The revised Directory gives the PCA an opportunity to say that the worship of our Triune God is not an afterthought.…Worship is the highest privilege of the Christian and the church’s glad response to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. For that reason, we should receive this proposal with gratitude, read it carefully, discuss it charitably, and pray that the Lord will use it to honor His name and edify His church.

For more than fifty years, the Presbyterian Church in America has lived with a curious arrangement. We have a Book of Church Order made up of three parts: the Form of Government, the Rules of Discipline, and the Directory for Worship. Yet the Directory for Worship has largely remained in a secondary constitutional status. It has been “an approved guide” and “the mind of the Church agreeable to the Standards,” but not binding in all its parts. Several chapters have been granted full constitutional authority, but the whole Directory has not.

That means that the central activity of the Church has not had the same constitutional clarity as our doctrine, order, and discipline. The Ad Interim Committee on Revisions to the Directory for Worship is bringing forward a proposal that seeks to address that long-standing gap. Their report describes the revised Directory as “a carefully framed proposal,” shaped through “study, discovery, discussion and principled compromise,” and unanimously submitted with the hope that it “will honor our Triune God and edify this church.”

I want to convince you that we should match their spirit and approve their revisions as our new Directory for Worship.

On a recent episode of Polity Matters, we had the opportunity to interview three members of the committee: Nate Shurden, Joel St. Clair, and Chad Van Dixhoorn. (Subscribe, so you don’t miss it.)
What came through in the conversation was not merely that the committee had produced a constitutional proposal, but that they had labored to give the PCA something warm, biblical, useful, and pastoral.

Nate Shurden explained that a directory, in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, is not a prayer book. It does not give fixed liturgical forms or prescribe every word of a service. But neither is it a vague appeal to spontaneity. “A directory traditionally within the Reformed and Presbyterian world,” he said, “seeks to lay out biblical principles and foundations… identifying ordinary elements for worship, giving pastoral directions for how worship should be practiced and conducted so that worship is governed by the Word of God.” He went on to say that a directory “literally gives direction” and “helps to give wisdom, theologically and biblically and practically, so that our worship will be ordered and edifying.”

That is a helpful way to think about this proposal. The revised Directory is not an attempt to make every PCA congregation look identical. It is not an effort to flatten the breadth of our denomination. The committee explicitly says that the chapters were written to be “readable” and to “reflect the breadth of our denomination’s practice.” It aims to provide constitutional guidance without unnecessary over-prescription.

Chad Van Dixhoorn used a memorable image in the interview. A prayer book, he suggested, can be like walking into a furniture store and saying, “I’ll take one of those living rooms.” Everything is already arranged. A directory, by contrast, is more like “Home Depot” or “IKEA”—the pieces are there, but they must be assembled wisely. His point was not to make worship casual or improvised, but to emphasize the genius of the Presbyterian directory tradition: it gives real direction without binding consciences to fixed forms.

That balance is one of the great strengths of the proposed revision.

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