Bow Tie Dialogue with Pastor Uriesou Brito of the CREC

Hey guys, it's Keith Foskey, and I want to welcome you to the first Bowtie Dialogue of 2024.

Now, for those of you who have not been part of the Bowtie Dialogues in the past, what I do is I get a pastor or a group of pastors from another denomination, and I talk to them about what they believe, the history of their denomination, and I try to do so as an educational opportunity for you as the viewer, but also for me to clear up any misconceptions

I have. As many of you know, I love to talk about denominations and what makes us different, what are the funny distinctions that come between us, and what are the more serious distinctions that are out there.

And so today, I am blessed to be joined by Pastor Uri Brito of Providence Church in Pensacola, Florida.

So, I want to bring Pastor Uri on and say thank you, sir, for being a part of Bowtie Dialogues with me today.

Heath, it's a delight to be with you, and good to see you again virtually, brother. Yeah, absolutely.

And I do want to mention, again, I want to thank you. You and your church welcomed me out to Pensacola just a few weeks ago.

Me and my son, Justice, came out, and we spent the night at your home, and I had the opportunity to speak to a large group of the men of your church, and that was a real blessing for me.

That's not something I get to do often, and it was so welcoming. All the men there were so encouraging.

I came home with a little extra spring in my step, just having been encouraged by your men, and I hope

I was an encouragement to you guys. Yes. The conversations still linger about your appearance here in our midst.

We had a delightful time, and I was really glad to have you here. Well, praise the Lord for that. One of the things that, as I mentioned in the opening,

I like to do on this particular show is I like to ask a lot of questions about other denominations, but the first thing

I want to mention is today we're going to be talking about the CREC, and my first question right out of the gate,

Pastor Urie, is the CREC a denomination? Is that how you define yourself, or is it more like a fellowship of churches, and can you kind of define what the

CREC is and how you guys see yourself? Well, that's a great question, and I would suspect there may be even some differences among how that is defined in the

CREC. I view it as a denomination because I understand denominations merely as a formalized connectionalism, and a denomination would function in a way that we see in Acts 15, where churches would come together at an appointed time to make decisions that are of a theological or a praxeological nature that would affect the entirety of the body.

If that is the ongoing definition, the one that I prefer to use, therefore we are a denomination because we do gather once every three years, and we make decisions that affect every single one of our 130 -plus churches.

Oh, wow, okay, so you guys have quite a few churches, and again, I'm going to be asking you a lot of very basic questions because as much fun as I've had getting to know the guys from the

CREC like yourself, and also as much fun as I've had teasing my relationship to Doug Wilson as the

Harbor Freight version of Doug Wilson and getting to do my little mini debate with him over postmillennialism, hashtag fancy amillennialism,

I still don't know a lot.

So again, that's one of the reasons why I had you on. I want to ask you some questions, and I know my audience has questions. I put you guys in my videos before, like I had a funny video where we played the family feud, and I connected you guys within the

Presbyterian side because it was the Presbyterians versus the Baptists, and under Baptists we had

Southern Baptists, Independent Baptists, Reformed Baptists, and under Presbyterian I had PCA, PCUSA, which is sort of the very liberal side, and then we had the

CREC, and some people say, well, who is that? So is CREC a Presbyterian denomination?

Is that how you would define it? Well, the way I would phrase it, I think I would use a language that Douglas Wilson used in a book he edited many years ago, and I would say we're

Presbyterians with a little P. And what that means is we function in a

Presbyterian polity, in a Presbyterian government, and by that I mean there are local churches, let's say

Providence here in Pensacola, we're a local church. Our congregation's connected to other churches in this part of the country, covers six or seven states.

Our congregation joins these churches at a Presbytery, which is called the Athanasius Presbytery.

There are nine Presbyteries in CREC. We gather once or twice every year, and that Presbytery gathers once every three years with all the other

Presbyteries in the country and the world, which is defined as a council.

So the hierarchy would go, Keith, council, a Presbytery, and then local session or local body, local congregation.

In that sense, we are by definition a Presbyterian body. Where the little P comes along is that we're a bit looser in the sense that pastors like myself are not members of Presbyteries, but we are members of the local church.

So in the Presbyterian model, pastors are members of the Presbytery. So in that sense, the CREC functions a bit more like a

Continental Reform, Dutch Reform polity rather than a strict Presbyterian, but the

Presbyterian structure is certainly there. Great. That's super helpful. Very quickly, since you mentioned your particular situation as being a pastor in the church,

I notice you're wearing a clerical collar. Now today is Ash Wednesday, so I know a lot of people see that clerical collar and they immediately associate that with Roman Catholicism, much like they see the ashes on the forehead, and they might associate that with Roman Catholicism.

