Church Life

Church Society have just launched a new series of publications entitled The Reformed Evangelical Anglican Library. Lee Gatiss, the editor of the volumes in the series, recently dropped me an e-mail to point them out, and they look promising. In particular, I often feel that the wisdom we most often seek out is that from our own generation, but those of former years and centuries so often have much to teach us.

Then enjoy the wisdom of William Cowper, as found in two verses of his hymn What various hinderances we meet:

Have we no words? But think again;
words flow apace when we complain
and fill our fellow-creature’s ear
with the sad tale of all our care.

Were half the breath thus vainly spent
to heaven in supplication sent,
our cheerful song would oftener be,
‘Hear what the Lord has done for me!’

It is a joy to discover Sam Allberry has a blog. He has a particularly excellent post on there with some very important reminders for those of us who lead public prayer in church. Check them out at: http://allberry.blogspot.com/2009/09/public-prayer.html

Doug Wilson says some very helpful things about getting major issues and minor issues the right way around in theology.

Specifically, how sad – and how serious – when people take a minor issue (one on which we may quite respectably agree to disagree) and turn it into a major issue (one on which we do not have the latitude to disagree). As Wilson argues, at that point the issue has to become a major one on both sides. It is a major issue to mis-classify a minor issue as major.