If modern television sitcoms were the litmus test for masculinity, our expectations of men would be minimal. It’s no secret that for most of the last half century television has depicted fathers as incompetent buffoons often only featured to keep the laugh-track greased. Besides bringing home a paycheck (sometimes), TV dads mainly try to stay out of the way of their much better half. The negative influence such portrayal has had on the men that God intends to lead the home, the church, and to an extent, society, is hard to over-stress.

In contrast to cultural expectations, the Bible calls men to reflect Christ’s three-fold office of prophet, priest, and king. In fact, this is true of all believers.

The protestant reformation laid the ax to the root of the notion that only kings and clergy discharged an important office. The reformers understood the profound implications of Christ’s anointing by the Spirit to be God’s officer, fulfilling the three Old Testament offices. Beginning at Pentecost, Christ poured out this same Spirit upon his people (Acts 2:17), calling and equipping them to continue on earth his prophetic (Matt. 10:22), priestly (1 Pet. 2:5) and kingly work (Eph. 6:11).

By living out the three-fold office of Christ, our fathers, future fathers, and other single men will distinguish themselves from those who wrongly call themselves men, and inspire the respect and reverence of those they are called to lead.

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This article is adapted from an address delivered at Classis Michigan’s 2012 Missions Rally. Rev. Boekestein was asked to speak to the challenges the URCNA faces in the area of home missions.

After the United States declared independence they agreed to submit to the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union to help them in their mission to develop into a strong nation and eventually spread across the continent. The problem was that until the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution, Congress was paralyzed and every state was doing what it thought best regardless of the common good. There was no mechanism for garnering funding. Congress could do nothing significant without the approval of most or all of the states. Individual states independently laid embargoes, negotiated directly with foreigners, raised armies and made war, all violating the letter and the spirit of the Articles of Confederation. In the words of James Madison: “The radical infirmity of the ‘Articles of Confederation’ was the dependence of Congress on the voluntary and simultaneous compliance with its requisitions by so many independent communities, each consulting more or less its particular interest and convenience and distrusting the compliance of the others.”[i]

Perhaps this scenario sheds some light on some of the challenges we as United Reformed Churches face in fulfilling the Great Commission together.

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a perfect child? Can you imagine a child who never threw selfish tantrums or scowled at the meal you set before him? Can you conceive of a kid who never left his room trashed after he was told to pick it up or who never spent his allowance irresponsibly and then whined for more money?

Here’s a reality check: If you did have a perfect child, life as a mother in this world would still be hard.

Mary had a perfect Son but her life as a mother was not easy. Like every mother, she still needed a Savior to rescue her from the demands, guilt and worries of motherhood. In her case, her Savior was her Son.

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The Carbondale (PA) Area Ministerium has asked me to pray for the churches in our area tonight. Here is what I hope to pray:

Great God in Heaven and Lord of the church, we thank you so much for your promise to build a church against which the gates of hell can not prevail. We thank you that in the church we can experience the restoration of community which we lost in the fall of Adam. It is with profound gratitude that many of us can say, “I love thy Church, O God! Her walls before Thee stand, dear as the apple of thine eye, and graven on thy hand.”

We do confess, however, that through our own sin that bride of Christ, the church, has become tarnished with unfaithfulness. Some of us have zeal but not knowledge. For others our learning is much better than our lifestyle. We are sometimes too harsh toward the hurting and sometimes too relaxed with the rebellious.

Lord, we pray that the churches in our community would exhibit the marks of true churches of Christ. Cause the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to have the central place in our churches. We are thankful for the men and women who have come before us and for the traditions which they have left to us. But do keep us, as your dear Son has said, from making the Word of God no effect through our traditions which we have handed down (Mark 7:13). As Isaiah has written, keep us from “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (29:13). Instead cause us to manage all things according to the pure Word of God, rejecting everything contrary thereto. May we own Jesus Christ as the only Head of the church.