Some people have an allergic reaction to anything that looks in any way Catholic, especially here in the

South. People who grew up Baptist, they see the collar, they see that look, and they may have an allergic reaction to it.

So my question to you is, why the collar? That's a great question, and I get a lot of it, as you can imagine, here in the

South. I'm just a few hours north of you here. That's very common. We are in Baptist land. I think

Scandia County is predominantly Southern Baptist. And in the South, there is, as you know well, there is a lack of historical literacy.

And by that I mean that most people who are familiar with or in the evangelical world only know that which is evangelical, and that usually means non -Catholic, and then there's

Catholic. What they don't know is everything in between, right? They don't understand Anglican polity or Lutheran polity or Methodist polity or other variations of it.

I am in the high Presbyterian tradition. And what's interesting,

Keith, is that very few people know this, but the clerical collar is a Protestant invention, not a Roman Catholic invention.

And we have an article where we talk about the history of it in my website, kyperion .com. And the clerical collar was a

Presbyterian invention in the 19th century. There were vestments, and if you look at any pictures of Calvin in the 16th century, you'll see him with a robe and something similar to a clerical collar, but the language needs to be turned around.

That is, the Roman Catholics borrowed from the reformed the clerical collar, not the opposite.

And so that's a historical point. But the second point to keep in mind, I think, is that when I wear the clerical collar, especially here in the

South, what I'm saying, what I'm communicating with it is that the kingdom is open for business.

And so that, in fact, one of the stories I tell often is I was having breakfast with Doug Wilson one time in Destin, and a young lady who was being our waitress came along and she came to me and she said,

Pastor, will you please pray for me? And the only reason she understood that is because I was wearing a collar.

Of course, little did she know that one of the most well -known pastors in America was sitting across from me, but the clerical collar gave me a kind of uniform identity, which professions have, and I think biblically, the ministers ought to have in some fashion or another.

And I used a collar to represent that. Well, as you know, I use the bow tie to represent the

Presbyterian, which is where which is where bow tie dialogues came from.

They hold that every time I do my videos, this is my Presbyterian outfit. And it's modeled after sort of a hodgepodge between various Presbyterian leaders that I've seen that wear the bow tie.

But of course, Doug Wilson wears the sweater vest. So this is, you know, it's a it connects to him as well.

So tell me about your relationship. Yeah. Happy merger. Tell me about your relationship with Doug Wilson.

How did that come about? Did because because being part of the CREC, obviously, you're you're you well, actually, let me back up.

Tell me how Doug is connected to the CREC and then how you became connected to him. That might be easier. Yeah, that's probably

Douglas Wilson is undoubtedly the most well -known figure in the CREC for a variety of reasons.

And I am just deeply grateful for his labors. Douglas Wilson is one of the three founding members of the

CREC. In 1997 and 1998, three pastors in the northwest of Pacific Northwest gathered together because they were independent churches and they did not want to maintain their independent status.

They wanted to form an alliance. We might even say a confederation. And so these three congregations gathered.

Douglas Wilson was one of them and two other very faithful pastors were in the stillness CREC. That was 1998.

They came together to form a little confederation of of evangelical churches.

So that was the beginning of the CREC, Confederation of Reform Evangelical Churches. Those three churches gather because they had a particular vision for society.

They were post -millennial. They had a very optimistic view of history. They also were practicing infant baptism, but they had a a vision for baptism that was much more

Catholic with little c, much broader than your standard Presbyterian. That means that they were willing, especially in those early days, to allow

Baptist members, Baptists to be members of the church and to allow churches under the

London Baptist Confession to come in into the confederation in 1998. So Douglas Wilson played a very fundamental role in establishing the

CREC. Of course, those three churches have grown significantly now. We're, as I said, over 130 worldwide.

But that that catapulted the CREC to some level of knowledge because Moscow, even back in those days, they didn't have the the impetus or the the power that Canon Press or Canon Plus is now.

But in those days, they had the credenda agenda. Douglas Wilson was already very influential in the classical school movement.

So all of that brought a certain level of notoriety and visibility to the CREC, which produced a lot of the growth in the early days, which is why the vast majority of CREC churches are very attached to the classical school movement in America today.

