Letters to a Young Calvinist – Part 2

Back to reality! Dan and I have been gone the past week on my family’s vacation to Stony Lake! We left last week Friday and it was SUCH a great week! We miss it incredibly, but I suppose as the saying goes, “all good things must come to an end.” It was very relaxing, time with family, time to fish, and time to just do whatever we want. It was lovely. Pictures will come eventually!

Since being back, we’ve been just a tad busy, but it’s been a good busy. Yesterday we had beach volleyball and college group at night. Again and again, God continues to bless us with amazing youth group kids and kids that we just LOVE! After church on Sunday, we both said how good it was to see the kids again. I think we don’t realize how much we miss them when we are gone :).

Anyways, I want to get back to the book “Letters to a Young Calvinist.” Here are a few more things I have pondered and am still pondering:

– In chapter 11 it says, “Calvinism isn’t worth a lick if it doesn’t translate into a set of practices that mark us as a peculiar people who are adopted brothers and sisters of the Beloved.” No matter what denomination you, I think this is true – if we don’t daily live out the practices and beliefs of our faith, isn’t it dead? Of course there are different “practices” so to speak within each denomination, but shouldn’t they all lead to God? If they don’t, I think we need to relook at what those practices are!

– Have you ever wondered why your church service is set up the way it is? I know I have wondered…I was on our church’s worship planning team for a couple of years and I gained a little understanding of why certain things were done at a certain time, but I think this book really gives a hint as to the “WHY’S.”
“In the Reformed tradition, the entire service is worship. While psalm singing and hymn singing might be an important part of worship, in fact they are just a slice of the entire drama that constitutes a service of Christian worship…each week, worship invites us into the narrative of God’s redemptive history. Indeed, the entire drama of worship replays that story each week and invites us to situate ourselves in that story.”
I think there is much argument about the worship services. Aren’t most of the arguments personal preference issues? Yes, I know I have an opinion about worship services too. I am well aware of that. But I have tried to work on that because really, I need to make sure MY heart is in the right place. When I enter the sanctuary, I need to check my heart at the door and make sure I am ready to worship the true God, and not worship myself in wishing there was something different. A worship service I think is designed typically around the creation-fall-redemption concept, aka, redemptive history. How beautiful!

– This next part really made me think – the topic of baptism. Everytime there is a baptism, I get a little teary eyed because I think they are so beautiful. Welcoming a covenant child into the family of the church, is quite a promise. The question that most congregations are asked during the baptism is this: Do you the people of the Lord, promise to receive this child in love, pray for them, help instruct them in the faith, and encourage and sustain them in the fellowship of believers? We answer…We do, God helping us.” BUT…DO WE? I feel like sometimes churches have their “sectors.” I know in youth ministry that sometimes people will put the responsibility of one’s salvation on the shoulders of the youth pastor, and if they stray, it’s the youth pastor’s fault. I’m sure a pastor gets a similar response. REALLY? Are we not ALL called to care for their faith? We take a child’s faith very seriously, but we can’t be the sole people to care for it – nor the sole people to blame. As the saying goes, “it takes a village to raise a child,” so the saying goes in a church as well. It takes a whole church. Hence the need for intergenerational churches and interactions! I am not a parent, but I can dare say, that a parent would say they did not raise their child on their own. I’m sure they would say they had many people along the way helping, encouraging, and mentoring their child. So why would we expect anything different in the church?

– This next quote brings me back to my last post, about religious pride. “God’s Word gives us quite enough to chew on without having to hungrily and greedily start flying off into the unaccountability of building “systems” where God is silent.” Isn’t our culture filled with systems and about drawing conclusions to reach a certain answer? Just like with creation, some things God is SILENT on and who are WE, to make up a system that God did NOT create? I am not against deeper studying of God’s Word! In fact, I have a degree in Bible/Theology – what I am against is the mindset of religious pride – that God all of a sudden wasn’t silent on an issue. Like the book said, the Bible gives us enough to chew on – so why greedily search for systems? Our culture is all about doing things “the best way.” I feel we do that with the Bible too. Our culture is so good at using the Bible to defend whatever topic they want to defend – making “their way the best.” Hello…religious pride! God has given us ALL the SAME INFALLIBLE WORD. We should not treat it any other way!

I continue to appreciate what this book is saying. It draws me back to the Word and has reminded me of the grace God has given us, what a gift the Word of God is, and how daily I need to surrender my whole self to him – if I don’t, I find myself back in my sinful ways. I’m not quite done reflecting on this book yet, but my next post will be my last 🙂