My aging mind cannot understand how so many of my dear brothers in Christ in the PCA can even conceive of the Administrative Committee “funding plan” as being pleasing to the Lord. I do not find a justification for “pay-to-play” in the Scripture.

Editor’s note: Many PCA Presbyteries will be holding their winter stated meetings in January and February. One of the issues before them will be the proposed BCO 14 amendments, also known as the AC Funding Plan. The Aquila Report asked a number of ruling elders to give us their perspective on the proposed amendments; two REs will present reasons in support of the Plan and two will give reasons against adopting the Plan. We will publish these articles one day at a time during this week, alternating between pro and con. It is our desire to encourage a full and open debate in allPresbyteries on this important proposal before the PCA.

Before there was a PCA I was a ruling elder in the PCUS in a church where only four of the twenty-four elders believed the Bible was the unerring revelation of God. My seven years of labor in this context was emotionally distressing.

The Lord mercifully transplanted me into a tiny “body” raised up from the prayers of four or five families. Three of these families were led by former PCUS ruling elders who subsequently affiliated the small “body” with the RPCES. The “body” was constituted of approximately 35 to 50 people, counting the children, when my wife and I and our three youngsters joined the group (I was not one of the “founders” of this small group).

From this tiny beginning the Lord raised up a Moderator for the RPCES; and two Moderators for the PCA – one a teaching elder and the other a ruling elder.

My heart pleads for the little churches.

Are the little churches not free to decide where their meager resources are to be allocated without “outsiders” judging them, even penalizing them?

The proposed “funding plan” for the Administrative Committee of the PCA [amendments to BCO 14-1 and 14-2] can be rationalized and thereby justified in many seemingly “wise” ways. But by whatever name you call it, it is a “pay-to-play” plan. And without intention, it precludes the little church from providing potential godly council to the PCA through its highest court. My aging mind cannot understand how so many of my dear brothers in Christ can even conceive of this “funding plan” as being pleasing to the Lord. I do not find a justification for “pay-to-play” in the Scripture.
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Dr. Richard C. Chewning is a Ruling Elder in Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Dr. Chewning was the Moderator of the last two Synods (1981 and 1982) of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPCES) before it joined the PCA in 1982; and was elected Moderator of the 13th PCA General Assembly in 1985.