Sunday at St. Andrews the Great

I attended an amazing church last Sunday: St. Andrews the Great, an Anglican church. But wow—it was very good. Every part of the service was Christ-centered. The worship music included only contemporary songs (and this was, I think, my only criticism of the church). We sang several worship songs, including a few that were new to me (which I appreciated). The sermon was on Philippians 1, the first in a series on Philippians. It was not spectacular (no understatement intended), but it was very good, a solid, Christ-centered exposition of the text, along with an introduction to the book of Philippians as a whole.

After the service, there was a lunch for students (free the first time, 2.50 each subsequent time). The room was set up so that there were dozens of small tables at each of which were seated c. 8 people. The main course was a tasy dish of chicken and noodles with some kind of sauce. After the main course, the speaker, a young man, gave a short talk—a sort of "sermonette"—on idolatry. After his main talk, each table discussed three Scripture passages on idolatry. Although it was not one of the preset passages, I read Ezekiel 16 to my table. After a short time, the discussion time ended, and the speaker took questions from the audience. In answering a question about how "God gave them up" in Rom 1:24, 26, 28 is compatible with human free will, the speaker responded by saying that humans do not have free will and that all things are predetermined by God. I'd never heard a statement like that in a church. And, unless he meant by it some sort of hyper-calvinism (which I didn't take him to mean), the statement was amazing. It made my week.