Providence Church (CREC) in Pensacola,FL

In the 19th century, the evangelist Charles Finney, known for creating the invitational system, changed how music was sung in Church. Music was no longer in praise of God but a way of drawing people to the front to make public professions. This model has become the predominant means of worship in the Church today.

Finney observes the following:

To produce a spirit of renewal and revival, “God has found it necessary to take advantage of the excitability there is in mankind, to produce powerful excitements among them, before he can lead them to obey.” He argued, “There must be excitement sufficient to wake up the dormant moral powers.” (ST, Finney).

Music was utilitarian for Finney. “How can I draw people to God through their emotions and tears?" rather than “How can we adore the Triune God?” There is a fundamental difference.

One recent theologian was perplexed by how modern Americans read their Bibles. Instead of asking, “What does the text mean?” we ask, “What does it mean to me?” We have become self-interpreters. We have become fascinated with the way something affects us. And if it doesn’t fit my style, I will find something else.

We have divided the evangelical church into “Traditional vs. Contemporary.” In other words, if you are between the ages of 20 and 45, you are encouraged to visit our contemporary service, and if you are older, please attend our traditional service at 11.

We have segregated the evangelical church into preferences.

Now, there are things preferential in the Church: the color of chairs, curtains, bagels, etc. Nevertheless, we have applied that principle to issues the Bible has already spoken. Worship must be regulated according to God’s holy word. This applies especially to the place our children play in worship.

When the contemporary church asks: “Why do our children suddenly decide to worship elsewhere when they are older instead of mom and dad’s church?” The answer is that we have segregated our children for so long that they logically want to be separated from us. They have grown accustomed to worshiping apart from us. We have treated children as if they are a separate corpus. Thus, we have relativized the role of music. Church music is for the whole man. It's for the equipping of the complete man from infancy to the aged.

History is made up of happy major chords and sad minor chords. It is a story of joy and sorrow. Therefore, our music must reflect the vitality and the deep anguish of the Scriptures. Biblical Church music should be reverential, joyful, exuberant, shout-worthy, mournful, lamentable, and war-like. Music dresses us in priestly garments (Eph. 6:10-20).

It ought to shape our way of thinking about everything. Church music ought to appeal to your children and to you. In Psalm 8, God says I have declared my praise from the mouths of infants. You should sing a hymn and then say, “I am more aware of who God is because of what I have just sung.” You should have Psalms 2, 98, and 110 going through your minds as you work from Monday through Friday. They communicate God's plans for his people and his promises to deliver them from evil.

God’s hymns need to take you back to when you were ill, and God rescued you, when a loved one was diagnosed with cancer, and God poured grace and mercy. God’s music needs to take you to his works on your behalf. You need music that elevates the power of God from a magical figure to the magnificent creator of every star and planet, God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There is a distinctness to corporate worship music. In other words, what you sing with God's people on Lord’s Day worship should sound very different than workout or wedding reception music.

In the Temple, Yahweh God made its worship entirely different from anything outside. This was one way God kept Israel separate from the other nations.

Music is not preferential. It is God-rendered. We sing; therefore, we are what God wants us to be.

Randy Booth will be teaching a 4-part series on Marriage on September 13-15.

Friday Evening: 7pm - 7:45pm (15-minute break). 8pm - 8:45pm.

Saturday Morning: 9:30am - 10:15am (15min break) 10:30am - 11:15am

For my Floridian Friends:

VOTE NO ON AMENDMENT 4

https://votenoon4florida.com/

This amendment would allow abortion for any reason at any time in a pregnancy.

Amendment 4 – Not What it Seems – Way Too Extreme Amendment 4 gives abortion clinics a rubber stamp to approve late-term, third trimester abortions. That’s because Amendment 4’s “Health Care Provider(s)” aren’t just doctors but could be any one of dozens of health-intersecting occupations licensed by the state. Even abortion clinic staffe...

Worship is not mainly about what we do before God’s face; it is mainly about what God is doing to and in us. The service of the Lord’s Day is God’s action: He calls us into His presence; He declares our sins forgiven; He speaks His word of comfort, rebuke, and encouragement; He feeds us at His table; and He sends us back into the world.

Of course, at each point, we also respond: When God invites us in, we enter; when He absolves our sins, we praise His grace in His Son; we tremble at His threats and believe His promises; we eat and drink at His banquet; and when He sends us out, we go. But these are responses to God’s action, and depend on the Spirit’s continuing work. We assemble in the first instance because we believe God has promised to do things for us.

-Peter Leithart

Tomorrow we gather for worship and fellowship under the name and banner of the Triune God!

We will be gathering at 9:15 to run through this great Hymn, Psalm 65 'Tis By Thy Strength. We have sung this at one of our Psalm Roars, which you can listen to HERE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp9HtK1xnlg

After worship we will gather for our fellowship meal. Please stay and enjoy a wonderful meal.

