December 2017 Ordained Servant

From the Editor. Rod Dreher’s popular new book, The Benedict Option, has stimulated some healthy discussion about the church’s response to an increasingly hostile culture. John Muether reviews the book, the subtitle of which is A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. Despite his helpful portrait of what a healthy Christian community should look like, Dreher lacks the biblical ecclesiology to support his proposal. My Essay, “The Shape of Ministry in the OPC,” offers the contours of one central aspect of a sound doctrine of the church: ministry of the Word. This is based on my annual lecture to the students of the Shiloh Institute.

OPC historian John Muether completes his series of sketches of the great Reformed confessions with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. This brings the celebration of Reformation 500 to a fitting conclusion with the crowning confessional achievement of the Reformation and Post-Reformation eras.

Danny Olinger offers us the eleventh chapter of his rich biography of Geerhardus Vos: “Geerhardus Vos: Changes at Princeton, the Reconstruction Movement, Departed Friends, and Family Life,” the challenges of life in ministry, both personal and ecclesiastical.

Darryl Hart reviews a book of essays on Wendell Berry and Higher Education, exploring the gigantic challenge American academia presents to serious Christians who locate their lives in church, family, and community.

Have you ever heard of Lord Mackay? I review Westminster classmate Cameron Fraser’s fascinating account of a great British Christian of whom few Americans are likely to have heard in Learning from Lord Mackay.

Finally, a poem cutting through the schlock of Christmas: “Yuletide Hullabaloo.”

Blessings in the Lamb,
Gregory Edward Reynolds

FROM THE ARCHIVES “CHURCH, MINISTRY OF THE WORD”

Subject Index

• “The Spirituality of the Church.” (D. G. Hart & John R. Muether) 7:3 (Jul. 1998): 64‑66. [reprinted 15 (2006): 87–89]
• “The Church Christ Is Building.” (Larry Wilson) 11:3 (Jul. 2002): 55.
• “What Is the Church For?” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 15 (2006): 36–39.
• “Christ in the Midst of Culture: The Church as Embassy.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 18 (2009): 10–14.
• “Ministry of the Word According to the Westminster Standards.” (Larry Wilson) 12:1 (Jan. 2003): 11–16.

Ordained Servant exists to help encourage, inform, and equip church officers for faithful, effective, and God-glorifying ministry in the visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its primary audience is ministers, elders, and deacons of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as well as interested officers from other Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Through high-quality editorials, articles, and book reviews, we will endeavor to stimulate clear thinking and the consistent practice of historic, confessional Presbyterianism.