The overture requiring the titles of elder and deacon to be restricted only to men who serve in that ordained office passed, but even if it had failed it would still remain impermissible to ordain women to the office of deacon, which is what this minister was arguing for. Others arguing against restricting the titles of elder and deacon to ordained men insisted that their specific cultural heritage, namely respect for older members in the church, demanded that they use biblical titles of office for those not ordained to that office. Still others simply stated that they have used these titles for non-ordained women for decades, and that it would be very unpleasant to change course now.

The Presbyterian Church in America met this week [6/10-14/24] for its annual General Assembly (GA), where the entire denomination gathers to deliberate important, denomination-wide matters. Ruling Elder Steve Dowling was an excellent and fair moderator and business progressed in a timely fashion. One might even dare to hope that the trend of ending mid-afternoon on Thursday, as occurred both this year and last year, will continue indefinitely. This year there were fewer outwardly controversial matters debated, though some of the items up for votes were related to bigger issues (the role of women in the church, abuse, etc.).

I attended this year as a voting commissioner and was pleased with how things went. One of the items receiving extra attention is that of who may use the titles of elder or deacon. This one is important because it addresses the fact that women in some PCA churches have been called deacons, though the polity of the PCA requires that this ordained office be only filled by men. Of all the GA debates, I was most surprised by the reasoning of those who opposed the overture that would explicitly forbid the title of elder or deacon being applied to anyone not ordained to that office. One minister presented the commonly used argument that the biblical word “deacon” is applied to women (Phoebe in Rom 12:1, for example). There is a confusion in this argument between the way in which the word “deacon” is used in a more generic sense in scripture simply to mean someone who is serving others in some capacity and the specific office of deacon described in 1 Timothy 3, but what was most striking to me was that this speaker was using this argument very straightforwardly to state that the PCA’s binding polity is simply wrong about women deacons. Even if the PCA’s polity is wrong on this (I don’t believe it is), for the time being that polity is binding on all officers. The overture requiring the titles of elder and deacon to be restricted only to men who serve in that ordained office passed, but even if it had failed it would still remain impermissible to ordain women to the office of deacon, which is what this minister was arguing for. Others arguing against restricting the titles of elder and deacon to ordained men insisted that their specific cultural heritage, namely respect for older members in the church, demanded that they use biblical titles of office for those not ordained to that office. Still others simply stated that they have used these titles for non-ordained women for decades, and that it would be very unpleasant to change course now. I don’t recall hearing a single argument on this side for the permissibility of calling unordained women deacons within the rules of our currently existing polity. This, to me, only goes to show that the real issue has been a lack of enforcement of our polity in the past, not ambiguity about that polity.

One thing that surprised me this year was the failure of an overture that would make binding an amended section of our non-binding Directory of Worship. The section, as newly amended, would mandate that only qualified men can preach. The main argument against this overture was that our binding Book of Church Order (BCO) already mandates that only qualified men can preach. This is true (BCO 12-5.e), though I don’t understand why added clarity on this matter is problematic.

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