In this essay
Why We Exist
A conference talk from Lorenzo Small on the church's reason for being. Not its programs, not its buildings, not its institutional momentum, but the underlying calling that holds every congregation accountable: the gospel its existence is meant to bear witness to.
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Lorenzo Small
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" alt="">Holiness
St. Christina the Astonishing tried to flee the stench of sinners; Isaiah collapsed in terror before the Holy One. Sara Jane Nixon argues that the content of God’s holiness is love, a holiness that draws near to sinners rather than away from them.
" alt="">Orthodoxy
Right belief or right worship? Doctrine or doxology? Drawing on Chesterton, Athanasius, and Calvin, Richard Burnett presents orthodoxy as a costly, moving equilibrium, never stuffy and never still, that has carried the church through every storm.
" alt="">Perseverance
Spiritual autobiographies remind us how the Spirit sustains faith through the long road. Drawing on Schweitzer, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Douglas F. Fletcher names ten weapons against evil and reflects on perseverance as a gift God himself secures.
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" alt="">Humility as a Reformed Value
What does humility have to do with teaching the Bible? Bryant argues: everything. The breadth and mystery of Scripture, the humility of God's self-revelation in Christ, and the limits of every interpreter all push against confident overreach in the classroom and the pulpit alike.
" alt="">John Calvin on Death and Grief
It's hard to picture John Calvin grieving, or writing tender letters to bereaved friends. Nixon shows that we should picture exactly that. The Reformed tradition's reputation for being rigorous-but-cold is a caricature, and Calvin himself is the first witness against it.
" alt="">Calvin and Barth on the Unity of the Church
Calvin once wrote that he would gladly cross ten seas if it would help mend the church's torn body. Burnett puts that ferocity in conversation with Karl Barth, and asks what the two together have to say to a denomination tempted to treat division as routine.
" alt="">Luther, Calvin, and the Recovery of Congregational Singing. Is the Reformers’ Legacy at Risk?
Before the Reformation, Catholic worship had no congregational singing and no music in the language people actually spoke. Mills traces how Luther and Calvin recovered the song of the gathered people, and asks whether contemporary churches are quietly drifting back toward the silence the Reformers fought.
" alt="">Three Pastoral Insights From Martin Luther
Hylton encouraged his congregation to mark the Reformation's 500th anniversary, then noticed that the popular media coverage focused mostly on Luther's failings. He pulls three pastoral insights from Luther's example, the kind that hold up regardless of what we think of his weaker moments.
" alt="">Reformed Accents
What makes a Reformed church Reformed? Small begins with Peter DeVries's wry novelistic portrait of a Calvinist boyhood and works toward a serious answer: shared Protestant emphases, yes, but with distinctive accents on Scripture, election, the priesthood of all believers, and worship as covenant response.