It’s impossible to preach the gospel with a person’s life. A person’s testimony and lifestyle is certainly important, but nobody will ever be saved by merely watching how people live. They must come to know the law of God which confronts sinners with their guilt and shame. It’s then that they come to hear the good news announced which points them in the direction of the Savior of the world—Jesus Christ.

Gone are the days when we simply received little clichés and pithy statements on bumper stickers alone. Now, with the highways of the internet and social media, we have access to a wealth of information which can be profitable and dangerous at the same time.
Every so often you will see this common phrase circulating around social media: “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” The statement is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, but in all reality, there’s little evidence that he actually spoke those words.
The real issue is with the meaning of the phrase itself rather than the origin. Is it possible to preach the gospel without words? Is it possible to be faithful to God by proclaiming the good news with your life alone?
The Danger of Cliché Christianity
I love a good quote from a good author, but those quotes are not enough. We need the Scriptures. One of the great tragedies of modern evangelicalism is the shallow approach that is popularized through social media. We are bombarded with messages, quotes, and man’s opinion on many levels on a daily basis, and oftentimes these messages drive us in the direction of superficiality rather than robust faithfulness.
Some common clichés circulating today might include statements such as:

God never gives you more than you can handle.
When God closes a door, he opens a window.
God helps those who help themselves.

The fact is, God often gives us far more than we can handle for the sanctifying purpose of revealing our weakness and our need for God. Sometimes when God closes a door, he simply closes a door. It should also be pointed out that God helps those who learn that they cannot help themselves without the power and strength of God. The sappy cliché approach to following Jesus does not work.
When genuine Christians study the Scriptures, they soon learn that the worldly clichés that are so commonplace in our day are at odds with the very Word of God. It’s at this juncture that Christians are moved from a steady diet of sloppy cultural phraseology to the rich streams of God’s holy Word where an abundant supply of wisdom and knowledge flow into the hearts and minds of God’s children.
Preaching is Far Superior to a Personal Testimony
When we hear people who press a personal testimony above the actual gospel itself—that’s confirmation that there’s a massive misunderstanding regarding the gospel. To be clear, people are not saved by listening to a personal testimony. People do not need more stories.
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“We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church (Genesis 2:24; Leviticus 18:1-30; Romans 1:26-29; I Corinthians 5:1; I Corinthians 6:9; I Thessalonians 4:2-7),” the email added. “Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately.”
 
Grace Christian School “fielded hundreds, probably thousands, of phone calls Thursday, Friday, over the weekend, with just some of the most outrageous things: People threatening to burn my house down, threatening to kill my family,” said Barry McKeen, school administrator and pastor of Grace Community Church of Valrico, Florida, which runs the school.
The threats came in reaction to an article by NBC News, which published several paragraphs of a June 6 email in which McKeen reiterated to school parents the school’s commitment to biblical sexuality.
“We believe that God created mankind in His image: male (man) and female (woman), sexually different but with equal dignity,” read the email, and continued:
Therefore, one’s biological sex must be affirmed, and no attempts should be made to physically change, alter, or disagree with one’s biological gender—including, but not limited to, elective sex reassignment, transvestite, transgender, or non-binary gender fluid acts of conduct (Genesis 1:26-28). Students in school will be referred to by the gender on their birth certificate and be referenced in name in the same fashion.
“We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church (Genesis 2:24; Leviticus 18:1-30; Romans 1:26-29; I Corinthians 5:1; I Corinthians 6:9; I Thessalonians 4:2-7),” the email added. “Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately.”
It’s a bit surprising that NBC News would choose to cite a robust defense of biblical sexuality so extensively. It must believe that every word is damning.
Indeed, to this apologetic, NBC felt it needed to only add quotes from three anonymous former students who essentially confirmed the email accurately reflected the school’s policies. One left the school for another which allowed her to “just be myself.” Another, who graduated, said her identity as transgender “was not something I could be open about.” A third, who also graduated, objected to chapel messages preaching against homosexuality.
In response, McKeen published a video address on Thursday night insisting that the school would not back away from its commitment to follow the Bible. “Why we were chosen for this experience, I do not know,” he said. “Almost every Christian school has such a policy.”
But McKeen did know one thing. “I don’t answer to NBC,” he explained. “I answer to God. And so, if a lot of people are mad at me, I’m sorry. I don’t like that they’re mad at me. But at the end of the day, I answer to God.”
McKeen said “many things in the article” were true. Grace Christian School does have “a policy that does not allow students to [identify as] homosexuals or transgender.” But that’s because “they’re students. They’re young people. They shouldn’t be sexual at all. God condemns any sexual activity outside of marriage, and that’s also in the policy.” The policy didn’t single out LGBT identities; it also applied to heterosexual immorality.
“We have had these policies in our school since day No. 1, in the early 1970s,” said McKeen, who “has served in the church for 21 years.” He clearly explained that “God has spoken on those issues explicitly, aggressively.” There is no wiggle room. Therefore, “it is our policy now. It will be our policy going forward because … God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change.”
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We need to do better by the Reformed faith. We should not shun words like beautiful, nuance, winsome, and missional, but find ways to use them and use them properly: to extol the virtues of the Westminster Standards as a philosophy of ministry and summary of the Scripture’s teaching.

