You Get What You Pay For
The Committees & Agencies of the PCA General Assembly must be able to compensate their coordinators well enough to attract qualified, competent leaders.
We should expect Permanent Committee coordinators to be competent to ensure neither they nor their staff create unnecessary controversy. The General Assembly should get what it pays for. My friend was sharing his frustration with me about the stated clerk of his presbytery. “He promised me I would have the minutes from our stated... Continue Reading
How to Normalize an Erroneous Innovation in Doctrine or Ecclesiastical Practice: A Guide for Heretics and Less Egregious Reformers-Errant in Presbyterian Churches
Lessons that might be drawn for how best to achieve the desired result based on the PCA’s recent experience and that of other denominations on similar questions like women’s ordination.
An apparent victory in the short run may conceal a defeat in the long run, especially if it failed to uproot the poisonous roots that the ‘losing side’ planted. Already I am told that presbyteries are arguing that the recent BCO additions which many of us thought were meant to prohibit men who are tempted... Continue Reading
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
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
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
Distributions in the PCA
What do they say?
The most interesting thing about these two alleged 15% segments is that there seems to be virtually no overlap between them. Find a PCA church with evening worship (in addition to morning worship) with two full sermons on the Lord’s Day AND unordained “deacons” serving on a unisex board and—to be frank— you’ve found something like a sasquatch... Continue Reading
The PCA Should Have A Directory for Worship
The way the Presbyterian Church historically has seen fit to order its worship is to have a Directory for Worship.
But what matters to me is that we can all agree that there are principled convictions we should all share. We can appreciate diversity while we also strive to remain faithful to what God’s Word says regarding how we should worship God. Four of the Ten Commandments directly relate to how we worship God, and... Continue Reading
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