Creed or Chaos

During the Second World War, the English woman of letters, Dorothy Sayers, gave a stunning address on the importance of doctrine.  Published after the war as Creed or Chaos, the central argument of the book remains remarkably prescient:

"Something is happening to us today, which has not happened for a very long time. We are waging a war of religion. Not a civil war between adherents of the same religion, but a life-and-death struggle between Christian and pagan. The Christians are, it must be confessed, not very good Christians, and the pagans do not officially proclaim themselves worshippers of Mahound or even of Odin, but the stark fact remains that Christendom and heathendom now stand face to face as they have not done in Europe since the days of Charlemagne. 

The people who say that this is a war of economics or of power-politics, are only dabbling about on the surface of things. Even those who say it is a war to preserve freedom and justice and faith have gone only half-way to the truth. The real question is what economics and politics are to be used for; whether freedom and justice and faith have any right to be considered at all; at bottom it is a violent and irreconcilable quarrel about the nature of God and the nature of man and the ultimate nature of the universe; it is a war of dogma. 

The word dogma is unpopular, and that is why I have used it. It is our own distrust of dogma that is handicapping us in the struggle. The immense spiritual strength of our opponents lies precisely in the fact that they have fervently embraced, and hold with fanatical fervor, dogma which is none the less dogma for being called "ideology." We on our side have been trying for several centuries to uphold a particular standard of ethical values which derives from Christian dogma, while gradually dispensing with the very dogma which is the sole rational foundation for those values. 

The thing I want to say is this: it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. 

It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. 

This is the Church's opportunity, if she chooses to take it. So far as the people's readiness to listen goes, she has not been in so strong a position for at least two centuries. The rival philosophies of humanism, enlightened self-interest, and mechanical progress have broken down badly; the antagonism of science has proved to be far more apparent than real, and the happy-go-lucky doctrine of "laissez-faire" is completely discredited. But no good whatever will be done by a retreat into personal piety or by mere exhortation to a "recall to prayer." The thing that is in danger is the whole structure of society, and it is necessary to persuade thinking men and women of the vital and intimate connection between the structure of society and the theological doctrines of Christianity. 

The task is not made easier by the obstinate refusal of a great body of nominal Christians, both lay and clerical, to face the theological question. "No creed but Christ" has been a popular slogan for so long that we are apt to accept it, without inquiring whether religion without theology has any meaning. And however unpopular I may make myself I shall and will affirm that the reason why the Churches are discredited today is not that they are too bigoted about theology, but that they have run away from theology. 

If we really want a Christian society we must teach Christianity, and it is absolutely impossible to teach Christianity without teaching Christian dogma."

Miracles

Even as Christ has wrought

Wine from water,

So has the Spirit wrought

Sweetness from gall,

Life from death,

Even in the first breath

Of repentance.

Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013)

Robert Farrar Capon, a writer, thinker, pastor, and cook of extraordinary depth and insight, has gone home to be with the Lord.

He said and did and wrote much, for which we can all be thankful. Perhaps the following (one of my favorite passages from his revelatory book, The Supper of the Lamb) will suffice to explain why:

To raise a glass, however, is to raise a question. One honest look at any real thing—one minute’s contemplation of any process on earth—leads straight into the conundrum of the relationship of God to the world. The solution is hardly ob­vious. For something that could not be at all without God, creation seems to do rather well without Him. Only miracles are simple; nature is a mystery. Autumn by autumn, He makes wine upon a thousand hills, but He does it without tipping His hand. Glucose, fructose, and Saccharomyces el­lipsoideus apparently manage very nicely on their own. So much so, that the resolving of the conflict between the sacred and the secular (or, better said, the repairing of the damage done by divorcing them) has been billed as the major problem of modern theology. Permit me, therefore, glass in hand and cooking Sherry within easy reach, the world’s most interrupted discourse on the subject. In vino veritas.

