Please join us on Sundays for our worship services at 2pm and 4pm. You're also welcome to check us out at our Wednesday evening home Bible study. If you need more details, just send us a message. You may know this Church by our previous name, "Associated Presbyterian Church Vancouver." We still retain this old name as our legal name for all business. Our church has been going for over 100 years an
d we still share the same eternal message of new life and hope in Jesus Christ. This message can be summarized as BAD news and GOOD news. The BAD news is that we have all broken God's law, which we find summarized in the Ten Commandments. As Romans 3:23 says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Because God is a perfectly holy and just God, we all deserve to be punished for our rebellion against him. The Westminster Larger Catechism asks, "What are the punishments of sin in the world to come? Answer: The punishments of sin in the world to come, are everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell-fire for ever." But the GOOD news is that God did not leave all mankind to perish in this state. He sent the Son of God into this world so that we might be saved from what we deserve. This is summarized in perhaps the most famous verse of the Bible: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) Jesus came to take the sins of his people upon him and die in their place on the cross. And as a Church, we call on all men everywhere to repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as their only hope. (Acts 17:30)
And when we do come to him, confessing our sins, he promises to forgive: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9) The Bible teaches us that Jesus Christ shows mercy and love to all who turn to him. His arms are wide open. He says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28)
We are part of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Canada, and as such, everything we believe can be found summarized in the Westminster Standards (https://thewestminsterstandard.org), which are very old documents summarizing what Christians believe. These documents have stood the test of time, and although they aren't perfect as the Bible is perfect, they are a very useful guide to us. Our worship services may be a little different from what you're used to. The worship services are very simple, because we want our focus to be on the Word of God and the numerous ways that we are called to respond to His Word in singing, prayer, and meditation. We sing the 150 Psalms of David in our worship services. We believe that the Psalms are the inspired songbook not only for the Old Testament Church but also for the New Testament Church. Clowney once wrote, "We believe in a God whom we cannot actually see. We follow a voice that we do not audibly hear. We are held by a hand that we cannot physically feel. This is also the nature and emotion of the Psalms. They encompass virtually every aspect of our lives and emotions. They catalogue every expression of the soul in poetic form. They summarize our spiritual experiences, both highs and lows." If Clowney is right, the Psalms do not simply capture and express the experiences of God’s people; they also draw us into the heart of Christ himself. In so many ways they express the songs of the soul that Jesus would sing as he made his own pilgrimage through the dark valleys of this world to the highest peak of the hill of the Lord. As Geerhardus Vos once said, "Our Lord himself, who had a perfect religious experience and lived and walked with God in absolute adjustment of his thoughts and desires to the Father's mind and will; our Lord himself found his inner life portrayed in the Psalter and in some of the highest moments of his ministry borrowed from it the language in which his soul spoke to God, thus recognizing that a more perfect language for communion with God cannot be framed."
