Culture Shock: Moving From an Evangelical to Reformed Church

The Rev. Dr. R. Scott Clark (D.Phil., Oxford University).  Professor of Church History, Westminster Seminary California.  Author of the must-buy, must-have, must-read, and must-ponder volume, Recovering the Reformed Confessions. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2008.  Print.

Church Campanologist, our English friend, has posted the following at: http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/culture-shock-moving-from-an-evangelical-to-a-reformed-church/#comment-7864.  Thank you, my English friend, for posting this.  Of course, the same issues are posed to those transitioning to old school, Confessional and Prayer Book services.  We most strongly recommend purchasing Dr. Clark's volume.

Culture shock: moving from an Evangelical to a Reformed church

"Dr R Scott Clark has been a professor at Westminster Seminary California (in Escondido) since 1997, where he teaches Church History and Historical Theology. He is the author of Recovering the Reformed Confession and contributes to a variety of theological publications and books. He also serves as Associate Pastor at Oceanside United Reformed Church. (If you are in San Diego County, it would seem a good place to go for Sunday worship.) My Reformed readers remember his late, lamented — now deleted – Heidelblog.

"In an article for R C Sproul’s Ligonier Ministries’ Tabletalk Magazine, ‘Pilgrims and Their Hosts’, Clark describes the ecclesiastical culture shock which occurs when Evangelicals attend a Reformed (Calvinist) church. Clark himself is an ex-evangelical. There are messages here for both Evangelicals and Reformed church members. Emphases mine below.

There are about sixty-million evangelicals in North America. By contrast, the confessional Reformed communions number fewer than one million members. One effect of these disproportionate numbers is that the theology, piety, and practice of American evangelicals shape the expectations of many Christians. That ethos is the product of a series of religious revivals that began in the eighteenth century and continued through the nineteenth century. These two episodes … were both organized around various kinds of religious experience. They differed on how to arrive at that experience and even on what the experience means. Nevertheless, the common thread of religious experience, whether it be a sort of direct encounter with the risen Christ or a conversion experience at the anxious bench, ties them together. Since the early eighteenth century, all American evangelicals have been shaped by a desire to have an intense, personal religious experience."

For more from Church Campanologist, see:  http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/culture-shock-moving-from-an-evangelical-to-a-reformed-church/#comment-7864