V73: What do you say to your fellow elder who is unconvinced of the exegesis and believes that the diaconate is reserved only for men?

Wheatley: That, I hope, this is an issue where brothers can disagree and still work together; that it belongs not in a top tier of theological essentials, but a second or tertiary tier of things that we allow latitude among as a denomination.

At their 2012 winter meeting, the Northern California Presbytery received a request to conduct a study on a topic that, so far ,has proven too hot to handle–woman in the diaconate. This request came from Pastor Sam Wheatley of New Song Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, UT.

Following this Presbytery meeting Wheatley’s paper was put up online and has started to garner responses from a number of other PCA blogs.

As this paper, and its author, is sure to gather more and more attention in the coming months, the contributors of Vintage 73 wanted to interact with the topic. Our hope was to seek to understand Pastor Wheatley’s motivations and intentions behind his this.

Rather than taking wild guesses, or trying to search old websites for comments Rev. Wheatley might have made, we decided to ask him directly and we are now, with his permission, publishing his response to our questions.

V73: What was your motivation for bring this request at this time? Why not two years ago?

Wheatley: Two years ago our presbytery did bring this up at a presbytery level. We brought the issue of the diaconate by surveying and describing the various ways that sessions within the Northern California presbytery were organizing their diaconates. We presented to the presbytery 6 ways that local sessions had interpreted the BCO on the issue of organizing the diaconate with respect to the inclusion of women. We adopted a resolution that approved all 6 as valid forms for sessions to employ. For each position we gave a BCO rationale that had been used to arrive at that construction. This resolution was complained about and resulted in an SJC case. The SJC ruled that our presbytery did not have the right to make such a resolution.

The reason I and others wanted to bring this up before presbytery was that for many years there has existed a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding this issue. We desired to bring the issue up in order to have a more thorough and biblical discussion of the diaconate and the role of women in the diaconate. Before doing something overtly political like overturring to change the BCO, I’m seeking to address a tough issue in a biblically faithful and winsome way. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about the Reformed tradition is the ability to work through the biblical material on complex issues and draw conclusions that keep us in line with orthodox theology and prophetically relevant to our contemporary setting.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]

Sam DeSocio lives in the city of Pittsburgh, with his wife Jo, and their sons Augustine & Gabriel. Sam is the pastor of Grace & Peace Presbyterian Church, a new PCA church plant. He is a regular blogger at V73.