Take the largest part of that truth first. God makes wine. For all its difficulties, there is no way around the doctrine of creation. But notice the tense: He makes; not made. He did not create once upon a time, only to find himself saddled now with the unavoidable and embarrassing result of that first rash decision. That is only to welsh on the idea of an unnecessary world, to make creation a self-perpetuating pool game which is contingent only at the start—which needs only the first push on the cue ball to keep it going forever. It will not do: The world is more unnecessary than that. It is unnecessary now; it cries in this moment for a cause to hold it in being. It was St. Thomas, I think, who pointed out long ago that if God wanted to get rid of the universe, He would not have to do anything; He would have to stop doing something. Wine is—the fruit of the vine stands in act, outside of nothing—because it is His very present pleasure to have it so. The creative act is contemporary, intimate, and immediate to each part, parcel and period of the world.

Do you see what that means? In a general way we con­cede that God made the world out of joy: He didn’t need it; He just thought it was a good thing. But if you confine His activity in creation to the beginning only, you lose most of the joy in the subsequent shuffle of history. Sure, it was good back then, you say, but since then, we’ve been eating leftovers. How much better a world it becomes when you see Him creating at all times and at every time; when you see that the preserving of the old in being is just as much creation as the bringing of the new out of nothing. Each thing, at every moment, becomes the delight of His hand, the apple of His eye. The bloom of yeast lies upon the grapeskins year after year because He likes it; C6H12O6=2C2H5OH+2CO2 is a de­pendable process because, every September, He says, That was nice; do it again.

Let us pause and drink to that.

Glorious Grace

"Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears." Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013)

Rock of Ages

Augustus Montague Toplady, clergyman and writer, was born in 1740, at Farnham, about 20 miles southwest of Windsor, England. He studied at the prestigious Westminster School for a short time, but was sent to Ireland in 1755, the same year as his conversion—he had been greatly influenced by the teachings of John Wesley. 

Toplady received his degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Trinity College. During his studies, he gradually came to reject the Arminianism of the Wesleyan Methodists in favor of the doctrines of Sovereign Grace of the Puritan Calvinists. Ordained deacon in 1762, he was licensed to the Anglican curacy of Blagdon the same year. He was ordained a priest in 1764, and from then until 1766 he served as curate at Farleigh, Hungerford. For the next two years he held the benefice of Harpford with Venn-Ottery, and for two years after that, of Broad Hembury. During 1775 he took a leave of absence to minister to the French Calvinist Reformed Church in Orange Street, London. 

His first published work was a work of verse, Poems on Sacred Subjects. But he was best known for his polemical and dogmatic works—including The Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Arminianism which was published in 1769 and The Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England which was published five years later in 1774. Those works proved vital in the ongoing theological struggles within the English church and helped to ensure orthodoxy for at least another generation. 

Toplady was only thirty-eight when he died, but his short life-span was enough to produce one of the most beloved of all hymns, Rock of Ages: 

Rock of Ages cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in Thee; 

Let the water and the blood 

From Thy driven side which flowed 

Be of sin the double cure; 

Cleanse me from its guilt and power. 

The hymn was first published on this day in the Gospel Magazine, London, 1776. Today, only a very few non-specialists read the theological works which established Toplady as one of the most significant men of his day, but nearly all Christians sing his hymn—even the Arminians it was written to confound.

A Different Tigger Altogether

“Well, I’ve got an idea,” said Rabbit.  “And, here it is.”

“We take Tigger for a long explore.  Somewhere where he has never been.  And then, we lose him there.  And, the next morning we find him again.  And mark my words, he’ll be a different Tigger altogether.”

“Why?” asked Pooh.

