Tuesday Evening Family Foundations in Sound Doctrine
Live Streaming Video
This live, interactive video broadcast series, running each Tuesday evening from February 8th through March 29th and October 4th through November 22nd, will cover every section of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.
Here is what you get:
- The elders of Hope Baptist Church helping you to practically apply a historic confession in your family, church, and work life.
- Live interaction with the elders during the webinars.
- Video record you can return to over and over again as you disciple your family in sound doctrine.
- Password protected access to all the sessions.
The recommended copy of the confession can be purchased from Solid Ground Christian Books.
We as an organization do not have an official doctrinal statement except for the Nicene Creed, which is considered one of the premier confessions of protestant Christianity. We also officially promote the NCFIC Confession, which has a laser beam focus on the complementary roles of church and family life. For this webinar, we could use the Belgic or the Heidelberg or the Westminster Confession of Faith. The reason we are using the Baptist Confession of 1689 is that this is the official confession of our church, Hope Baptist Church. Our objective during the Family Foundations Webinars is to teach a model for how to use a confession. We hope to demonstrate how one might understand it and then how to apply it in everyday life. This is our primary objective.
The role of the family in upholding sound doctrine
This confession was designed for families to help parents instruct children in sound doctrine. The Westminster Confession of Faith, which is nearly identical to the Baptist Confession, appeals in its introduction first of all to heads of households to teach sound doctrine to their families. It reads like this:
"How much the serious endeavors of godly parents and masters might contribute to an early seasoning, the tender years of such as are under their inspection, is abundantly evident.”
"That, as the Lord has set them in place above the rest of the family, they would labor in all wisdom and spiritual understanding to be above them also. It is an uncomely sight to behold men in years babes in knowledge, and how unmet are they to instruct others who need themselves to be taught, which be the first principles of the oracles of God.
The Westminster Confession was written for families in order to establish sound doctrine so that the church would not end up with spiritually ignorant children.
A church without a doctrinal foundations is an unprotected church
My advice to people is very consistent: Don’t go to a church without a statement of sound doctrine.
Impact of the confession on the church, family, and contemporary society
The Westminster Confession had enormous impact on Christian culture, and even on nations. Benjamin Warfield, the great theologian from Princeton Seminary, wrote this of the confession and its impact on Christianity:
The significance of the Westminster Standards is a creed to be found in these three facts: Historically speaking, they are the final crystallization of the elements of evangelical religion. After the conflicts of sixteen hundred years, scientifically speaking, they are the richest and most precise and best guarded statement ever penned. Of all that enters into the evangelical religion, and of all that must be safeguarded if evangelical religion is to persist in the world. And religiously speaking, they are a notable monument of spiritual religion.
The impact on people’s lives was enormous. Douglas Kelly speaks of the impact of the Westminster Confession on Scottish peasants. He says: “Generations of children brought up on the catechism have had a greater capacity for conceptual thinking, as opposed to merely pictorial thinking, than those who never memorized it.”
Charles Spurgeon told of the value of the Second London Baptist Confession to the family,
Here, the younger members of our church will have a body of divinity in small compass, and by means of the scriptural proofs, will be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them… Remember, it is the ancient gospel of martyrs, confessors, reformers, and saints. Above all, it is the truth of God against which the gates of hell cannot prevail… Cleave fast to the Word of God which is here mapped out for you.”
