So, are you TR (Thoroughly Reformed) or BR (Barely Reformed)?

You know you’re a TR if…

• You first quote the Confession and then say, “Oh yeah, the Bible says this somewhere too.”
• You refuse to vote for Jesus as time magazine’s “Person of the Year” because you don’t want an image of Christ on the front cover.
• You secretly believe that you have to believe in election to be saved.
• You think Puritans are really, really, really, really, REALLY cool.
• While not being a theonomist, you completely understand them.
• While officially affirming the priesthood of all believers, the only people you really trust to interpret Scripture are Calvin and yourself, and you only trust yourself on Thursdays before noon.
• For you, Baptist and stupid are the same word.
• A “Reformed Baptist” and a “square circle” are equally as difficult for you to imagine.
• You wonder what the Holy Spirit was up to between the times of Paul and Calvin.
• You think women belong in the home and not in any pulpit, much less a staff position in large churches.
• At some point in your life you honestly believed that the only people who are saved are you and your buddy who thinks just like you, and then you kind of have to wonder about him because he DOES think just like you.
• You think any church that has more than 200 people is probably apostate.
• You are personally repulsed by Campus Crusade for Christ.
• It is harder for you to keep the Sabbath than it is to fill out your taxes.
• You keep telling yourself that Willow Creek has to be a really bad dream.
• You’ve considered stoning someone.
• You’ve seriously thought about lighting up a cigarette in church.
• You think “that Pope as the Antichrist thing” should never have been taken out of the Confession.
• Saying a blessing before the first round of drinks doesn’t seem strange to you at all.
• Instead of being concerned for Amy Grant when she went secular, you actually considered for the first time that she might be a Christian. Only for a second, though.
• Your favorite Bible is your “Authorized Bahnsen Version.”
• You’re convinced everyone in your Presbytery is secretly a 33rd degree Mason.
• You know the Apocrypha doesn’t belong in the canon, but you wonder sometimes whether we should add Van Til’s “The Defense of the Faith.”
• You pray daily for God to release His judgment on para-church ministries.
• You think no true evangelism has been done without at least 3 lengthy quotes from the Confession.
• You’ve thought that if you were a dispensationalist, you would think the clearest proof of us being near the end is ECT.
• You can’t figure out why God didn’t take Van Til like he did Enoch.
• For you, tobacco is its own major food group.
• You like Sproul Jr. a whole lot better than his father.
• You think John Gerstner was an Arminian who knows better now.
• You think the “Concerned Presbyterians” are way too moderate.
• The only reason you haven’t condemned Covenant Seminary is because you went there and you don’t want to invalidate your entire theological education.
• You have no idea what personality type you are which explains why you are a TR.

You might be a BR Pastor if…

• You changed the name of your church from “Knox Reformed Presbyterian” to “Grace Community Fellowship”.
• You’ve ever seriously considered going to Pensacola or Toronto to bring back the fire.
• You think that what the church needs is another revival, not another reformation
• You use the phrase “semper reformandum” when someone objects that your practice isn’t confessional
• You think the phrase “no creed but Jesus” has an appealing ring to it
• You’ve ever done an “infant dedication” service
• You own more than one book by C. Peter Wagner, David Wilkerson, James Dobson, or Gary Smalley
• You don’t own anything by Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander or B.B. Warfield
• You think it’s a good thing that many of your members don’t know the Church is Presbyterian
• The words “relevant”, “contemporary”, and “cutting edge” cause you to salivate excessively
• You don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have exceptions to the Confession
• You consider it to be in bad taste to ask theological questions of a candidate on the floor of Presbytery
• You’ve ever cut a service short because it was Superbowl Sunday
• You constantly use the word “just” while praying, as in “we just want to really thank you”
• You switched to overheads so people would have their hands free to “just really worship God”
• You have no idea what the Regulative Principle is, but strongly suspect it is another form of legalism
• You believe an endorsement from J.I. Packer on the back of a book
• You believe that the greatest work on Apologetics ever written was “More than a Carpenter”
• Any discussion of Reformed theology you are involved in will inevitably include the phrase “dead orthodoxy”.
• You wish there was some way of incorporating an altar call into your service.
• You have a “worship team”.
• You believe that Republican and Christian are synonyms.
• You spend more time working on the liturgical drama than the sermon.
• The most common logo on your casual clothing is “PK.”
• You nod your head and say mmmm… when someone says “doctrine divides”.
• You get really bummed that your conversion story isn’t more exciting during the open-mike time of sharing.
• You could sell your copy of the Confession in “like new” condition.
• You think that the PCUSA went Liberal because people just really stopped loving Jesus.

It is Good Friday, 3pm. In church tradition, the very hour that Christ died while hanging from the cross at Calvary.

“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

“For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

“Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.”

– from Hebrews 9.

By the blood that was spilled by our Savior on the Cross, we are redeemed, and by Him — and ONLY by Him, and not by our own works — are we saved, and only by His sacrifice, are we made worthy to be called children of God.

So, uh, Happy Good Friday?