Seeking to provide civil discourse in a safe place, the Presbytery has invited two PCA leaders to make ‘Vote Yes’ and ‘Vote No’ presentations and field questions from members of the Presbytery.

During a period of ‘Reports from Commissioners at General Assembly’, a regular docket item in Blue Ridge Presbytery for the July meeting following the most recent PCA General Assembly, it was clear to the Presbytery leadership that their members had a number of unanswered questions about the meaning and affect of the proposed changes to BCO 14 that would set up a new and distinctively different funding plan for the PCA Administrative Committee.

Knowing that the winter and spring meetings of the Presbytery were likely to be crowded with licensure and ordination exams, the Facilitating Committee of Presbytery (which serves as an Executive Committee between meetings) met through email exchanges for several weeks after the July Stated Meeting to discuss what to do. It was agreed that the Presbytery members would benefit from an opportunity prior to the October meeting to read up, listen to presentations and ask questions on the issue prior to attending the Stated Meeting and vote on the BCO changes. This would result in a more focused and less time consuming debate on the approval vote in October.

The Moderator, Past Moderator and Stated Clerk were assigned the work of obtaining speakers from outside the Presbytery to facilitate this meeting. The date of Saturday, September 18, seemed to be the one with the least conflicts among the churches. A format was agreed to and the search began for speakers. The location was set at Westminster Church, Roanoke for it proximity to an airport.

On Tuesday, August 2, firm commitments to participate were received from two PCA leaders.

Representing the Administrative Committee and presenting the ‘Vote Yes’ position will be Teaching Elder David Silvernail, Pastor of Potomac Hills Presbyterian Church in Leesburg, Virginia. He has been serving as a member of the AC Committee during the process of presenting the Strategic Plan to the General Assembly.

A member of theCooperative MinistriesCommitteeof the PCA who did not vote in favor of the Strategic Plan (due to leaving the decision meeting early to fulfill a prior commitment) will be presenting the ‘Vote No’ position: Teaching Elder Dominic Aquila, Editor of The Aquila Report and President of New Geneva Seminary in Colorado Springs, CO.

The program will begin at 9:00AM Saturday morning and run through about 12:30PM that day. The bulk of the time will be devoted to have the speakers answer questions presented by Elders from the Presbytery.

During the first hour, the ‘Vote Yes’ speaker will make a 20 minute presentation to review reasons for supporting the change, and then field previously submitted written questions for 30 minutes. During the second hour, the process will be repeated for the ‘Vote No’ speaker.

After a brief recess, the third hour will be given over to Elders who are actually present at the meeting asking questions (that have been written out and approved by the meeting’s moderators) to be answered by both speakers within reasonable time limits.

The Presbytery is arranging for the two 20-minute presentations to be video recorded and for the entire 3 hour program to be audio recorded. Barker Productions of Birmingham, AL has agreed to serve as the licensed agent to reproduce these recordings and make them available to interested Elders (and others) throughout the PCA. Barker Productions was chosen because of their work in providing this same service for PCA General Assemblies for a number of years. Ordering details will be published in the near future.

The Facilitating Committee of the Presbytery has sent out the official invitation for Presbyters to attend the meeting. In that invitation they encourage Elders, especially Ruling Elders, from all Blue Ridge Presbytery churches to attend, and to be sure they have read over the official materials ahead of time. Attendance from churches will not be restricted to just the BCO limit of voting numbers and they were encouraged to send as many Elders as possible.

Visitors from outside the Presbytery (and the public) are welcome but questions will only be accepted from Blue Ridge Presbytery members.

Questions concerning logistics for the meeting should be addressed to the Presbytery Stated Clerk at [email protected]

Don K. Clements is a Teaching Elder in the PCA. He is the Publisher of The Aquila Report and serves as the Stated Clerk of Blue Ridge Presbytery