“…the Record of the Case in this matter establishes that no written information was presented to Presbytery concerning the work of the Shepherding Committee. Thus there is no record of the facts leading Presbytery to conclude that the investigation had been satisfactorily completed.”

In a highly unusual situation, the PCA Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) has send a complaint back to a Presbytery stating that they had failed to proceed to judicial process in a case even though they had stated in a letter that had been read to the Presbytery that there was evidence before the Presbytery raising a strong presumption of guilt that could not be dismissed without explanation.

In their report, the SJC recognized that a higher court is to exhibit great deference to the factual findings of a lower court (as outlined in BCO 39-3), and that the higher court should only reverse the lower court where there is clear error. However, the SJC did find such clear error in this case.

(Since the case involves charges of personal sin, the names of the complainant as well as the individual charged will not be included in this story.)

The case involved a member of a congregation in Nashville Presbytery that asked for the investigation of the member’s pastor resulting from conflicts between the two. After the initial investigation by the Presbytery’s Shepherding Committee, no formal report of their findings was submitted to the Presbytery. However, they did read a letter to the entire Presbytery sent by the Shepherding Committee to the Session of the church in question, pointing out facts that the SJC quoted in their findings, such as:

“The complaints against XXX are serious: deceit, manipulation, and schism…many come from credible sources, well known in our presbytery…”

“We seriously doubt XXX would have pursued these alienated parties without being required to do so…”; and

“XXX never apologized to our committee for labeling us ‘Sanballat and Tobiah,’ i.e. Nehemiah’s enemies”

In a long and highly detailed Reasoning and Opinion, the SJC came to the conclusion that the Presbytery failed to develop a clear written Record of the Case, and documents that were available to the SJC upon which to make a judgment contained clear evidence that there was a ‘strong presumption of guilt’ that could not be dismissed without explanation.

Since the Presbytery was unable to explain to the SJC’s satisfaction as to why behavior described as sin was not an offense, the Complaint was sustained.

In their ruling the SJC found that Nashville Presbytery failed to conduct an adequate investigation in the case and, in spite of having evidence before it, failed to make a finding of a strong presumption of guilt as to offenses allegedly committed by one of their members.

The matter was remanded to Nashville Presbytery with instructions to conduct further proceedings in the case, which were to be consistent with the detailed findings of the SJC.

(Note from the Publisher: It is important to mention that the Editor of The Aquila Report, PCA Teaching Elder Dominic Aquila, is a member of the PCA Standing Judicial Commission. In fact, he was a part of the 3-member panel of the SJC that first heard this case. It is the firm policy of The Aquila Report that no information included in any SJC-related report comes to the magazine from Dr. Aquila. All sources of information for these stories come from other credible sources as well as from the official reports issued by the SJC.)