Are We There Yet?

First day of actual building work on the church property!

Coral Ridge Presbyterian (PCA) in Ft. Lauderdale is a special church to our family for a number of reasons. First, it is Connie’s home church.   Her father served as an Elder there and her parents were early members. Second, we have family (Connie’s brother and sister and their families) in that congregation.  Third, Coral Ridge has been a leading congregation not only in the PCA but in the country.  Dr. James Kennedy, the founder of Coral Ridge, has been a church leader and helped foster an effective evangelism training program known as “Evangelism Explosion” which is being used across the world.  Fourth, Connie and I were married in that sanctuary!

Therefore, we have followed their search for a new pastor in the wake of Dr. Kennedy’s death.  I am thrilled for them that they have called Rev. Tullian Tchividjian as their new pastor.  This will actually involve a merger between Coral Ridge and New City Presbyterian, the church he planted and pastors that is only 12 miles away.  Tullian has the distinction of being Billy Graham’s grandson.  (I also like the fact that he is a Reformed Theological Seminary graduate like myself!)

What truly excites me is that Tullian has a very gospel centered focus to his ministry and preaching.  He is now in a pulpit of great influence.  I pray he has great influence for the gospel in Ft. Lauderdale and beyond.

You can read more of this transition HERE.

You can hear the sermon he preached March 15th, the Sunday Coral Ridge voted to call him as pastor , HERE.

Wow.  Couldn’t pass up relating this James Montgomery Boice quote given on the Ligonier Blog.  We pray and speak of being a healthy church at HLPC and this cuts to the heart of it:

Many things are talked about as necessary for the health and growth of the church today. People talk about certain programs as essential. It is true that they are important. We have such a diversified culture that people have their own individual problems. The family is fragmented, and the kind of reinforcement along Christian lines that ought to take place in homes does not always take place. The church is trying to minister specifically at these points through programs. Still, if you think back to the time of the Great Awakening in this country, you will realize that churches at that time had hardly any programs at all, at least nothing that we would recognize as programs. There were no youth groups, no graded Sunday schools, no bowling leagues, no baseball teams. But those churches were healthy. Why? Because they had the faithful preaching of the Word.

Quoted in Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching. 2nd edition, 2008 by Reformation Trust Publishing, an imprint of Ligonier Ministries. Available here.

(HT:  Ligonier)

From Joel Beeke’s The Family at Church, some tips on preparing for the preached word:

1.  Prepare yourself and your family with prayer-  pray for the conversion of sinners, the edification of God’s people, for your pastor’s preparation and delivery, and for yourself.  Pray that you, your family, and others will come as those in need of the gospel and the Word.

2.  Come with a hearty appetite for the Word-  Heed I Peter 2:2 and come as a newborn baby longing for milk.  Realize that preparation for the Word begins Saturday evening.  Get a good night’s rest for you and your family if at all possible.

3.  Meditate on the importance of the preached Word-  The God of creation and redemption is meeting with you!  Thomas Boston said, “The voice is on earth, but the speaker is in heaven!”  Remember that every sermon counts for eternity as salvation comes through faith and faith through hearing God’s Word (Rom. 10:13-16).   Remember that every Lord’s Day you are receiving spiritual food for the week ahead.  The Puritans called this day “the market day of the soul.”   They went weekly to stock up on supplies- so do we in a spiritual sense!

4.  Remember as you enter worship you are entering a battleground-  the enemy of our souls would desire to distract us from the Word.  Yesterday’s ball game and tomorrow’s work day will conspire to pull us away from the hearing of the Word.  Pray for strength to overcome these and other enemies.

5.  Come with a loving, expectant faith-  Come as a Mary and not a Martha.  Be ready and prepared to sit at the feet of Christ listening to Him speak in the Scriptures.

On this day, October 31st, in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the chapel in Wittenburg, Germany.  This was the modern day equivalent of posting to an extremely well read internet message board.  The crux of Luther’s writings was to decry the sale of indulgences in order to finance the building of St. Peter’s in Rome.  What was an indulgence?  It was a ticket of sorts to free yourself or a deceased loved one from years spent in purgatory.  Purgatory was the place where one went after death to be “purged” of all sin making them truly fit for heaven.  Luther saw how the sale of these indulgences struck at the heart of the gospel- that man is saved by grace alone through faith alone.  Luther lit a match that set the entire known world on fire.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past week I attended the Ligonier Pastor’s Conference in Orlando, Fl.  This was an excellent week of fellowship and encouragment.  We heard multiple times from R.C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson (Sr. Pastor of First Presbyterian of Columbia, SC), and Steve Lawson (Sr. Pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist in Mobile, Al).  In addition to preaching/teaching there were several Q & A sessions- which are always a highlight.  We were fed extremely well- I’m hesitant to get on the scale!  We were also housed quite comfortably in the Marriott of Lake Mary.  A particular highlight for me was to spend those days with my best friend from seminary, Ty Blackburn.  Ty pastors the Providence Church in Duluth, GA where he has been for 15 years.  Ty and his wife, Patti, were our neighbors at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS and Connie and I were especially close to them both.

What did I learn?  I reviewed my notes just this morning.  I think the main thing I came away with was to keep the main thing the main thing.  What do I mean by that?  What was continually stressed was to preach the gospel faithfully through the regular exposition of Scripture. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve only been to one Gothic cathedral in my life and it was this one- St. Stephansdom in Vienna, Austria.  I was able to visit it on two separate occasions during overnight layovers on the way home from missions trips to Odessa, Ukraine in 1998 and 2001.

Let the record show that I’m a Reformed Protestant and believe deeply in the Biblical truths recaptured during the Reformation.  Those truths have been summed up in the Latin phrases of “Sola Scriptura” or Scripture alone, “Sola Fide” or Faith alone, “Sola Gratia” or Grace alone, and “Sola Deo Gloria” or For the Glory of God Alone.  That being said, when I walked out of St. Stephansdom I was profoundly impacted with the reality that architecture communicates.  In this case, this massive facility that took hundreds of years to complete spoke volumes about God’s transcendence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not much on this blog in the way of insightful posts, I realize.  Recently all that’s been given are links to stuff I like.  Well, here we go again.  R.C. Sproul is interviewed by Michael Horton for the White Horse Inn.  Check it out:

(HT:  Ligonier Ministries)

Michael Horton (one of my favorite authors and host of “The White Horse Inn”) has a new book coming out with the title Christless Christianity.  Check out this web site that highlights the book and upcoming DVD with a good video clip of Horton speaking to the issue.  Good stuff.

(HT:  The Riddleblog)