU want to go?"

"Wherever YOU want to go. Pick a place."

Aarrghhh!

Choosing a church is much worse...

Alan Gertner is thirty and just quit his job as head of sales at Google. Why? Toronto's Globe and Mail reports:

Gertner created a spreadsheet measuring the metrics of the happiness and meaning in his life, and found that his three particular passions in life are coffee, clothing, and cannabis.

So Gertner has gone into business with his Dad selling dope, threads, and caffeine. Gertner tells us...

Here's the audio from our 2016 Shepherds Conference, "The Enemy Within: A Conference on Sexual Abuse in the Church." I'd particularly recommend "Recognizing Sexual Abuse" and "Shepherding the Sexually Abused."

Please let us know any criticisms or suggestions you have for us. We'll be doing a similar conference next year on the church's ministry to those suffering the gay/lesbian/transexual/BruceJenner/bisexual temptations. Here's the conference title and dates:

Not Ashamed: Gospel ministry in a post-Obergefell world

February, 15-17, 2017

Here then are the audio files for this year's conference on the sexual abuse of the church's children...

What a privilege, to have a son who is a priest deliver your eulogy. But really, this is not a eulogy. It is an homily that Father Paul Scalia refused to allow to descend to the level of eulogy. It is excellent precisely because Fr. Scalia is restrained in speaking well of his father he calls "Dad."

Rather, he voices his Dad's unease with the sort of overbearing sentimentalities that have become characteristic of funerals today. Instead of spending his time speaking well of his father, Son Scalia spends his time speaking well of the One he directs our attention to throughout his homily, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Only One we may ever speak well of without risking the descent into idolatry. So Fr. Scalia points our attention to the Man Jesus Christ Who came to save the ungodly, saying several times that his Dad was a sinner in need of salvation. Praise God for this witness!

Still, this is an homily given by a Roman Catholic priest during a Roman Catholic mass, and so heresies seep out as Fr. Scalia preaches—the heresies of Roman Catholic dogma...

[The sacraments] are no means of grace except through the faith of the recipient, and in consequence of his own spiritual state and act. There is no inherent power in the ordinance itself to confer blessing, apart from the faith of the participator, and except through the channel of that faith. There is no deposit of power—whether, with the Church of Rome, we deem it physical and ex opere operato, or whether, with Tractarians and High Churchmen, we call it spiritual—in the Sacraments themselves to influence the mind of him who receives them. They have no virtue of themselves, apart from the work of Christ through His Spirit on the one side, and the spiritual act of the recipient through his faith on the other side. - James Bannerman, The Church of Christ

This is an introduction to a series of posts on paedocommunion, the practice of communing at the Lord's Table children who have not yet confessed their faith and been examined by their pastor or the elders of their church. This practice is most common today within the broad Evangelical church where parents simply commune their own children. When the bread and wine are passed, the children whisper to their father or mother that they "want some, too," and the parents see no reason to say "no."

What we are going to examine, though, is a much less common version of paedocommunion found in a small number of congregations in the Protestant and Reformed tradition. Their practice differs from that of the broader Evangelical church in three ways: first, those young children in mainstream Evangelical congregations who commune have not yet been baptized while the children communed by their parents in Protestant and Reformed congregations have been baptized. Second, children communing in mainstream Evangelical congregations don't normally do so because their fathers and mothers believe paedocommunion is Biblical and have developed a system of doctrine to defend their practice. It's really only an ad hoc practice which exists because no one's thought about it and parents aren't inclined to tell their children "no" when they want to do something that seems good, spiritually. On the other hand, parents who commune their children in the small group of paedocommunion Protestant and Reformed congregations believe Scripture requires their children...