Since Doug Wilson is the founder of the classical school movement in America through the ACCS accreditation, my my knowledge of Doug Wilson came probably in the early 2000s when

I was in college and in the Bible Presbyterian College, began to read some of his material, began to read the credenda agenda magazines, which are no longer available now, but they were very influential.

Even in those early days, Keith, you could see Doug Wilson's wit, his use of the serrated edge.

All these things were already playing out in the way he spoke. It was a very articular form of the

Reformed faith that we didn't see before, that I didn't see before. What I saw was a very systematized

Reformed theology through systematic theology books, through other sort of literature. But Doug Wilson brought a kind of gravitas and a sort of masculinity to Reformed theology that I had not seen.

And so I had a chance to interact with him, I think, for the first time in 2008 in Texas, and we built a friendship.

And since then, he has been just a wonderful partner. I've done a lot of work with him, and he was very influential in encouraging me to pursue my current role in the

CREC, which is the Presiding Minister of Council, which means I am the representative of the denomination as of September of last year.

And so it's been a joyful four or five months now. Yeah, I was going to mention that, that you have a high position there.

You've been entrusted with a lot of, well, you've been given a lot of trust within the organization.

So they obviously think very highly of you, and I can understand why. You're a godly man. And as I said, I was having met your family, definitely a godly family, and I'm very grateful for that.

Now, one other quick thing, and this may sound like a very rudimentary question, but I do want the audience to know, what does CREC stand for?

And when did the name come about? Initially, in 98, it was formed as the

Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, just an alliance of churches. That's essentially what confederation means.

And several years later, our council decided, as a way of including our

European churches, that one better way of communicating what was happening within the

CREC was to change the term confederation to communion. And in that manner, it allowed our—it helped with translational issues, let's put it that way.

And so we changed that title to Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. And so we have churches in Eastern Europe, in European.

We have a church now in England, now churches in South America. And so that in itself changed around the seven, eight years ago.

Yeah, I can see how, and I mean, I may just be thinking about this as sort of a Southern boy.

Anytime you have the word confederate in anything, it can have, you know, because of that.

I don't know if that played into it at all, but confederacy and then the word confederate in the South can have a—can certainly have some connections in the minds of certain people.

So, yeah, absolutely. No, it did. It did play a role in forming this.

There were several reasons, but that was one of the roles, because confederacy is very much identified with the South and it wasn't exemplifying the universality of our group.

Yeah, absolutely. So when we were at your house, we were talking about some of the distinctions, some of the things that brought you into the

CREC, some of the things that were most influential in you. And I want to say something because I want to talk about your six points.

You mentioned to me, I remember standing at the bar at your house, not the—well, the bar, I say the bar, the bar in your kitchen, not your—

Yes. Yeah. As we're sitting there, you're talking about the six Ps, and I want to get to the six

Ps. But before we do that, I want to talk about the masculinity that you just mentioned, because you mentioned

Doug Wilson bringing a masculinity. When I was at your church, we sang a song called Raise a

Glass to the King, Boys. And you sang it with, as you said, the word gravitas.

There was a certain masculinity and gravitas to your singing.

There was definitely not a sense in which it felt feminine or soft.

It felt very strong and masculine. And the same thing when I was at Fight Laugh Feast last year, when the doxology was sung and when the psalms were sung, everything was sung with a certain just—I can't think of a better word than just masculinity.

And on top of that, the sea shanties are somewhat popular among the

CREC, the one that I like. I can't think of it right now, but the name. What's the most popular one that has the refrain that you guys do?

Oh, there's To the Word is one of it, Sanctify the

Lord, he said, to the word, to the word we go. And there's a couple of other ones I can't recall right now.

Yeah, I can't either, but I remember I knew it because my son loves it. We sing it in family worship.

So I remember when I went to Fight Laugh Feast, it was great. But with that being said, how are you approaching the subject of masculinity?

And in what way do you think that's good for the church? Yeah, that's a great question. I've written quite a bit about this, but I think there is a de -emphasizing of the role that men play in local churches.

And that plays out, of course, in liberal leftist ways with female officers and that kind of thing.

But there's another practical dimension to it, and that is that throughout the world, most congregations are, they're female led.

In fact, this is a more sort of a subtle observation, but even hymnals and choruses, they are written so that it is appropriate for women to sing and that men can't sing because they're too high in the way they start their pitch and their notes.

And so even that is a testament of the feminization of the evangelical church. What we have done in our congregation throughout the

CREC is we've worked very hard to re -establish the role of headship in the home among men, because we know that if we pursue men, we conquer not only the men, but we conquer their wives and their children.

