Resources | Christ Evangelical Reformed Church (CERC)

Resources

Articles

Robin Gan

Why not sup the Lord’s Supper?

Imagine if you will that surfing the internet in Malaysia you come across a Christian website that documents a church’s ‘innovative’ attempts at having the Lord’s supper ‘the way the New Testament chu...

Mark D. Thompson

What does it mean to be Reformed Evangelical?

What does it mean to say that Moore College is both “reformed” and “evangelical”? In some parts of the world it would seem odd to use both these terms to describe yourself, your church or your college...

John Hendryx

A Short Response to the Arminian Doctrine of Prevenient Grace

Prevenient grace, according to Arminians, convicts, calls (outwardly), enlightens and enables before conversion and makes conversion and faith possible. While Calvinists believe the inward call to the...

Thomas R. Schreiner

Does Scripture Teach Prevenient Grace in the Wesleyan Sense?

How crucial is prevenient grace to the Wesleyan system? Wesleyans themselves seem to concur that their theology hinges on the doctrine. Robert E. Chiles says that "without it, the Calvinist logic is i...

Matt Schmucker

Those Toxic Non-Attenders

Growing up I always heard that it was better to be accused of committing a sin of omission than a sin of commission. That way, you could always chalk your sin up to forgetfulness, ignorance or thought...

ESV Study Bible

The Bible and Religious Cults

Almost every book in the NT has something to say about false beliefs and those who advocate them. We are warned, e.g., about false prophets (Matt. 7:15–16; 24:11), false christs (Matt. 24:5, 24; Mark...

Andrew Prideaux

Review: Fundamentalism and the Word of God by J.I. Packer

In his book Fundamentalism and the Word of God, J.I. Packer explains that the terms ‘evangelical’ and ‘fundamentalist’ originally served to distinguish the Christianity of the reformation and the spir...

Michael A. G. Haykin

Identifying Heresy

This is vital to note: a person who embraces heresy is not a Christian according to Christian tradition. Thus, when an author very critical of an historical Baptist figure described his teaching as be...

Harry Reeder

Cultural Myths About Truth and Love

A witness for Christ in any age--and certainly in this present age--requires a prayer-saturated, Christ-centered, Gospel-motivated, Bible-shaped, Spirit-filled and God-glorifying commitment to "speak...

Charles Terpstra

The Reformation: A Return to the Primacy of Preaching

Christ-centered preaching is the source of hope, comfort, and life for the regenerated believer. Those touched by the love of God desire above all to hear faithful preaching which directs them to thei...

Brett McCracken

Why We Don’t See Church as ‘Essential’

Ever since the world went on COVID-19 lockdown and stay-at-home orders were issued, the terms “essential” and “non-essential” have loomed large in our discourse. Businesses and services deemed “essent...

Kevin DeYoung

The Four-Hundred-Year Flower

At its very heart, the Canons of Dort are about the nature of grace – supernatural, unilateral, sovereign, effecting, redeeming, resurrecting grace, with all of its angularity, all of its offense to h...

Michael Horton

Why We Need to Rethink “In Essentials, Unity; In Nonessentials, Liberty”

It’s true that not everything in the Bible is of equal weight. But I am worried that we have drawn too stark a line between “essentials” and “nonessentials;” in fact, I am convinced that this maxim le...

Carl Trueman

Evangelicalism is Not Enough

In that book the author challenges the slogan “No creed but the Bible" (no authoritative confessional texts besides the Bible) — a position that is prevalent in many denominations and congregations. H...

The Briefing

Cultbusters?

Invoking the vague concept of ‘cult’ is a lazy way of attacking one’s opponents. If I label your group as “little more than a cult” I can avoid having to assess and come to terms with your teaching. I...

Phillip D. Jensen

Explicatory Preaching with Phillip Jensen

Under Phillip’s leadership and influence, Sydney Anglicanism has become a ministry well-known for its faithfulness and gospel-centeredness. Listen to this 9marks Interview on his experiences of doing...

John Piper

What Is a Reformed Understanding of the Gospel?

What makes a Reformed understanding of the gospel is the desire and the passion that God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son receive the fullest measure of the glory they should receive i...

John Piper

What Must Someone Believe in Order to Be Saved?

What are the most basic things a person needs to believe in order to be saved? Paul says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." He says, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus i...

Timothy Witmer

Pastoral Authority in an Anti-Authoritarian Age

What does the Bible have to say about the rights and responsibilities of leaders to exercise authority? The New Testament speaks clearly of the existence and exercise of authority in the world. The bi...

David F. Wells

Thinking Biblically about Authority: An Interview with David Wells

Jonathan Leeman interviews Dr. David F. Wells on the subject of authority.

Dr. Carl Trueman

Confessions of a Bog-Standard Evangelical

Recently, a fellow historian at another Christian institution commented to me about the growing number of Presbyterian prophets who make their reputations on the back of bashing evangelicalism, while...

Phillip D. Jensen

The Limits of Fellowship

Let me commence by saying that the title “the Limits of Fellowship” is misguided. I know I chose it myself, but it is the wrong question. It starts us off looking for the negative when the theme of th...

David Schrock

5 Metaphors for Your Church Membership

The term “membership” is misleading because of how it’s commonly used. Often it connotes privilege in a club. Costco members get access to deals. Country club members get reduced green fees. If you pa...

Johnny Antle

The Worth of Waiting: A Word to Aspiring Elders

Waiting is a challenging lesson. The better we perceive something to be, the stronger the desire. And the stronger the desire, the harder the wait tends to be. I'm keenly aware of this because I'm pra...

