Seizing those opportunities [currently available to the PCA] will require organizational competence, high character from our leadership, and a recovery of relational trust across the denomination. If we can address these problems, the potential good that might be accomplished through the PCA is significant. We should labor toward those ends. Should we fail, it will not be for a lack of talent or theological engagement, but simply due to a lack of competence, character, and charity in our denominational life.

I first became involved in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in 2006. It was fall semester at the University of Nebraska, where I had just matriculated after graduating high school the previous spring. A friend I had recently met invited me to the weekly large group gathering of Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). It became a kind of home for me for the next four years. There I heard the Gospel preached, grew in my understanding of Scripture and theology, and was constantly reminded that the Christian life happens not in parachurch organizations, but in churches. RUF wasn’t a replacement for church, but simply an extension of the church to the campus and it was understood that I still needed to be in church each week and that life after college would not be a prolonged adolescence in a campus ministry, but commitment to the ordinary life of a local church.

At the same time that I was involved in the life of RUF, I also joined a small recently particularized PCA congregation in central Lincoln. I was baptized there in April of 2007 and, again, was encouraged in my faith, challenged to repent of my sin, and aided in a life of Christian discipleship.

Alongside those local institutional experiences, I also became aware of Tim Keller’s work around the same time and quickly began reading everything I could from him—which in the late 2000s was actually not very much. It was the days of local church pastors passing around CDs with Keller sermons on them or sharing PDFs of short papers Tim had written.

That time was a period of a small revival of sorts in Lincoln, primarily propelled by the PCA. For a short time in the early 2010s, Nebraska was the most represented state in the student body at Covenant Theological Seminary outside of the PCA’s southern base. Many of my closest friends were part of that group. The Covenant they attended was the Covenant led by Bryan Chapell and downstream from the changes brought to the school by Chapell and Paul Kooistra. It was the Covenant that also trained my campus ministers from RUF as well as the most senior teaching elder in our presbytery who was instrumental in planting the church I eventually joined and launching the RUF chapter. The Platte Valley presbytery, still my ecclesial home nearly 20 years later, owes Chapell a great deal and I am thankful for his work to train so many of my friends and former pastors.

All that being said, as I reflect on my time in the PCA I am struck by the fact that so much of the good I have experienced is not necessarily because of talent or charisma but because of competence and character. The men God used so mightily in my life are not known across the nation for their preaching. They are not the sort that gather thousands for conferences. They do not hold high office in the denomination. They were, rather, ordinary faithful ministers, men of character and integrity, and men who knew how to do their jobs. They knew how to fundraise for RUF. They knew how to lead a church. They knew how to run a leadership team meeting or welcome new members into the church. They weren’t perfect, but they knew what they were doing and they went about their work with integrity.

This brings me to last week’s unfortunate events. Dr. Chapell, who moved on from Covenant over a decade ago and who now serves as our church’s stated clerk, appeared on Collin Hansen’s podcast “Gospelbound” to discuss a recent book he has written on generational dynamics in the life of Christian communities. Around 40 minutes into the interview, Chapell was discussing the challenges of institutional stewardship with Hansen. In that context, he produced a list he apparently kept on his desk and held it up to the camera. In speaking of the names on the list he said,

Those are the names of the scandalizers, the people who have invested hours every day attacking others for their supposed lack of faithfulness, for their compromise; whose identity comes from scandalizing others. And every name on that list has either left his family, left the faith, or taken his life. Every name on that list.

Before we even get to what happened next, we should note this: It is not a mark of health in a Christian leader to keep a handwritten list of one’s enemies next to one’s desk. It is, rather, the mark of a person who is petty and foolish and carries grudges, as one friend observed to me. Or, as another friend put it, the command Our Lord gives us is not “love your enemies and also keep a list of them.” The simple existence of this list is a scandal in itself.

That being said, it got worse: Because Chapell made the decision to hold the list up to the camera, it was possible to read the names on his list. They included, in at least one case, a man who has been dead for over 20 years. Additionally, the list included a number of names of men who are ministers in good standing in various reformed denominations, none of whom have left the faith, left their family, or taken their own lives, as Chapell falsely claimed in the video.

Wes White, for example, is on the list and actually is currently pastoring at Chapell’s former church. (White has written about this affair on his personal blog.) Other men on the list included Andy Webb, currently pastoring in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Lane Keister, currently pastoring in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and several other ministers who have not done any of the things Chapell claimed in the interview. His list also included both Carl Trueman and Peter Leithart.

Needless to say, neither Trueman or Leithart have “left his family, left the faith, or taken (their lives).” Both men have now commented on these claims, Trueman in a brief interview with a journalist from World and Leithart via a statement issued through the Theopolis Institute’s social media channels.

One day after the clip was first noticed, Chapell issued a faux-apology that was published on the TGC page that had originally hosted the podcast, which TGC has understandably taken down. Here is what Chapell said about the affair, which I refuse to describe as an apology:

With deep regret for harm done to others, I am issuing a public apology for not taking proper care to protect the reputation of others. In an unplanned moment on a recent video podcast posted by The Gospel Coalition, I held up a small piece of paper that I believed was not readable but included names of individuals. TGC personnel who prepared the video also thought that nothing was legible on the paper. However, there are now those who have taken a screen shot of the video and enlarged it to identify some names. I sincerely apologize.

Note the words missing from this statement: There is no mention of “sin.” There is no mention of “slander” though one can easily argue that Chapell slandered many of the people on the list. There is also no mention of the ninth commandment, which seems relevant given the Larger Catechism’s account of it.

Note also that virtually half of Chapell’s statement is dedicated to explaining what happened and explaining it in such a way that the real problem here is with the people who took a screen shot of the video and enlarged it to identify the names. It reads as an apology from someone not genuinely penitent over his wrongdoing, but rather sorry that he got caught.

Where do things go from here, then? There is an immediate problem and then a larger issue.

Procedural Matters

The immediate problem concerns the procedural actions that will or will not be taken in response to this situation. And on this point what I say is of little relevance; I am only an unordained lay person from the Platte Valley presbytery.  That said, it is worth taking the time to understand how the procedural steps from here should work, so we will address that briefly.

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