The first blog of the new year!

This month, Pastor Steve Brownson will be leading our online discussion forum.

This month, feel free to post any and all of your own questions or comments about faith, the church, etc. to Pastor Steve.  Steve will respond to them all.

CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE AND THEN SCROLL DOWN TO VIEW PAST AND PRESENT WEEKS' POSTINGS...

Our First Blog
Essential Tenets of Presbyterian Faith

When we ordain people in our church to leadership positions we ask them several questions of faith which includes:  

“Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed by those confessions as you lead the people of God?"

Unfortunately, little work has been done to define those essential tenets (beliefs) [an opinion, thought, or doctrine held to be true by an organization].  Jack Rogers, who among his many claims to fame served as Moderator of the denomination, did his best to distinguish them and delineated the following ten:

Sovereignty
Trinity
Incarnation
Justification
Scripture
Election
Covenant
Stewardship
Sin
Obedience

Each week of the Blog in October, we’ll focus on two of them.  I hope this is a good beginning to what we can do together in study, even online.  And I hope that this study gives us a basis for our future discussions.  

Please know that next to Romans 8, Matthew 5-7 is some of my favorite part of Scripture.  I am always intrigued how the writers kept the record of Jesus’ teaching, using the formula  “I have heard it said…. But I say to you…”  Here, Jesus gives the standard answer of faith that has been accepted, but challenges his followers to the possibility of some new understanding, sharing his view and his faith in God.

We’ll use that formula and approach in our Blog!

See you on the net….  Hm, remember, Jesus talked about a net too!