I would like to invite readers to listen to Anna Madsen’s rendition of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” an 8th-century hymn traditionally associated with the Advent season.  The first verse of this solemn hymn says: O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. Christian Advent, or Adventus, is the four-week period before Christmas in the Christian liturgical year. Each week encompasses one of the following themes: hope, peace, joy, and love. The Advent season serves as a remembrance …

As this article from The Banner — The official magazine of the Christian Reformed Church — points out, the CRC General Synod of this year had an interesting discussion regarding Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA), which is one of the many theories to understand and interpret the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice. Interesting to me was the question of whether the denial of PSA might constitute a ‘heresy’ or not. The CRC synod, after some deliberation, concluded: [I]t is a serious deviation from the teachings of the confessions of the Christian Reformed Church to in any way deny that Jesus Christ’s life, …

Three years ago, I was invited to attend to a five-hundred-member Reformed congregation. Xavier (named changed for privacy), the seminarian who invited me, shared with me all the aspects he liked about this particular congregation: high liturgical and ceremonial, relevant preaching, and social-focused. In addition, the building was breath-taking. It had several Gothic style elements and beautiful colored stained-glass windows. Thirty minutes after the start of the morning worship service, the minister started his sermon by asserting that the Bible is responsible of promoting old moral behaviors. It had led people to discriminate against each other so that the most …