An Update on Presbytery Votes to Proposed BCO Changes
Four amendments to the PCA’s “Book of Church Order.”
To date, 26 presbyteries have voted on the changes. Here is how the votes currently stand: Item 1 amends BCO 13-6 to clarify the process for ministers transferring into a presbytery. The presbytery vote thus far has been 26 for, 0 against. Item 2 amends BCO 13-6 to add personal character and family management to the examination of transferring ministers. Read... Continue Reading
Revisiting the PCA Report: “Man’s Duty to Protect Woman”
A quarter-century after issuance of the PCA’s report, “Man’s Duty to Protect Woman,” its relevance continues with the Church, and an anti-Christendom culture.
In 2001, the PCA’s General Assembly adopted a majority report of an ad interim study committee on Women in the Military entitled, “Man’s Duty to Protect Woman.” As I wrote for the Aquila Report (Aug. 14, 2016), the PCA committee sought to convey the whole counsel of God summarizing the issue of man’s duty toward... Continue Reading
An Example of Why We Must Emphasize That Unnatural Lusts Disqualify for Office: A Reading in Missouri Presbytery’s 2020 Report on Allegations Against Greg Johnson
The constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) prohibits the ordination of men who experience unnatural lusts, prudence also recommending against it.
Those and many other things in our theory and practice of church government follow from an inference, and in many cases one that is much less clear and logically necessary than the inference that it is imprudent in the extreme to ordain men given to unnatural lust, or that the church may act on such... Continue Reading
Further Reasons Why the Presbyterian Church in America Ought Not to Ordain Men Who Experience Unnatural Lusts
The constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America prohibits the ordination of men who experience unnatural lusts.
Perhaps the most obvious corruption of our thought upon this point has been the substitution of “same sex attraction” for “lust.” …working off of Scripture’s framework, our constitution and ethical tradition know nothing of mere attraction, especially where it is conceived as a potential weakness or liability rather than as the sin of unnatural lust.... Continue Reading
Synod 2024: An Appraisal and a Vision
My hope is that the CRC would be a home for refugees of the sexual revolution, a place where God’s grace abounds but the boundaries don’t budge.
My prayer is that everyone in the CRC will be able to articulate the gospel and would unashamedly spread this good news. While the evangelical world has the gospel, they are adrift without a confessional tradition to ground them. Many have floated in the directions of the prosperity gospel or Christian nationalism or pastoral personality... Continue Reading
The Constitution of the PCA Prohibits the Ordination of Men Who Experience Unnatural Lust
The Presbyterian Church in America recently adopted changes to its Book of Church Order that specify that an elder “should conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity…”
The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) recently adopted changes to its Book of Church Order (BCO) that specify that an elder “should conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in his descriptions of himself, and in his convictions, character, and conduct” (BCO 8-2). Similarly, deacons are to be conspicuous for “conforming to... Continue Reading
Evangelical Denominational Storm Brewing?
Questions of policy within the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
The issue arose because Greg Johnson, the Presbyterian pastor of Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis who says he is homosexual but celibate, left the Presbyterian Church in America in 2022. Now his church wants to join the EPC. “That has stirred up all kinds of controversy because we’ve got some in the EPC that appear... Continue Reading
The Organization of Veritas Presbytery
On August 19, 2024, five ministers gathered in Greenwood, SC, along with elder representatives from three former ARP churches to constitute Veritas Presbytery, an independent unaffiliated presbytery.
“In order to uphold our ordination vows, before God, our Father, the Lord Jesus, our Savior, and the Holy Spirit, who guides us into all truth, and to adhere to the Holy Scripture with utmost honesty and integrity and therefore obey God over the ungodly whims of hierarchal human manipulations, this new presbytery is being... Continue Reading
Is the PCA a 2.5-Office Church?
Two specific areas in which the PCA – while holding to two offices, not three – in practice, encourages what has been called, half-seriously, a 2.5-office system.
Bringing together, then, the “permanency of the gifts which qualify for the office,” and the church’s judgment “that Christ is calling this man to the exercise of the office,” Murray considers it inconsistent for the elder to be installed for a specified period (despite the PCA’s “perpetual” ordination, this does not preclude churches from specifying... Continue Reading
In the ARP: Crisis of Conscience, Not Constitution
The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church is one of the oldest Presbyterian denominations in the U.S. At its June meeting the General Synod voted overwhelmingly to dissolve Second Presbytery, effective September 1, 2024.
We remain firmly Presbyterian in polity, with the highest court being the General Synod. What seems to be at the center of this confusion is a short phrase in the new FOG “in order to:” That phrase indicates that the synod has the authority to do those things (organize, receive, divide, dissolve, etc.). And that... Continue Reading
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 93
- Next Page »