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Aug 24, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
"Almost nothing fazes him or his wife, Noël, who have been living in a modest house in the under-resourced neighborhood since 1980. They know what to do if they hear gunshots (call 911 and then see if they can help), how to clean up a dozen hypodermic needles from the front porch
"(use a broom to sweep them up without touching them), and how to scare off someone breaking into your house (open the door and yell at them).

Piper didn’t have a grand vision for city revitalization when he moved in four decades ago. He just wanted to be able to walk to work,
"and thought it was more authentic to live in the same neighborhood as the church. Soon after, convinced that “presence matters,” he issued a call for Bethlehem members to join him. Within a decade, 400 of them had bought homes in one of the city’s worst areas.
"That was 1980, back before cities were cool—long before Tim Keller released Center Church in 2012..." #oof

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More from @presbycast

Apr 20, 2023
Machen cares not for your Christian Nationalism:

"For example, there is the problem of the immigrants; great populations have found a place in our country; they do not speak our language or know our customs; and we do not know what to do with them. We have attacked them by… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Make no mistake—any religion adopted an enforced by the government will first serve the government and will become secular. See: Europe, all of it.
Read 4 tweets
Apr 19, 2023
Christian nationalism led to liberal unbelief in the early 20th century and it would do something similar in the 21st.
In part because it would require the worst form of ecumenism.
Christian Nationalism is not just Christians who are nationalists/concerned with things national/nationists or those who support traditional "Christian" morality. The thoughtleaders of Christian Nationalism would execute heretics and establish a generic Christian church...
Read 5 tweets
Feb 15, 2023
Drive through any town or city in the US and notice how many older churches have blacked out their windows for the benefit of screens and stage lighting. Many newer churches have windowless worship spaces for the same reason. The reasons behind this are doctrinal.
It's not obvious from the outside, but this church is a windowless worship dungeon. The interior walls and floors have even been darkened—totally dependent on artificial light—and there's barely sufficient light to read the printed word if you are not on the stage.
Many small-town and rural churches try to replicate the megachurch experience at a much smaller scale. It's good for the A/V equipment companies...but is it good for anyone else? Imagine having a young child in a church that passes out earplugs.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 14, 2023
How many minutes does it take you to get to church, whether you walk, cycle, drive, or use public transport?
One reason for asking—the 17th-c. Massachusetts puritans (who were totally nuts in a number of ways) who wanted everyone to live within a half mile of the meetinghouse.
With traffic in some areas you could live a mile away these days and it take 10-15 minutes to drive there...and it might be unsafe to walk that distance in pedestrian-unfriendly areas.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 25, 2023
"What is lost when presbyterian worship is no longer led by presbyters (elders)? Well, in a word, what is lost is presbyterianism, or—at the very least—any form of presbyterianism known before the 20th century. Presbyters are not simply preachers and teachers or members of an...
"administrative board. They are shepherds who lead the flock in worship, not as coordinators, directors, or curators of the order of worship, but as true leaders who lead from the front…the front of the church’s worship space!
"Why is it important that ordained, examined, approved men lead worship? Because in many of the word-based elements of worship the leader is speaking, as it were, for God. How God’s word is read and the biblical and theological understanding of the reader/leader matter."
Read 4 tweets
Jan 11, 2023
Rural America is likely to become even more of a confessional presbyterian and Reformed wasteland unless pastors/planters are willing to be bi-vocational or serve multiple churches. Many of those baptist, pentecostal, and even UMC churches don't have full-time pastors.
Circuit riders and tentmakers may be required. Are P&R folk too good for that? Are we satisfied being the gifted and talented program for evangelicals who read, a place for upwardly-mobile baptists, a group of denominations almost exclusively for affluent suburbs and cities?
This is not to argue for a Cumberland Presbyterian-style abandonment of requirements for educated ministry, but it might argue for more distributed, local education at a much lower price. And it certainly argues for more resources to small towns and rural areas.
Read 14 tweets

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