In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days.  Here are numbers 21-30.

In 2023 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 21-30:

Parents And the Apostasy of Covenant Children

Among what these principles teach is that when a parent loves his family first and foremost, he neither loves God nor his family aright. One loves his children above God by pursuing their happiness rather than their Godliness, their respectability rather than their need for righteousness in Christ. Even to seek equally both happiness and Godliness is to deny God. It is to deny the primacy of a biblical pursuit of God, and that all blessings beyond knowing Christ are incidental to seeking first the kingdom of God. It’s to pursue God’s favor apart from thirsting after Christ. What can be more subtly idolatrous for the Christian?

Blasphemy in the Presbyterian Church in America: A Reflection before the General Assembly

Does he believe sexual immorality is shameful (Eph. 5:12) and corrosive (1 Cor. 6:18) and ought not to be discussed, or does he believe that being a ‘[insert sin here] Christian’ is just another form of Christian experience? Does he believe that it is blasphemy to associate Christ’s holy name with enduring sin and to make that sin central to one’s identity, experience, personhood, or ‘authentic self,’ or does he think it is needless alarmism and decidedly unwinsome to object strenuously to such obviously worldly notions?

Big Eva Says Out with Complementarianism, In with Anti-Fundamentalism

Moore is a former Southern Baptist leader and Gospel Coalition council member who is now the editor of Christianity Today magazine. The mere fact that he’s now the editor there shows something is afoot, given that Moore was historically strongly complementarian and Christianity Today has long been egalitarian. As I noted in a previous post, Moore wrote a column in March of this year saying that evangelicals needed to rethink their gender wars. Though obviously in a Moore style rather than a Keller one, it is an almost perfect instantiation of Keller’s framework and strategy. 

Movie Review: Nefarious

There is so much to appreciate about this film, and not just because it’s a good movie. Nefarious is a theologically orthodox explanation about God, the Devil, and the cosmic battle which occurs every day for a person’s soul.

2023 Orthodox Presbyterian Church General Assembly Report – UPDATED

For the election of a new moderator the following were nominated: Rev. Bruce Prentice (Mandon, ND), Elder Bruce Stahl (Wentzville, MO) and Rev. John Shaw (general secretary of OPC Home Missions). After a vote Mr. Shaw was declared elected. Rev. Danny Olinger (general secretary of OPC Christian Education), who had nominated Mr. Shaw, led in prayer for the newly elected moderator.

Schools in the Presbyterian Church in America

With respect to membership, PCA churches with schools are significantly larger. The average PCA church has 230 members on its rolls on average. Churches with schools average 630 members, while those without average 190. They have both more communicant members (500 vs. 148) and non-communicant members (131 vs. 41).

The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism

As fate—or perhaps providence—would have it, Darby’s premillennial eschatology and the stark intensity of his heaven-earth dualism caught on not just in Southern England, but in America. Reshaped in the hands of other ministers, theologians, and popularizers, his ideas and those of his Plymouth Brethren colleagues would in due time change the trajectory of American evangelicalism and the nation’s culture. The ideas presidents kicked around in the Oval Office can be traced back to his work.

Turning Worship into a Clown Show

Our God, our New Testament God, is a consuming fire and to be approached with awe and reverence, as the book of Hebrews teaches. And those incapable of acting in accordance with that have no place in the pastoral ministry. And the SBC is certainly not poorer for their departure.

Avoiding a Second Civil War

Two competing religions are struggling in a battle against each other for control of our nation’s numerous institutions such as the civil government, the military, education, and even the church. Whatever labels you use for the two sides of the conflict, either wokeism versus traditionalism, or Cultural Marxism versus Christianity, the clash between the two factions is heated and intense.  We call them culture wars, but we need to be reminded that culture is downstream from religion.

How To Kill A Denomination In One Easy Move

If you want to kill your denomination in one easy move that move is to neglect General Assembly.   Those who helped bring in the very things that caused you to send your ruling elders to GA in the first place (Revoice/Side-B, CRT, female line- authority, etc.) are themselves going to be at General Assembly and they are waiting to reengage at the very first indication that our denomination has again attained a false sense of security.
Related Posts:

Written by J. Chase Davis and Matt Patrick |
Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Today if you visit an Acts 29 church, you can’t be sure what you will experience. You might experience the promotion of trans ideology, a woman preaching in the pulpit during worship services, the teaching of critical race theory…that America was founded on lies and racism which has set up a system of white dominance. Or, you may experience a faithful pastor trying to do the best he can with little support or oversight from his primary church affiliation. 

