About Us

Holy Trinity is very happy to be a member of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (Knox Presbytery), but this affiliation does not define the boundaries of our fellowship. The CREC provides us with accountability and encouragement, but we embrace the whole of Christ's church with all its messiness and look forward to seeing how the Groom is going to clean up His bride.

Holy Trinity Church was established as a mission church of Christ Church, Spokane on October 21, 2007. Kenton Spratt accepted the call and assumed the role of a tent making pastor while he finished up the year as the headmaster and upper-level instructor at Westover Academy. He assumed full-time pastoral duties on June 1 of 2008. We currently (as of November 2010) have 23 member households (78 members) with some adherents. We are very grateful for the oversight of the elders of Christ Church in Spokane who, along with Kenton, currently provide leadership for the church while we wait for God to supply us with more in-house elders and deacons.

Kenton Spratt is the pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Colville, WA. He has been married for twenty-seven years to his long-suffering wife, Sheryl. They are thankful to God and his infinite mercy to have two college-age children who love the Lord. The whole lot of them are from Canada (that’s the little country to the north of the U.S. not shown on most maps here), and they currently have dual citizenship (Heaven and Canada) and an oft prayed for U.S. Green Card. Kenton obtained an MCS degree in theology at Regent College in Vancouver. It was there his life began to unravel as he wrote his Master’s thesis under J.I. Packer on John Owen’s Death of Death in the Death of Christ. This led to a whole series of changes and is largely responsible for where he is today. Among the most significant changes was the discovery of the centrality of the church in God’s story.

Holy Trinity Church is a "confessional" church. The Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals, to which we belong, requires that our office bearers (Pastors & Deacons) hold to something more than a vague and undefined "belief in the Bible." They, of course, must believe the Bible as the sole ultimate and infallible standard by which everything else is judged. But they must also “confess” to believe that certain historical documents are faithful summaries of certain aspects of the Bible's teaching. These historical documents include the Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon. Each church must also adopt one of several possible Reformation Confessions.

The Reformation Confession that Holy Trinity Church has adopted is called the Westminster Confession of Faith, written in A.D. 1646. It is a pretty decent (though incomplete and imperfect) exposition of some of the Bible's key teachings. This confession has been widely used in the Protestant church in various forms for hundreds of years. It is a safeguard to the flock when used rightly. Because the WCF is not the Bible, it has errors, omissions, and idiosyncrasies. The document itself was debated by a large number of men over a long time and it is a consensus document. Not even all the signers of the document would agree with everything in it. All we ask is that office bearers declare their differences openly, and let the church judge whether the differences are within the bounds of orthodoxy as judged by the Scriptures. This is a safeguard to ensure that no individual pastor can take it upon himself to teach whatever he wants without accountability to the church at large.

The following are the exceptions taken to the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) by the elders of Holy Trinity Church:

General

1. While we agree with the doctrines of the WCF, we do not always agree with how those doctrines are supported with the Scripture proof texts which the Westminster Divines cited.

Chapter I
Of the Holy Scripture

2. Para. 2 We are unwilling to be dogmatic as to the Pauline authorship of the book of Hebrews.

3. Para. 8. We believe that the original languages to be consulted in the matters of controversy are Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

Chapter VII
Of God’s Covenant with Man

4. Para 2 (cf. Chp. 19, para. 1, 6). While we agree with the original intent of the Westminster Divines, we believe the usage of the phrase “covenant of works” is open to misinterpretation by modern Christians. By way of clarification, we deny that any covenant can be kept without faith, and we affirm that good works flow out of faith in God, and not vice versa.

Chapter XXI
Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath-day

.5. Para. 8. We believe that along with works of piety, necessity, and mercy, the command also calls us to rest physically on the Sabbath (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 16:30; 31:15-17).

Chapter XXIII
Of the Civil Magistrate

6. Para. 3 — Delete the last phrase, beginning with “to provide that whatsoever…”

Chapter XXIV
Of Marriage and Divorce

7. Para 4: Delete the last sentence, which reads, “The man may not marry any of his wife’s kindred, nearer in blood than he may of his own: nor the woman of her husband’s kindred, nearer in blood than of her own.”

Chapter XXV
Of the Church

8. Para. 6. Though we believe the Pope of Rome to be anti-Christian, we do not believe him necessarily to be the anti-Christ.

Chapter XXVII
Of the Sacraments

9. Para. 4. We believe that the Lord’s Supper should not be administered without the oversight of an elder, lawfully ordained.

Chapter XXVIII
Of Baptism

10. Para. 3. We believe that the proper modes of baptism include sprinkling, pouring, and immersion.

11. Para. 4. Being a church composed of both paedobaptists and those holding to believer’s baptism, we expressly allow men otherwise qualified to serve as elders, but who hold to believer’s baptism, to make an exception to WCF Chapter XXVIII, paragraph 4, which reads: “Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one, or both, believing parents, are to be baptized.”

