Hello,
we are in the business of starting a publishing company. It is confessional, but theologically diverse enough to accomodate both Reformed Baptist views as well as Presbyterian (since it is only "quasi-ecclesiastical" and not a church).
However, how do you provide oversight to such an animal, or rather who? My presbyterian church? Or the Baptist church of my brother (which, being congregationals, has no real interest in oversight at all!)? Can it come under the oversight of the Presb. church, which then provides accountability not to its standards (Westminster and Three forms of unity), but to the standards of the publishing work (Baptist as well as Presbyt.)?

Any ideas, gentlemen?

__________________
Sebastian Heck
PCA & yet to be founded Reformierte Kirche Deutschland
Ph.D. student at Theological Universiteit Apeldoorn/Netherlands
Church Planting in Germany
Reformation2Germany

Publishing is a business like selling doughnuts, but because it involves doctrine, you need oversight of some sort, and informally and ultimately you do as a church member. I've published for 20 years doing my own projects as well as being involved formally in church projects. In both cases, as a member, I was always subject ultimately to church discipline though no formal oversight of my own projects existed. I've generally been self censoring and on safe ground with reprinting historically accepted Puritan and Presbyterian material. If you plan to do a wider corpus of material than either of your churches could confessionally approve, I would work out some kind of understanding with each side of the equation. You may consider setting up an editorial board containing officers from both your churches.

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Chris Coldwell, Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
• Naphtali Press: Presbyterian & Reformed Books
• The Confessional Presbyterian Journal
• The Blue Banner Archive

The Regulative Principle: Samuel Miller gives a succinct statement of this principle when he writes that since the Scriptures are the “only infallible rule of faith and practice, no rite or ceremony ought to have a place in the public worship of God, which is not warranted in Scripture, either by direct precept or example, or by good and sufficient inference.”

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions? Joining PB's Politics & Government Forum

I'd note also that the Puritanboard itself is under oversight of a Presbyterian body but allows Baptist views to be expressed. It is workable.

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R.Vic Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

How are you going to make any money and not be buried under unsold books... in Germany?

Until the 1920s, Reformed people were published by the major secular houses as well as ecclesiastical publishers. I am uncomfortable with walling off Christian media as some sort of separate ministry.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)