My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: "O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!"

20 December 2007

Sermons

Immanuel RPC has recently joined sermonaudio.com. Those who are interested can listen to our sermons at the new site. We're now also a part of reformedvoice.com, the sermonaudio mini-site where all RPCNA and RPCI sermons are collected.

This brings a couple things to mind. First is the great benefits technology can have for the church. Though we are a fairly "old-fashioned" (as in 2,000 years old-fashioned!) church, I'm glad for our churches to be thinking creatively about the use of technology. Not that I'm gunning for powerpoint sermons or anything, but in light of all the negative press technology receives - and often rightly so - it's good to seek out the good things and plunder the electronic Egyptians.

Second, the advent of recording technology should be a special encouragement to families with children. Since I have a better-than-front-row seat for worship every Sunday, I can testify that no matter how hard parents with young children work, they probably will not be able to listen to the whole sermon. I greatly appreciate parents working to train their children to worship alongside them, but I also worry about the spiritual health of parents who only get "sermon snippets" every week. If the weekly preaching of the Word is one of God's plans for our salvation (and I strongly believe it is), then any opportunity we have to catch the whole thing is a great gift. So if providence (or sleepiness - you know who you are!) kept you from hearing the whole sermon, use the technology providence has provided to keep yourself under the Word of God.

04 December 2007

Stupidity not necessary for conversion

As Christianity penetrated the well educated society of Alexandria, the choice for the convert seemed too often to be between clever, eloquently defended heresy on the one side and a dim, obscurantist orthodoxy on the other. It was one of Clement's principal achievements to render this dilemma unreal and irrelevant...

-Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, 95