“Because, he’ll be a humble Tigger.  Because, he’ll be a sad Tigger.  A melancholy Tigger.  A small and sorry Tigger.  An oh-Rabbit-I’m-so-glad to-see-you Tigger.  That’s why.” A.A. Milne 

The Blasphemy Challege: The Atheist Syndrome

Soli Vade Mecum Vitae

"I conceive every duty of a Christian to be comprehended in a single word: translation--a translation of the Scriptures into his tongue, and a translation of its truths into his own heart and conduct. The Bible must be our soli vade mecum vitae, our sole book of reference for life, our only book of trust." Thomas Chalmers 

A Lesson in Skirling

During the Christmas holidays in 1841, Thomas Chalmers, then perhaps the most prominent man in all of Scotland, paid a visit to the tiny Borders town of Skirling in Peebleshire.  During his stay, he consented to stop by the local village school and give a lecture on Mathematics.  

The great man was always inclined to leave a moral philosophy lesson for his students, even when he was teaching natural philosophy.  And so it was that at the conclusion of his talk, he drew a large circle on the slate board and declaimed:

"The wider a man's knowledge becomes, the deeper should be his humility; for the more he knows the more he sees of what remains unknown. The wider the diameter of light, the larger the circumference of darkness. And so, with every footstep of growing knowledge there ought to be a growing humility--that is the best guarantee both for a sound philosophy and a sound faith."

The importance of this vital lesson was not soon lost on his awestruck students.

Theological Lint-Pickers

The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

In 1813, Thomas Chalmers wrote in “The Christian Instructor” bemoaning the compulsion to internecine warfare amongst the Reformed, Paleo-Conservative, Theological Lint-Pickers, and Nomenclature-Saber-Rattlers in the Scottish Church.

He described the tendency as “that mingled sentiment of fear and aversion with which they listen, even to opinions that are evangelical and substantially their own, when they came to them couched in a phraseology different from what their ears have been accustomed to.”

Their selective but ardent litmus tests for acceptance, he argued, goes well beyond creedal faithfulness. “They must have something even more than the bare and essential attributes of orthodoxy.”  Indeed, “Even orthodoxy is not welcome unless she presents herself in that dress in which she is familiar to them; and if the slightest innovation in the form of that vehicle which brings her to their doors, she is refused admittance, or at best treated as a very suspicious visitor.”

Chalmers concluded that this parsimonious fractiousness is largely due to “a want of those two very things which they often insist upon, and with justice, as the leading attributes of a true and decided Christian: there is a want of faith and a want of spirituality.”

Alas, two hundred years later, it seems little has changed.

Acts Sermon Series Interview Part 1

Acts Sermon Series Interview Part 2

The Glory of the Ascension

"Hail the day that sees Him rise,
Ravished from our wistful eyes!
Christ, awhile to mortals given,
Re-ascends His native heaven.
There the glorious triumph waits,
Lift your heads, eternal gates!
Wide unfold the radiant scene,
Take the King of glory in!" Charles Wesley

"By the Ascension all the parts of life are brought together in the oneness of their common destination. By the Ascension Christ in His Humanity is brought close to every one of us, and the words “in Christ,” the very charter of our faith, gain a present power. By the Ascension we are encouraged to work beneath the surface of things to that which makes all things capable of consecration. Then it is that the last element in our confession as to Christ’s work speaks to our hearts. He is not only present with us as Ascended: He is active for us. We believe that He sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; He the fount of Living Water, now ever lives to refresh us unto eternal life." Brooke Foss Westcott

"See, the Conqueror mounts in triumph,
See the King in royal state,
Riding on the clouds His chariot
To His heavenly palace-gate;
Hark, the choirs of angel voices
Joyful halleluiahs sing,
And the portals high are lifted,
To receive their heavenly King." William Wordsworth

Our Cottage in the Wood

"For our titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the old acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage in the wood, to which we can return at evening." G.K. Chesterton

The Acts of the Apostles

Beginning this Sunday at Parish we'll begin a new series in the Book of Acts--a series that will take us through the rest of 2013.

Litanies for Childermas

Deuteronomy 30:19; Proverbs 24:10-11; John 10:10; John 3:16

Pastor: Heaven and earth bear witness: the Lord has set before us life and death.

All: He has set before us blessing and cursing.

Pastor: Therefore, let us choose life that we and our covenant children after us may live.