For this is what it means to be a king: to be the first in every desperate attack, and last in every desperate retreat, and when there is hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.“The Horse and His Boy,” C. S. Lewis, 240.
Leading a Christian organization for the past few years has been difficult. The church is in desperate need of courageous men to lead in such times of tribulation. Sadly, this has not been the posture of many evangelical leaders.
The American evangelical landscape has lately experienced the pains of the Big Sort. Christians are self-sorting according to various religious and political convictions that reflect broader national trends. Regardless of the reasons for such a sorting, whether it be the idolization of politics as some might claim, or simply the natural result of broader cultural trends, the evangelical Big Sort is in full swing.
An example of these trends is the Acts 29 Network, a network of approximately 700 churches, which projects a niche expertise in church planting. Founded in 1999 by David Nichols, of Spanish River (Presbyterian) Church alongside Mark Driscoll, who eventually became the primary leader, Acts 29 discovered its market position in the midst of the nascent and now fractured Young, Restless, and Reformed (YRR) movement.
Acts 29 was always committed to gospel-centered ministry, complementarian theology, missional innovation, Spirit-led pneumatology, and Calvinist soteriology. However, the scandal-plagued organization has failed to meet the needs of the hour with grace and truth. Churning through leaders and tolerating trans ideology in pulpits, this once strong church network has outkicked its coverage, losing the moral clarity our times of disorder and particular depravity demand and the courageous conviction it once possessed. Constant board turnover, network realignment, and bloated bureaucracy speak to an organization building the plane as it flies rather than instilling confidence and stability in its member churches.
Our church joined Acts 29 in 2011. At the time we were already on the ground in Boulder holding worship services for our church plant.
For young church planters, joining Acts 29 was attractive because of the access to influential voices within the YRR movement such as Darrin Patrick, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Sam Storms, Steve Timmis, and Ray Ortlund. The benefit of joining Acts 29 wasn’t monetary as they did not give money to church planters at the time. The benefit was found in the trusted relationships based on theological alignment and the credibility the brand provided. It was like joining a trade organization or guild so that you could put the logo of the network alongside your brand ensuring credibility and gain access to people and conferences which could help you plant a church. Not to mention, the network was the “it girl” of church planting. Mark Driscoll was being discussed in the New York Times, Darrin Patrick was going on Fox and Friends. These guys seemed to have two things that don’t normally go together, a commitment to biblical fidelity and an attractiveness to a wide audience. What church planter wouldn’t want to join their network?
Over time the focus of the network shifted. Rather than lauding the glorification of God in all things through a rich commitment to the historic Christian faith and church planting, Acts 29 began to talk less about theological convictions and more about cultural diversity. As busy church planters, much of this didn’t catch our eye. We were glad to be part of the club and assumed the best of the talented leaders directing the network.
That changed in 2020. There were four events which led to a slow erosion of trust.
First, the sudden firing of Steve Timmis under the claim of “abusive leadership” based on a hit piece from Christianity Today seemed suspect. Whether there were biblically justifiable reasons to dismiss Timmis is unknown, since to this day, the network has not shared any investigation which would justify arriving at such a conclusion. When one network leader was asked what abusive leadership is, his reply was simply “Anytime a leader misuses power.”
Second, COVID created a confusing and at times contentious environment amongst churches in the network. Some stayed closed and others stayed open. Acts 29 provided pragmatic opinions on the best practices for churches but offered little theological instruction surrounding the importance of churches remaining open.
Third, our friend Darrin Patrick took his own life. Darrin was a recent friend to our church and a former board member of Acts 29. His own life unraveled as he had a moral failing and falling out at his own church plant. Darrin’s experience was emblematic of broader problems in evangelicalism in dealing with once-famous pastors who were voted off the island.
Fourth and most significantly, with the death of George Floyd, churches in the network became deeply divided and did not receive clear leadership from Acts 29 central staff and regional directors regarding biblically sound approaches to this matter. Acts 29 executive chairman, and former president, Matt Chandler, blamed the church for making BLM necessary. Vice president of church planting, Tyler Jones, proclaimed that those who have been silent regarding racism are walking in unrepentant sin. Acts 29 itself parroted worldly talking points about systemic racism. On a network call for pastors, the Director of Pastoral Care stated that “America has designed a system where white folk always win…This system sprung up from the church…My prayer is that God would use our generation of pastors…to dismantle it with the gospel truth.” One former board member, and current Acts 29 pastor, Leonce Crump, referred to the revolutionary war as an insurrection. He went on to say, “God is always standing on the side of the disenfranchised, marginalized and the oppressed” all while claiming to be neither left nor right. Furthermore, claiming that if we don’t participate in BLM, we will dishonor the heart of God and that we must be anti-racist. In an interview with Acts 29 pastor Guy Mason, pastor Crump said “Blood, violence, and hypocrisy are the soul of this nation.”
All of this led us to begin asking earnest questions to restore trust and build unity within the network and our own church. We have had over a dozen phone calls over the last three years with vice presidents, former board members, and other leaders in the network to seek clarity on doctrinal and financial matters. As part of their membership in the network, churches agree to give 2% of their annual budget to the network to further their mission of planting churches (think of them as member dues). If our church was going to support church planting in this way, we wanted to ensure that the churches that were being planted were not worldly.
Read More
Related Posts:

“Those whose blessed state we are here assured of are such as fear the Lord and walk in his ways, such as have a deep reverence of God upon their spirits and evidence it by a regular and constant conformity to his will…God blesses them, and his pronouncing them blessed makes them so.”

As my wife and I anticipate our seventh covenant child (and third daughter) joining us early next year, I told our other children that it is their fault that we’re having another baby!  Because they are all so amazing—so wonderful and so precious, and so we wanted to love another of them in our family and church to impact this world for Christ!  Yes, it is a lot of work to care for them, as the world wants us to worry about in fear, but they are also a great blessing from the Lord to we who fear Him.
In fact, God best blesses those who respect Him with many children to build their families and His Church.[1]  So God promised Abraham more children than stars in the sky and sand on the seashore as reflected in his new name, “father of many nations.”  And God gave the Israelites easy births of an enormous amount of babies to outgrow their Egyptian persecutors (and also blessed their faithful midwives).
The Scriptures can hardly imagine anything as a greater temporal blessing than being bestowed with more children.  Thus Psalm 128 expresses this in verses 3 and 6; yet having many children is an illustration of what the Psalm focuses on—people whom God blesses and makes happy:
Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee…Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the LORD. The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life (vs. 1-2, 4-5).
Imagine having the most powerful soldier personally standing guard around you and your family always.  Psalm 34:7 says, The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.  Those that fear Jesus (who trust in and serve Him) enjoy His happy, blessed protection and provision.
Read More
Related Posts: