The following is the text of an address responding to the 217th General Assembly, given by Michael Walker at the PFR Christian Life Conference in Montreat, NC, on July 3, 2006. Coming right in the wake of G.A, this was the 37th Annual conference and was attended by roughly 1,100 evangelical Presbyterians.

Well, I am just bursting at the seams to be able to talk some more about the General Assembly! Seriously, though, last night, it was mentioned that people often complain to their church leaders. And as a church leader myself, I am happy to say that I just cannot identify with that experience, especially after the General Assembly.

Here are some quotes that have been uttered here at Montreat in the last few days, and these are not complaints but heartfelt expressions of where we find ourselves in these days:

One person said: “Our congregation has begun the process of pulling out of the PC(USA). And yet we are scheduled to have a PFR renewal event in our congregation in the fall. If we pull out, will you still do the renewal event?”

As a side note, two of the most active elders from my own congregation resigned last week, and we’re a fairly small congregation and the
impact of this will be significant.

Also here in Montreat, someone admonished me: “You know, we spend a lot of time criticizing others in the denomination. If we spent half that time praying for them, our denomination would be different. Before we march on with the criticisms, let us pray.”

And so the truth is that there is much unrest in our church. And we are not all of one mind at the moment about how we might best respond to it. Certainly we need to pray. Certainly we need to continue to proclaim the Gospel. Certainly we need to continue to lift up the name of Jesus. But regardless of our perspective we can’t deny that something is different this week than it was three weeks ago about the context in which we do those things. And we’re not sure how much different it is, and we’re not sure what ought to be different about how and where we, together, pray, proclaim the Gospel and lift up the name of Jesus.

And so we need to talk about the General Assembly, openly and honestly. The General Assembly met two weeks ago. It is the highest governing body of the Presbyterian Church, and its decisions have an impact on all of us.

Now, I don’t want to start with the debate over the ordination to church leadership of persons who are sexually active outside of marriage,
though we should just state the obvious up front and name it, because it was the Assembly’s action on that issue that has, I think rightly,
provoked a good deal of soul searching and consternation after the Assembly. We will get there, and I will address the whole question of
whether at this point I think we ought to stay in or leave the denomination.

But I want to begin with a few other items, some of which are actually much closer to the theological center of who we are as Christians than the ordination debate itself is. And I think what we’ll realize is that, in the end, this Assembly was a mixed bag. They made some surprisingly good decisions as well as deeply troubling errors.

I would like to give you an overview of three major decisions that I think were positive at the Assembly, and then three major decisions that were disappointing. And then I will share some more extended thoughts about where I think we are as a denomination
right now.

1. Good Decision on “Abrahamic Heritage”

The General Assembly received an overture on “Abrahamic Heritage,”
recommending that the Assembly make some strong and highly questionable
statements about the relationship between Christianity Judaism, and
Islam. The presbytery that sent the overture was hoping to provide what
they thought would be a good basis for peaceful dialogue between
Christians, Jews, and Muslims. To that end, they requested that the
Assembly assert “unity and harmony” between the three religions and say
that we all “worship the same God.”

PFR had published advice opposed to this recommendation, and I had posted on my blog site some extended correspondence with one of the writers of this proposal. So, it was something we were watching very carefully.

In the end, the General Assembly chose
to reiterate our commitment to work for peace and righteousness with
Muslims and Jews, but wisely declined to assert “unity and harmony”
among the three religions or that we all “worship the same God.” This
was a very good outcome for the “Abrahamic Heritage” proposal, because
it avoided making statements that would be offensive to members of each
of the three religions, and it stated again our commitment to working
for peace.

We should be grateful for this outcome. Not only was
it faithful, but you can be sure that, if it had passed, it would have
been at the very top of the list of concerns and topics of controversy
after the Assembly, ordination standards notwithstanding, as it touched
directly upon the very heart of who we are as Christians, namely the
centrality of Jesus Christ.