Reader 1: If we faint in the day of adversity, our strength is small.  Deliver those who are drawn toward death, hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. 

Reader 2: If we say, "Surely we did not know this," does not He who weighs the heart and keeps our souls know it?

Pastor: Therefore, let us choose life.

Reader 3: The thief does not come except to kill, and to steal, and to destroy, but, Jesus has come that we may have life, and that we may have it more abundantly.

All: For God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Pastor: Therefore, let us choose life.

Psalm 139: 7-8, 13-18

Pastor: Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

All: For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Pastor: Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

All: My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Pastor: Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.

All: How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

Romans 3:13-18; Jeremiah 8:3; Proverbs 8:36; Psalm 145: 8

Pastor: Lord, we come confessing.  We confess that our throats are open graves.  Whether we realize it or not, we have chosen the way of death.

All: There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together we have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.

Pastor: All those who hate God, love death.

All: Our feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in our paths, and the path of peace have they not known.  There is no fear of God before our eyes.

Pastor: But, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Deo Gracias!

Adam lay i-bowndyn,

bowndyn in a bond,

Fowre thows and wynter

thowt he not to long.

And al was for an appil,

an appil that he tok.

As clerkes fyndyn wretyn

in here book.

Ne hadde the appil take ben,

the appil taken ben,

Ne hadde never our lady

a ben hevene quen.

Blyssid be the tyme

that appil take was!

Therefore we mown syngyn

Deo gracias!

Saviour of the Nations, Come

Ambrose (340-397) was the great bishop of Milan who was instrumental in the conversion of St. Augustine. In fact, there is evidence in one of Augustine's writings that substantiates Ambrose's authorship of a wonderful Advent hymn, Veni, Redemptor Gentium--indeed, he is credited with writing a goodly number of hymns and is sometimes referred to as the Father of Hymnody. This particular hymn has been traditionally sung during the vespers service of the Nativity on Christmas Eve. The great German Reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546) was instrumental in popularizing the hymn in Wittenburg through his 1524 translation from the Latin. The following version is an 1860 translation from Luther's German text by William Reynolds. Several other versions of this hymn exist, including a fine translation by John Mason Neale, Come, Thou Redeemer of the Earth.

Saviour of the nations, come,

Virgin's Son, make here thy home!

Marvel now, O heaven and earth,

That the Lord chose such a birth.

Not of flesh and blood the Son,

Offspring of the Holy One;

Born of Mary ever blest

God in flesh is manifest.

Wondrous birth! O wondrous Child

Of the virgin undefiled!

Though by all the world disowned,

Still to be in heaven enthroned.

From the Father forth he came

And returneth to the same,

Captive leading death and hell,

High the song of triumph swell!

Thou, the Father's only Son,

Hast o'er sin the victory won.

Boundless shall thy kingdom be;

When shall we its glories see?

Praise to God the Father sing,

Praise to God the Son, our King,

Praise to God the Spirit be

Ever and eternally.

Church Circus

"A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." Charles Haddon Spurgeon

History Repeats: The Tron Church Debacle

"The Free Kirk, the Wee Kirk,
The Kirk without the Steeple."

"The Auld Kirk, the Cauld Kirk,
The Kirk without the People."

(A popular Scots rhyme at the time of 1843 Disruption)

Snopsing Chalmers on the "Gap Theory"

It is often asserted that the Scottish reformer, educator, and pastor, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), was one of the originators of the so-called "Genesis Gap Theory" as a part of his effort to harmonize the ideas of evolution and creation. Scan the internet and you'll see this claim repeated again and again. Even many of the most reputable Intelligent Design or Creation Science sites perpetuate this peculiar notion.

It has no real substance however. Indeed, it is an "urban myth."

The actual origin of the "ruin-reconstruction" view of Creation comes from the writings of late 19th century writers like Hugh Miller, G.H. Pember, and I.T. Taylor. It was then popularized by early 20th century dispensationalists such as A.C. Dixon, A.J. Gordon, and H.A. Ironside. And it was particularly propounded in the best-selling study Bibles of Finis Dake and C.I. Scolfield. The theory asserts that some indeterminate amount of time elapsed between the first two verses of the Genesis narrative--this "gap" could then account for millions of years of geologic time or the fall of Satan or any number of other perceived textual difficulties.

