1/ It’s clear to me that many fail to grasp just how small the American reformed church is compared to both other denominations and the general population.
I believe that it's accurate to say that the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is the largest explicitly reformed and...
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2/ ...conservative denomination. Its total membership is approximately 350,000.
That’s big in comparison to the OPC (≈ 33,000).
It’s even bigger in comparison to the CREC (≈ 13,000).
So my denomination, the CREC, is just under 4% the size of the PCA.
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3/ But the liberal PCUSA’s total membership is ≈1,100,000.
So the PCA is only 32% the size of the PCUSA.
The SBC has around 13,500,000 in membership.
So the PCA is about only 3% the size of the SBC.
And, of course, the total population of the States is around 332 mil.
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4/ So the SBC only represents about 4% of the total population of our country.
Point No. 1 - Most reformed denominations represent a percentage of percentage of a percentage of percentage of the population...
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5/ Last week, I mentioned that I knew of a pastor who ripped off Keller’s sermons. I saw lots of comments like “Why Keller? How about a non-woke person to copy.” I replied “Keller because, outside of a small subsection of reformed folks, he is still highly respected.”
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6/ Which brings me to...
Point No. 2 - Most reformed folks don’t seem to realize how strange and foreign their terminology, positions, and culture are to most everyone outside their tiny tiny pond.
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7/ I used to sell mobile phones. I consistently outsold a lot of my co-workers. It wasn’t because I knew more about the product. I could hold my own in product knowledge but many of them knew more about the particulars of the phones than I did.
But...
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8/ ...they loved to use all the technical terminology when describing the various phones capabilities: “This phone has a 1.3 GHz dual core 32-bit CPU” or “ The new camera has 8 MP iSight back-side illuminated sensor and shorts 1080p HD video at 30 frame/s."
This sort of...
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9/ ...language appealed to phone geeks who were in-the-know. It, however, intimidated normal folks. It caused them to think, “I probably should do more research before making a decision.” They’d leave the store and end up buying somewhere else the next day.
I would just say...
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11/ Point No. 3 - Many reformed churches and denominations stay small, not because they are super hardcore, but because they struggle to be relatable to and understood by the people outside their niche of niche subculture.
Jan 30, 2023 · 6:47 PM UTC
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