2. Good Decision on Abortion Policy: Protecting Viable Babies

Prior
to this General Assembly, the PC(USA) was the only mainline
denomination that had not taken a stand against partial birth abortion.

Yet our abortion policy was changed
at this Assembly and our denomination now officially respects viable
babies in the womb as persons whose lives ought to be protected. PFR
has worked for years with Presbyterians Pro-Life, and together we are
grateful for this shift in our church’s policies, moving in the
direction of the preservation of life.

3. Good Decision on Divestment

The
PC(USA) frankly has a history of rushing into complex geo-political
matters without thinking things through very carefully, and the last
Assembly’s decision to initiate a process of selective divestment from
corporations doing business with Israel is one such example. This has
been a huge controversy over the last two years, and our relationship
with the Jewish community has been seriously strained.

Yet the 217^th General Assembly replaced
the previous divestment policy with a new policy that does not single
out Israel but also lists Gaza and the West Bank, for instance. And
instead of calling for divestment the new policy calls for investment
only in activities that are consistent with promoting peace in the
region, so the whole thing is framed more positively as well. This new
policy gives the PC(USA) a more consistent and consistently moral
approach in its investment strategies. And hopefully this balanced
decision by the Assembly will begin a process of healing some of our
strained relationships.

Having shared three positive decisions by the Assembly, I will now turn to three decisions that were disappointing.[1]

4. Disappointing Decision on Montreat Historical Society

The General Assembly voted to approve
a recommendation to close the Montreat Historical Society. This
facility houses many of the memories of the southern Presbyterian
Church, and over twenty presbyteries had requested that the Assembly
find some alternative to closing the facility. But those efforts, which
PFR had come alongside, were to no avail. And we can pray that these
resources will be redistributed in a respectful manner that will make
them available for the study of our church’s mission and history.

5. Disappointing Decision on the “Trinity Paper”

Our next topic is one that’s gotten much, if not altogether accurate attention in the press. The General Assembly voted to receive
the paper entitled: “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing.” This paper
has been the subject of controversy, because of its effort to move
beyond the Trinitarian name of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and
employ other “triads” like “Rainbow, Ark, and Dove,” or “Mother, Child
and Womb,” as new and creative ways of referring to God.

PFR would
have liked for this to paper to have been referred to the Office of
Theology and Worship for revision (it was not originally written by
that office but rather by a committee of seminary professors). We
worked together with others, such as Prof. Andrew Purves, to help the
church understand the paper’s deficiencies. A recording of Prof.
Purves’ remarks about the paper, along with PFR’s advice to the Assembly, are available on PFR’s website.

Though the paper was not referred as we had hoped, two things are important to note about the Assembly’s decision:

1) The Assembly did not vote to approve the paper.
Rather, they voted to “receive” the paper from the committee that had
been commissioned to write it, a move that does not give the paper
official standing as policy of the PC(USA).

2) The paper was amended prior to being “received” by the G.A.
Though the paper is still clearly deficient, the amendments were
improvements. In particular, references to “naming the Trinity” were
changed to “speaking of the Trinity,” and other references to various
“names” of God were removed. Another positive change was made to the
paper, stating that the name into which we are baptized is the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The purpose of these amendments was
to clarify that the various “triadic metaphors” employed by the paper,
e.g. Rainbow, Ark, and Dove, are not intended to be names that are
alternatives to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather, they are just
metaphorical descriptions that on the order of saying what God is like – God is like a Rainbow, or an Ark, or a Dove. Yet God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Granted,
this distinction might be lost on many. The paper’s major remaining
deficiency is its failure to distinguish, in sufficiently clear terms,
the different character of God’s Triune name on the one hand, and on
the other hand these creative metaphorical references to God that
happen to be strung together in threes, like Mother, Child, and Womb.
The impression the paper gives to many has been reflected in newspaper
articles, where one cartoon suggests that, if we’re just stringing
words together in threes, we might as well call God “Rock, Paper,
Scissors.”[2]

Hopefully
since this paper was only received rather than approved its damage will
be limited to the press articles already written. So much for the
Trinity Paper.

6. Disappointing Decision on Ordination Policies

(Note
to the reader: if you are familiar with the basic history of the
PC(USA)’s debate and with the basics of what happened at the Assembly
regarding ordination policies, you may want to skip to the next
section, entitled “So What Do We Do Now?”)

And finally we
come to the topic that has caused the most controversy since the
Assembly, indeed the subject of controversy with which our denomination
has been captivated for decades, and that is the church’s standards for
its ordained leaders, that is our pastors, elders, and deacons.

Most
of the controversy has surrounded the “manner of life” of our leaders,
and in particular what it means for our leaders to have sexual lives
that are a demonstration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Much of the
debate has surrounded homosexual practice in particular, because that
has been the interest of liberal activists for the last thirty years.
But in reality it has as much to do with fidelity in heterosexual
marriage or pre-marital sex as it does with homosex. Having debated
the issue for over thirty years, the church has not, until this last
assembly, made any real changes in our standards or our policies for
applying those standards.

In order to understand what happened at
this General Assembly it is important to explain a few of the different
pieces of our church’s policies on ordination.

To do so, we
have to pay attention both to our standards, and to the “force” or
binding character of those standards. In other words, we first have to
see what the standards are, and then we have to assess whether or not
those standards are “optional.” I know, an “optional standard” is an
oxymoron, but that’s the state of debate about ordination in the
PC(USA).

So, there are two constitutional items that are
important in the debate over the sexual practices of our ordained
leaders. First, there is an “Authoritative Interpretation” of the
Constitution (hereafter “1993 AI”) that states the following:
“unrepentant homosexual practice does not accord with the requirements
for ordination set forth in Form of Government.” As an AI, it has
“constitutional force,” i.e. it tells us what the standards in the
Constitution of the church do and do not mean. But because it is only
an AI and not actually a part of the Constitution, it could be removed
by one vote of one General Assembly. The G.A. has the power to
“authoritatively interpret” the Constitution on its own – so it can add
or remove such an interpretation with one vote – whereas to change the Constitution would require an amendment to the Constitution, which can only happen through both GA approval and
ratification by a majority of our 173 presbyteries. Anyway, that’s the
first piece: the 1993 AI proscribing homosexual practice.

The second important constitutional item is the “Fidelity and Chastity Standard” in G-6.0106b in the PC(USA)’s Book of Order,
a part of our Constitution. G-6.0106b is often called the “Fidelity and
Chastity” standard, because it states that those who are called to
ordained office in the church must abide by the requirement “to live
either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a
woman, or chastity in singleness.” Two things should be mentioned
about this standard: (a) because it does not mention homosexuality
explicitly, some have claimed that this standard, when read in their
own clever and disingenuous way, does not actually prohibit homosexual
sex acts. However, at present, the 1993 AI makes such a reading more
than clever and disingenuous: it makes it legally out of bounds,
without question. It is therefore important for the church to maintain
both the standard and the AI. (b) Because this standard is a part of
the Constitution, changing or removing it would require an amendment to
the Constitution, which means any change would need not only the
approval of the General Assembly but also ratification by a majority of
the 173 presbyteries of the PC(USA).

In the last decade,
the 1993 AI has been narrowly maintained by the G.A. The General
Assembly has voted twice to amend the Constitution to change the
Fidelity and Chastity standard, but that standard has been maintained
through successive votes of all the presbyteries (and this by
increasing margins). The General Assembly has been known for having a
far more liberal bent than the presbyteries. When the GA has wanted to
change the standard in the Constitution, the presbyteries have rejected
the changes. So, the two critical pieces of our ordination standards,
as they relate to the sexual practices of our ordained officers, have
been maintained.

And yet we now have to ask the second question:
given that the church has set these standards, are these standards
binding or optional? Can local governing bodies choose to ordain or
install someone even if they live in open violation of the standards?
This is actually a pretty new question. The obvious answer would be
“no,” because the church has, through its Constitution, which governs
the whole church, set standards for the whole church.

But there
has been a shift in the agenda of the gay lobby in several
denominations. Because the liberal activists have not been able to get
the church-wide votes to go their way, i.e. because they have not been
able to get the standards changed, they have begun to seek some interim
alternatives that will at least get the ball rolling in their direction
and begin opening the door for the ordination of practicing
homosexuals. One such alternative they conceived was to weaken the
standard or make it “optional,” which would achieve a favorable interim
result.

What’s more, the activists have known that in order to
make the standards optional they must avoid a church-wide vote, because
the church-wide votes have made and maintained the standard as a
standard, not as an optional suggestion.[3]

You
may recall that I mentioned a moment ago that the General Assembly can,
on its own, pass an “authoritative interpretation” of the Constitution,
without a church-wide vote. And this is precisely what has happened at
our recent General Assembly. What we call “standards,” that is what is
written in our church’s Constitution, have not changed. The “Fidelity
and Chastity” standard is still there. But the G.A. passed a new
“authoritative interpretation” of the Constitution that really does
change what it means to have standards. The intent of the new
“authoritative interpretation” is to make it okay for sessions or
presbyteries to ordain and install individuals who live in open
violation of the church’s standards, i.e. to turn standards into
suggestions or to make them optional or however you’d prefer to put
it.

In other words, it would seem that one vote of one General
Assembly has made it constitutional to violate the Constitution. There
are all kinds of interesting names one might be tempted to call this
kind of maneuver and its consequences.

The basic point of the
Assembly’s action is to let the local governing bodies decide if a
person “adheres to the essentials” required for ordination, those
essentials now being determined by that local governing body.
Apparently there are requirements, and then there are “essential”
requirements. And, to quote the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian
Church: “Certainly, there will be differing judgments in different
locations and different mission situations as to what is essential for
the ordination of people in ministry.”[4]

This is what I have been calling “Local License.”

The
actual “legal” effect of the Assembly’s action, in terms of church law,
will not be known until we have a couple precedent-setting decisions by
the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission. That means we have
burdensome and distracting court battles ahead of us. In a moment I
will mention how PFR will help those seeking to uphold biblical and
constitutional standards.

So what do we do now?

Well,
in the wake of the Assembly’s decision to localize the determination of
essential requirements for ordination, I have been receiving lots of
advice. Many conservatives feel pressed with the question of whether or
not we should be staying in or leaving the PC(USA). This inner turmoil
results from the fact that after debating for over thirty years about
whether to ordain persons who are sexually active outside of marriage,
the recent Assembly’s action was the first time our denomination’s
policies have actually changed. By passing a new authoritative
interpretation of our church’s Constitution, it would appear that we
have given local governing bodies the license to ordain and install
individuals who live in open violation of the church’s standards.

Given
this shift in our policy, some would like me to come out and say we
have a mandate to leave the PC(USA). On this view, the Assembly’s
unprecedented accommodation to secular American culture represents a
fatal compromise from which we as a denomination cannot recover. It is
also believed that we as church members and officers are implicated in
the grievous sin of the denomination, such that choosing continued
participation in this church is choosing participation in sin, which is
unconscionable.

On the other hand, some have insisted that I
declare as schismatic any attempt to leave the PC(USA), asking instead
that I lift up the biblical exhortations to bear with one another
patiently as we maintain the visible unity so vital to a faithful
witness to Christ in the world. Those who hold this view insist that
we must take the unity of the church seriously, and they believe that
leaving over the Assembly’s action on ordination would be tantamount to
cutting a limb off of Christ’s Body.