There is no record of Chalmers endorsing this view--or anything like it. The notion that somehow he did comes from a single statement in a single lecture out of the more than fifty volumes of his writings.

This is what Chalmers actually said: “The detailed history of creation in the first chapter of Genesis begins at the middle of the second verse.”

Clearly, Chalmers posited no gap, no ruin and reconstruction, and no attempt to reconcile evolution and creation here. At most, he made a simple exegetical observation that Genesis 1:1 declares God's ex nihilo creation; Genesis 1:2a introduces the Spirit's moving amidst the material void; And Genesis 1:2b begins to unfold the details of that glorious moving and its resultant redolence.

Regardless, debates about the age of the earth and possible conflict with the historicity of the Bible would actually not come into common discourse until well after the death of Chalmers. Indeed, he made his isolated comment in 1816--long before Darwin ignited the controversy with the publication of "Origin of Species" in 1859.

Thomas Chalmers most assuredly wrestled with ways to find a common ground for scientists and theologians--his Astronomical Discourses (1817) were particularly effective examples of his apologetic methodology. But never would he compromise the integrity of Biblical truth for the sake of supposed scientific accommodation.

Leslie Printice: Pro-Life Pioneer

Leslie Printice was a young widow in New York City when she first became active in the pro-life movement.  A member of Gardiner Spring's congregation at the prominent Brick Presbyterian Church, she was encouraged by his sermons on child-killing to take a bold and active stand.  

She organized several meetings in her midtown Manhattan brownstone of doctors, lawyers, politicians, judges, and community leaders to hear the facts about the abortion trade.  Under the auspices of the church she set up the New York Parent and Child Committee.  The committee established prayer networks, sidewalk counseling shifts, and even alternative care programs with Christian doctors.  It also organized regular protests in front of Anna Lohman's five area abortion franchises--known professionally as Madame Restell, Lohman was the boldest, richest, and most visible child-killer.  

Tenacious and unrelenting, Leslie led a rally outside Lohman's lavish home on this day that was by turns emotional, physical, and fierce.  When Lohman went to trial for the first time the next year, Leslie was there--despite innumerable threats on her life from a number of the gangsters on Lohman's payroll--to testify with several children "saved from the butcher's knife."  

Nearly half a century later, her efforts were recognized in Albany by Governor Theodore Roosevelt as the primary catalyst for the state's tougher legislation and stiffer enforcement of protections for the essential right to life of all New Yorkers.

Adventide

"Advent is a season of preparation.  For centuries Christians have used the month prior to the celebration of Christ’s incarnation to ready their hearts and their homes for the great festival.  While we moderns tend to do a good bit of bustling about in the crowded hours between Thanksgiving and Christmas that hardly constitutes the kind of preparation Advent calls for.  Indeed, traditionally Advent has been a time of quiet introspection, personal examination, and repentance.  It is a time to slow down, to take stock of the things that matter the most, and to do a thorough inner housecleaning.  Advent is, as the ancient teaching of the church asserts, a time of fasting, prayer, confession, and reconciliation.  All the great Advent stories, hymns, customs, and rituals—from the medieval liturgical antiphons and Scrooge’s Christmas Carol to the lighting of Advent candles are attuned to this notion: that the best way to prepare for the coming of the Lord is to make straight His pathway in our hearts."   —From Christmas Spirit: The Joyous Carols, Stories, Feasts and Traditions of the Season by Greg Wilbur and George Grant

St. Andrew’s Day

Numbered among the Apostles, the brother of Simon Peter eventually became the revered patron of both Greece and Scotland where his feast day, November 30, remains a kind of national holiday.  Andrew (c. 10-60) may well have been, as tradition asserts, the founder of the church at the site of Constantinople, but he was most assuredly the great reconciler, as Scripture asserts.  As a result, his memory is celebrated by a day of forgiveness.  Services of reconciliation are often followed by a great feast of roasted or smoked beef, the telling of heroic tales, the reciting epic poetry, and the singing of great ballads.  King David of Scotland, son of Malcolm Canmore and Queen. Margaret, codified the day a national holiday in 1125—and so it has been ever since.

