Calvin's company of pastors - Tim Keller - Video

Summary notes of talk by Martyn Thompson

It takes more than preaching to form a Christian!

The fastest way to grow your church is good preaching. Revivalism is big in evangelicalism being big on conversions. Calvin shows just having a great experience under a great preacher is not enough to form someone, it takes a whole church.

Everything plus preaching changes lives. Meeting together, “doing life”

He democratized monastic practices

He took six practices of the monks and brought them in the church for everyone;

1. Extensive bible exposition. Medieval church people didnt sit they stood and just chatted. Calvin added seats to his church and made it like a school house. He would discipline those who would talk. Every day there was a services of the word that would take you through the bible. He would also do lectures more in depth. You were immersed in biblical teaching constantly.

2. Catchetichsis. 5 Services on Sunday 5 services. Including a catechsim course. Before you do lords supper you would do the catchesim. He worked through apostles creed, lords prayer, ten commandments, church and sacrments.

3. Immersion in the Psalms. Benedictans would go through all the psalms every week. Calvin made the hymns psalms. He put the psalms into beautiful metrical french. He made the psalms memorable. The psalms are for the heart. They teach you how to pray. You remember what you read, but you remember what you say better than you read, and you remember better what you sing than what you say.

4. The Lords Supper was prominent in worship and in pastoral/christian formation. It only happened 4 times a year so it wasnt just added to the worship service. There would be a communion season. There was more self examination and renewal.

5. A Daily office. He believes you should pray 5 times a day. Wake up. Brekafast. Work. Dinner. Before you go to bed. He gave example and litrugies for families to use when worshipping.

6. Accountability - They would set aside time to exhort those having issues.

We fall short of this with Just Church and Small Group. You need to be evangelistic ebcause calvin had a state church where people had to come to church.

Do you have an equivalent in your church?

Pastors need more lifetime inservice training.

Every friday the pastors in the area had a public conference for an hour and a half. A pastor would do an exposition in a way that it would be the basis for them to do another sermon. Then a sermon and then another pastor would be picked to respond and others would chime in then finally calvin would chime in. This was open to the public. Then they went into private time. They would then do a more sharp critique of the sermon. They would do pastoral case studies. They would do preaching on an area of teaching. Brotherly critique. They would examine new pastors. 4 times a year they did self evaluation with the lord supper season.