Sinclair B. Ferguson

It's by searching the scriptures and reflecting on and applying their teaching to the churches to which we belong.

So that ultimately our regulative principle is going to be the one that God gives to us.

If we seek out the Scriptures, I think we will find two things.

First of all, we will see that there are certain constants in worship, what are sometimes called elements.

And these are, or should be, in every service, no matter who we are, where we are, or how many or few of us there may be.

There'll be singing praise.

There'll be praying, there'll be the exposition of Scripture, there'll be baptism and the Lord's Supper.

These are constants.

These are what we sometimes call elements.

And then there will be variables, and there are many variables.

For example, the time of day when we gather for worship.

For the first half of my life, without fail, the morning worship service began at 11 o'clock.

And I think it traditionally began then because the farmers need time to milk their cows.

So even when no one in the congregation owns a cow, somehow or another we have kept up the tradition and treated it as a constant, although it's a variable.

And there are other variables.

The Scriptures don't tell us what tunes we need to use to sing God's praise.

The Scriptures don't tell us when we should stand and when we should sit.

And so, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, it's legitimate and appropriate for these things to be, as the Westminster divines noted, ordered by the light of nature.

And so these characteristics may differ from place to place, from culture to culture.

But as I say, there are aspects of our worship that should be fixed.