August 18, 2023
It's been such an encouragement to see all the students back on our campus again this week! From what I can tell, the Lord has been gracious to give a wonderful start to the new school year at CCS.
It's been great to see all the new faces, and to see the 9th and 10th grade students in the new Upper School building! If you haven't seen the new building yet, make a point to do so.
As you'll see just below, our Head of School Cathy Haynie was recently awarded the Joe Shepherd Memorial Service Award as the MAIS outstanding administrator of the year. It's a great honor and well-deserved. If you see Cathy, congratulate her!
Thank you for praying for the administrators, teachers, and students. As you pray, thank God for using this ministry to our covenant children and to our community!
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Please pray for our Officer Training class that will begin this coming Wednesday. We have five men going through the class: John Neiswinger and Andy Rowan were nominated for elder, and Nathanael Baugus, Max Smith, and Steve Tackitt were nominated for deacon. Pray that the Lord would help me as I teach, and would lead these men and our Session to discern whether the Lord is calling them to serve as officers of POPC.
The class will run through early November, and then these men will meet with our Session's Officer Candidates Committee, which will make its recommendation to the Session. The Session will approve those men who are eligible to stand for election by the congregation, and you will have an opportunity to cast your vote the second Sunday in January for those men you believe God is calling to be elders and deacons here.
There are few things as important in the life of a church as nominating and electing godly and qualified men to the offices of elder and deacon. So be in earnest prayer for the Lord's call to be made evident!
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I'd also ask your prayers for my brothers and me. Though he is only 71 years old, my father's dementia has increasingly gotten worse over the past several years, and the past two months it has taken a significant downward turn. It appears that we are going to need to move him into an assisted living or memory care facility next week, and we need wisdom to know whether we should find a place in Hot Springs (where he currently lives near one of my brothers) or here in the Jackson metro area, and wisdom to navigate the Medicare/Medicaid universe while juggling our responsibilities as husbands, fathers, and workers. So many of you have walked the road we're about to walk, so I know that we won't be walking it alone. It's hard to watch the man who raised me and poured so much into me decline into this condition. But we trust that the Lord is sovereign even over this form of suffering, and we want to be faithful as sons to honor him in the autumn and winter of his life. Please pray for us.
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Don't forget that we're celebrating the Lord's Supper this coming Sunday! These words from J. I. Packer's book Concise Theology helpfully remind us some basic truths about the sacrament of communion: "The Lord’s Supper is an act of worship taking the form of a ceremonial meal, in which Christ’s servants share bread and wine in memory of their crucified Lord and in celebration of the new covenant relationship with God through Christ’s death. At the time of the Reformation, questions about the nature of Christ’s presence in the Supper and the relation of the rite to his atoning death were centers of stormy controversy.
"On the first question, the Roman Catholic church affirmed (as it still affirms) transubstantiation, defined by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Transubstantiation means that the substance of the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the substance of Christ’s body and blood so that they are no longer bread and wine, though they appear to be. Luther modified this, affirming what was later called “consubstantiation” (a term that Luther did not favor), namely, that Christ’s body and blood come to be present in, with, and under the form of the bread and wine, which thus becomes more than bread and wine though not less. The Eastern Orthodox churches and some Anglicans say much the same. Zwingli denied that the glorified Christ, now in heaven, is present in any way that the words bodily, physically, or locally would fit. Calvin held that though the bread and wine remained unchanged (he agreed with Zwingli that the is of “this is My body…My blood” means “represents,” not “constitutes”), Christ through the Spirit grants worshippers true enjoyment of his personal presence, drawing them into fellowship with himself in heaven (Heb. 12:22-24) in a way that is glorious and very real, though indescribable.
"On the second question, all the Reformers insisted that at the table we give thanks to Christ for his finished and accepted work of atonement, rather than repeat, renew, reoffer, re-present, or reactivate it, as the Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass affirms. The prescribed ritual of the Supper has three levels of meaning for participants. First, it has a past reference to Christ’s death which we remember. Second, it has a present reference to our corporate feeding on him by faith, with implications for how we treat our fellow believers (I Cor. 11:20-22). Third, it has a future reference as we look ahead to Christ’s return and are encouraged by the thought of it. Preliminary self-examination, to make sure one’s frame of mind is as it should be, is advised (I Cor. 11:28), and the wisdom of the advice is obvious.”