Andrew D. Clarke

The Healthy Church: Embodying Leadership

Churches are often distinguished from each other in terms of their theological position or worship tradition. A further, significant distinguishing characteristic of a church, however, is the nature o...

Dr. R.C. Sproul

The Invisible and Visible Church

Are you a member in good standing at your local church? More importantly, are you a member in good standing of the invisible church? In this message, Dr. Sproul teaches us the distinction between the...

Jonathan Leeman

What Would An Ideal Polity Look Like From a Christian Perspective?

There is no ideal polity, at least not in the way most Westerners would think about the matter. Following in the Greek tradition of Plato and Aristotle, democratic Westerners think in terms of one con...

Dr. John M. Frame

Proposal for a New Seminary

In the early days of American Protestantism, the training of ministerial candidates was carried on by pastors of churches. A young man feeling a call of God to the ministry would associate himself wit...

Michael Herrington

Committed to Marriage, Committed to the Church

Wedding season is here. Are you committed to your church? That may seem like a rather abrupt shift in topics, but they are actually closely related, especially if we consider a certain popular wedding...

Stephen Travis

Judgment of God

JUDGMENT OF GOD. The belief that God passes judgment on the lives of his human creatures is important for Christianity, as it is for most of the world?s religious traditions (see, e.g., S. G. F. Brand...

John Folmar

Three Lessons for Cross-Cultural Evangelism

The answer is, there is no “cross-cultural key.” In our evangelism, we don’t do anything differently here than we would anywhere else. Our evangelistic methods are singularly uncreative. To suggest th...

Dr. Carl Trueman

Christianity, Liberalism and the New Evangelicalism

For Christians, the past should always be instructive. When we look back to the Old Testament, we see how much of Old Testament faith and life was nurtured by remembrance of times past. The Passover,...

R. Scott Clark

Why (Some) Reformed People Are Such Jerks

The Oxford American Dictionary gives this informal usage of the noun jerk: a contemptibly obnoxious person.

Michael S. Horton

The Crisis of Evangelical Christianity

The Reformation was, more than anything else, an assault on faith in humanity, and a defense of the idea that God alone reveals Himself and saves us.

Michael S. Horton

To Be or Not To Be: The Uneasy Relationship between Reformed Christianity and American Evangelicalism

The ambivalence expressed by Warfield cannot help but be felt today by those who are convinced of the persistent truth and vitality of the catholic faith as it is expressed in the confessions and cate...

Shane Rosenthal

Abandoning Evangelicalism?

"Now, with new Reformation categories, I was able to see some of the problems inherent in American evangelicalism as I had experienced it over the past few years. I no longer considered myself an evan...

Dave Bruskas

Do You Worship Your Weekend?

We see nothing in Jesus? life that would pass the approval of a life coach's prescribed 'ideal week'. Should church staff strive for a 'balanced' life, or a full life?

Adam Ford

A lesson from Paul's prestigious past

A lesson from Paul's prestigious past

Justin Taylor

Do You Have an Accountability Partner?

R. C. Sproul Jr. talks about being asked by a deacon at church twenty years ago if he had an "accountability group." When it was explained that this would be "a group of men who are active in your lif...

Bobby Jamieson

Testing the Glue that Binds Churches Together

Are denominations dying? That seems to be the common wisdom. Certainly the mainline denominations are bleeding out; people are leaving those churches en masse. But what about denominations of evangeli...

Jonathan Leeman

A Church and Churches: Independence

What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world? In the companion piece to this article, I consider how different churches should integrate together. Here we wan...

Jonathan Leeman

A Church and Churches: Integration

What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world? In the companion piece to this article, I consider what makes different local churches independent from one anot...

Jonathan Leeman

Churches Cooperating in Discipline

Yes, autonomous local churches really can cooperate in church discipline. No, they typically don't. But, yes, they should! The first step my own church takes to cooperate with other churches in discip...

The Gospel Coalition

Who Governs the Church?

A Presbyterian and a Baptist discuss how they derive their polity and who calls the shots.

Tim Keller

Gospel-Centered Ministry

I am here to talk to you about what ministry shaped by the gospel, profoundly shaped by the gospel, really looks like? In this letter, Peter was not writing to the same type of situation Paul addresse...

Randy Newman

Keep It Complicated

I am sometimes told, when discussing how to present the gospel to a non-believer or how to formulate a sermon or Bible study, to "keep it simple." Sometimes the admonition is "to keep the cookies on t...

Matt Smethurst

Submit to Jesus, Submit to His Bride

Church membership can feel boring, secondary, extrabiblical, and unimportant. Aren't there plenty of more pressing things to talk about? Not really, suggests Jonathan Leeman in "Church Membership: How...

Bobby Jamieson

Gospel Centrality: A Warning and a Recommendation

How do you move beyond the gospel without moving on from the gospel? On the other hand, if the gospel is so all-important, do we need to "move beyond" the gospel in any sense at all? Those are two of...

Dr. Carl Trueman

The Gospel is Insufficient

At a seminar I gave last week, I used the tried and true method when facing a crowd outside of my usual comfort zone. Three points nobody could disagree with, a fourth point that might have raised som...

Dr. John M. Frame

A Fresh Look at the Regulative Principle

The "regulative principle" is the Reformed view of how God regulates our worship and provides that worship is by divine appointment. Everything we do in worship must be divinely warranted. And since S...

Books

The Five Solas Series

Thomas R. Schreiner et al.

Stop Dating the Church!: Fall in Love with the Family of God

Joshua Harris

The Courage to be Protestant

David F. Wells

Religious Affections

Jonathan Edwards

Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus

Jonathan Leeman

Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus

Jonathan Leeman

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