So what to do? Both approaches have some truth. Yet ultimately I find both unconvincing and overly simplistic.

One of the biggest barriers to clear thinking in the PC(USA) is that nobody really agrees what the PC(USA) is.
One of the great unasked and unanswered questions in our denomination
is also one of the most foundational for the topic at hand: what is
the PC(USA) anyway? In what would we stay? What would we leave? We
need to be explicit about what we are talking about before we can
faithfully assess our respective commitments to it!

What is the PC(USA)?

There
are two main different assumptions about what the PC(USA) is, and
because these assumptions have not been faced head on, so much of the
national conversation in the church is just people talking right past
each other about who we are, where we are as a church, and where we
need to go in the future. Allow me to contrast the two most typical
ways of identifying what the PC(USA) is, ways that I have picked up in
various denominational conversations.

First, there are some,
especially liberals, who tend to equate the PC(USA) with the universal
Church of Jesus Christ, at least rhetorically. The Theological Task
Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, though theologically
diverse, was particularly fond of this approach. The title of the Task
Force itself conflated the PC(USA) with the universal Church. Of
course, the Task Force was talking about the peace of the PC(USA), not
that of Christ’s Body as such. And yet during the Task Force’s work,
all of God’s promises about the peace, unity, and purity of the Church
in the New Testament were arrogated to the PC(USA) as a denomination,
thereby providing the foundational principles for the whole work of the
Task Force.

The best example of this way of thinking is the
statement of the Task Force in its mid-term report, when they implied
that anyone who even considers leaving the PC(USA) is in danger of
severing his or her relationship to Jesus Christ! In other words, if
you leave the PC(USA), you would be leaving Christ’s Body and so Christ
himself.

Yet we know this is theological silliness. We share
ministers with other denominations, and when our ministers go to serve
with the Lutherans, we don’t say they are leaving the Body of Christ.

The
truth is that the broken western church is a complicated mess. It is
shattered into thousands of pieces, and the most we can say is that
parts of the PC(USA) participate in the Body of Christ. We cannot say
that we are the Body of Christ. Leaving the PC(USA) would not
in itself sever my relationship to Christ or necessarily mean I have
left the Church (capital “C”). The stakes are not that high, and
accusations of “schism” are typically overblown. Calvin says “it is
always disastrous to leave the Church,” which is true, but you cannot
just flip out the words and now say “it is always disastrous to leave
the PC(USA).” The point here is that the PC(USA) is not the Church; we
need to get over that way of thinking.

The other, equally
unhelpful approach to identifying the PC(USA) is preferred by many
conservatives, and that is to equate the PC(USA) with its institutional
structure or its non-profit status. On this view, the PC(USA) is an
entity that has existed only since the 1980s and commands no particular
loyalty. As long as the institutional structure is helpful, we should
stay and use it. When it becomes an impediment to life as an individual
Christian or as a congregation, then we should go elsewhere to find a
more helpful institutional framework. If we take this approach, there
are very few spiritual implications of leaving the PC(USA). There are
only legal complications, such as trying to figure out how to take our
church property with us.

So what are we? What is the PC(USA) and how does the answer to this question inform my relative commit to it?

There
isn’t an easy answer, and asking professional theologians doesn’t help
either. I’ve tried that, and they don’t agree with each other. Part of
the difficulty is that a “denomination” is not a biblical category, so
however we chart a way forward we will be drawing on related biblical
principles and then trying to make the contextual adjustments to an era
radically different from that of the New Testament Church.

In
any case, here is my best attempt at defining what we are: The
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is a covenant community of congregations
that since the 18^th century has been called to embody
particular charisms as a witness to Christ and in service to the larger
Church as it participates in God’s mission.

