A Play-by-Play Description

Fred Sanders, professor of theology at Biola, on Twitter:

Clarity ensues. But as I’m paraphrasing their own arguments, I notice that their case is stronger than I remembered. And as I type in some short quotes, I notice that they are coming at the whole issue from a different set of animating questions and concerns than I am.

Quality scholarship often goes slower than you’d like, but the work is so much better.

“Paying Attention in Worship”

John Muether, professor of church history and dean of libraries at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, writes in Tabletalk:

The stakes may be higher than we think. As distraction dulls our senses, it can lead even believers to indifference about heavenly matters. The book of Hebrews (which many commentators believe was originally a sermon) speaks powerfully to our digital age when it warns, “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Heb. 2:1).

There is a lot to lose and a lot to gain. Isaiah 55, from which this post is titled, calls our attention to this as well.

I took these photos of the Yuma Territorial Prison.

Another picture worth seeing is the mug shot of Pearl Hart, a media savvy prisoner who was part of a scandal (or was it a con?), that got her a pardon and early release on the condition that she’d leave and never return to Arizona.

Dear Covenant,

As you know, this last Saturday through Monday I went with my family to Yuma. While there, my wife was able to take an art class with a master painter from Canada (here’s what she’s working on), my kids and I spent time together exploring this unique part of our state, and on Sunday we were able to spend the day getting to know the mission work better.

Though I’ve not been able to visit very many times, Yuma OPC is close to my heart. I helped get the mission work started in the early days and our congregation has done what it can from a distance to help see a new church planted in this part of the state. In the pictures below, you’ll notice that they are still using the logo Bryce designed a few years ago.

The last time I was there, I was with a group of us from Covenant that went to help pass out flyers around town for the mission work, but I had to get back to Tucson quickly that day and wasn’t able to worship or even visit with the saints for very long. So I was happy for the extended time we had last Sunday.

The mission work meets at First Presbyterian Church, a generous and friendly congregation of the PCUSA that allows the OPC to use the entire basement of their building, which includes a kitchen, a classroom, an eating hall, and a meeting room. Last Sunday, the meeting room was packed with more than eighty people. A quarter of the congregation were visitors, many who were Canadians preparing to head back to Vancouver and other places.

I was invited to preach, which I did, and worshipped with the others there. It was exciting to see what God has done since the earliest days when all this was just an prayer request. And it was a joy to connect with old friends as well as meet new ones.

The afternoon was spent getting to know Pastor Baker and his family better. They treated us to a St. Patrick’s Day lunch of corned beef stew, cornbread with butter, and some of the best cupcakes I’ve ever had, thanks to Pastor Baker’s middle daughter.

Throughout the afternoon, while the kids played, we talked about evangelism and pastoral ministry. Lessons we’ve learned; lessons we’re trying to learn. We all agreed that we were mutually blessed by the encouragement, fresh ideas, and fellowship.

Then, back to church in the evening. This is when the mission work has their Sunday school. The small children met separately, while Pastor Baker helped the rest of us through some catechism questions, singing, prayer, and a lesson. He taught about the sacrificial death of Christ. And I was reminded of how many terms we have to describe Christ’s sacrifice and how important it is for us to understand them. It’s something I’ll be reflecting on going forward.

By the time we said our goodbyes, we were already excited about our next time together, when the Bakers visit Tucson.

Thank you for your prayerful support this weekend, for donating your money to home missions, and for your zeal for the evangelistic mission of Christ’s church.

Encouraged,

Pastor Chelpka

Imperial National Wildlife RefugeYuma Orthodox Presbtyerian ChurchFirst Presbyterian Church of YumaFirst Presbyterian Church of YumaCastle Park, West Wetlands Park in Yuma, AZRoad Sign for Popular Yuma, AZ Restaurant, Mr. G'sGuard Tower at the Yuma Territorial Prison State ParkPrison Cells at the Yuma Territorial Prison State ParkDodger at the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge Visitor's Center

Helicopter on a stick.

Golden fried alligator.

⍟ I’ve posted an update on what I’m doing now.

⍟ I wrote some summary notes on John Owen and Herbert Croft’s thoughts on deacons. Their books on the nature of the church were published in London only a year apart from one another.

