Family Room= Theology Class

For the next seven weeks, we will be studying the biblical pattern of the family. God has a very specific plan for men, women and children in Scripture and he calls us to obedience and ultimately to joy as we discover his plans are far better than ours.

It is clear by now that we aren’t a flashy dashy, new and improved, marketing savvy kind of church. So you might be wondering why we would go the way of the topical series instead of the typical, systematic, verse by verse style by which we normally proclaim the Scriptures. The answer is simple and has two parts: First, we wanted to focus on the importance of families because of the year of doctrine. If our focus this year truly is doctrinal clarity and depth, the family should be the first place where that doctrinal clarity is established. As go the family rooms of the membership, so goes the church itself. The church is not an institution, meant to “fix” everything. The church is indeed a hospital where we all come to find the teaching, reproof, correction and training of Scripture and the fellowship of God’s people to equip, encourage and edify our souls, but it is not a place for parents to drop their kids off and hope they “get better”, or a place where teenagers can go so the youth pastor can make up for 17 years of bad parenting. The church is a place of training where families can be equipped to be what God intended them to be: the primary gospel-teaching, doctrine learning, God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, sin killing, holiness practicing center of the Christian life.

Secondly, every “topical” message will be an exegetical message. We will not toss our commitment to sound hermeneutics in order to have a “cool series.” In upcoming posts I will be addressing the issue of churchy coolness as well as McChurch, or the seemingly ever-present desire for the church to have just the right menu lest the customers bolt. Buckle up.