The Pottsville Associate Reformed Church is hosting a Bonfire and Fall Party, Friday, October 20, 2017. We will get started at 6:00pm at The Manse. The Church will provide caramel apples, popcorn, and cider and each family will bring a favorite Fall food or dessert. So break out your instruments! Dust off your vocal cords! Bring all your friends and family and join us for a night of fire, music, games, food and fun! Click here for directions or email us at pottsvillearp@gmail.com for more info.
Tag Archives: PottsvilleARP
Warp and Woof
Mathematics has axioms – presuppositions, accepted without proof — which form the basis for all subsequent mathematical proofs. Likewise, Christianity demands certain presuppositions. As a revealed religion, Christianity’s presuppositions, its axioms, must be accepted on faith. But this often seems to be an intellectual cop-out.
An appeal to faith in a recent conversation with a friend and skeptic brought charges of “philosophical laziness.” “No so,” I answered, but I also had to admit that the exercise of faith is not binary. Faith is not either on or off, absolute or absent, and not black and white. Faith has contours. It has a warp and woof which creates contours in quality, character, and shading. Faith has axioms, but it also demands proofs. It has doubts but it asks questions. It waxes and wanes, but does not fail. It is a gift, but it must be exercised and grow directed by the Spirit through a process of sanctification.
Abraham is the paradigmatic man of faith in Scripture and Genesis 15:6 is the core profession of his faith. But even in this passage we see the contours of Abraham’s faith as it is received and exercised.
Join us this Lord’s Day, August 20, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine the faith of Abraham from Genesis 15 and consider the contours of our own faith. For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.
Ad Fontes
Ad Fontes, “to the fountains,” was the motto of the Christian Humanists, whose discovery of the preaching of the early church fathers sparked the Reformation with its emphasis on “sola fide” or salvation “by faith alone.” The gospel was unshackled from legalistic tradition and extrabiblical rites as men went back to the fountains of God’s Word and gospel preaching to proclaim a salvation that was utterly gracious and a faith that was the free gift of God.
But as soon as we say salvation is by faith alone, some will ask, where does this faith come from? In the Bible, the Old Testament patriarch Abraham is held up as the paradigmatic man of faith. From where did his faith spring? Was it a moral code? An inherent goodness? Some intrinsic spark in his heart fanned into flame by piety?
We meet Abraham in Genesis 11, the youngest son in a family of moon worshipers. God had not spoken to men for hundreds of years. But suddenly God breaks his silence and speaks to Abraham, renewing His covenant with him. God called upon Abraham, before Abraham called upon God. God chose Abraham, not the other way around. The Bible calls this “election” — a precious doctrine which frightens many, but is inescapably pervasive in the Scriptures.
Join us this Lord’s Day, July 23, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine God’s call to Abraham from Genesis 11:26-12:9 and the doctrine of election that forms the spring from which faith flows. For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.
Saying Goodbye
Saying Goodbye is difficult, especially if we know we will never return to the places or people we are leaving. Can you imagine all the emotions Noah felt as he boarded the ark and prepared to leave all that was familiar for a journey alone into an unknown world? An ancient pastor once noted regarding Noah and the ark,
“…the most severe contest of all for Noah was to bid farewell to the world, to renounce society and to bury himself in the ark. The face of the earth was at that time very lovely. It was no light trial for Noah to leave the life to which he had been accustomed during 600 years”
This week we continue our conversations from the Book of Beginnings by discussing Genesis 7. We will consider God’s mercy and grace toward Noah and his family in the midst of a total and complete judgment against the sin and violence which had engulfed the ancient world.
Join us this week in worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we continue the story of Noah and the Ark. Worship begins at 10:45 am. For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.
What’s Wrong with Everybody
Have you ever thought, “What is wrong with everybody?” Some, if not most days, we see the news or check our news feed and shake our heads, asking this question. The world seems turned upside down and out of control. But the more we consider history and observe our own times, the more we realize that our problem is not a new problem. A wise ancient teacher and king once said.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
This week we continue our look at the Book of Beginnings from Genesis 3. There we find both the answer to the question, “what is wrong with everybody” and the solution to the problem posed by the answer.
Join us this week in worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church on the square in Pottsville as we examine the Book of Beginnings, Genesis 3, to consider what is wrong with everybody and what God is doing about it. Worship begins at 10:45 am. For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.
Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church 