Hello, welcome to Polity Matters. My name's Ben Ratliff, and I'm joined by Jared Nelson and Scott Edberg. But uh while you may think it's the last time we're together, it's not. Uh though we are in BCO 63, we are not through. We refuse uh to go into the night. We will return. Uh, but for now we're back to talk about the last chapter of the Book of Church Order. And uh I'm curious where where the guys are at. I mean, last time we checked in about being nearly done with the book, you guys just talked about the fact that we could do more. But you know, originally we set out to do a podcast on the BCO, and while we've veered in other directions, we are finishing what we set out to do. This is the end. Do you feel nostalgic in the least?

SPEAKER_02 0:51

I didn't know if we'd actually be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

I don't I don't know if that was our best work. I think we should just go back to chapter one and just kill me, find another co-host.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

It's it's like when you finish preaching a sermon series on a book and you you get to the end and you feel like you're ready to preach a sermon series on that book. Yeah. This was just a practice around everybody. Let's let's do it for real.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Let's start Genesis over again.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Well, you know, I think generally speaking, the book has gone in the end in a direction that a lot of people don't expect it to go. You think about the Blue Binder, the Book of Church Order, you think a lot about form of government and rules for discipline. Between me and y'all and everybody who's listening, I have really enjoyed the directory for worship. It's probably been my favorite section for us to spend time in, not least of which is because it's been you know extremely devotional in many respects, but it's also kind of ends on an encouraging note. The rules for discipline was almost depressing in at points. Uh but but here we are ending in in a good place talking about Christian life in the home. So uh I mean before we jump in, is there any any general comments y'all want to give? Uh Jared, chapter 62 was not in is on the OPC one, and it was changed a little bit from Westminster's directory. Do you are there any thoughts on on the originals of of this content?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yes, it does not exist. ARP doesn't have it, OPC doesn't have it. The PCA has a particular heart, apparently, for Christian life in the home, uh for family worship. And so this maybe is one of our distinctives.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

You heard it here first, people. The PCA cares about what goes on in

BCO 63-1

SPEAKER_01 2:24

your home. All right. Well, chapter 63, Christian Life in the Home, Section One, in addition to public worship, it is the duty of each person in secret and of every family in private to worship God. Now, here's the question Is this just talking about a generic your whole life is worship, and so you should just live your whole life in worship, or is this talking about particular things that you ought to do in secret and in private with your family? Go.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

No, this is not just everything is worship. If everything is worship, nothing is worship. That's right. Um this is you might think of three different areas in which you may have uh worship occur, corporate, which we all know in coming together as a church. Uh many will think of, well, then I also have my private devotional, you know, I have my devotional book or my reading with my Instagram coffee and and Bible recombination in the morning. Or maybe you jarred. Yeah. Um, but there's a third category that is family, uh, those in your home that has been uh uh a subject for uh reflection. It does go all the way back to Westminster. They just didn't put it in their directory for public worship, but they did talk about uh the need for this and even discipline threatened for those who rejected it completely. Uh those three areas corporate, family, and uh private, all as having something of a time that set aside that looks different than you just taking a walk and I'm um worshiping among nature or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Collecting seashells by the sea for baptism. All right. Well, that that first sentence is uh straightforward and simple. Uh it is it's the duty of us to do these things. And then uh section two deals with uh this secret uh worship, and then the rest of the chapter will deal with things in the family. So let's let's uh talk about

BCO 63-2

SPEAKER_01 4:04

our personal private things first. 63, two secret worship is most plainly enjoined by our Lord. In this duty, everyone apart should spend time in prayer, reading the scriptures, holy meditation, and serious self-examination. The many advantages arising from a conscientious performance of these duties are best known to those who are found in the faithful discharge of them. So here's the things you should do, and you will know it's good for you when you do it well, basically. So maybe we want to break these apart and talk about them. Uh, where do you guys want to go?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Perhaps when you're thinking of secret, you you might think that you're doing something wholly unique or new, but as you look through um this list, you see that it is basically emulating what you do corporately together on Sunday. And I think that's a helpful way to think through how worship should look, both in your home, as we'll see probably as we go through these sections, but also privately that you're doing some of the same sorts of things. It's good to pray for the needs of others, but your prayer life should include prayers of adoration and confession and supplication and so forth. And so we should have a well-rounded private worship, and some seasons that's better for us, some seasons it's worse. But it looks a lot like what we see um in church on Sunday, at least with the elements, except privatized in the home. Maybe outside of the sacraments themselves, but the forms.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah, I wonder if you guys have had any resources or any helps of encouraging this in your own personal life. So how do you how does this look in your own in your own life and do you use any resources?

