Life is simply not worth living without God, and it is very difficult without family. Remove both, and you have existence, not life. One might say that he avoids church and gatherings because he does not want to die, but we must ask in return, “What are you living for?” Whatever the response, it will not convince many (other than non-Christians!) that it is worthwhile.

This is the first post in a two-part series on church and health by Rob Golding, Pastor of First Artesia CRC.
Imay be a day late and a dollar short, but I have heard many people say that they are going to avoid certain gatherings due to the chance that they might get sick. They are immunocompromised. Recently, I received an email indicating that a family member will not be at my grandmother’s 103rd birthday because a friend staying with the family member is very susceptible to disease. Without seeking to castigate this family member (this person is acting in the best interest of a friend), how should we think about such things?
It is one thing to avoid gatherings temporarily when we are temporarily compromised. A woman at our church is avoiding our gatherings while she receives chemo infusions because they drastically reduce her ability to fight infection. She has the blessing of the pastor and the elders. Especially because she says she will be in the front row the day her system is up and running. But what about those who will be compromised indefinitely?
Well, for Christians, this seems to be a no-brainer. For the Christian, there is nothing better than being in the presence of the Lord, with His people, hearing His word, and singing His praises. Indeed, this is a foretaste of heaven that non-Christians cannot and do not enjoy (which is why they would not like heaven if they were to go!). I do not think it is a stretch to say that every single Christian would say that their second-best blessing—after being with God and His people—is family.
So, if Christians avoid family gatherings and church because to do so makes them vulnerable to death, we should ask them, “What are you living for?”
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Any position that attempts to add or subtract from this Gospel is a false gospel that cannot save.  Many heresies are such because they claim that something additional is required.  For example, there are some that say that, in addition to faith in Christ, one must be baptized in water in order to be saved.  But water baptism cannot save you; only Jesus can.  Water baptism is merely an outward act of obedience reflecting our unseen faith.   There are those that claim that after salvation, one must do good works in order to maintain that salvation.  This too is heretical because it makes continued salvation contingent upon works, not on Christ.  Jesus is both the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).  Good works will naturally follow from salvation because a saved person wants to please God.  But these works cannot save.  They are merely an outward reflection of inward faith.