Members do not have to embrace the Confession (as elders do), but members must be willing to be taught according to these doctrinal standards. Holy Trinity Church aims to be a place where sincere believers who love God’s word can grow up in it (at whatever level of maturity they are currently at), and not a place for those who have arrived (or think they have!).

Many worship services in modern churches tend to be informal. The model is often that of a concert or entertainment event, with a very “come as you are” attitude toward visitors. Consequently, when someone joins one of our churches Sunday morning for worship, often the most obvious difference in our worship approach (which is evident to them in the first five minutes) is the concern for reverence and dignity, and what comes across as “formality.” The more common approach has often been called “seeker sensitive,” and some might be excused for thinking that our approach is actually closer to “seeker hostile.”

The reason we approach worship this way is because we believe that God requires a cultivation of reverence from us. "Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:28-29, ESV). This is what we are seeking to do. We see here in this passage that worship can be unacceptable to God, and two of the things that would make it unacceptable would be a spirit of irreverence and an attitude inconsistent with awe. Sadly, that is often what can happen with informal worship services. When Paul envisions an unbeliever wandering into the church, he doesn't see the unbeliever feeling at home, rather he sees him as becoming undone "he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you" (1 Cor. 14:24, 25).

Probably the biggest issue for someone who is unaccustomed to "formal" worship is the question of insincerity. Many of us have been taught that if it is “scripted,” then it must be insincere. If our worship services have a “bulletin” with all the elements of the worship service laid out beforehand, then what has happened to the possibility of the Spirit leading us in the course of the service? If a service is hypocritical and insincere, then that is obviously not the Holy Spirit’s work—on that we certainly can agree.

But we don’t think this way about other activities that must be planned out beforehand. If you had the privilege of seeing a Marine Corps precision drill team, would you wonder if they “really meant it?” If you took your wife to see a performance of the Nutcracker at Christmas time, would you walk out shaking your heads at all the insincerity because the music was exactly the same as last year?

As far as the “scriptedness” is concerned, we would point to where the apostle Paul rejoiced in the “good order” of the Colossian church (Col. 2:5). The word there is a military one, which could be rendered as regimentation—like the drill team we mentioned just a moment ago. At the same time, we want to avoid the sins condemned by Jesus when He warned us about flowing robes (Mark 12:38), wide phylacteries (Matt. 23:5), lengthy prayers (Matt. 23:14), fancy religious titles (Matt. 23:7), and other forms of ecclesiastical showboating. But preparation to offer God what He requires is not the same thing as over-decorating what He did not require.

In the medieval church, there was a sharp distinction between the worshiping clergy and the spectators found in the laity. The “action” was up front, behind what was called the rood screen, and the people of God assembled to watch—well, mostly to listen. They were permitted to be in the presence of something big, they were around when the mystery happened. But for all intents and purposes, they were shut out, and the experts did the heavy lifting. The Protestant emphasis on the priesthood of all believers changed all that for centuries.

But unfortunately, a very similar sharp division has been creeping back in recent decades—now in the form of professional entertainers up front, and the audience out in the seats. Many who attend church do not expect to be asked to “do” anything. This did not happen all at once; it happened by degrees, but it has gotten to the point where some congregations don’t even sing much anymore.

In the approach taken to worship by CREC churches, the worship service is an active conversation between God and His people. It is a dialog—not a monologue. We are all part of the body, and we all have something to do. The service is initiated from the front, by the minister. He is there in his role as a “deputy spokesman” on the Lord’s behalf. He is authorized to do this by his ordination, and he is faithful to his ordination to the extent that he sticks to the Scriptures like white on rice. In this role, he summons the people to worship at the beginning, and he declares the benediction at the end. He reads the text for the sermon as the very words of God, and he preaches the sermon as the very oracles of God (1 Pet. 4:11). After the confession of sin, he announces the assurance of pardon in the name of Jesus, and so on.

The people of God respond to all this actively. They sing the psalms and hymns and say amen after them. They say the Creed. They respond to the Scripture reading with “Thanks be to God.” They lift their hands in the Gloria Patri. They deliver a corporate charge or blessing after a baptism. They take the elements of bread and wine weekly. In short, in worship, the body of Christ is called to be a conversationalist. One of the first things that visitors to our congregations notice is that there is so much for them to do. This is intentional. The whole body is called to work together, and worship is that work.

These responses are usually prepared for our congregations in a printed bulletin, and because of this, those who are used to a more spontaneous, “go-with-the-flow” style of worship sometimes react to such a prepared liturgy as “kind of Catholic.” Actually, within limits, it is one of the most Protestant things we do. And in a sort of double irony, the spectator approach favored by many pop-evangelical churches is actually drifting back toward a very old error indeed.