And so one of the distinct features you're going to find in our congregation and in others is you're going to hear very strong singing, a kind of a forte, a bold and courageous call to warfare, to live the

Christian life, to increase and grow in our piety, to, as the Confession says, improve our baptisms.

All of that have to stem from the forcefulness and the strength of manhood.

And if men don't lead, it'll be very hard for the women to follow. And because we believe that the priesthood is fundamentally a male priesthood, therefore, we want to emphasize the presence and the potency of men in worship and in life.

So a lot of our emphasis is an encouragement for men to be faithful in their homes so that therefore they will equip themselves to be faithful in the church.

Thank you for that. That's very helpful, and I hope people hear what you're saying. I saw something recently, and again,

I know statistics can be somewhat misleading at times, but there are times where they can be helpful.

And there was a particular statistic that was shared online, and it talked about how if a child comes to faith, the chances of their parents coming to faith is small.

If a mother comes to faith, there's a little bit better chance that her children may come to faith, but if the father comes to faith, there's a much greater chance that the family will be led to faith.

And again, obviously, we know God is sovereign and we believe in elections, so we have to take that with a certain sense in which, okay, but God uses means, right?

And one of the means God uses is godly fathers and godly parents, but specifically fathers to lead their families.

And so I think that's what you're saying, is that you want to attack at the high point and say, okay, fathers lead your families.

Talking about the subject of fathers leading their homes and masculinity, all of those things are very important, but it's also important that they be led in the right way.

So theology matters. That's the unofficial motto of our church, Sovereign Grace Family Church.

We believe theology matters, and obviously I know you do as well. So what are some of the principal theological distinctions of the

CREC? I know we're going to talk about the six Ps in a moment, but you said there are some other things that are just sort of a little more foundational.

So can you tell us what the foundational theological distinctions are? Yeah, that's a good question because at a confessional level, you have various confessions that we've subscribed to the

Westminster and the Heidelberg and here at Providence. Those are reformational distinctives that most of our churches share in commonality.

But then there are particular distinctives that make the CREC different than the

PCA, the OPC, the URCA, and then the other 34

Presbyterian denominations that I don't have time to elaborate. And I like to summarize into a threefold outline,

Keith, and that is culture, liturgy, and theology. Culture, liturgy, and theology.

The cultural element is one that I think is what gets people through the door and encourages them to embrace our theology.

And once they embrace our theology, they embrace our liturgy. So it's a one, two, three punch.

Under the cultural category, the CREC is very committed to the element of hospitality.

Hospitality, of course, is something that is given a lot of lip service in our culture. And we even talk, we talk a lot about koinonia and koinonia meals and all of that.

But, you know, even the very word koinonia doesn't mean potluck meals. Koinonia means a sharing of mission.

And so within the cultural dimension of CREC, we believe that hospitality ought to play a fundamental role in who we are.

So what I would like to see of our churches, and churches are coming in at different stages, is that when people come through our congregation, as they experience who we are as a people, both theologically and liturgically, what

I want them to see is that even though that may seem a bit odd to the evangelical mind, why is a pastor wearing a robe?

Why is a pastor wearing a collar? Why are they singing psalms? All this kind of stuff. What I want them to see is the normalcy by which we live out the

Christian life. And for us, practically, that means we have big fellowship meals. We have feast days.

Yesterday, we celebrated Shrove Tuesday, which is the day in which the church eats pancakes and bacon.

I mean, who's against that, right? And these feasts are sort of part and parcel of who we are.

They're embedded into our culture. So we live through feasting and hospitality. And that means that on Sundays, we gather.

God hosts us at his sacred table. But throughout the week, we are in people's homes.

We're rejoicing, celebrating birthday parties, celebrating the different events in people's lives.

But we're also just meeting to be with one another so that the fellowship of the week is going to strengthen what happens on Sunday morning.

That's a cultural element. Under the theological element, you have several things that are unique in the

CREC. I'll just mention two for the sake of time. One of them is the practice of paedo -communion.

I think most of your listeners are familiar with paedo -baptism, the doctrine where infants are baptized if they come from the household of at least one

Christian parent. Well, paedo -communion is the practice that those who are baptized as infants and who are at a place where they can—the best way to phrase it at a popular level is if children are baptized as infants, when they're able to eat at daddy and mommy's table at home,

God now invites them to eat at the father's table at church. And so paedo -communion means that those who are baptized now receive access to the table of our

Lord in bread and in wine. So what you're going to see in our congregation are children of all ages who have been baptized also partaking of the

Lord's Supper. That's going to come as a shock to a lot of evangelical listeners. But of course, this has been practiced as early as the first century throughout history.