SPEAKER_02 5:39

The best resource for at least Bible reading is the Navigator's Bible study plan. You do five lessons a week and then two are makeup. And so I like it because it allows me the liberty to miss and not feel guilty. Often reading plans start and die by getting behind, basically. You get into Leviticus and you start getting days behind, and then you have instead of four chapters of Leviticus to read, you have 20 chapters. And so having a reading plan that's flexible, like the Navigator's reading plan, where it's only five days a week, and then Saturday and Sunday are makeups. I find that to be an indispensable way. I've done all sorts of reading plans, but that one has been the most beneficial to me.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah. If you Google Bible reading plan generator, there's a website where you can go and there's a lot of customization you can do and create your own that suits your needs. But I think in addition to scripture reading, you know, this is a good outline. Prayer, reading the scriptures, meditation, and examination. Prayer, of course, there's prayer books out there, but I'm sure we've talked about them at some point on the show. You know, Valley Vision is one of my go-to's, right? It's it's been a kind of a steady use in my rotation. Um, it it just a good book of forms like that will give you your own prayer vocabulary that you can kind of hold on to and that will see you through seasons and times. So finding something's helpful. Uh in terms of meditation, I've I've been a big fan of these books recently put out by Stephen Yule from Reformation Heritage. I was about to show it to the camera, but we're not recording anything. Anyway, it's the first one's called The Heart Taken Up, and he's gonna have uh four total out of Reformation Heritage that'll cover the whole year. So you'll it's four books, 90 days each to cover um 12 months, and uh really, really helpful. He writes like a Puritan, he pulls a quote from each one. So that that is not a replacement like for Bible reading, but it is really helpful for meditation if you're looking on something just to direct you in a particular direction.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

I could go on and on, but Jared, you jump in.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Yeah, I I really like uh a guy that we interviewed early on, Jonathan Gibson. He has the daily liturgy, Be Thou My Vision is probably the best one to do, and it just has 31 days, and so you can cycle through them and actually has everything that's in corporate worship in it. So some sort of call to prayer, some hymns that you can sing, readings, a catechism, and he has a couple more in that series, but you can also get them on audiobook, and then you can have him in his uh Irish accent read them to you. That's my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

All I remember about Johnny was hearing him speak at Twin Lakes one year and he talked about golf a lot. He kept talking about the power of God. I just it would it was so confusing. I didn't know that God golfed, but anyway. Anything else there you guys want to uh suggest or encourage folks to consider? Really finding something you'll do. It's it's Ralph Davis's old line. The best Bible translation is is the one you'll read. So something you'll put to use is good. Yeah. That last sentence is helpful. The many advantages arising from a conscientious performance of these duties are best known to those who are found in the faithful discharge of them. It's kind of like you know, you can tell people it's good, but you really you really won't know until you make use of it yourself. And I think all of us would say it's that's certainly true, and everybody should make use of secret uh personal worship in and regular devotions. Y'all good?

