Pure Church

It was a great privilege to join the guys at Christ the Center for an interview on the life and ministry of Lemuel Haynes. I hope it might be of interest to some of you.

Lemuel Haynes was an African-American pastor in the Rutland, VT area in the late 1700s-early 1800s. One of the things I appreciate about Haynes was his constant looking to the return of Christ. He ministered with heaven in view.

The good folks at Reformation Heritage Books invited me to do a short volume on Haynes' piety in their Profiles of Reformed Spirituality series. It's entitled May We Meet in the Heavenly World, a phrase Haynes sometimes used when signing his letters. It captures the man in many ways. You can also find a print interview about Haynes and the book at RHB.

I want to give thanks and praise to God for the many, many things He has allowed me to do in life and ministry. Giving thanks and praise should be a life-time long post unto itself, but here I just want to thank Him for the privilege of working with Reformation Heritage Books on their Profiles in Reformed Spirituality series. It was a joy to contribute a volume on the piety of Lemuel Haynes. The book is called May We Meet in the Heavenly World, and today only RHB is offering a 50% pre-publication discount on the volume.



John Saillant, author of what I think is the most significant Haynes biography to date, Black Puritan, Black Republican, offered a kind endorsement:

“This well chosen selection from Lemuel Haynes’s writings represents a significant part of the earliest African-American engagements with the Reformed theological tradition. In that tradition Haynes and his black contemporaries, both American and British, found a language of justice and inspiration that allowed them to criticize slavery and racial prejudice, and to offer a Christian vision of a free society. “May We Meet in the Heavenly World” can be recommended to students of Christian theology and of American history.”

My brother Tony Carter wrote the forward. Many thanks, bro, for your faithful labors and encouragement.

Apart from a short biography considering some shaping influences on Haynes' piety and thought, the remainder is Haynes himself. Every since I read that first sampling of Haynes' ordination and funeral sermons, which are included in The Faithful Preacher, I've been impacted by his consistent heavenly-mindedness and view of meeting Christ in the world to come. The promise of eternity seemed to inform everything he wrote. I want to live like that. And I pray May We Meet in the Heavenly World helps me and you live that way as well.

Many thanks to the entire RHB family, especially Jay Collier for his tireless editing and project managing labors, for the joy and privilege of working on this volume.

I love no one on earth more than my wife of nearly 20 years, Kristie, whose constant example and exhortation is "serve the Lord with gladness." Thank you, babe. I see you in my eyes.

And most of all, thanks be to God who saved us by the blood of His Son and prepares a place for us in the heavenly world. Psalm 73:25-26.