But still, that's very unique in our culture. The second issue is something that you allude to and something you do so joyfully and comedically is our position on eschatology, which is a—I can say that around 98, 99 percent of our churches are post -millennial in eschatology.

And so that simply means that at the end of history, at the end of human history, the church can expect to have been triumphant over her enemies so that when

Christ comes, he's going to receive a bride that has been victorious in her evangelistic endeavors and in the application of the gospel in society and in government.

So those two issues form a lot of our theological. And then the third one is the liturgical.

And liturgy, again, back to an observation you made earlier, it's very—for a lot of evangelicals, liturgy just sounds like something

Catholic. But of course, the word simply means literally the work of the people. And that means that when the people gather together, the people are experiencing, they are playing out, they are applying or practicing a particular liturgy, which simply means a laid -out worship service.

And every church has a liturgy. It's just that some are more intentional than others. And for us in the

CRAC, the liturgy follows what we call a covenant renewal model. And so that is based on the rhythms of scriptures.

And so we begin with a call to worship. God calls us into worship. And then we confess our sins.

And then now that we've confessed our sins, our hearts are open. And then there's a consecration that the word of God is now preached.

It's sharpened in the two -edged sword. It penetrates our hearts. And then God cleanses us.

And then fourthly, we come into his sacred table in communion. When God performs holy surgery in us by changing our hearts, he also provides a table.

And then finally, when we are cleansed and purified, we are commissioned. That's the final C. We're sent out into the world as ambassadors and evangelists for truth.

So CRAC focuses very much on the culture, the theology, and the liturgy.

And I think you're going to see these three elements very central to what we do in any congregation that you may visit in the

CRAC. Well, that was very helpful. And it raises some questions

I have to ask, particularly on the subject of paedo -communion, because from what

I understand, and again, I'm not Presbyterian, so I have to go off of what

I hear others saying and just to ask, why is it that my

PCA brothers and others who don't share that view see that as an aberrant view or an errant view, that children are not to come to the table until they can discern the body as 1

Corinthians 11 gives that requirement? And again, I'm not seeking to debate the issue with you.

I just want to hear how you would respond to someone who may raise that objection. Yeah, that's a great question.

And what's interesting is that when I have dialogues with Baptists here where I live or other parts of the country where I travel, 98 % of Baptists would say, your position is consistent.

If you're saying that children come to the covenant via their baptism, then why would you hinder them from partaking of the covenant elements?

In other words, if you come into the covenant, then everything in the covenant belongs to them as well. And so the

Baptists usually point this out. In the Presbyterian world, that becomes a bit more complex because in Presbyterianism, there is a strong sort of subscription to the

Westminster Confession and confessional norms. There is a reformed tradition within the 16th, 17th century of the

Huguenots or theologians like Johann Musculus who were reformed and practiced paedo -communion.

But the Presbyterians, the more generic, they make a good point to say that overall, Presbyterianism denies paedo -communion on the basis of the 1

Corinthians 11, 26 passage that we are to discern the body. And there are perhaps some confessional things that would prohibit paedo -communion.

That's a separate conversation. So Presbyterianism would say that infants are baptized, but they can only come to the table once they profess faith before a session.

And that can vary in age. I've seen Presbyterian children as old as 17, 18 come to the table, even though they were baptized a few days after they were born.

So that conversation is broader. From our perspective, we believe that the Apostle Paul, when he asks us to discern the body, what he isn't saying, he's not saying that that is a demand or an imperative for you to have a theological rationale for how the atonement functions.

But what Paul is saying in the context of 1 Corinthians 11 all the way to chapter 14, and we're writing a commentary on those passages right now, so it's very fresh in my mind.

What Paul is saying is that the discerning of the body means the preservation of the unity of the body among all, rich and poor, male and female,

Jews or Greeks. And so to discern the body means to preserve the unity of the body, which in Paul's days was, as he addresses the church at Corinth, there was obvious division, even at the practice at the table.

Some were coming early, consuming the meal. We know that story. So from our perspective, that is not so much an application to infants, which by nature are the most unifying aspects of any body, right?

You put an infant in a congregation and everybody's united around that. But Paul's imperative is actually against those who are willingly and intentionally dividing the body as they were at Corinth and in other places.

So that's the application there, so that infants would actually have a unifying element rather than the opposite.