By calling us a
“covenant community” I mean that we are bound together by a common
faith and mission, with congregations in relationships that ultimately
extend back to the first half of the 18^th century. It means
that we are more than our non-profit status, more than our bureaucratic
structure. There are deep relationships, covenantal memories, and a
spiritual legacy that continue to shape who we are. We are a community
of roughly 11,000 congregations who share a history of ruptures and
reunions, joys and trials. Our bond contributes to the unified witness
of the Gospel: we are 11,000 congregations together.

And
yet we cannot consider the foundation of our covenantal relationship to
be a landmark of redemptive-history. Though we are in covenant
relationship with one another, the “covenant” that gives us our
distinct denominational identity is not the New Covenant in Christ. To
claim we are the community of the New Covenant would be to drift back
into claiming we are the universal Church. Rather, the covenant that
gives shape to the PC(USA) is much more humble.

Our
denominational identity is shaped by our agreement that the Reformed
doctrines of sovereign grace give us a biblical description of our
relationship with God in Christ, and by our commitment to live together
according to Presbyterian principles of church order. These are the
things that brought our congregations together and through which God
built up our denomination. These are the particular “charisms” –
spiritual gifts – that God has blessed us with and through which we can
be a blessing to the Church universal and to the world.

These two
aspects of our covenant – our confessional foundation and the ordered
nature of our life together – have been expressed respectively in our Book of Confessions and our Book of Order,
which together with the Bible make up our “Constitution.” They are
intended to be an expression of our denominational identity and an
instrument for maintaining it.

Staring Reality in the Face: Free to Be Faithful

Yet
for awhile now the meaningfulness of the PC(USA)’s Constitution has
been eroding. Theologically, we have lost our rootedness in the
Reformed doctrines of sovereign grace both to pan-denominational
evangelicalism and to theological liberalism. And with respect to our
polity, bureaucratic relations have often replaced the spiritual rule
of elders, and our “connectionalism” has been eaten away by various
forces: from the steep decline of denominational loyalty to the recent
Assembly’s decision to allow something as central as sexual morality to
be a matter for local determination. The Reformed confessions were
relegated to a secondary status long ago (in practice). And now our Book of Order is following suit.

And so here we are. There is no sense in covering up reality.

Let
me suggest something that may sound a bit dangerous: there is a certain
freedom in our present circumstance, a freedom out of which God might
end up bringing some good. In some ways the Assembly’s decision on
ordination finally admits in theory where we have been in practice for
quite some time. And staring reality in the face can be a revelatory
experience.

One thing revealed is that we are free to no longer look
to our constitutional documents or our higher governing bodies as the
primary means of giving expression to the unity and identity of our
covenant community. We might recover their ability to serve that role,
but in the meantime we ought to admit what some on the P.U.P. Task
Force knew well, namely that the higher you go in our governing bodies
the less representative those bodies become. (Honestly, it is hard to
get past the fact that the P.U.P. Task Force was careful to make their
recommendation to change our ordination policies in a form that could
be passed by one vote of the G.A., without requiring votes of the 173
presbyteries!) If the higher governing bodies of the church do not
re-present us then we need to find alternative ways to make manifest
who and whose we are.

Indeed, the substance of the Assembly’s
action on ordination itself encourages greater local control and admits
the weakness of our national identity. Maybe that in itself should
diminish the sense of being morally compromised by the Assembly’s
decision (a concern of many evangelicals). We can express our identity
locally with confidence and integrity and need not feel defined by the
unrepresentative actions of the Assembly.

And we can do much
more. Having been encouraged to assert ourselves locally, we can do so
in ways that will give alternative and ultimately more unified
expression to our covenant community. It is about the relationships –
congregation to congregation, and gatherings of elders and pastors. We
find ourselves in a time where the institutional modes of maintaining
these relationships are failing, and we need to develop new patterns.
For instance, even if some use their new local license to shrink from
the global church by considering confession of the Lordship of Jesus
Christ or a sexually moral life non-essential requirements for
ordaining officers, we are free as an evangelical movement to expand
into rather than shrink from global Presbyterianism.

