From the Desk of the Elders

On these pages you’ll find some excerpts and extended thoughts on various topics such as church life, theology, biblical living, and much more.

How to Avoid Making a Shipwreck of Your Faith

Early in the foggy, dark morning of February 6, 1865, Captain Thomas Leach brought the sleek and fast Confederate blockade runner Acadia, a 738 ton side wheel steamer, tight along the Texas shore. He had successfully avoided detection by the picket ships of the U.S. Naval blockade and was only hours from completing a successful…

The Nature of True Repentance – Thomas Watson’s Six Ingredients

Puritan Thomas Watson (1620-1686) teaches us the nature of true repentance in his excellent book, The Doctrine of Repentance. This little book is a wealth of practical applied faith and is worth reading more than once. It is written in typical Puritan style with points made as numbered outlines. Despite the Puritan’s reputation for employing…

The Myth of Neutrality and Your Bible

In our post-Christian culture, fairness, equality, tolerance and the inalienable right not to be offended are the chief marks of our day. That is, unless you are a Christian. There is a double standard regarding free speech, tolerance and general equity toward others. As Christians, we receive the hatred of the world and are not…

Does Man Have Free Will? The Doctrine of Total Depravity

There is a debate that runs among some Christian circles about the concept of free will. This debate is one part of the disagreement between people who are Calvinistic in their view of God and salvation, and those who are not. The Calvinist believes in a doctrine called “total depravity”, which teaches that men are…

Why Do Calvinists Evangelize?

July 22, 2013
Scott Head
Blog
1 Comment

Mention that you adhere to the doctrines of grace, or “Calvinism” if you prefer, and you can expect to be questioned about evangelism. Sadly, there is a perception in modern evangelicalism that Calvinism kills evangelism. Many people can’t understand how the two go together. Unfortunately, this question arises from of broad lack of knowledge about…

Are you Baptists, or Calvinists?

Every now and then, people ask us what it means to be a “Reformed Baptist”. They want to understand why we use that adjective, “reformed”, when describing what kind of church we are. That is a very good and important question. Traditionally, in protestant churches, Reformed means that a church holds to the particular doctrines…

Why Our Families Worship Together

When I was a child, my family attended church together. I fondly remember sitting in the pew with my mother and father, my sister and my grandmother, actively engaged in church. Everyone who attended our church was present during the worship service. Somewhere along the way, that changed. Today, a very large number of evangelical…

Why a Confession?

Cornerstone Christian Fellowship is a confessional church, meaning we hold to a particular confession of faith as our basic summary of beliefs. But what is a confession of faith and why is it important? A confession of faith is a document that summarizes a church’s beliefs about the Christian faith. It is easy for a…

What Is A Sermon?

What is a sermon? What is its purpose? What should characterize it? How do you know if your pastor is faithfully doing his job? Not every verbal presentation which comes from the pulpit qualifies as a sermon. As a church-goer, it is vitally important that you know what your pastor should be doing from the…

Christian Men and Spiritual Leadership

A lost concept in many Christian churches is that fathers are to be the spiritual head of their homes. This is one of the consequences of the greater loss of traditional gender roles. Our society works overtime to marginalize the idea of clear gender roles beginning with our children. With every successive generation, the erosion…