The idea of internships often brings up negative connotations—images of employees passing off their work load upon an unsuspecting intern so they can relax and take it easy.  Perhaps it conjures up ideas of making the intern perform menial tasks, such as retrieving dry cleaning and washing cars.  While there are certainly many who abuse internships, it is important that we understand why Geneva will have a pastoral intern this summer.  Far from promoting sloth, a pastoral internship plays an important part in building the Church.  Let us explore the importance of a pastoral internship by examining, the nature of the church, the importance of training pastors, and the need for church to work towards building the Church.

Whether we like it or not, there are many messages that we send to those around us.  If a man walks into a room wearing a finely tailored suit, we might think that he is an important businessman.  On the other hand, if a man enters the room wearing tattered clothing we might think that he is something less than important.  Whether the man intends it or not, he sends a message to those around him by the clothing he wears.  The same is true about marriage.  Whether we realize it or not, husbands and wives send a message to those around us by the way in which we conduct ourselves in marriage.  When God ordained marriage, he painted a portrait.  The question we must ask ourselves is, Do our marriages accurately reflect this portrait?

Mel Gibson’s movie about the last twelve hours of Christ’s life has created quite a stir over the last several months.  It has been criticized and praised from both within and without the Christian community.  The secular media has brought a great deal of attention to it for its supposed anti-Semitic message.  Many within the Christian community, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, have hailed the movie as a panacea for ailing spirituality and a great evangelistic tool to bring throngs of people into the kingdom of God.  And still others, most notably those within the Reformed community, have argued that the movie is a violation of the second commandment.

In the last year a flurry of churches have advertised "40 Days of Purpose" programs across the nation.  The 40 Days campaign is based upon Rick Warren’s best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life.  Last year Warren’s book sold eleven million copies and remained on the New York Times best seller list for forty-four weeks.  What is the purpose driven life?

Warren argues that he has simply taken the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s first answer, "Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever," and extended it into a devotional book.  There are positive aspects about Warren’s book, such as his emphasis upon the need to glorify God in all that we do.  He writes that the five purposes of the believer’s life are bringing glory to God by worshipping him, loving other believers, becoming like Christ, serving others, and telling others about him (pp. 55-57).  These five purposes constitute the overall aim of his book.  Generally speaking, these are noble goals.  Yet, there are considerable problems with Warren’s book that obscure the five goals.  There are four major areas that present problems: a self-centered focus, doctrinal errors, mishandling of Scripture, and self-promotion and marketing.

Within the Reformed community there is always much discussion and sermonizing on the dominion mandate: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen. 1.28).  There are many Reformed pastors and theologians who appeal to this passage of Scripture and argue that the Church must carry out this command.  The Church must not only carry out the mandate through evangelism, they argue, but also through procreation.  After all, Christ reissued the mandate to the Church in the Great Commission (Matt. 28.18-20) and we are still obligated to God’s first command to Adam and Eve.  Hence, the bottom line of their argument is that through the accomplished work of Christ the Church fulfills the dominion mandate.  While this sounds true and scriptural, it misses the mark by a significant distance.  It might surprise us to discover that the Church does not fulfill the dominion mandate.  If the Church does not fulfill the mandate, then who does?  Christ fulfills the dominion mandate.

The media has been replete with issues of Church and State since the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) has recently taken legal steps to remove monuments that contain the Ten Commandments from courthouses across the country.  Christians have taken to the steps of courthouses in an effort to let their legislators know that they want their monuments to the Ten Commandments to remain.  The idea behind this political activism is that the United States is a Christian nation that was founded upon the principles of Scripture.  Courthouses, therefore, should be allowed to post monuments to the Ten Commandments.  What might come as a surprise, however, is that this idea and subsequent conclusion are contrary to Scripture.  The idea that monuments of the Ten Commandments should be displayed in courthouses is built upon a misconception of what constitutes a Christian nation and a misunderstanding of key biblical doctrines

Contemporary Reformed theology has become gnostic in recent years, argues Douglas Wilson in his latest book entitled, Reformed Is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant (Moscow, Canon Press, 2002, 206 pp., $14.00, paper).  What does Wilson put forth in his book?  There are positive things about his book; he affirms various orthodox doctrines and interacts with historic Reformed teaching.  There are, however, negative things about this book.  Let us therefore first turn to Wilson’s case and then critique his arguments.

Let us explore the church calendar, its origins, presuppositions, and then answer the question of why we do not follow this practice.  

When it comes to the consumption of alcohol we tread upon a hotly debated subject that often generates more heat than light. Regardless of where one falls on this issue, due to the nature of the debate many have allowed it to affect the practice of the Church. In particular, many, perhaps if not most, American churches do not use wine in the Lord’s Supper; they instead use grape juice. This practice should cause us to ask two questions. What does the Bible say about alcohol? In particular, what does the Bible say about wine? And, second, should we use grape juice or wine in the Lord’s Supper? Let us proceed to answer these questions.

There are many verses in the Scriptures with which people are familiar. Perhaps this is due to the desire to inculcate Scripture in the lives and minds of the people of God. Therefore, whether it is Sunday School memorization, or a personal desire to memorize Scripture, people gravitate towards the great verses of Scripture. One such verse, for example, is Romans 12.1-2: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Now, while many are familiar with this passage of Scripture, there are many who do not know what this verse looks like in real life. In other words, What does it mean to be a living sacrifice?