While we work to restore proper order in our own denomination – which we will do – we are free to be faithful.
We are free to be faithful in building new relationships and expanding
the covenant community. We are free to be faithful by proclaiming the
Gospel, training missional leaders, doing good theology and fostering
healthy congregations whose public witness to Jesus is at the heart of
God’s plan for the expansion of his Kingdom. We are free to address the
underlying disease of the church’s problems rather than simply being
entrenched in battles over its symptoms. We are free to be faithful by
banding together as those who confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ over
all of life, and together building ministries that do not depend on a
failing denominational structure, ministries that do equip our leaders,
nourish our congregations and offer a faithful witness to Christ in the
world – friends these are the things our ministries together as
Presbyterians For Renewal are all about, and we are free to pursue them
with passion while we seek the will of Christ for our future together.

If
we discover that there is no future for basic biblical faithfulness in
the PC(USA), we will see to it that we can sing a new song in a new
land, and I would be the first to lead the charge. And yet as of this
day this has not been revealed to us, and as we seek the mind of Christ
together, we must stay together as an evangelical movement
and we must trust more in the Spirit that rose Christ from the dead
than we do in the powers of darkness whose day will soon come to an
end. We must not stop engaging in the work of the Kingdom or allow
ourselves to be so captivated by the agendas that the devil has thrust
upon the church that we fail to proclaim together the Gospel of the
living and reigning Lord Jesus Christ!

And brothers and sisters,
we are free to be faithful in building relationships with Presbyterians
all over the world and to begin seeing ourselves as we are – a small
part of what God is doing to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to
peoples around the globe. We can begin to understand ourselves more as
people participating in the flourishing of the Gospel around the world
– and it is flourishing around the world – and less narrowly as people
who feel buried amidst the ails of a declining mainline North American
denomination. This is one of the main thrusts of the new Presbyterian Global Fellowship,
an initiative I have been working on with a cluster of evangelical
congregations in the PC(USA). And I invite you to come and join us for
its first gathering in Atlanta on August 17-19 at Peachtree
Presbyterian Church. We don’t know where God will take this nascent
movement, but I hope you will come and seek God’s will with us and help
shape its future.

Choosing to emphasize that we as a Presbyterian
Church can and should pursue our identity and unity through means not
defined by our governing bodies does, in my mind, represent a step
further than where PFR and most of the evangelical movement has been in
the past. PFR has always been an alternative of sorts, some have even
called us a “shadow denomination.” Whatever we call it, I believe the
time has come for the whole evangelical movement to go to the next
level: more distinct identity within the PC(USA); reconsidering our
stewardship of financial resources and questioning the wisdom of paying
per capita and undesignated mission giving – this will vary by
presbytery but we do need to ask the questions; and a public,
open-ended, theologically informed discussion about where God may be
leading us together in the future.

In our agenda for the next two
to four years, this approach of getting on with the mission of the
church together as an evangelical movement and not waiting on the
reform of the hierarchy is one of two main thrusts.

The other
main thrust is the faithful engagement of the church’s governing bodies
– from sessions to the General Assembly – doing all we can to ensure
that biblical and constitutional standards for church leadership will
be upheld at the local level, working to restore order at the national
level at the next General Assembly, and exploring several specific
ideas for our future, including non-geographic governing bodies.

We
must be careful that this effort does not consume us so much that we
fail to get on with the church’s mission; but I believe it would be
unfaithful for us to merely abandon the structures of the church.
Indeed, we have good, tangible reasons to engage them with confidence.
We should remember that, after all the campaigning and all the
anticipation and all the deference given to the PUP Task Force, their
recommendation on ordination standards that has provoked our reaction
has received only 57% approval of the one most disproportionately
liberal governing body in the church. And the GA voted by over 80% to
keep our standards in place. In other words, we don’t know what may
happen at the next General Assembly. I do not believe the further
liberalization of the church is inevitable. Nor do I believe a more
faithful course is inevitable. They are both in question.

