Reforming the Unreformed

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blhowes

Puritan Board Professor
I'm curious how some of you would go about reforming a church that knows very little about the reformed faith.

I visited the baptist church that I had mentioned in another thread. I enjoyed the sermon (Psalm 84, "Thirst for Worship") and the opportunity to meet some of the people after the service.

The pastor of the church holds to the 1689 confession, but he's a fairly new (~ 1 year) pastor at the church. The church historically has held to the New Hampshire confession, but his take is that most folks there were never taught and therefore wouldn't know much about the 1689 confession, the New Hampshire confession, or the differences between Calvinism and Arminianism. He looks at his situation as an opportunity to change this.

If you pastored a church similar to this, how would you go about bringing reformation and introducing the people to Calvinism? Would you from the pulpit start preaching with 'guns blazing'...or would you follow a slower approach?
 
If I were a pastor's wife of a pastor who was pastoring this church... I would encourage my husband not to go in with "guns blazing," simply to preach through Scripture and deal with the doctrines as they come along. Personally I think Christians swallow a lot more that way, and then get interested and are ready to be more openminded to confessions, catechisms, systematic theology books etc. But a lot of Reformed people don't take time (or have time) to "innocuously" go through Scripture with before starting to pelt people with terms they've been trained to react against. One of my friends who is an Arminian-- extremely strongly Arminian husband-- was led to admit that Calvinism makes sense in this way. Of course she washed her hands of the discussion by accusing all the smart people of being Calvinists, with a little bit of the flavor of "you take too much on yourself."
 
I would agree, just preach through the Scriptures, particular the book of Romans or perhaps John, and plainly declare the truths there without using all the "big words." I would also recommending perhaps for a Sunday School class, spending a portion of the time going through the Confession they hold to and explain it to them, perhaps taking 15 minutes, explaining one section of the confession each week. You don't have to get real deep, just enough to get them familiar with what the church holds to.

[Edited on 31-1-2005 by puritansailor]
 
Patrick and Heidi,
I think I agree with the approach you've described, as does the pastor of this church. He feels the change is best done patiently and gently.

I can't help but wonder how many other pastors are facing the same challenge, and how many of these churches we might tend to 'write off' unknowingly. As a visitor to the church, it had one strike against it in that it held to the NH confession, which was a compromise between Calvinism and Arminianism. Strike two, its presently affiliated with the American baptists.

Inspite of these two strikes, I'm really glad I visited the church. As much as I'd love to be a part of a church that's already reformed (term used loosely), it also would be pretty exciting to be part of a church that over time learns to embrace and love the reformed doctrines.
 
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