BCO 63-3

SPEAKER_01 8:57

633, getting into the matters related to the family uh at large. Family worship, which should be observed by every family, consists in prayer, reading the scriptures, and singing praises, or in some briefer form of outspoken recognition of God. Uh so there should be something every day that families are doing uh that is related to the prayers, scriptures, and singing. Maybe uh you guys want to talk about your own practices? I mean, this pretty well sums up ours. We we read first, we we pray, and then we read a chapter every day out of the Bible, and we used uh Joel Beake's uh family worship Bible guide, which has a couple of observations on every chapter of the Bible. That's super helpful. And then we usually will go through different prayer requests, and you know, there's six of us, and so we um, you know, usually two or three or four people want to pray about something, and so we all pray a little bit, and then we sing a verse of a hymn or doxology or something, and so really simple, brief, you know, it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And so I really appreciate this section for that reason that it's just kind of straightforward and simple.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Yeah, um, it should not be an hour. That's right. It should not be super long. We we don't do our um family worship all at once, it's kind of littered in its parts throughout the day. And so that just seems to be what works for us. I mean, we pray together at every meal. Before bed, we take prayer requests and we pray with our boys. We sing before bed, and we often read the scriptures together before bed or or kind of switch it up depending on the season. But it's not like a structured 30 minutes or 40 minutes at the dinner table. We kind of fit the elements throughout our lives as we have time, and we find that near bedtime is a great time to pray and sing together, and so we do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yeah, I'll give a a shout out to uh Jason Hoopoulos, who was really helpful for me in thinking through this. First, he had a book that was called A Neglected Grace. Buy that. If you have never done family worship before, buy it and read it. He is the only person I've ever heard talk about this after he was done talking about it. I didn't feel guilty for what I don't do. I felt excited for what I could do. And he talks about a story once. Like if you find a talk where he's talking about this, or he and his wife did not do this, and then we're at a house with an elder who invited them to their time in which he read scripture, prayed, and then sang the doxology, doxology at the end. And then eight minutes later, they're like, wait, it can be that simple. And so that's basically been our structure too is we will do times in which we read scripture. And before I had like the family worship Bible guide and tried to ask questions and it would not go well. And now I'm just like, I'm just gonna read it. And if there's things that they want to talk about, they'll talk about it. We talk more about it now than I did when I had prepared questions. Because we'll just read through it and then somebody like, what does that mean? And I let them ask the questions and we'll talk about it. Or we we just read a scripture and at the end we're like, all right, let's pray. You know, it's like there's nothing that they're wanting to talk about. So we basically just read read scripture, we we'll read a chapter of scripture, pray, and then uh if we have some time to sing or something like that, we can do that. But a lot of times you can just do like the doxology at the end or uh not sing. Uh we're not uh I don't think it's necessarily uh you have to do that.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

One of the things that um Randy Thompson, when that his family did, was they had like a family psalm, and every day as a family they sing a psalm together, the same psalm. And now his kids are all grown up, and Randy has grandkids, and when they come together for Thanksgiving or something like it, they still ask to sing that psalm together. And so it's like a family tradition, and that's a that that encouraged me just that story to find a select few songs and have the family just memorize them and love them, and the kids will love them. I my kids ask me to sing Psalm 103C just about every day of their lives. I'm not great at singing, but they they love to sing it with me. And so you you start to create habits and desires and you create knowledge even um through some of those

BCO 63-4

SPEAKER_02 13:07

habits.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

634 parents should instruct their children in the Word of God and the principles of our holy religion. The reading of devotional literature should be encouraged and every proper opportunity should be embraced for religious instruction. And we we really could just tack this on to what we've just talked about in many respects. We're gonna get into it later on, uh, about religious education and things. I suppose it's not a bad time to bring it up. But uh, you know, your children are learning a lot from the world, regardless of where they're in school, uh regardless of where they're being educated, and so as much as you can supplement their own remaining corruption and the temptations of the world and what it has to offer, you know, the better you'll be. And so it's is this is good pious advice, if we can call it that, right? Reading a devotional literature should be encouraged at every opportunity for your families.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

I would just say the best devotional literature is the word of God. And so I don't know, sometimes this can feel intimidating. And I just think people just need to be encouraged, read the Bible and pray, and then some of this will naturally start flowing as you're like, well, as we're reading through this, I don't understand Isaiah. Okay, well, let's let's get a devotional that helps us with that, or something like that. You know, again, the family uh worship Bible guide can be helpful if you need to have something to go along with it that you want to read together. But I think you just start with the word of God and then start adding things once it makes sense.

BCO 63-5

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Cool. 635. Parents should set an example of piety and consistent living before the family. Unnecessary private visits on the Lord's Day and indulgence in practices injurious to the spiritual life of the family should be avoided. First sentence, straightforward, makes sense. Be a godly example to your kids and your family. What what's what are they talking about when they say unnecessary private visits on the Lord's Day?

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Well, let's start with the first sentence. I think it should be noted that what you want your children's piety to be will probably not rise higher than what you've shown them. So if you're like I want my kids to weekly do family devotionals when they uh are get married, and you never did that, don't expect them to do that. I want my kids to, you know, have a time they set aside for prayer and uh reading the Bible and you never do that, don't expect them to rise higher than the example that you've shown them. So I think that's an important part of it is just modeling that. Now uh Scott has some really good thoughts on what unnecessary private visits mean.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Warren Smith did not comment on this section of the VCS though it's gotta just be uh necessary business and and movements and things on the Lord's Day so that you can give the data what what it's intended to be, right? Because it's gotta go along with indulgence and practices injurious to the spiritual life of the family, right? So don't schedule so much. You're too busy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Yeah, sometimes we can be very busy on the Lord's Day, and it's sometimes better to slow down a little, even with good things like visiting church family or having fellowship meals in people's homes. Some Sundays as a pastor can be over laborious for me and my family, um just because of the nature of my family, and and so I think that's helpful for me. Um, because everything seems like the ministry on the Lord's Day, and so it's easy to say, Well, I'm doing the Lord's work, and so you just keep adding, and then you've not actually stopped to rest in the Lord on that day.