So you mentioned that Baptists would see that as more consistent, and I have sympathy for that because this is one of the things that I have said in my conversations.

I've had debates with Presbyterians regarding infant baptism, and one of the things that I have said is because being a

Reformed Baptist, I've said the same requirements you have for the table are the requirements we have for baptism.

So in that, there is somewhat of a—because they'll say, well, why would you have any requirements for baptism?

I say, well, you have requirements for communion. And it's basically the same thing, that you confess your faith, that you recognize your sin, that you've received

Christ as your Savior. Those confessional things recognized

Him. And so, yeah, I mean, I can see where Baptists would argue that you're more consistent, and I can also hear my

Presbyterian PCA friends' heads exploding when I say that. But how would you take this charge?

You said something earlier. You said that paedo -communion goes back to the first century, because I have heard even yesterday—I mean, as nearby as yesterday,

I was in a conversation with a PCA pastor, and he said paedo -communion is not historical.

So you just said it goes back to the first century. What basis do you have for making that claim?

I'm not asking you to cite your sources, but if you have something on the top of your head—I mean, this is a podcast, we're not doing a lecture here—but if you have in your mind something that you could cite and say, here's where I would point to this.

Well, first of all, if you go to the fourth century, you have Augustine making several declarations about the participation of children in communion.

So that's the fourth century. And then in the first century, what you do have—and this is proven,

I think, through very historical elements—but specifically, if you read Tim Gallant's book, Feed My Lambs, that's a great book, a very well -known book, and there's some other great literature.

But you already have sources outside of the Scriptures, historical sources,

I think is—I don't know if it's 2 Clement, but also various, we call them, apocryphal sources, sources that are outside the immediate

Scriptures, referring to the participation of infants in communion. But we also know, through the—that statement to me seems a bit absurd, because we know, through Orthodox and Catholic debates, that the

Church split in 1054 primarily over the role of infants at the table.

So the Eastern Orthodox Church had been confessing—the Church at large had been practicing paedo -communion—but in the 11th century, the debate between the

East and the West emerged because the Western Church was affirming that the

Eastern Church was at odds, because they were allowing children to partake of the elements, and the

Western Church was saying that infants cannot partake of the elements, because the elements contain the body of Christ, and if infants were to drop the body of Christ, drop the wafer, they would be dropping the very body of Christ.

So what we have, that is one of the many debates of 1054, but that division between East and West proved that that practice was already there for a thousand -plus years, and to this day, the

Eastern Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, continues to practice paedo -communion, but the

Roman Catholics have no longer practiced. They practice something called confirmation, which is very much like Presbyterianism.

The infants are baptized, but they're confirmed after they go through catechesis, and the

Eastern Church says, no, children are partakers of the Eucharist at the moment of baptism.

So that debate itself proves that there is a lineage, a historical longevity to the practice, otherwise they wouldn't have to debate that issue.

I have to ask, because literally I said this last week in my sermon, because you just said that the schism was created over infant communion.

I've always believed and taught that it was over the philoquy clause, the issue of the adding to the

Nicene Creed, the phrase, and the Son in regard to the proceeding of the Spirit. Am I wrong?

Is that not what brought about the schism in 1054? Well, there were several issues.

The philioquy clause was one significant them, but there are several issues.

And the philioquy clause in some ways have sacramental implications as well to the role of the

Spirit. And so these issues were very much connected, we could say, as an overall document in terms of analyzing these great debates of the 11th century.

Okay. I just want to make sure I didn't have to go back and recant my sermon, because I'm teaching on the

Trinity on Sunday mornings, I'm preaching through 2 Corinthians, and I just happen to be at a portion where Paul is talking about the role of the

Spirit in the new covenant. That's an issue, Keith. Let me add one more thing. So in some ways, the

CREC is, we are Western when it comes to the philioquy clause, we confess the

Nicene Creed, and we are Eastern when it comes to the role of children in the service itself.

And so this is a separate footnote here, but in our service is one of the unique features, which

I think is consistent with infant baptism and paedo -communion, is that all of our children attend church together with their parents.

And we all practice weekly communion. And so you're beginning to see, I think, from what

I'm saying, a level of consistency in the way we want to think about the role of children, not only covenantally, but also their participation from birth to their very death.

And so I think there is a holistic approach here that I think is very important to keep in mind. It's interesting that you say that, because our church is what's called family -integrated, so our children worship with us, and we have weekly communion, and we have ever since the church began in 1958.

So it's funny how there's a consistency there between us in regard to some of the methodology, even though there certainly would be some theological distinctions.