Another
important thing to remember about the recent Assembly’s decision on
ordination, which granted license to local governing bodies, is that
you are not required to use the license they have granted. You are free
to be faithful in your congregations and in your presbyteries to uphold
the biblical and constitutional standards of the church. And PFR is
ready to help you do that.

I encourage you to read the written piece we have on our website called “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace.”
It interprets the Assembly’s actions, and gives you some practical
advice about what you can do now – how you can speak now to help ensure
faithfulness in your sessions and presbyteries. There is also
information available on the website of a new group called the
Constitutional Presbyterians. (Click here to see a list of various groups you might find helpful.)

In
addition, PFR has established a legal team consisting of five former
members of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission. This
team stands ready to answer any questions you may have about what has
happened and what you can do to uphold the Constitution, including
pursuing remedial cases against an ordaining body that does not uphold
the Constitution, or disciplinary cases against leaders who live openly
in violation of the Constitution. Send email to: speaknow@pfrenewal.org.

What
is the PC(USA)? We are a covenant community of congregations called to
live out of the distinctives of our Reformed heritage, in and for the 21^st
century. We can now see that enforcing our national “Constitution” will
not in the short term be a primary means of enabling our community to
live out of its own ideals. Perhaps the Spirit will breathe on our
congregations and presbyteries to enable authentic Reformed life to
emerge from the grassroots. We are living such a life in many places.
Let’s build new patterns of relationships to nourish and support each
other and provide new modes for the unified witness of our covenant
community.

At the same time let us work together to restore
order and faithfulness at the national level, calling the whole church
to live out of its own recognized biblical and constitutional standards.

If
you leave the PC(USA), I won’t call you schismatic, you can still be
part of the Church, that is the Body of Christ, and your relationship
with Christ will likely still be intact. But we will miss you, and our
covenant community will be the weaker for it. So, for the sake of the
covenant community, I urge you not just to stay, but to become a part
of the expanding movement.[5]

Footnotes:

[1]
I feel compelled to point out that it does feel a bit odd to hold these
up as “good decisions.” In one sense, for the reasons stated above,
they were good decisions. In another sense, I admit that they are not
exactly cause for unrestrained rejoicing, given that they were
basically decisions to undo damage and help prevent further damage or
unfaithfulness. Evangelicals often feel like that at General Assembly:
like we’re working for damage control. The things we rejoice about as
evangelicals are typically things that happen in our congregations,
where God changes peoples’ lives. What we most desire cannot be
accomplished by a General Assembly, and using the Assembly to make this
or that prophetic statement or espouse this or that national church
policy, or even getting evangelicals elected commissioners to General
Assembly, is not what we see as our primary task in the church, whereas
for many liberals the situation is reversed. And so the Assembly is
flooded with liberal proposals for action, which its unrepresentative
set of voting commissioners often find appealing, and for the sake of
what matters most to us – our congregational ministries – we often find
ourselves trying to limit the damage that might be done by the
Assembly. There is much more to be said here, but this is a general
description of what I see happening.

[2]
Cartoons are not meant to be fair, of course. The paper does not lead
to that conclusion, but it needed to have more clearly avoided that
conclusion.

[3]
I should point out that the decision to frame the Assembly’s action in
terms of the agenda of the gay lobby is to indicate that the Assembly’s
action, whether intentionally or not, fits the agenda of that special
interest group. I am here paying primary attention to who is pleased
with this outcome and why, not with the origins of the proposed
authoritative interpretation (i.e. the Theological Task Force on
P.U.P.).

[4] Los Angeles Times, “Episcopal, Presbyterian Leaders Rule on Gay Clergy,” June 21, 2006.

[5]
Given some questions that were asked after this speech was given, it
seems appropriate for me to note that the future of the “expanding
movement” is, of course, open-ended. How could it be anything else?