November 2023 BCO Amendments Update
Overture 23 (Item 2) on officers conforming to the biblical requirement for chastity has garnered favorable support from almost all the presbyteries that have considered it. This item is likely the final amendment in response to the Revoice Conference and corresponding movement promoting so-called Side-B Christianity. Of the 40 presbyteries which have voted so far, 39 have affirmed this amendment and only 1 has rejected it. This means that this amendment needs the consent of just 20 of the remaining 48 presbyteries to vote on this item. The raw tally for this item is 1499-81 (95%-5%).
As fall fades to winter, 40 presbyteries have taken up the three proposed amendments to the Book of Church Order (BCO) initially approved and passed down by the 50th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Nearly half of the presbyteries have offered advice and consent regarding these three proposed (and recommended) constitutional changes. As a general reminder, for a BCO amendment to be ratified, there is a three-step process:
- The General Assembly must approve it by a simple majority.
- Then it must pass 2/3rds (currently 59) of the PCA’s 88 presbyteries by a simple majority (in each presbytery).
- If an amendment achieves 2/3 of the presbyteries’ support, it must then be approved by the next Assembly for final ratification.
Overture 26 (Item 1)
Overture 26 (Item 1) on the usage of officer titles continues to see widespread support throughout the denomination. If approved, this amendment would forbid the improper usage of titles associated with ordained office.
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Wounded Beauty
We look forward to the day when we will stand with Jesus, the Lamb who looks as if it had been slain (Rev 5:6). Glorified with him, our wounded bodies will testify to his defeat of sin and death. May our eyes be transformed even now, so that we might see beauty as revealed by our sacrificial Lamb.
One of the most dangerous things about beauty is the assumption that we know where to look for it.
We are not completely blind, of course: because of our creation in God’s image, which is not wholly destroyed by the Fall, all people have some God-given grasp of what beauty is. All of us, Christian and non-Christian, are rightfully drawn to beautiful works of art, music, and literature. We recognise the beauty of the Great Ocean Road, Niagara Falls, and the Alps.
And yet, sin does blind us. As Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4). As the true image of the Father, Jesus reveals God’s beauty as much as he reveals anything else about God. As one theologian puts it, “Jesus’ beauty…was the arresting beauty of truth, purity, servanthood, passion, power, mercy, and love…Jesus was a tapestry of all that is glorious in God intertwined with humanity’s capability to reflect the image of God.”[1]
However, before the Spirit’s work of regeneration, humans are blind to the glory of Jesus. As one who “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Is 53:2), Jesus confounds natural assumptions about who and what beauty is. His low, humble birth and upbringing is acknowledged in one response to his early ministry: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (Jn 1:46).
Those that disdain his humility also recoil at the ugliness of his cross, seeing in it only weakness and foolishness (1 Cor 1:23). Shockingly, the cross is the place where God’s beauty is revealed most clearly. It’s there where God demonstrates just how far the plenitude of divine love is willing and able to go for the sake of the beloved. Yet, apart from the Spirit, we do not naturally look at the life and death of Jesus and recognize beauty.
Even after we are recreated in Jesus through the Spirit, the distortions of sin do not disappear overnight. The process of sanctification is slow. We need to have our vision retrained so that they recognise and appreciate what is truly beautiful.
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Church Leaders: June Is Not the Time to be Silent
The month of June has been usurped by the “father of lies,” (John 8: 44) who “deceives the whole world,” (Revelation 12: 9), and who disguises himself as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11: 14). In other words, many churches and our nation have readily turned over an entire month to serious evil—serious, yet so deceptive that it is embraced by so many, even believers in Jesus Christ.
June, which some have designated as “Gay Pride Month,” is not the time for church leaders to be silent. It’s the most appropriate, opportune, pertinent, and relevant time to address the heavy spiritual darkness hanging over the Church and our nation.
Pastors and elders, follow the model of the Apostles who addressed serious issues as they arose. Remember the Jerusalem Council in Acts. Remember the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans—especially chapter one, his letter to the Corinthians dealing with incest in the church, and Jude’s short epistle dealing with the sin and doom of ungodly people.
The month of June has been usurped by the “father of lies” (John 8: 44); who “deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12: 9), and who disguises himself as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11: 14). In other words, many churches and our nation have readily turned over an entire month to serious evil—serious, yet so deceptive that it is embraced by so many, even believers in Jesus Christ.
Pastors and elders, this is not the time to ignore such evil, to be cowardly in the face of such evil, or to be compromised by such evil. Your flocks, your sheep desperately need your faithfulness to God’s Word in exposing evil for what it is. See Ephesians 5:11-12: 1:
“Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them; for the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of” (ASV).
