On October 3, 1983, three theological students attended their first day of classes in the Theological Hall of the Free Presbyterian Church in its North American context. That day marked the beginning of the second year of the training program. Eventually, that ministerial training program became Geneva Reformed Seminary with…
Author: David Mook
Rev. David G. Mook is the minister of Phoenix Free Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Arizona. He serves as clerk of the presbytery of the FPCNA, chairman of the Constitutional Documents Committee, and is an adjunct professor in the field of practical theology at Geneva Reformed Seminary.
The aspects of the revival of Presbyterianism during the Reformation period had emphases in theology and church government. In theology, Presbyterianism returned to its Biblical roots in its emphasis on salvation by grace alone and its rejection of human merit as the guarantor of acceptance with God. In church government,…
For about one thousand years, the vestiges of the system of church government that the apostles of Christ established languished beneath the oppression that the papal religion cultivated in the world. The power of the Roman Catholic clergy, the bishops especially, increasingly drew its authority from the papacy. The reign of…
Historical developments that started while the Apostles were alive began to accelerate with their deaths. The structure of church government on which the apostles agreed, that is, a Presbyterian system in which the people elected elders to conduct the business of the congregations and to stress the interdependency of the…
Debates over the method of church government have absorbed much energy and time. Particularly, those who favor a congregational or independent model of church government have insisted throughout the decades that the New Testament presents no other model, and that if it does, the peculiarities of the apostolic age rendered…