What was I up to church-wise in Edmonton

I went off with my relatives for the morning service at West End Christian Reformed Church, where they are members. Digging around on the website of the church, while the CRC upholds the Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of Dordt, and Belgic Confession, I noticed the following statement:

We recognize as fellow-Christians all people who accept the teachings of the bible as summarized in the Apostles' Creed.

Anyways, in the afternoon I was off to St. Albert CanRC to meet up with Ian & Jolene for supper. It seemed a little unusual being in a Canadian Reformed Church again (see some comments that I posted about that last night).

It was also some interesting in that I've recently started reading From Sabbath to Lord's Day, the sermon that afternoon was on the Sabbath, and then the Bible study group I attended that evening was working their way through the Westminster Confession and happened also to be talking about that topic.

Comments

St. Albert does have liturgy sheets. I'm not sure where they are in the afternoon because I haven't missed a morning service yet.

In Aldergrove, we also do not have a sign outside the United Church building.

The LCD projector is of course belonging to the church that owns the building. I'm not aware of any Canadian Reformed Church that uses LCD projection at this time. There was also a set of drums behind the screen on the pulpit. The screen was built by a member of the congregation specifically to block the view of the drums because some people found even their presense to be offensive.

Even if you fully expanded the abbreviations, there could still be some people who don't know what they mean. Usually someone nearby is happy to help point outsiders to the right page.

To me, uber-liberalism seems more cult-like (eg. charismatic), but I have personally seen somebody get upset about our uber-conservatism, specifically the absense of women in the consistory bench. That doesn't mean we should be throwing away our beliefs to accomodate outsiders; you're never going to make absolutely everyone happy anyway.

Not sure if you know Raymond or Byron Bredenhof, but they are both brothers to Rev. Reuben Bredenhof. Rev. Wes Bredenhof has two sisters here in the Valley, one married to Will Faber and the other married to Ryan VanDriel.

The screen was built by a member of the congregation specifically to block the view of the drums because some people found even their presense to be offensive.

I've never quite understood that viewpoint. If you come to some of the music evenings at Langley CanRC, they'll sometimes have a set of drums out there with a bit of a barrier there to muffle the sound. My personal tendency is to keep drums from accompanying singing, as I find that it's quite difficult (but not impossible) for them not to dominate.

Organs are also quite dominant, both in terms of their physical presence and also their budgetary impact - every once in a while that begins to bother me.

Even if you fully expanded the abbreviations, there could still be some people who don't know what they mean. Usually someone nearby is happy to help point outsiders to the right page.

But, unless the minister happens to notice someone fumbling around look for the passage in question, then the little extra time involved to find page might result in the person not being able to follow along with the beginning of whatever passage is being read (or completely lost if the reference is only quickly mentioned within the sermon).

Not sure if you know Raymond or Byron Bredenhof, but they are both brothers to Rev. Reuben Bredenhof.

I had guessed as much due to appearance, but just wasn't quite sure of the relationship between the two Revs.

To me, uber-liberalism seems more cult-like (eg. charismatic), but I have personally seen somebody get upset about our uber-conservatism, specifically the absense of women in the consistory bench.

As I had mentioned in my comment, I don't think that the CanRC is a cult, but some of its characteristics do seem a little cultish.

How would you define the word charasmatic? Are charasmatic churches necessarily liberal, or would you toss them in a separate category?

How would you define the word charasmatic? Are charasmatic churches necessarily liberal, or would you toss them in a separate category?

I consider charismatic different from liberal. I suspect there are a lot of liberal churches out there which are not charismatic. By charismatic I mean where people are waving their arms around whilst singing, etc.

Hmn. I can't say that I see anything wrong with people waving their hands around while singing. What I tend to label charismatic is speaking in tongues, faith healing, prophesy, and that sort of stuff.