The emerging and emergent movements seek to be “postmodern”. In fact, to the degree that they begin with human autonomy, with versions of rationalism (e.g., in their denial of the atonement), in subjectivism (e.g., in their hermeneutic and quest for the immediate encounter with God), they are not postmodern asContinue Reading
Rev. Nicholas Batzig writes: If you want to demean someone in the church, you simply have to use the “L-word” when speaking to or about that person. The number of times one believer has called another believer a legalist is inestimable. Name-calling often ensues when someone in the church believesContinue Reading
Rev. Mike Brown of the United Reformed Church, North America, writes about four ways that church discipline benefits Christ’s sheep: Perhaps you have heard the story of Shrek, a Merino sheep in New Zealand who not long ago gained international fame for avoiding his shepherds for six years because heContinue Reading
Increasingly, Christians are using “Reformed” to describe what they believe concerning the teachings of the Bible and the practices of the church. On one level, I think this is encouraging. More and more folk are being exposed to the doctrines of grace, which means there is a deepening understanding ofContinue Reading
What does your baptism mean to you? In the early church, baptism was taken very seriously. It was not uncommon for new converts to Christianity – known as “Catechumens” – to spend up to three years learning the fundamentals of the faith before being baptised into God’s covenant community. Unfortunately,Continue Reading
It is commonly accepted that if we claim something to be true about someone or something, we must be able to prove it. The bigger the claim, the more evidence required and the stricter the process of verification. For instance, an immigrations officer is not just going to just acceptContinue Reading
Over the last few weeks we have heard God speak to us through Paul’s letter to Titus. In this letter we have learned many things about our lives inside and outside of the church. Central among these truths is that God has saved us by his grace and not byContinue Reading
Where does the Holy Spirit fit into the Christian life? Sadly, there is much confusion when it comes to the answers to this question in the broader church today. Some people are so focused on the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is pushed into the background, or even forgotten. TheContinue Reading
In the last few weeks during adult Sunday School (which follows our worship service), we have been working through sections of the Heidelberg Catechism that deal with corporate worship. This past Sunday we looked at teachings (heads of doctrine) on the resurrection and ascension of Christ that help set theContinue Reading
As most of you are aware, we have been supporting the planting of a new English-speaking Reformed church in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. This is an exciting development because it is helping enable the riches of the Reformed tradition to spread beyond the Afrikaans language and reach moreContinue Reading