If you cannot make it to worship because of illness or some other providential hindrance, please follow along with our worship via Providence's YOUTUBE page. Take a look at that page HERE https://www.youtube.com/

HERE is our Order of Worship. We start worship at 9:30am. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/iwzk86oth7il81ljdumcg/August-25th-2024.pdf?rlkey=e2gvxxt0gb8y349nbn4i46dyr&st=ikhm5fxa&dl=0

God bless,

Pastor Stout

August 25th 2024.pdf Shared with Dropbox

Music reflects the culture of a church. The worship environment determines how we think about everything outside the Church. Music, therefore, has a preeminent role in the politics of the Church. Whether for good or ill, what you sing establishes the tone/mood of worship. We are conveying something when we sing. Music in worship is not just a necessary prequel to get to the real deal; music is part of the real deal.

We might say, “Music is a sung sermon.” When people sing in the Bible, they are glorifying speech. That’s why the Apostle says that we are to encourage one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We are to preach to one another by blessing their ears with glorified language. When we sing unto the Lord, we glorify our environment, speaking words of life by declaring what God has done and is doing in our midst.

When we sing God’s songs, we are partaking in the joy of the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Our music reflects who we are as a people and who we worship as a Church. Ask me what we believe and what my politics are, and I will tell you what we sing.

34th Wine and Psalm-Roar at Providence Church (CREC) in Pensacola,FL

Location: 3301 E. Johnson Avenue, Pensacola, Fl
Time: September 7th @ 5 PM

Tis By Thy Strength Providence Church Pensacola. 33rd Wine and Psalm Roar.

Mark your calendars for September 7th at 5PM @3301 E. Johnson Avenue for our 34th Wine and Psalm-Roar at Providence Church (CREC) in Pensacola,FL.

Protect Me From the Wicked One Providence Church Pensacola. 33rd Wine and Psalm Roar

Join us at 9:15am this Sunday to practice our closing hymn:

Tis By Thy Strength Providence Church Pensacola. 33rd Wine and Psalm Roar.

We are honored to have Pastor Randy Booth deliver four lectures (+Q&A) on marriage for our Pentecost Lecture Series. The first two lectures will be on Friday (Sept. 13th), and the other two will be on Saturday ( Sept. 14th). Pastor Booth will also preach at Providence Church on Sunday.

A Place of Loving Communion

Theology is the study of what God thinks and what He thinks about everything. Our subject for this conference is “marriage.” It is critical that we have a sound biblical theology of marriage since ideas have consequences. Therefore, a correct theology of marriage will lead to sound and fruitful marriages.

Where: At Trinitas Christian School

Friday Evening: 7pm - 7:45pm (15 minute break). 8pm - 8:45pm.

Saturday Morning: 9:30am - 10:15am (15min break) 10:30am - 11:15am

Greetings everyone... Here is our order of worship for tomorrow.

August 11th 2024.pdf Shared with Dropbox

The practice of weekly communion with actual bread and actual wine promotes healthy sociology, anthropology, and economy.

Sociology because it creates patterns and rhythms for community tables. Cultures are strengthened by weekly engagement around the table. A family that eats together stays together.

Anthropology because we see the humanity of Christ displayed in actual elements rather than imitations. There is no spiritual Jesus appearing, but by the Spirit, we commune with the Ascended Messiah.

And economy because bread and wine are not created ex nihilo but undergo a process of maturation. There is a liturgical work that takes place for grain to become bread and for grapes to become wine.

There is probably no greater decision a father can make than to find a church that treasures Christian values/virtues, lives in joyful fellowship, and attends to faithful worship. Everything else is secondary to that pursuit.

Dear Teacher,

As a new school year begins, I want to ask God's blessings and favor on you who instruct, whether in the classroom or at home. Perhaps a good exhortation may come from the lips of our rotund friend, G.K. Chesterton, who once wrote: “When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”

Teaching is a spiritual exercise. It is not a dispensing machine of facts. Teaching is a deeply emotional and intellectual exercise. You are not only helping the formation of other humans, but you are shaping your own.

In instructing, one faces the many duties of confronting, challenging, restoring, and rebuilding oneself and pupils. In many situations, gratitude seems as distant as possible from reality. But in such scenarios, you must contemplate the engaging and spiritually charged journey of passing wisdom to another image-bearer.

Remember to give thanks through every tear and laughter. When gratitude is forgotten, education suffers from the misery of idolatry, for idolatry entails forgetting the Creator and his gifts.

Seek gratitude after the good and hard days. Embrace gratitude as a caffeinated arrow of grace in your life. Teach. Give thanks. And persevere. The Lord be with you.

Prompte et Sincere,

Pastor Uriesou Brito

Since this interview, I have traveled to various ponds in the southern part of the U.S. and crossed the pond into Europe, so I am thankful that it is now available on Canon+

Doug Wilson carefully lays out the classic Reformed position on Romans 11, and I try to distinguish myself a bit from both classic Reformational eschatology and the preterist interpretation, though I find reasonableness in both.

