| What do you mean when you say Heritage Covenant Church is “a reformed Presbyterian Church?” Reformed from what? |
|
To be reformed means one who, in Christian belief and practice, looks back to the beliefs and practices of the church reformers of the 1400 and 1500’s. Principal characters in the Reformation period were John Knox, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Urlich Zwingli who themselves were looking back to the early church fathers with a desire to correct the errors that had infiltrated the Roman Church of their time. To be reformed today, therefore, is to always be looking back with an eye for how the church should be growing in Christian fidelity today and tomorrow.
Distinctives of the Reformed Christian faith include:
Sola Scriptura which means the Holy Scriptures as the ultimate authority and stands in opposition to the modern errors of continuing inspired revelation and “solo scriptura” (the Holy Scriptures as the only authority.
Confessionalism is an appreciation and adoption of the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian Church as authoritative guides to the current interpretation and application of Scripture in Christian practice and belief. The confessions and creeds of the Church historic address most of the common errors and heresies that plague today’s modern church.
Doctrines of grace as hammered out by the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) A biblical expression of the character and nature of God, the character and nature of man, the comprehensive effect on man and creation by the sin of Adam, and the comprehensive effect of the redemptive work of our savior, Jesus Christ.
Covenantalism. Every person who has lived or will live is a covenantal creature. As a Christian, if you believe that God sovereignly of His own will and pleasure chose the time and place of your birth, who your parents were, who your siblings were, and your social status all without consulting you or your will in advance, then you are thinking covenantally. Your only other alternative is to conclude that your place and time of birth was a matter of fate and chance. The latter is not Christian reasoning. To think covenantally is to acknowledge that God is the creator and the initiator of all relationships and their terms. The challenge for modern American Christians is to take this same line of thinking and extrapolate it across every facet of life and faith and practice: Individual, family, church, state, politics, economics, education, judicial, science, medicine, ethics, etc…..
To be Presbyterian refers to our form of church government. We hold that a plurality of elders to be the biblical model for church leadership and that the body of elder leadership (the “session”) to be responsible and accountable to other “sessions” of like minded churches of similar belief and practice.
|