In part 1, we looked at those doctrines that are essential to salvation: those that cannot be denied by a person whom Christ has saved.  We found that these all centered on Christ: His perfect nature as God Almighty, His atoning death for our sins, His grace by which He grants us faith in Him, His resurrection that foreshadows our own, and the repentance He grants us which results in obedience and good works.  We cannot attain salvation by our own works, but only by God’s grace received through faith in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9).  This is the Gospel and it is all about Jesus.
Any alternative is a false gospel.  The saving faith that Jesus imparts to us allows us to confess that Christ is the Lord God (Romans 10:9-13; John 8:24).  It is a genuine faith that God raised Christ from the dead (Romans 10:9-11), and will resurrect everyone else at His second coming (1 Corinthians 15:20-24; John 5:28-29).  The saving faith God imparts to us always involves repentance from sin and will result in good works (Luke 13:3,5; Revelation 2:5; 1 John 2:4; James 2:4).  These verses also clearly teach that the one who denies any of the above principles does not have salvation, but will die in his sins.
And yet, there are many who would verbally profess the above doctrines but lack saving faith in Christ.  Consider what Christ Himself said in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”  We saw in Romans 10:9-13 that declaring Jesus is Lord is a requirement for salvation.  Yet, Jesus Himself indicates that this, by itself, is insufficient.  He said, “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Matthew 7:22-23).
Notice that Jesus said “many.”  That is, many people think they have salvation in Christ and will be surprised to learn on Judgment Day that they do not.  That is a terrifying thought!  These verses should challenge every professing believer to ask himself, “Am I truly saved?”  Saying the right words does not impart salvation.  Rather, God imparts salvation, granting to the sinner a new heart, repentance from sins, and faith in God.
But how do we know that our faith in God is genuine?  After all, Jesus refers to people who were confident in their salvation, who professed Christ as Lord, and even performed miracles in His name; yet, they will not enter heaven.  Just imagine living your life, thinking you are a Christian, being confident in your faith in Christ, and then having Him say to you on Judgment Day, “I never knew you.  Depart from Me.”
Knowing God
God knows the people He saves (John 10:27-28).  And they know Him (John 10:14).  This knowledge is more than simply an awareness of God’s existence.  Even the demons know that God exists, but they are not saved (James 2:19).  Rather, God enters into a loving relationship with those whom He saves (Romans 8:29).  Therefore, those who are genuinely saved have come to know God and to recognize His voice.
For this reason, a severe misunderstanding of the nature of God is an indication that a person may not be saved.  Suppose that someone professes Jesus as Lord and believes that God raised Him from the dead.  But then when I ask him to describe God, he responds, “Oh, he is a three-headed dragon that lives on a moon of Neptune.”  Such a heretical and absurd response would indicate that this person does not know the real God.  The person may be saying the right words in professing Christ’s Lordship and resurrection, but he has placed his faith in a fictional god of his own imagination.  And a fictional god cannot save you from the wrath of the Living God.
This is the characteristic of cults.  Cults profess to be Christian, but have placed their faith in a false god rather than the biblical God.  It can be difficult to identify cults because they often use the same words as Christians, but they mean something different.  Thus, it is necessary to ask questions about the nature of their god.  Is their god an all-powerful, all-knowing, omni-present, unchanging, eternal, triune spirit?  A person who does not know God in a saving way often has one or more fundamental misconceptions about God that are revealed when sufficient questions are asked.
No doubt, even a saved person can have some misconceptions about God.  After all, God is infinite and we are finite.  Therefore, we cannot know everything about Him.  But there are certain characteristics that are basic to the nature of God.  A denial of one or more of these may indicate that a person does not know God in a saving way. 
So, what are the fundamental characteristics of the biblical God?  What are His essential attributes that are clearly elucidated in Scripture?  All those who truly know God should agree on the following aspects of His nature.
(1) The Trinity
The biblical God is triune.  He is one in nature/essence, and three in eternally distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Thus, these three Persons share one name (Yahweh) as Christ affirms in Matthew 28:19.  Yet each divine Person is one eye-witness under biblical law (John 8:17).  The doctrine of the Trinity necessarily entails monotheism, which James 2:19 implies is necessary (but not sufficient) for salvation.  We have seen that Romans 10:9-10 teaches the belief that God raised Christ from the dead is essential to salvation.  The Trinity is implicit in this passage because all three Persons were involved in the Resurrection.  The Spirit raised Christ from the dead, (Romans 8:11), as did the Father (Galatians 1:1), as did the Son Himself (John 10:17-18).
Fortunately, the Bible does not say that a detailed and nuanced understanding of the triune nature of God is required for saving faith.  It is sufficient to know that God is one in essence, and yet three in eternally distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  No doubt God will forgive some of our misunderstandings of how this all works in practice.  But to reject what God has said about His own nature is to reject God.  God expects us to accept whatever revelation He has given us.
Some may ask, “But what about Old Testament believers?  Did they know about the Trinity?”  New Testament believers have far more information on the Trinity than believers under the Old Testament administration.  Yet, even Old Testament believers knew something of the fact that God is one in nature and more than one in Persons; we see communication between the Persons in the first chapter of Genesis (e.g. Genesis 1:26-27). Even the Hebrew term for “God” (Elohim) is plural (literally “Gods”) and yet used with singular verbs (e.g., Genesis 1:1).  So, the Israelites knew that God was one in one sense, and more than one in a different sense.  They probably did not have the rich understanding of the three Persons that New Testament saints enjoy.  The point is that God expects us to accept whatever revelation He has given about Himself.  A saved person will therefore come to accept what the Bible teaches about the triune nature of God, even if he doesn’t fully understand it.  Thus, a rejection of the Trinity is a strong indication that a person has not (yet) been saved.
(2) God Is the Creator and Judge of All
God is the Creator of all things (Genesis 1:1; Exodus 20:11).  As such, we owe Him our very lives.  Since all things were made by Him (John 1:3), all things are contingent upon Him.  They exist and continue to exist only because God the Son upholds all things by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3).  God alone is not contingent upon anything.  He is completely self-sufficient and does not require a universe or anything beyond Himself to exist (Exodus 3:14).
God is transcendent: beyond the physical universe (1 Kings 8:27).  God is eternal and without a beginning or an end (Deuteronomy 33:27; Isaiah 43:13; Psalm 90:2).  He has no creator since He has always existed.  He is completely sovereign, answering to no one else (1 Timothy 6:15; Isaiah 40:13-14).  He needs nothing, and does whatsoever He pleases (Psalm 135:6).
As Creator, God has the right to set the rules for all that He owns (which is everything).  Therefore, it is by God’s standard and His standard alone that we all will be judged.  This implicitly requires that God is righteous by virtue of the fact that His nature determines what is right (Ezekiel 18:25).  His judgments are necessarily right because they stem from His holy nature (Genesis 18:25).  Thus, our moral obligation is to obey God.  And when we fail to do so, we must expect punishment since this is the just penalty for our treason (Isaiah 13:11).  All God’s ways are just (Deuteronomy 32:4).
This distinguishes the living God from many false gods of other religions and cults.  Their gods change, are not righteous, and are not sovereign over creation.  As the Apostle Paul explained in Acts 17:24-25,28-29, the biblical God does not need to be served by human hands because He needs nothing; rather, we need Him since He is the one who gives us life and breath.  The biblical God is the sovereign, uncreated Creator of all things.  Therefore, a rejection that God is Creator of all things suggests that a person is trusting in a false god rather than the God of Scripture.
(3) God Is All-Knowing, Unchanging, and Eternal
God is eternal (Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalm 90:2; Isaiah 9:6; Romans 16:26).  He has no beginning in time, and no ending (Hebrews 7:3).  This would have to be the case since God is the Creator of time itself (John 1:3).  Since God is beyond time, He does not change with time (Malachi 3:6).  He can “step into time” as He did with the incarnation of Christ, and He can act in time.  But God is not bound by time like we are.
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We really don’t have generalizable data on how widespread (or not) the practice [of unordained women serving as deaconesses] is in the PCA. How many churches have deaconesses? How many deaconesses are there in the PCA? The purpose of this project is not to pick a fight, but to shed light, in the hopes that it will lead to more productive debate at PCA General Assembly.

