We must not think recent news out of Saint Louis is cause to slacken or pause. News from Saint Louis should stir us to remain vigilant against any who would erode the freedom of the gospel: freedom from the penalty of sin, freedom from the power of sin, and one day freedom from the presence of sin.

The PCA has been at a crossroads for some time as we debate what sort of denomination the PCA will be.
Will the Presbyterian Church in America be a denomination that is “Faithful to the Scriptures, True to the Reformed Faith, and Obedient to the Great Commission,” where officers and church courts uphold the Constitutional Standards of the PCA with integrity and sincerity? Or will the PCA be a denomination characterized by latitude and leniency with regard to the Standards?
Up until recently, the General Assembly of the PCA tended to issue actions and deliverances that favored that latter course: one of latitude and leniency. As I’ve written elsewhere, the presbycrats were largely allowed to run things.
But lately, attendance at the General Assembly has seen marked increase, especially since 2018 when it was so difficult for the General Assembly to grant constitutional authority to the chapter on marriage in the Book of Church Order. And a year later attendance skyrocketed after many in the PCA were scandalized by a speech in which TE Greg Johnson, PhD reflected on his unnatural lust on the floor of the Assembly.
I. Hoping for Repentance
Many throughout the PCA were shocked that a minister of the gospel would attempt to wax eloquent about his vile affections in hopes of swinging a vote against an overture. Further grief flowed seemingly every time that minister spoke publicly. During one now infamous podcast, he even seemed to go so far as to assert that unnatural affections are not within the scope of repentance:
What I hear is that you are judging brothers for not repenting of something that cannot be repented of.
From many corners of the PCA, individual elders and church courts wrote both to TE Johnson and to his presbytery urging him to repent of his views, actions, and statements. The Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) even took the unprecedented step of re-opening a case before it to provide additional opportunity for clarification and corrections by TE Johnson on what he meant.
Despite the clarifications when the SJC re-opened the case, members of the Standing Judicial Commission nonetheless issued a blistering concurring opinion expressing concern regarding his “lack of clarity” and “tone-deafness” on matters of homosexual lust and other issues.
Further corrections and clarifications followed. But in addition to corrections and clarifications, TE Johnson engaged in additional speaking and writing on the subject of vile affections, which further troubled the Church.
For example, Ascension Presbytery reported on Johnson’s 2021 book Still Time to Care and noted not only grave concerns with the way TE Johnson “misuse[d] identity in Christ” but also and his “aberrant views on sexual orientation, his disregard of the confessional teaching on the heinousness and various aggravations of different sins, and his lack of interaction with the confessional understanding of the gift of continence.”
Further attempts were made to bring TE Johnson to repentance; letters were sent to his presbytery, dialogues on various media platforms, reviews of the book were written highlighting troubling aspects in Johnson’s views and ministry paradigm.
Johnson’s teaching, speaking, and writing on the issue of unnatural lust has deeply troubled the PCA. For example, two Covenant College faculty members noted a troubling lack of focus on the need for sanctification in his book:
[W]e’ve registered two substantial reservations, raising a worry about Johnson’s treatment of sanctification with respect to concupiscence and questions about the notion of sexual orientation as a fixed propensity that’s taken for granted in this book and by most participants in the broader debate. Since these themes are central to the book’s overall argument, they end up weakening his case for a paradigm of care. In our opinion, the paradigm of care is inadequate without a complementary devotion to sanctification.
The defects in his theology and practice have been noted across the spectrum of the denomination from GRN Council Members such as Jonathan Master, the aforementioned Covenant College professors, and even the Stated Clerk called the way he speaks about his unnatural desires, “highly imprudent.”
Despite all this, TE Johnson and the Session with whom he serves have refused to give heed to the concerns of the wider church on this matter. Memorial Presbyterian Church (MPC) continues to welcome transvestites to perform in its chapel as the church supports these folks earning a living from their “arts.”
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The worship of the true God is persuasive, not manipulative. God persuades us to admire, by revealing His beauty in His Word. False gods manipulate by placing audio-visual candy canes in front of our noses and ears. Persuasive worship is by nature, then, “slower”, requiring more time, concentration, and focus, for no one can be persuaded without some rational thought. Those addicted to manipulative worship instinctively call persuasive worship “boring”.

Pentecostal worship places great emphasis on intensity. By intensity, they mean a strongly felt experience of emotion, intimacy, joy, wonder, or happiness. Indeed, this is a close cousin of the ecstasy in ecstatic utterances. The experience sought is one where active seeking gives way to a passive experience of overwhelming pleasure or emotion.
Critically examining emotional experiences like this has all the fun of ruining someone’s birthday surprise or spoiling a joke by blabbing the punchline before the narrator has finished. We don’t like people like that, who appear to find joy in lessening the joy of others. Not surprisingly, when a critique of someone’s spiritual experiences begins, the response is often an impatient sentiment along the lines of “Can’t you just let people have their fun?”, or, “What’s it to you if someone has a different worship experience to you?”
But in matters of Christian worship, we cannot be content if worshippers merely make the claim to an ecstatic experience. That’s precisely because the experience of worship is not the goal of worship. Worship is not successful simply because the worshippers enjoyed their worship. Christian worship is rooted in truth, and therefore everything that claims to be Christian worship must be a truthful response to a truthful revelation of the true God. In other words, you can get worship wrong, even if it felt right. Many people feel good about an exam they wrote, and find out they failed; some feel terrible and find out they passed with flying colours. The indispensable necessity of Christian worship is a true revelation of God from the Scriptures, and a truthful – that is, appropriate and corresponding – response to that revelation. The First Commandment restricts worship to the true God. The Second Commandment restricts the responses of worship to those He has commanded, which correspond to His being. The true God worshipped the true way constitutes biblical worship.
This brings us to a rather dispassionate discussion of felt emotions in worship, one that is sure to annoy all fans of scrunchy-face worship. Philosophers and thinkers have written much on how human emotions differ: their categories, their manifestations, and how they are evoked. Dating back to classical Greece, philosophers have often placed emotions into two categories: those evoked by reason, and those evoked by physical sensation. Different nomenclature has been used, but a similar idea prevailed for centuries. Pre-modern theologians spoke of the affections and the passions.
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The elders mentioned in Acts 11:30 by definition are Christian as the relief sent from Antioch was intended for “brothers and sisters living in Judea” (Acts 11:29). While there weren’t clearly defined distinctions between Jews and Christians by the Roman authorities until the reign of Nero, there was early on, within the first days after Jesus’ resurrection a clear distinction made between the followers of Jesus and the established Jewish religious community.

In Acts 11:29-30 (narrative, descriptive) we’re given the first explicit mention of New Testament Christian elders:
Acts 11:29 The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
Prior to Acts 11:30 the term for elders is used as a reference to Jewish elders, not members of the believing community following in faith the resurrected Jesus (1). The elders mentioned in Acts 11:30 by definition are Christian as the relief sent from Antioch was intended for “brothers and sisters living in Judea” (Acts 11:29). While there weren’t clearly defined distinctions between Jews and Christians by the Roman authorities until the reign of Nero, there was early on, within the first days after Jesus’ resurrection a clear distinction made between the followers of Jesus and the established Jewish religious community.
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