You have been committed to the idea that the Great Commission leads us into obedience in all that Jesus taught, and that obedience will lead you out into the streets, from time to time. But you wanted to pursue that mission in a denomination that took the Word of God seriously, Confessionally, faithfully. You believed that your denomination could be an example of that kind of sacred calling. That’s the Church you hope for and long to help lead. I want to tell you: that PCA is both here now, and still to come.

As the founder of the National Partnership[1], I’ve been careful to avoid the sense that I was creating a tribe in the PCA. If anything, the NP represented a tribe that already existed, a broad tribe that loved our denomination and believed in its mission. A tribe who believed that, if the PCA was in trouble, it was in trouble in the same way that their friends and neighbors were in trouble: because of powers and principalities at work in the world. I’d like to speak to two groups, both of whom fear the PCA is drifting.

I want to speak to those who have deep stakes in the denomination, who were discipled by Sproul, trained by Frame and Pratt and Kelly and Calhoun, received your church’s Sunday school curriculum from Jack Scott, were taught by the likes of Randy Pope, Frank Barker, James Boice, Jonathan Seda, Carl Ellis, Wy Plummer, Louis Wilson or Robert Rayburn, Ligon Duncan, Jim Baird, Paul Kooistra, Charles McGowan. You joined the PCA because it was a voice for orthodox Biblical belief in a world with constantly shifting values and truth commitments. The denomination did not hesitate to speak with clarity on the issue of creation, of divorce and remarriage, the valuing of human life, and was willing to speak powerfully about the sin of racism in our past. You knew that the PCA advocated for the Scriptures without compromise, and it had a place in the Kingdom of God that made you proud.

The PCA has been the denomination of Reformed University Fellowship and church planting, and a global witness that has helped stoke the revitalization of the Church in the countries where it once flourished, and established footholds in countries where disciples still meet in secret. This has been a denomination with an incredible commitment to world-wide evangelism and local discipleship. You knew that the next issue of Table Talk was going to help you, and your church, stay in the word. Your kids had a reliable choice for a college where Christ is Pre-Eminent on Lookout Mountain, GA. And if you sent them to a secular school, they probably had a PCA-affiliated campus ministry available to them. I want to tell you that everything that made you proud to be in this corner of the Church, remains. And there is absolutely nothing in the winds that will change that. This denomination will continue to be an institution both theologically orthodox and Kingdom-minded.

How do I know? Because in the PCA, theological liberals depart. Many of the articles you might read concerning troubling happenings in the denomination involve churches that have already left us, having taken an unbiblical view of, for instance, human sexuality, and find that they cannot hold those views and stay. While some take this as proof that the fruit is rotten at the core, I would say it is direct evidence that the PCA continues to exercise a healthy confession. We continue to maintain a rigorous structure for upholding Biblical fidelity, a good burden that our pastors willingly carry—even into suffering. While some publicize distrust of “city church” culture, you may not hear about the pastors in some of those city churches who have unique styles of community engagement and who might belong to a more culturally progressive wing of the church, suffering in their communities for holding to a Biblical ethic. These are pastors who have the difficult conversations with visitors looking for a community that will obey their tribal commitments instead of the Scriptures. Some of those pastors not only lose dear friends and congregants, but even officers in their churches. I hear of these costs being paid daily. These culturally progressive ministers may have differing views on the merits of social justice emphasis, they may be circumspect about critical race theory. They may hold minority opinions on American politics, but they are — first — devoted to the means of grace. In a rapidly de-churching nation, these pastors and elders are engaging in foreign missions on American soil. Their faithfulness is inspiring, and costs them perhaps a great deal more than the price their critics pay in their own churches.

I recently caught a social media exchange where Tim Keller was being questioned concerning his view of a Biblical sexual ethic[2] by skeptics and theologians across the denominational landscape. While those outside the PCA on the thread considered him to be too conservative, it is clear that within the PCA some would call him too liberal. But Keller’s theological conservatism is foundational to his philosophy of ministry, it deeply channels the currents of his writing, cultural engagement, and church work. While Keller is maligned as a theological liberal in his own denomination, he is the one engaging thousands on Twitter defending a biblical and historical view of human sexuality. Even our alleged theological “progressives” are committed to Biblical fidelity.

For further evidence you might look at the recent work of our Human Sexuality Ad-Interim Committee, a report enthusiastically scriptural, confessional, compassionate, wise. If ever there was a time when the erosion of Biblical Fidelity would show, it would be that report. But look at the product[3]. Look at the authors spanning across the divides in our denomination. I continue to be thankful for statements like this one (p.24):

It is crucially important that our churches communicate to same-sex attracted believers experiencing same-sex attraction that faithfulness to God’s call to discipleship upon their lives is possible. An unclear understanding of the Reformed position that sinful temptations themselves, as well as sins of the will, are to be repented of might reasonably lead some to believe that faithfulness is impossible and pursuing holiness is an exercise in futility. We should be clear that while every Christian’s obedience remains imperfect and tainted by sin in this life, there is still a very real and important sense in which through Christ all Christians have been equipped for real and progressive obedience to God that brings him honor and is worthy of rejoicing in (WCF 16.6). This remains true even if their attraction to the same sex does not go away.

In that committee our church represented itself extraordinarily well. Any concern about the “drift” of the PCA ought to require evidence from what we produce when we gather together. Not only is the judgment that the PCA is “going liberal” without evidence, even the concern is without basis in fact.

There will be a considerable amount of discussion over a court case in the Missouri Presbytery this year. And the same contrary voices are again harvesting the anxiety of faithful pastors and elders who wonder if the cultural tensions they experience in their neighborhoods are sledgehammering the pillar and buttress of truth in their beloved denomination. Let me be one voice telling you no. The process of the case—apparently the record is almost two thousand pages long—is indicative of the presbytery’s commitment to honoring their vows to maintain Biblical fidelity, it is an indicator of our higher courts’ willingness to exercise oversight of that fidelity, and it is an indicator of the pastor-in-question’s commitment to the oversight of his own Biblical fidelity. When the record of the case is finally released, I believe we will see that far more can be accomplished by a constitutional process than by extra-judicial blog-justice. We should all be grateful to see that the buttress is alive and well.

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