So just thought that was interesting that we're family -integrated and we do weekly communion. And that's probably, as a side note in terms of interest, since I took this position as PMOC in September of 23, the interest, the visibility of the

CRAC has grown, has multiplied so much. It's hard to even put into categories how many emails

I get on a regular basis. But I think that's one reason why you're seeing a lot of Reformed London Baptist interest in the

CRAC, is because they too, now the practice of children in a worship service in the

Baptist tradition, that doesn't have that much of a historical element, but it's becoming much more common.

And I think you're seeing why London Baptist churches, Reformed Baptist churches are finding interest in CRAC churches, because there is a continuity of thought on these matters.

Yeah. So you've mentioned at least two of the six things, because you said there's six

Ps at your church. The overall CRAC, you said there's three unifying things, but within your church, you teach six

Ps. I just found that interesting. I'm a sucker for alliteration. I don't always alliterate my sermons, but when

I do, I always feel very much like I've arrived as an expositor, if I can give four

Ps in my sermon. So you have six Ps, and you've already talked about paedo -communion, you've already talked about Presbyterian government, but what are the others that you would say at Providence Church are focal points that you point to?

Yeah, great question. And I'll preface it by saying that in our congregation, the only requirement for membership is an affirmation of our statement of faith, which is fairly generic.

It begins with the inerrancy of the Bible, and it ends with the affirmation of the Second Coming. So that's there.

So to become a member. However, one of the things we tell our new members coming in is that our congregation is unique, and these things may be too much for you to embrace, but I want you to know this is what's taught in the pulpit and in the podium.

And so along with the two things you already mentioned, one of them is a strong commitment to predestinarianism.

And so we affirm very much the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. And the other element, of course, would be the post -millennial hope, the preeminence of worship.

So that's another P there that we have to sort of fit in. But worship is so central to what we do because we affirm that worship is warfare.

Therefore, we have the preeminence of worship. And then a feature that you probably saw when you visit it, but it's very common in our culture here, is the significance of psalm singing.

So if your listeners are having trouble, just think of psalm singing. That will help a little bit of the alliteration to continue there.

And psalm singing is very crucial to who we are because we believe that to sing

God's inerrant words is to be the foundation of everything we do. And when we sing

God's inerrant words, one thing we do know is that we're not singing anything wrong. And so we believe that the psalms ought to shape our hymns.

We're not exclusive psalmists, but we believe the psalms ought to shape our hymns. And one of the other features

I want to point out as a final point is the what we call the pedo -life. And what that essentially means is that the life of children is very crucial to who we are.

And it's very hard for you to see any event in our church that doesn't include children, because Jesus says, for unto such belongs the kingdom of heaven.

And so therefore, they are to be incorporated in what we do. And the expectation that people have that children are somehow second -class citizens and cannot be with the big people.

That's something that you and I share in common in our churches, is that no, the reality is that children learn together with their parents.

And if your reality is similar to mine, children pick things up faster than their parents. And so those are a few of our

Ps that we try to emphasize and inculcate in those who are coming to our congregations.

Well, that's super helpful. I'm thankful that you have clearly shared everything.

And I do want to ask one question about one of those Ps, because as you know, I have a crown back here.

It's the crown of the king of the amillennialists. If you were going to define the difference between postmillennialism and amillennialism without simply saying, you're right, because that's not fair.

Don't just say, well, we're right. But if you were going to say, this is what I see is the distinction between postmill and amill, because I think people sometimes have a hard time seeing what those distinctions are.

It's easy to see the premill difference, right? It's easy to see sort of what the differences are with the premillennial and the postmillennial and amillennial.

But sometimes there's confusion over the postmillennial difference.

So what really defines postmillennialism as opposed to amillennialism?

OK, that's a great question. Let me see if I can just bring out an analogy here just to make things real simple for your listeners here.

I think this is the best way that I can sort of summarize and offer a synopsis of this distinction.

First thing, there's a lot of historical continuity, right? I mean, our heroes at Princeton Seminary were people like B .B.

Warfield, Hodge. They shared a lot of similarity, though they were postmill and amill. The best way to summarize it from my perspective is, think about it like this here.

At the end of history, when Jesus comes back, what kind of church is he going to be receiving?

The amillennial position views the end of history in the following way. When Jesus comes back, he is coming back to rescue a bride that has been beaten and bruised throughout history because the bride has been persecuted.

She has not achieved a full -blown investment and incorporation of her principles in history.

