Puritan Reformed Church

The Church’s Puritan Distinctive: Scripture Alone in Doctrine, Worship, and Government

Welcome to Puritan Reformed Church. I'd like to give you seven things that you can think about so you can evaluate whether or not you'd like to come and build with us. First of all, Puritan Reformed Church is Puritan.

Shocker. What it means to be a Puritan is to be careful to apply the scriptures, and the scriptures alone, and the scriptures in their totality, to doctrine, worship, and government. As you think about this as it relates to the church especially, our goal is to carefully make sure that what is taught is according to the scripture alone, that the way worship is done, that we can prove it from scripture so that we're able to have a God-focused worship.

And with the government of the church, to be careful to perform and exercise powers that are demonstrable according to the instruction manual given by the king of the church in scripture alone. Puritan Reformed Church is also Reformed.

The Reformed Faith, Confessional Standards, and the Main Doctrines

Another surprise. And being Reformed means that we hold to the Reformed faith. The Reformed faith is the doctrine of scripture, but it's the work of the church to organize what is taught in the scriptures and to capture that in confessional standards.

We hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and that can have some of its main doctrines encapsulated in what are sometimes called the Five Solas, or TULIP. And you can also think about the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation.

These are main doctrines that were emphasized in the Reformation that are also emphasized in the scriptures themselves. We are patriarchal, which means that we believe that only men should be speaking and leading in church, but also that in terms of public authority in the church and the state, we would encourage that to be done by men.

And furthermore, that inside of the church, that only men who are of 20 and above are those who ought to be voting in congregational assemblies. In addition to that, we also focus on giving ministry to help those who are heads of house to lead their families.

Patriarchal Church Leadership and Head-of-House Ministry

Our goal is not to undermine the head of house by giving authority that's public to those that are under them, and furthermore, to not cause ministry directly to age-based groups or sex-segregated groups through the authority of the church, which then prevents the patriarch from being able to properly lead his own family.

Instead, our focus is on building him up to be able to pastor his own home. This leads into our next distinctive, family-integrated worship. Our desire is to see families worshiping together, to have them be together.

Family-Integrated Worship and Congregational Discernment

One of the things this does is it encourages a cohesion of the family unit, and furthermore, helps to make sure that we have sermons that address all areas of life for every member of the family. But in addition to this, it makes it so that the head of house is present, hearing the teaching that his own children and wife are hearing, and to be able to be discerning and act in a way so as to help to cause wrong teaching to be something that can be addressed to the family.

But even more than that, we've focused on making sure that the men are able to ask questions. When public teaching occurs, men are able to ask a question for clarification, ask a question to get more information, or to be able to make a comment to express a reason why there might be an objection to what was taught publicly.

Psalm Singing as Commanded Worship

Our next distinctive is psalm singing. Psalm singing emphasizes the importance and seriousness of worship in accordance with the way that God has commanded. He wrote a book of songs, he put it at the middle of the Bible, it's the longest book in the Bible, and there's 171 songs in it.

Now, the reality is that most of us don't know the psalms, and if you don't sing them regularly, you're going to not become familiar with them. He wrote a book of songs, and he commands us over and over again to sing psalms.

So, it should be a serious and important part of the church. And in reality, we've seen throughout the history of the church that psalm singing is the shared hymnal of the church throughout history. Not just in the New Covenant, but even going back into the Old Covenant.

So, if you want songs that have been sung for 3 ,000 years by your fellow saints, and that were written by God, and that help you to avoid all of that kind of, you're sitting in church, and all of a sudden you hear lyrics in the songs, and you realize that those lyrics are heretical, in psalm singing we're able to offer to God an acceptable sacrifice of praise.

They're fruit of the lips. What he's commanded is that we can worship him in spirit and in truth. Our next distinctive is postmillennialism. Postmillennialism is the doctrine that the kingdom of Christ is right now.

Postmillennialism and Christ’s Present Reign

He is ascended, and he's enthroned at the right hand of the Father. He's reigning, and he's conquering the world through his body, the church, to subdue his enemies under his feet, which are our feet.

And so, in Psalm 47, it talks about the enemies of God being conquered under our feet. That occurs through a spiritual warfare, through the use of the sword of the spirit, the word of God. And the effect of that is that people are brought under the authority of Christ, that every tribe, tongue, and nation will be covenanted under his kingship.

And the reality is that in order to accomplish that, we have to concentrate forces to build enclaves of Christendom, where we're able to work together to see Christian churches, education, hospitality in homes, the building of businesses, and ultimately seeing also civil magistrates that are godly Christian men that can help us to restrain evil and to protect our Christian liberties, to see the kingship of Christ advanced in the earth.

That work together is something that helps us to not just be stuck in this sense of we're waiting to lose. Instead, we have a mission to advance, to see the victorious Christ acknowledged throughout the world.

Theonomy and the Law of God in Every Sphere

And our next distinctive is theonomy, which is, we don't just believe in the idea that there's some vague way that Christ is made king of the nations. But no, there's a covenanting of the nations, so that the rulers of the earth, the kings of the various localities, they recognize Christ as king and they see his law as wisdom that they should use to rule in their own nations, that we should see in every sphere of life, the individual, the household, the church, and the state, that the law of God instructs us what justice is, what wisdom is, the way that we ought to go in every sphere.

If you believe these truths and want to build with us, heed the call to worship and join us this Lord's Day.