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (ESV).
“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret” (NIV).
The your sheep are inundated with deceptive messages deviously proclaiming sexual immorality and more as blessed, good, loving, righteous, wholesome and legal. Your flocks contain some mature believers, but many new believers, many youth believers, many parents, and many children—all of whom are vulnerable to such strong messaging. Sadly, many churches and Christians have not only accepted the message but have embraced and even practiced it. The deception is so appealing, attractive, beguiling, captivating, enticing, seductive, and subtle. These may be many words, but they powerfully define and describe Satan’s devices.
Growing up in a Presbyterian, Reformed Faith church, it wasn’t until later in life I realized that any Scripture relating to the sin of homosexuality was skipped over in sermons and Sunday school lessons. We never learned there was such a sin being practiced. As a result, no young person was warned about the dangers or the temptations to these sexual sins and how to resist and renounce them. In other words, we grew up naïve and ignorant—thus vulnerable. Do you wish that for your young people and flock?
Pastors and elders, now is the time to address such a sinister sin. Do it in love, but firmly. Don’t soft-pedal it with jumping onto other sins such as greed, gossip, etc. In the hierarchy of sins, this is a serious one because God commanded death to anyone guilty, and He used the harshest of adjectives and modifiers to describe how heinous and serious it is. When preaching on the sins of greed, pride, adultery, concupiscence, one doesn’t veer off to other sins to soft-pedal those. The Church is dealing today with what is termed the “Third Way.” The emphasis is so much on love or ignoring some issues that truth is canceled out or dismissed. When it comes to sin, whether immorality or other acts of unrighteousness, there is only “One Way,” and that is to proclaim what God said about them– to expose them, call for confession and repentance, and then forgive and restore the sinners.
It gives me no personal pleasure in focusing on or writing about this topic, but the force of the advocates for sin are so strong and taking prisoners—even deluding Christians—that it demands being addressed openly, cautiously, firmly, lovingly—but above all faithfully and truthfully. Many lives are at stake, especially the lives of members of your flocks. “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3: 4) relative to this issue. Don’t you wish to instruct and protect them? If you genuinely love your sheep, you will sacrificially protect or rescue them as much as you would feed and nourish them.
Pastors and church leaders, now is the time to stand up and step up to the present challenge. And while doing so, assure your flocks that believing God over Satan or the world does not make one “homophobic.” That has to be one of Satan’s shrewdest tricks.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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A Devotional on the Excellency of Christ Seen in Christmas by Jonathan Edwards
Edwards repeatedly uses the word condescension, and we need to understand that this is a theological word and concept, with no hint of the negative connotations that the word holds in common usage today. Christ’s condescension was his descent from a higher divine state to a lower human one, accompanied by his relinquishing of divine privilege in order to accomplish an action (the salvation of people) that strict justice does not require.
Infinite Condescension
In this act of taking on human nature, Christ’s infinite condescension [“descending to be with”] wonderfully appeared, that he who was God should become man, that the word should be made flesh, and should take on him a nature infinitely below his original nature. And it appears yet more remarkably in the low circumstances of his incarnation: he was conceived in the womb of a poor young woman, whose poverty appeared in this, when she came to offer sacrifices of her purification, she brought what was allowed of in the law only in case of a person . . . [who] was so poor that she was not able to offer a lamb.
And though his infinite condescension thus appeared in the manner of his incarnation, yet his divine dignity also appeared in it; for though he was conceived in the womb of a poor virgin, yet he was conceived there by the power of the Holy Ghost. And his divine dignity also appeared in the holiness of his conception and birth. Though he was conceived in the womb of one of the corrupt race of mankind, yet he was conceived and born without sin. . . .
His infinite condescension marvelously appeared in the manner of his birth. He was brought forth in a stable because there was no room for them in the inn. The inn was taken up by others who were looked upon as persons of greater account. The Blessed Virgin, being poor and despised, was turned or shut out. Though she was in such extreme circumstances, yet those that counted themselves her betters would not give place to her; and therefore, in the time of her travail, she was forced to betake herself to a stable; and when the child was born, it was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. There Christ lay a little infant, and there he eminently appeared as a lamb.
But yet this feeble infant, born thus in a stable, and laid in a manger, was born to conquer and triumph over Satan, that roaring lion. He came to subdue the mighty powers of darkness, and make a show of them openly, and so to restore peace on earth, and to manifest God’s good-will towards men, and to bring glory to God in the highest, according as the end of his birth was declared by the joyful songs of the glorious hosts of angels appearing to the shepherds at the same time that the infant lay in the manger; whereby his divine dignity was manifested. . . .
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