Make our churches places where the gospel of Jesus Christ is heard loud and clear from week to week. Keep the ministers of our churches from distorting the message of salvation that is found only through the finished work of Christ. Grant also boldness to the shepherds of our churches to keep watch over the doctrine and life of those under their care. May we never cease to preach against the sins in which we and our people can become so easily entangled.

We pray that through bold preaching and involved shepherding that we would become a holy people. Cause us to receive Christ as the only Savior. Help us to avoid sin, to follow after righteousness, and to love the true God and our neighbor. May we crucify the flesh and its works and turn neither to the right nor to the left. Cause sinners to find in our churches the only cure for their sin and guilt. May we find refuge in the obedience, passion, and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we have remission of sins, through faith in him. Amen.

Imagine that you’ve been called to minister to a largely isolated community composed of an unfamiliar people group totaling less than 100 souls. The natural beauty of the place will be stunning. The opportunities for adventure will be nearly limitless. The locals will be hospitable. But you’ll have no regular phone service or reliable electricity. Snow will never be more than a few months away. During the brief summer the mosquitoes will swarm in clouds. Worst of all, the human brokenness will be palpable. And you’ll be moving there with your wife and two small children (with one more soon on the way).

These facts faced Rev. Wes Bredenhof (CanRC) as he considered the call to move to FortBabine, a small aboriginal town in central British Columbia, Canada. The Bredenhof’s nearly five year adventure is described in The Gospel under the Northern Lights: A Missionary Memoir.

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In 1941 Winston Churchill stood before an eager audience at an all-boys school in war-torn England and spoke these famous words, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in.”[i] Churchill’s words echo the thrust of the message of the writer to the Hebrews. But where Churchill rested his comments on the “honor and good sense” of his audience, the writer to the Hebrews urges confidence in the high priestly work of Jesus ChristThe recipients of Hebrews were in danger of abandoning Christ through unbelief. Pressured by persecution, assaulted by sin and challenged by everyday life, these believers were on the brink of quitting in the heat of battle. With such dangers clearly in view the author chooses one primary theme on which to focus; the priesthood of Christ. The word “priest” occurs over seventy times in the New Testament. More than one third of these occurrences are in Hebrews.

Christ’s priesthood demands believer’s attention on a continual basis. When we fear that God is still angry toward us we need to remember that Christ has propitiated the wrath of God. When we doubt that God could ever look on us with favor we need to recall that Christ stood as our replacement. The love the Father shows to him he now shows to us. When we take for granted that Christ suffered for us we need to reflect on his innocence. He always does the will of God for us with precise obedience.

The priesthood of Christ is eminently practical but if we can’t remember what his priesthood means we will not use it as we must. It has been well said that “the association of ideas is the controlling law of memory.”[ii] If we could associate six key ideas of Christ’s priesthood with the letters P-R-I-E-S-T perhaps we would more readily recall his work and be better steeled to “never give in.”

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As our congregation is evaluating the nature of congregational meetings (with relation to women voting) we have found Martin Monsma’s “The Congregational Meeting” to be a helpful resource. Since it is no longer in print and hard to find, here is a PDF version.

Christian reflection on community is often an exercise in romanticism. By viewing the early Christian community of Acts 2 through rose-colored glasses we imagine a homogenous cloister of haloed saints meeting all of each other’s expectations, living as one big happy family. By projecting this abstract ideal on our own church context we are almost guaranteed to foster a spirit of disappointment and  disillusionment, often leading some to desert the pursuit of comm-unity altogether.

Even outside of Christian circles, “community” has become a buzzword; being so overused and having so many definitions, it ceases to mean anything. Thankfully, the Bible does offer a clear definition of community. It also teaches us how to live as a community without expecting either too much or too little from it.

If you want to stop romanticizing Christian community consider reading a little book called Life Together[i] by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a 20^th century German theologian who was executed for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler). Living as he did, under the religiously supp-ressive Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer’s perspective on biblical community can help us to develop a more balanced, less self-centered understanding of Christian fellowship. He helps us understand that community is less about what we need to do than about what Christ is doing, which helps us to seek contentment in Christ’s community while at the same time preventing us from becoming complacent in our responsibilities to that community.

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