October 22, 2026
Please continue to pray about giving or pledging to give to our Sanctuary Renovation Fund. That fund currently has $645,600 in it, which means we are only $455,400 away from being able to start the project (that would bring us to $1.125 million, which is 75% of the estimated cost of $1.5 million). We have pledges for another $108,000 over this year and next year, which is greatly encouraging! If you haven’t yet made a pledge, or given to the fund, please prayerfully consider doing so—though as we have said repeatedly, this giving should be over and above your giving to our general fund.
If you desire to know more about how to give non-cash assets, especially if you are above the age of 70 1/2, the PCA Foundation can help advise you.
Let’s be praying that the Lord would raise the needed funds soon!
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Don’t forget that this coming Lord's Day evening at 5:30 p.m. we will be gathering with the churches of the Presbytery of the Mississippi Valley for a Reformation Day service at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson. The guest preacher will be Dr. David Gilbert, the Senior Pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church in Douglasville, Georgia, and an adjunct professor of preaching at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
There will be a special children's Reformation program for four-year-olds to 3rd graders, and members of our choir will be joining the FPC choir to lead us in singing. It's always a rich joy to sing and hear God's word together, so make plans to end your Sabbath day with with all the saints of our Presbytery!
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Unfortunately, I won’t be able to be there Sunday night, because I will be preaching for Pastor Dean Williams (our former Associate Pastor of Missions and Outreach) at Christ Presbyterian Church in Georgetown, Texax (outside of Austin). My theme will be the priesthood of all believers, one of the oft-forgotten truths that the Reformers recovered from the darkness of Romanism. The Bible teaches us that because Jesus is our great high priest, every believer is a priest in Him (e.g., 1 Peter 2:4-10). As priests,
we have direct access to God through Christ’s mediation, and need no other human priest to mediate for us;
we have been given gifts to serve the people of God, and whatever calling(s) God has for us in the world, we can and must do these for His glory as well;
we are to be on mission by the Spirit’s power, bringing the gospel to the world no matter what it might cost us.
we have the right and responsibility to know God’s word and to make it known.
The doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is related to the twin Reformation emphasis on salvation and worship. This foundational period in church (and world) history restored to the church both the gospel of justification by free grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and the purity of worship. In his book On the Necessity of Reforming the Church, John Calvin writes, "If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity: that is, a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained."
We tend to forget about the reformation of worship that took place in the 16th century. Romanism was filled with superstition, ceremonies, idolatry, and additions and subtractions from biblical worship. The Reformers (particularly Calvin and his followers) sought to restore the Bible to its rightful place, both in terms of establishing the how of worship (what elements are allowable in corporate worship)—answer: only those that God has commanded in His Word—and in terms of the priority of preaching in worship. If the gospel preached is God's primary ordained means of saving sinners and growing them up in Christ-likeness, then worship must be filled with the word of God.
But the retrieval of a pure gospel was the most transformational result of the Reformation. God brought back to light the truths of sin, sovereign election, justification by faith alone, assurance of salvation, and the necessity of holiness as the fruit of repentance. The recognition that sinners are not justified by the sacraments, by buying indulgences, or by works of any kind, but only by the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, credited to our accounts through faith alone, freed men and women and boys and girls to serve God in Christ with joy and confidence.
Both of these reformations inform our priesthood: because God has sovereignly and graciously made us priests in Christ, we come directly to the throne of grace through Christ to worship God according to His word, with reverence and gratitude, rejoicing with awe.
Let us give thanks to God for restoring the true gospel to the church, and let us be diligent to continue to exercise our priesthood boldly on the Lord’s day and the other six days of every week!