The Reformation Project: Theses 21-30

21. The presence or absence of excitement or other emotions provides no evidence regarding whether a work of the Spirit of God is taking place.

22. In whatever style of worship churches employ, they must always use the Bible as their guide.

23. The use or non-use of liturgical forms neither quenches nor indicates the movement of the Spirit of God.  The clearest evidence of the Spirit’s presence and work is the clear proclamation of Jesus as Lord.

24. While joy and celebration are certainly one aspect of the Christian life and Christian ministry, the Bible confronts us realistically with God’s presence and providence through every type of circumstance of life.  The notion that all worship leads to celebration should be shunned along with superficial forms of praise and gladness, even if a Christian can maintain joy in the Lord in hard circumstances.

25. In preaching the Word of God, the minister has a responsibility not only to expound biblical truth faithfully, but also to model the proper manner of reading and interpreting Scripture.

26. Rightly dividing the Word of Truth requires a proper understanding of the Covenant of Works and of the Covenant of Grace, as found in Scripture, seeing Christ as the ultimate fulfillment of both.

27. Preaching and teaching the Bible requires expounding its themes in proper context.  The Bible must never be used as a kind of book of quotations used to provide ancillary support to the things that we wish to talk about.

28. Belief in the authoritativeness and accuracy of Scripture does not require viewing it as a technical manual on every subject that it addresses. 

29. The bumper sticker maxim that “Jesus is the answer” is not true unless the correct questions are being asked.  The minister has an obligation to point his listeners toward concerns for which the church has unique importance, principally the proclamation of the Gospel.

30. Worship services and sermons that focus most of their attention on what we are doing, and that have as their goals to get congregants to do something, rather than to believe something, are inherently legalistic, even if such legalism takes a softer form than that sometimes promoted in churches of a prior generation.