Language shapes the way people think and heavily influences the judgments people make. George Orwell illustrates this well in 1984. We see this in secular culture; simply by adding the modifier affirming to a product, policy, or institution, it is easier to brand opponents of the policy, product, or institution as some sort of -phobic.
Who could possibly be opposed to something that is affirming and who could survive being labeled some sort of -phobic? Language manipulates the way people perceive issues and even whole groups.
Even in the Church labels influence the way people in the Church relate to one another and how we see ourselves relative to others in the communion. Of course our primary identity flows out of Christ as saints, beloved, and children. Nonetheless in a communion as large as the PCA it is helpful to recognize where one stands along the spectrum.
In 2015, TE Bryan Chapell wrote describing his impression of three main groups in the PCA: “traditionalists, progressives, and neutrals.” Nobody seemed to like Chapell’s designations, and the volume of blogs on all sides objecting to the way Chapell described the different groupings suggests he was probably near the target(s).
While I am not a fan of being labeled a traditionalist, the three words Chapell used to describe the three groups were respectful and accurate enough for people to grasp what he was talking about in 2015 without a whole lot of nuance or elaboration. There are simply differences of ministry perspective, philosophy and priorities across the PCA, and people generally fall into one of about three broad categories. Chapell’s three words effectively distinguished the three groups.
Shaping the Message
Not all labels are as neutral as the ones in TE Chapell’s 2015 article. If an elder is described as winsome, missional, outward facing, and/or gospel centered where would we assume he falls in the Chapell Taxonomy above? If a congregation tends to focus or speak much on “beauty” and “authenticity,” where would you tend to assume it falls on the Chapell Taxonomy?
Recently a church website posted selections of references given for pastoral candidate TE James Kessler, including one from now Stated Clerk Chapell.
Stated Clerk Chapell asserted,
James [Kessler] is courageous and gospel centered. He is very insightful of people. James has multiple gifts so he has an extraordinary ministry. He is a true gem. James has been a leader in the denomination, especially of those pastors who are ‘gospel centered.’
Are there PCA pastors who are not “gospel centered,” is there a portion of the PCA which is not “gospel centered?” What would the taxonomic label for this group be? “Law Centered?” We can only speculate, and that is not the purpose of this article.
My purpose is, however, to highlight how men on the more confessional or “traditionalist” end of the PCA spectrum have done a poor job using language to communicate the beauty, loveliness, and grandeur of simple, ordinary, plain, vanilla, Old School, Reformed, Westminster, Confessional, Ordinary Means of Grace Presbyterianism.
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