So Jesus comes back at the end of history to rescue a bride and bring her into eternal bliss, bring her into the marriage supper of the lamb.

So that bride is bruised because she has been martyred. And in some ways, we can refer to that as a victory.

But overall, Jesus comes and rescues her and brings her into eternity. In the postmillennial vision,

Jesus comes to receive a bride that has been readied by her victories in history.

Not only through her piety, but through her practice. And so what Jesus does then is he not rescues her, but receives her.

And that's the fundamental distinction, rescue and receiving. That is, in my perspective, the best way to sort of dichotomize or at least offer a distinction between these two views.

Now, there are variations that have arisen in the 1970s and 80s where you see terms like optimistic amillennialism, these categories that didn't exist in 40 years ago, but are using.

And so from my perspective, as I look at these distinctions that I just elaborated,

I think there has been a greater harmony between these two positions, even in the last 20 years that I didn't see when

I began my theological projects and interests. When I was coming to the theological world, it was a very clear distinction between the theonomist reconstructionists like Doug Wilson, R .J.

Rush Dooney, Greg Bonson, and the Westminster Escondido, the Michael Hortons, and the

R. Scott Clark, and those guys. And that distinction was very concrete.

Today, there is just so many nuances that it's hard to put forth a clear distinction.

But the way I described it, I think does most reverence to the way that language has been spoken in the 18th, 19th, and 20th and 21st century.

I think that's fair. It goes right along with what I've said, and I'm parroting Kim Riddlebarger when

I say that the difference is in amillennialism, Christ comes to save his church, and in post millennialism,

Christ comes to a saved church. And would you say that's fair? I mean, to simplify what you said?

I think so. And a lot of it has to do with—that's a perfect way of saying it—has to do with how we interpret the

Great Commission, essentially. Do we believe that the commission is going to be fulfilled in time and in space, or do we believe that the commission is given, though the intention of it not being that it ought to be fulfilled in every jot and tittle of it?

And so we believe that in the playing out of history, whether that be 5 ,000, 10 ,000 years, the

Great Commission will be fulfilled in its entirety. Well, this is an interesting topic for me, and maybe

I'll have to have you on another time to dig in. I'd love to talk to you about maybe imminency and things like that, because our church is—we're doing a conference in March on the subject of—and this is a shameless plug for my church.

We're doing a conference on end times, and we're going to be talking about this subject, and I just happen to be preaching on the millennium, and I'm going to be talking about the differing views.

And so I always like to hear intelligent men like yourself be able to articulate your position so that I'm better equipped at sharing with our congregation exactly what it is different people believe and why they hold the positions they hold.

So thank you for that. I appreciate it very much. Well, Pastor Urie, I'm so grateful that you've been on the show with me today.

We're getting close to the hour mark, and I've learned so much just sitting with you, not only at your house but just in this last hour.

But I want to give you one final question and maybe have this be the wrap -up for today.

One of my phrases that's come out of my funny videos is the phrase, superior theology.

Every time I've had a group on, I've had the PCA, I've had the LCMS, I've had the Anglicans—I think it's

ARNCA. I forget. It's the North American— ACNA. Yeah, ACNA. I've had those guys on, and every time

I have them on, I ask this question, who really has superior theology? And it's always them.

Who really has superior theology and why? So that's your final word. That's a great question.

I'm a fairly ironic kind of fella, and I spent four years in my MDiv work studying with John Frame, who's one of my heroes, who defined theology as the application of the

Bible to all areas of human endeavor. And so if that's the case, if theology is defined in that way, then

I think we have a lot of great Christians in every tradition practicing superior theology, you know, from the

Westleys to the Calvins to the Knoxes and to the J .C. Riles. And so I think that's one way of looking at theology.

In terms of sheer numbers, of course, we produce the biggest commentaries and all of that, but that's a form of academic theology.

And I tend to shy away from academic theology because, pastorally speaking,

I want to see what's being produced on the ground. And so I want to interpret superior theology, not from an academic perspective, but in how the theology is fleshed out, as Doug Wilson says, from your fingertips.

If that's the case, then my brother, you share a superior theology as well.

Amen, brother. I appreciate that kind word. And I want to thank you for giving us your time today. Thank you for sharing with us about the

CREC, for being such a gentleman and a scholar and a pastor and a great husband and father that I got to see out there when

I was with you all. So thank you for being with me today on the program. My absolute pleasure, Keith.

Thank you. Yes, sir. And I want to thank you all for being with me today as this first Bowtie Dialogue of 2024 comes to a close.

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