Presbytery is Next Week—Is This Our Game Face?

Warts, Criticism, Chewing Tobacco and Jalapeño Pepper-Fellowship


This entry is from the book, With Calvin in the Theater of God, see Mark Talbot’s chapter, “Bad Actors on a Broken Stage,” p. 60. The book is a 2010 publication from Crossway Books. Good Stuff.

…Calvin’s letters show that he took his faults very seriously…In fact, it was part of the Genevan pastors’ practice to take each other’s faults seriously.

...T. H. L. Parker highlights this in a passage describing Geneva’s Venerable Company of Pastors, which held a regular quarterly meeting “for mutual frank and loving self-criticism”:

“In the church, as Calvin conceived it, every man helped every other man. If in Christ Jesus all believers are united, then a private believer is a contradiction in terms. Not only are the blessings and the virtues given for the common good, but the faults and the weaknesses concern the other members of the body. There was to be no hypocrisy of pretending to be other than a sinner, no dissembling or cloaking of sins; but, just as God is completely honest with men, and men must be honest with God, so also believer with believer must be courageously honest and open. The quarterly meeting was a little day of judgement when, flattery and convention laid aside, each man saw himself through the eyes of his fellows and, if he were wise, harboured no resentment but knew the uniquely joyful release of voluntary humiliation.”


Dr. Talbot quotes from T.H.L. Parker’s biography of John Calvin, p. 115, Westminster/John Knox Press

G. Mark Sumpter

Why Johnny Can’t Pray

For without Me, you can do nothing. John 15:5

In short, Johnny cannot pray because he’s happy with his narrow prayers; he also refuses Sabbath rest.

“Through prayer Jesus received the Holy Spirit, with wisdom for teaching and the power to do miracles. Through prayer Jesus made disciples, choosing the twelve. Through prayer Jesus did the work of evangelism, calling people to trust Him as the Christ. Through prayer Jesus glorified God, and was glorified by Him. Through prayer He carried forward the missionary work of the gospel. Therefore, if we want to see God work powerfully to change people’s lives through our own teaching, discipleship, and missionary evangelism, we need to spend time with Him in prayer. We will accomplish as much or more by praying than by all our doing.” Slightly adapted....from Phil Ryken in Luke, (commentary), p. 568.

One deep, deep root of our prayerlessness revolves around a refusal to sabbath. The Sabbath mandate reminds us that we cannot be busy 24/7. God said for us to cease, to rest, to stop from the work. Accordingly, the presupposition that gets challenged every week concerns a theology of re-creation, re-newal, re-fuel, re-charge and to re-orient. Have we repented of a theology of works? Salvation is by grace through faith, not of works; it is not by being busy. Sumpter, do you hear this? Refuse to guilt yourself into prayer; refuse to busy yourself into approval and fruitfulness in the eyes of men. Rather, waste time; stop to linger; shut it down for leisure in prayer.

Otherwise you’re dead meat, dry in the bones, and you limp along with half-baked ministry.

Go waste some good time in prayer.

G. Mark Sumpter

Grammar in Preaching

Preaching Inquiry

While inside the man cave yesterday with fellow OPC pastor Brian Nicholson, we took to verbal transactions over the use of grammar or terms in preaching.

I was very heavy on the utilitarian and pragmatic. I asked, “I want to be pragmatic...terribly pragmatic...is it permissible to help grow the church—to attract new visitors—by use of biblical and reformed jargon, terms, code-words or grammar paving the way for worship to be visitor-friendly?”

Yes, visitor friendly. Whether non-Christian or professing believer—I am wondering will grammar attract? Does grammar connect?

To illustrate—a Josephine County resident reads the local paper and ponders words like born again, Savior, evangelical, Bible, truth, vows, Adam, Eve, Jesus, church, and the like. My son is a neighborhood paper boy; these words appear fairly frequently in the letters to the editor and maybe in one or two other places. Such words might be considered foreign. But are they altogether foreign? Is there an acquaintance with such grammar of the faith that is sufficient to connect?

Also, as another illustration, other Josephine County residents listen to Renewing Your Mind or hear an mp3 of Phil Ryken, Michael Horton or R.C., Jr. and thinks, “is there a congregation in my area that is a part of the same stream of faith and life—I’ve grown acquainted with this reformed jargon?”

Interestingly, a professing believer, whom I had never met, telephoned the other day, “What does it mean to be reformed?”

If the preacher uses the grammar of the Westminster secondary standards more often, and his congregation increasingly recognizes that grammar, will it pave the way for that same grammar-speak out in everyday discourse of life, and thereby prove to be another way of attracting visitors?

Does Christian terminology—the grammar of the faith—help or hinder preaching? Help or hinder with the goal of reaching out?


—Mark Sumpter