BCO 63-6

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Last paragraph here, 636. In the supreme task of religious education, parents should cooperate with the church by setting their children an example in regular and punctual attendance upon the sessions of the church school and the services of the sanctuary by assisting them in the preparation of their lessons and by leading them in the consistent application of the teachings of the gospel in their daily activities.

unknown 16:40

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

So you gotta help your kids a quality line there at the end. Man, yeah, you gotta help your kids with their Sunday school homework.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Do you guys have Sunday school homework for them?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

We have some, but it's yeah, yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

There's not much.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Ours is all uh children's catechism, memory work, and Bible verses, memory work, and hymns.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

You have to memorize some hymns for Sunday school, but yeah, memorizing catechism questions and Bible verses, that would be that would be good work on that. But yeah, it would be nice for parents to also be setting an example and going to Sunday school or other times to learn. So good advice.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

It shows also that the supreme task for religious education starts with the parents with the church, and so it it's not a ministry where we just send our kids to Sunday school, and that's sufficient for their maturity and growth in the Lord. There is something that is of great responsibility to the parents to actually rear their children well in the Lord, so they can't just off uh offset or give away that responsibility to a youth director or a uh children's coordinator or something like that. It's something that the parents they do what they are called to do, which is rear their children in the nurture admonition of the Lord, and the congregation is called then to come alongside and help the congreg uh help that family and one another to grow as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

I remember 15 years ago reading this book about it was basically about what makes religion sticky for the children and passing it along to the next generation. And one of the things they looked at was just how many Mormon children stay within the Mormon church and what that's attributable to. And one of the things is they have this thing called seminary for their kids. They'll they'll start like an hour in the morning, sometimes during the week, and have religious education. And just the fact that, you know, as confessional churches, we have resources to do things that are on that level to actually teach them right doctrine rather than what they're being taught in the Mormon church. And one of the biggest elements of it was religious education and the the church teaching them right doctrine. And so this is really important for our next generation.

IT IS OVER

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Well guys, we did it.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Schedule a day of Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

It's over. With an ice cream social, certainly. I do want to apologize to listeners that the ice cream social gag kind of lost lost its speed there in the last, I don't know, six months or so. But just with with no one providing an answer to our desires, it just kind of fizzled out.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

We had one person offer.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

We did. We did. Well, that's it on 63. Unless you guys have anything else you want to comment on anything we missed or that we need to highlight.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Go read Jason Holopoulos' book. Yeah, for real.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Yeah. I think before I I I don't I don't think it's inappropriate for us to say it here. We've we've completed the Book of Church Order. Say a big thank you to our listeners and folks who have benefited from the podcast. We uh I've been encouraged over the last uh what over two years, two and a half years, whatever it's been now. Um I know this has been helpful for a lot of you guys. It's been helpful for me personally. Uh and um I'm grateful for my co-hosts and their work on this project. And we we're not done, but we we are also not in the business of podcasting. So while we may be around seasonally after this, we probably uh will dial it back a little bit uh from week to week. We'll let you know once we've decided exactly what this will what this will be in the future. We're not leaving uh the space altogether, but we are all three ministers in the PCA and have lots of work to do, and uh we may start shifting our time around a little bit. Anyway, we'll let you know. We'll keep you up to date. And uh big big thanks to our supporters who have helped keep the show running and have contributed to swag and just general encouragement over the last couple years. We'll uh we'll certainly keep you all up to date. You'll know probably before anybody else knows what what we're up to. So uh you guys have anything you want to add? We're good. Let's uh who should it be? I don't know who it should be. I don't know. Maybe maybe we'll go a little, as Fred Greco would say. This podcast is over. Thank y'all for joining us. Stay tuned for what's coming next. We we will certainly be putting out more content at some point. So make sure you stay subscribed, follow us on social media, support us uh down below if if that would be helpful for you in terms of getting access to a chat group and um uh you know, swag uh from GA to G A, things like that. Uh I think that's all I've got to say. So until next time, say goodbye, gentlemen. Goodbye. Y'all take care of