Every so often I find it helpful to read a book about reasoning. It was about that time again when Alan Jacobs recommended Think Again: How to Reason and Argue in his newsletter, so I decided to get a copy.

Here’s what @ayjay said about the book:

“In my book How to Think, my goal was to encourage my readers towards a thoughtful disposition rather than give them methodical guidance. But since my book came out, Walter Sinnot-Armstrong has published Think Again, which provides a lot of that step-by-step direction, and does so very well indeed. When I was giving a talk at Duke last year I met with Walter and his students, and I was pleasantly surprised at how neatly our books converged.”

I had previously read and enjoyed Jacobs’ book, so this seemed like a great idea.

Sinnott-Armstrong’s book is an introduction to the principles of good reasoning. He teaches you how to identify, analyze, evaluate, and make arguments. He helped me remember things I had forgotten and understand some things I was unclear on.

In addition to addressing how to reason and argue, Sinnott-Armstrong explains why it’s important. One reason is that civil, reasoned discussion, “gives us more chance of arriving at mutual understanding and respect as well as true beliefs and good policies.” (46) It has the potential to reduce polarization.

“Most people see arguments as ways to persuade other people or to beat them in some kind of verbal fight, debate, or competition. That view is not all wrong, but it is limited and incomplete. Some people do present arguments as displays of prowess or power, but arguments can also play more constructive roles in social interactions.” (56)

Learning how to reason and argue can teach us how to “get beyond name-calling and figure out how strong an argument really is”; we aim to “reconstruct the argument as charitably as possible and then ask how strong it is in its best form.” (199) In this way, arguments can lead to good results like learning, humility, and compromise..

By teaching how to do more than merely assert, Think Again can help you reach those noble goals.

The following is a repost from my November 2017 review on Goodreads.

Alan Jacobs. 2017. How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds. Currency. WorldCat link.

I loved How to Think and highly recommend it for anyone who is committed to knowing the truth or helping others know the truth (e.g. journalists, politicians, scholars, pastors, etc.).

Thinking well requires one to take a certain posture towards the truth, oneself, and others. The posture toward “others” is a main idea of this book. Alan Jacobs shows how thinking is always relational. And he describes how truth seeking and community ought relate to each other and what happens when they don’t—a topic of central importance to me as pastor.

Here are some choice quotes:

“The more useful a term is for marking my inclusion in a group, the less interested I will be in testing the validity of my use of that term aginast—well, against any kind of standard.”

“The only real remedy for dangers of false belonging is the true belonging to, true membership in, a fellowship of people wo are not so much like-minded as like-hearted.”

“The problem, of course, and sadly, is that we all have some convictions that are unsettled when they ought to be settled, and others that are settled when they ought to be unsettled.”

“As I’ve said before: Thinking is hard.”

Thanks to @ayjay, I read Think Again: How to Reason and Argue by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. This is an introductory book on the principles of good reasoning. But WSA teaches more than how to reason and argue, he also explains why. I’ll write a little more on this tomorrow.

Prof. Kate Klonick teaches her students about privacy with a “creepy assignment”.

She has them go to public places and then learn what they can about a person by watching, listening, and googling. What her students learn is that our privacy is protected in public partly by being unknown to others. But, with the power and accesibility of the internet and its tools, it’s like we’re all living in a small town. Which is why Prof. Klonick advises us to

“Treat every place as if it were a small town, and give everyone the privacy that you would give to your neighbor — and that you would want your neighbor to give to you.”

That’s excellent advice. Let me suggest three ways to do that.

First, when possible, move private converastions to private places. This applies to both viritual spaces and physical ones.

Second, keep your voice down. Just because that guy over there is wearing headphones or holding a book, it doesn’t mean he’s not listening. And if you’re sharing secrets, you can guarantee he is listening.

Third, start noticing how some public and semi-public places work well for private conversations and some don’t. As a pastor who does disciples people over a large metro area, I keep a list handy of the places I find that offer privacy. Here are some examples from my list:

  • “Wide, open park with paved paths. Not much decision making necessary for choosing which direction to go. Easy to see who is around you.”
  • “Free. Quiet garden. Take the path on the left and find the bench by the back wall.”
  • “Burgers. Loud music and kitchen noise. Open floor plan with lots of space between tables.”

On a short walk at Thono Chul between classes.

Flowers and cacti

At the Ann Day Community Park.

Sign Warning About Venomous Creautures at a Park in Pima County

This is my sermon from this morning about Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman. She wants to know what any of us could ask of God, “What do you have to do with me?” And he promises her something only God could give. Read the story in John 4.

Hymnary.org is a fantastic tool for researching church music and for finding songs to sing in worship. I focus this article on finding songs for worship, and I’ll start by explaining how this works at my church.

Picking Hymns At Covenant

At Covenant, we use the Trinity Psalter Hymnal for our corporate worship. The Trinity Psalter Hymnal has about 700 songs to choose from, which is great but potentially overwhelming. Especially since our aim at Covenant is to match each hymn to its particular place in worship and to a main theme in the sermon. And there are other factors too.

So, for example, if a prominent theme in the sermon is the spread of the gospel, and we need a song to follow our confession of sin and assurance of pardon, then Psalm 51 might be a good choice. First, because Psalm 51 is a song about the grace of repentance. And second, because it includes the line: “Then I’ll teach your ways to sinners; rebels will return to you. From the guilt of blood, O free me, God, my God and Savior true.”

Without Hymnary.org, finding an appropriate match will depend on your memory of the hymnal and the usefulness of the indices.

As you might guess, sometimes it’s hard to find what you are looking for. In a pinch, you can pick a standard like Holy, Holy, Holy or Be Thou My Vision and move on. But now that the metadata and texts of the songs in the Trinity Psalter Hymnal are online and searchable at Hymnary.org, you have a better option.

Case Study: Baptism Songs

Imagine you are preaching a short sermon series on baptism, and you want to sing hymns that match this theme. If this were my church, and I planned on a five-week series, I would need about 18 hymns, less than that if we repeated some of the songs. So let’s say you are looking for 13 hymns related to baptism.

You might begin by looking up “baptism” in the topic index of the hymnal. There you would find that the index directs you to the seven hymns in the baptism section (189–195). Assuming you’re happy with them all, that’s only about half of what you need. And there’s another problem: about five of the seven are directly related infant baptism. Nothing wrong with infant baptism, but you’re probably only going to use some of these in a sermon series that focuses on baptism more generally.

So, not having enough songs yet, you think to look up “water” in the index. Good move! Under WATER OF LIFE you’ll find four more hymns, and these are all real winners:

  • Come to the Waters
  • Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken
  • Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
  • I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say

So now you have, at the most, eleven hymns. Which means you’re still short. Also, it would be nice to have more options to choose from, especially some psalms, since you have none on your list so far.

Full-Text Searching

Now watch this.

  1. Go to the advanced search of Hymnary.org.
  2. Under Texts, type water in the field called “Full Text”
  3. Under Hymnals, type TPH2018 in the field called “Hymnal, Number”
  4. Under Result Type select Instances1

This is how you search the text of every hymn in the Trinity Psalter Hymnal for the word “water”. Click search and you get 51 results!

Not all 51 are relevant but many are. For example, you’d find these songs you hadn’t found before:

  • O Day of Rest and Gladness, which reminds us that holy worship is the place where “gospel light is glowing with pure and radiant beams, and living water flowing with soul-refreshing streams.”
  • The Church’s One Foundation, which begins “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord; she is his new creation by water and the Word”
  • Psalm 46, which includes: “God’s city is forever blest with living water welling; since God is there, she stands unmoved ‘mid tumults round her swelling. God speaks and all is peace, from war the nations cease; the Lord of hosts is nigh. Our father’s God Most High is our eternal dwelling.”

Things are looking good. You might have a list now of 13 songs related to baptism, but there are other things to consider as you make your choices: familiarity, musical factors, order of worship, etc. And so it would be helpful to have a few more options.

No problem. If you expand your search to other relevant words, like “wash” or “cleanse”, you’ll find songs like Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder, which has talks about being washed with Christ’s blood in all five verses, and Psalm 51 —again!—which prays “wash me, make pure within, cleanse, O cleanse me from my sin”. And there are several other hymns that will make your search worthwhile.

Searching Across Indices

Dianne Shapiro, the content manager at Hymnary.org, told me about another popular way to get more results: Use the indices of other hymnals to find songs in a particular hymnal. In other words, suppose a certain song is not included under the topic of baptism in the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, but it has been indexed under baptism in a different hymnal. By following some simple instructions, Hymnary.org can discover those connnections for you.

First, login and add the Trinity Psalter Hymnal under “My Hymnals". This way an icon will appear next to any results that are found in the TPH after any search.

Second, in an advanced search type “baptism” in the Topic field, without specifying the hymnal you’re searching for. Select “texts” under Result Types. Now when you search, all the hymns in every hymnal tagged with “baptism” will appear. And any result that is found in the TPH will have a special icon next to it, even if the TPH did not itself tag that hymn with “baptism.” So clever!

For a topic search on “baptism”, you’ll get over 1,000 results. But you don’t have too dig through all of those because many appear on the first page that are found in the TPH. In fact, the first one found in the TPH is Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, which, amazingly, has not come up under any of our other searches thus far—it’s a real gem. And it’s not the only one.

Conclusion

All this writing may make searching seem difficult. But just give it a try. It’ll take you less than ten minutes to figure out, especially if you follow my examples.

And, of course, it’s possible to fuss too much with this. But if you don’t have the hymnal memorized yet and are regularly looking for hymns, then learning how to use the basic search features on Hymnary.org is worth the time. The website will help you find better hymns and find them faster.

  1. Hymnary.org distinguishes between “instance” and “text”. For example, the TPH includes the text, Psalm 23 and two instances of that text: 23A and 23B. An “instance” is the full-text for each song in the hymnal. Thanks to Dianne Shapiro, Content Manager at Hymnary.org, for helping me with this distinction and other parts of this post. ↩︎

The following guidelines help us choose our songs for worship each Sunday at Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

  • Choose songs from the Trinity Psalter Hymnal
  • Choose each song based on its place in the order of worship. Each song should respond to what comes before it. Let the first song in the morning respond to our confession of faith, the second to God’s pardon of our sins, the third to his word in the sermon, the fourth to communion. Follow the same pattern for the evening service.
  • Choose songs that foreshadow or reflect sermon themes.
  • Give shorter songs preference over longer songs when the Lord’s Supper is served.
  • Include at least one psalm (1-150). Use the index in the TPH to find psalms by theme. You can also use this table.
  • In the evenings we sing the psalm that is read. If there are a couple tune options we pick from those. Otherwise we just sing what’s in the book
  • Choose familiar songs and tunes. Repeating a song in the same month is fine, even preferable.
  • Never choose songs that share the same tune in the same service.
  • Aim for musical variety. A weaker selection of songs would have all the singing in the same meter or mode. A stronger selection would vary these.
  • Be sensitive to significant aspects of our current congregational life, i.e. season of the year, shared trials or celebrations.
  • Add #409 after the reception of a new member.
  • Conclude with the Doxology in the morning and the Gloria Patri in the evening.
  • Use your memory, the table of contents, indices, and advanced search at Hymnary.org to help you find hymns. Also the digital versions of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal are useful.

On the recent @monday episode, @macgenie and @manton discussed how and why M.b is not set up up for private groups/channels right now. My question is what do I do with the large, private group I moderate on FB? I’d love to find a new home, but where?

My church has a long name: Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Here’s a short explanation of what it means.

I asked my students taking New Testament Survey to read half of one of the gospels, then write at least one paragraph answering this question: “According to what you read, who is Jesus and what is his mission?”

I loved reading these micro-papers about Jesus. There was nothing fancy about them. They were mostly simple recitiations of how the gospel writers themselves directly answer this question. But the plain truth about Jesus is so beautiful and encouraging! It brought me joy to see that truth affirmed in each summary I read.

Here’s what they found:

  • Jesus is God.
  • Jesus is human.
  • Jesus is so good!
  • Jesus fulfills the Old Testament prophesies.
  • Reactions to Jesus are strong.
  • Jesus forgives sins.
  • Jesus helps people in big ways: healing, exorcism, raising from the dead!
  • Jesus has great authority in his teaching.
  • In his words, in his actions, and in the testimony of others—God the Father, John the Baptist, angels, and even demons—who Jesus is and what his mission is is very clear.

For next week, I asked my students to read the rest of the gospel they started, and think about the various ways people react to Jesus in the gospels.

When’s the last time you read one of the gospels from beginning to end?