Spurgeon's Wisdom

The Wider Diameter of Light

"The wider a man's knowledge becomes, the deeper should be his humility; for the more he knows the more he sees of what remains unknown. The wider the diameter of light, the larger the circumference of darkness." Thomas Chalmers

"With every footstep of growing knowledge there ought to be a growing humility--that is the best guarantee both for a sound philosophy and a sound faith." Thomas Chalmers

Providential Working

‎"There is no panic in Heaven! God has no problems, only plans.”  Corrie Ten Boom

What is Pulpit Freedom Sunday?

St. John's Wayside Chapel

Having failed to gain permission from the Glasgow Presbytery to plant a much needed new parish church in the city, Thomas Chalmers and the session of St. John’s Parish Church were grudgingly allowed to create a “chapel of ease” or a “wayside chapel” within the boundaries of their current parish district in 1822.

The spare and utilitarian building was designed by the renowned architect John Baird and had a capacity of about 300 worshippers.  It also contained a number of classrooms within which several community classes were conducted and a small parish school convened.

It was popularly known as the Potters Kirk, because of the large number of the congregation employed in that trade--the Annfield pottery factory was just across the Gallowgate.  Indeed, the church provided a remarkable cultural and spiritual hub for the blighted jumble of the industrial neighborhood. 

The small bell-tower originally carried a small spire, creating a much-needed landmark for the otherwise dreary community. But it was removed sometime just before the Disruption of 1843.

Following the Disruption, the remaining congregants applied for parish status and in 1846 it was renamed St. Thomas Parish Church.  But, the largest proportion of the members had followed their mentor, Chalmers, into the Free Kirk.  Eventually, the parish was recombined with St. John’s and the building became redundant.  The building was sold to the Wesleyan Methodists but the decline in the neighborhood brought even that enterprise to an end and the chapel closed its doors in 1973.  Derelict, the historic building was torn down in 1976 and replaced by a corner market and a fast food outlet.

St. John's Parish Church

The parish experiment of Thomas Chalmers in Glasgow had as its cultural center of gravity a remarkable architectural icon (see image above).

The foundation stone of St. John's Parish Church was laid in 1817 by Henry Monteith, Lord Provost of the city, and Chalmers, then the pastor of the city's prominent Tron Church. The building, situated at the end of MacFarlane Street fronted the Gallowgate, and was erected at a cost £9,000. With a capacity of nearly 1600 worshippers, it was one of the largest church buildings in Scotland, located in one of nation's poorest urban neighborhoods.

During its construction the foundations collapsed sparking fears that the 138-foot high Neo-Gothic tower would not be able to support the weight of the full compliment of bells which had been specially designed for the church--only St. Andrew's in Edinburgh could boast a complete "Ringing of the Bells" at the time. The defective design was quickly corrected and construction was not long delayed.

The facility provided a sanctuary for the worship for the St. John's congregation, of course.  But, it also created a tangible presence in the community for the congregation's reforming work, a hub for its evangelistic, educational, cultural, and mercy ministries.

The new church plant was launched by Chalmers, who had ministered in the city since 1815 and had become the most prominent voice of Evangelical and Reformed Christianity in Britain. His vision for St. John's was to create a "parish model" of ministry, similar to what the little villages of Fifeshire enjoyed, but right in the heart of the poorest, most densely populated, most industrialized section of the city. 

The new building was finally opened in 1819 and remained a vital part of Glasgow's Evangelical and Reformed renewal until the landmark was demolished in 1962 in a tragically ill-conceived "modernization" scheme (see image below).