Here are three main principles that I am working with in this interview:

a) The Hebrew Scriptures function as the hermeneutical means of reading and understanding the entire New Testament. Romans and Ephesians cannot cohere without the Old Testament.

b) The danger of those scapegoating social ills on the Jewish people is a pastoral problem that requires attention and firm admonition in our churches. These pursuits are not mere urges into historical curiosities but attempts at grasping the tree before time and seeking refuge in false explanations.

c) Preterism does not answer the Jewish question in every instance but provides some groundwork for thinking about Romans 9. Creation still groans in anticipation of the return of the true Israel, Jesus Christ.

The Promise Made To The Jews | Uri Brito | Canon+ When we raise the question of the relationship of Israel to the church, we immediately find ourselves in turbulent waters. In North America, the most common form of evangelicalism is is dispensational, which holds that Jews continue to occupy a significant place in prophecy. Some dispensationalists....

Here is our order of worship for tomorrow, the 4th of August.

August 4th 2024.pdf Shared with Dropbox

LIVE!

Evangelical Leaders EXPOSED: Orthodoxy Is Not Enough w/Uri Brito https://www.patreon.com/ReformationRedPillOn this week's episode of RRP, Joshua Haymes, and Pastor Uri Brito discuss the controversy around Megan Basham nami...

Come and join us!

Christians come into worship to inhabit time. When we forsake worship, we lose track of time; we live in a foreign time zone. But when we come into worship, we come into heavenly time; a time when the Church communes with the king of time, Jesus Christ. Worship allows everyone to be in the same rhythm, marching with the beat of the liturgy.

The pre-resurrection church was in the dark. They couldn’t read the time accurately, and everyone’s clocks were set according to their own schemes. The false teachers drew us away from real-time. They perverted the rules of time. They made up time and forsook the time of the Torah and the prophets.

But the resurrection of Jesus gave us uncorrupted time; without perversion. The Church walked in accordance with the time of heaven.

She has since been feasting since AD 33 with gusto! And as long as she communes with Jesus and continues in this long-time-tested tradition of gathering and lifting their voices, she won’t lose track of time.

The Church is a feast-factory; she produces clocks for a world gone mad; a world lost in sadness that arranges life according to her own time-zone. The world has no sense of time, so she makes her own time. But God has ordained one time, one day, to come as one.

While the world fabricates parties to make sense of time, the church parties on since that glorious day when time saw a stone rolled away and a resurrected Lord triumph over the gates of hell.
Time is on our side. And therefore, let us join the feast! Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!

Kuyperian Commentary is delighted to publish this lengthy but fascinating piece by Dr. Jason Garwood on I Corinthians 11. It is well-researched and carefully articulated. This will be a significant contribution to the modern-day debate on head coverings.

https://kuyperian.com/paul-the-head-covering-an-alternative-interpretation/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2EG32bl6wsUvMx7VK6BfsqcbsoveHIcPDPBayU5lv9YISggturSlbjfEQ_aem__jpzzcBn2WTq9-qbbhAx2g

Paul & the Head Covering: An Alternative Interpretation - Kuyperian Commentary By Rev. Dr. Jason M. Garwood 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 Introduction          The broader challenge of interpreting 1 Corinthians stems from the fact that Paul sorts out a seemingly unending list of problems and we are privileged to hear (read) only one side of the conversation. Paul’s First le...

Another great week at Jubilate Deo Summer Music Camp has begun with 350 young singers nationwide! The CREC continues to build and form the future generation of Psalm singers!

Here is our Order of Worship for tomorrow.

June 23rd 2024.pdf Shared with Dropbox

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. -Flannery O'Connor

After many months, we are pleased to introduce the new website for the CREC:

Home - Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches The Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches is a growing body of congregations spanning much of the world, including the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Central Europe and Southern Asia.

Pastor Steve Wilkins and Mr. Jarrod Richey from Church of the Redeemer in Monroe, LA are our guests. We discuss the place of the arts in modern culture, especially within the Church.

Steve Wilkins is the President of the RSA Board of Governors. Jarrod Richey is Academic Dean of RSA and Board member.
Students can pursue a one —or two-year Arts certificate at the Redeemer School of the Arts (RSA) in Music, Visual arts, or Culinary Arts. Our inaugural class will begin this Fall 2024. Find out more at RSALA.org.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/uriesou-tenorio-brito/episodes/Season-5--Episode-9-Redeemer-School-of-the-Arts-with-Steve-Wilkins-and-Jarrod-Richey-e2l439e

Season 5, Episode 9: Redeemer School of the Arts with Steve Wilkins and Jarrod Richey by The Perspectivalist Our guests ar Pastor Steve Wilkins and Mr. Jarrod Richey from Church of the Redeemer in Monroe, LA. We discuss the place of the arts in modern culture, especially within the Church. Steve Wilkins is the President of the RSA Board of Governors. Jarrod Richey is Academic Dean of RSA and Board member.....

Here is our Order of Worship for today. Broadcast starts at 9:30am.

June 16th 2024.pdf Shared with Dropbox