Anytime I read “spiritual” material, I want to know the foundation of the writer. What does he or she believe? That will be no different for you reading my material. So, here is a brief statement about my foundation.

  1. I believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God as written in the original autographs. It is trustworthy because he is trustworthy. There may be minor translation difficulties in some translations of the Scriptures. These, however, do not change the teaching of the Scriptures when taken as a whole. The best commentary on Scripture is Scripture.
  2. I prefer to use the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible because it follows a methodology that attempts to translate on a word for word basis and is, therefore, a little more precise than other translations that use some form of a paraphrase. I acknowledge that sometimes a paraphrase approach like the New International Version (NIV) gets it better than does the ESV and vice versa. All quotes on this site will be from the ESV unless indicated otherwise.
  3. In my opinion, the best single statement of the teaching of Scripture is the Westminster Confession along with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. No confession, no matter how well crafted, replaces Scripture and is always subject to correction by Scripture. If you study the history of the crafting of the Westminster standards, you will find that they are themselves a compromise that was required to bring together the various factions of the Reformation in Great Britain, the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. Full disclosure requires that I acknowledge that I do hold a few exceptions to the Westminster Standards. No human summary of the teaching of God’s inerrant word gets it completely right since we who are finite are attempting to synthesize the truth of the infinite.
  4. If one wants to check boxes to know where I stand on different topics, here are some statements that will give further definition.
    1. My Soteriology is Calvinist. Yup, I know, how could I be one of those? This position did not come to me easily or quickly. This by no means separates me from my Arminian brothers and sisters. We just understand Scripture differently in regard to our Soteriology (doctrine of salvation).
    2. I am a continuationist, that is, I believe that the gifts of the Spirit that God gave to his church are still extant today. In the past few years (I am writing this in 2025) there has come an amazing range of beliefs and practices among we who are continuationists; Classic Pentecostals, Charismatics, Third Wave, NAR, some are hyper Charismatics and have odd practices, some are more modest in their worship styles, some are heretical in their teaching. I find myself in a category known as Word & Spirit. Word & Spirit indicates that there is high priority on both the expository teaching of the word with good systematic theology and high priority on the Biblical practice of the gifts of the Spirit, especially as identified in 1 Corinthians 14.
    3. I am what some call a soft complimentarian, that is, I believe Scripture declares men and women equal before God as imagers of God and of equal value as children of God. I also believe that God has established differences in the roles of man and women in the church and the home. In the church I believe Scripture has relegated the role of elders to men only. Otherwise, women are free to use their gifts as the Lord leads in the church.
    4. I am a credo-baptist, that is I do not believe the Scriptures teach that we are to baptize infants. We are to baptize new believers after they have heard the gospel, repented, and believed the gospel. There is no iron-clad age limit on when this may happen.