Overture 26 from Northwest Georgia presbytery proposes a change to chapter 7 of the Book of Church Order that would disallow unordained people from being “referred to as, or given the titles connected to, the ecclesial offices of pastor, elder, or deacon.” RE Brad Isbell wrote that the overture effectively addresses “a big ecclesial deal” and helps the PCA “get ahead of things for once,” since there seems to be some lack of clarity (or at least consistency) on the issue. More recently, Isbell provided some examples of the practice in the PCA. On the other side of the debate, TE Tim LeCroy warned of the coming fight with the “far right of our denomination”: “Watch out! Do you have unordained women serving as deaconesses?” But we really don’t have generalizable data on how widespread (or not) the practice is in the PCA.
How many churches have deaconesses? How many deaconesses are there in the PCA? The purpose of this project is not to pick a fight, but to shed light, in the hopes that it will lead to more productive debate at PCA General Assembly.
Method
We drew a random sample of presbyteries in the PCA, stratifying by US Census region. We stratified by region so that at least two presbyteries were chosen from each region to ensure geographic representation. We sampled more presbyteries in the South region, a region densely populated with PCA churches and presbyteries. Random sampling is important because it allows for generalizable inference. Randomization is important because, since each presbytery had an equally likely chance of being chosen, it allows us to say that our findings are generalizable within a certain margin of error. This method is similar to what pollsters using during election season to claim that a candidate is polling at some level, plus or minus some margin of error.
We also drew a random sample of presbyteries from two sister denominations in the North America Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC): the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA). Since these denominations are smaller, we did not do a stratified randomization. In total, we sampled 14 presbyteries from the PCA, 4 presbyteries from the OPC, and 2 presbyteries from the RPCNA (see Table 1). These sister denominations are good comparisons for this analysis for a few reasons: (1) the PCA has fraternal relations with both of them; (2) they share doctrinal standards (Westminster); (3) the PCA and OPC do not allow for deaconesses as an ordained office, while the RPCNA does.

Table 1. Presbyteries sampled for analysis

US Census Region
Presbyteries
Denomination

South
James River
PCA

South
Central Florida
PCA

South
Tidewater
PCA

South
South Florida
PCA

South
Central Carolina
PCA

South
Georgia Foothills
PCA

South
Metro Atlanta
PCA

West
Canada West
PCA

West
Pacific
PCA

West
Pacific Northwest
PCA

Northeast
Westminster
PCA

Northeast
Ascension
PCA

Midwest
Ohio Valley
PCA

Midwest
Great Lakes
PCA

Northeast
New York and New England
OPC

West
Southern California
OPC

Northeast
New Jersey
OPC

Midwest
Ohio
OPC

Midwest
Midwest
RPCNA

Northeast/South
Alleghenies
RPCNA

Together, these 20 presbyteries have 465 congregations. We excluded 36 churches from our analysis if no functioning website could be found or if the website was predominantly in a language other than English. We retained over 90% of all churches sampled in each of the three denominations.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of church websites

PCA
OPC
RPCNA

Presbyteries sampled
14
4
2

Congregations in sample
319
101
45

Congregations excluded
25
10
1

Total churches in analysis
294
91
44

% churches in analysis
92.2%
90.1%
97.8%

Website information

% TE only
17.0%
20.9%
20.5%

% TE/RE only
21.1%
46.2%
40.9%

% TE and Staff only
16.3%
1.1%
0.0%

% Deaconesses
4.1%
0.0%
13.6%

% No deacons, no deaconesses
50.0%
51.6%
59.1%

The purpose was to capture what is clearly portrayed on each church’s website, rather than to conduct a deep investigation into each church’s website. As such, we typically spent no more than 30 seconds per website to count the number of Teaching Elders (TEs), Ruling Elders (REs), deacons, and deaconesses, typically summarized on a “Leadership” or “Officers and Staff” page.
To be counted as a deaconess, a website had to explicitly identify the woman as a deaconess. Ours is therefore a very conservative estimate because if there were ever any reason not to count a woman as a deaconess, we did not count her. Deaconess with parenthetical note? Nope. Mercy team? Nope. Women to pastors? Nope.
Limitations
Before we proceed to share what we found, the reader should keep in mind that this kind of research is subject to several limitations.
Because the practice of having ordained deaconesses is de jure not allowed in the PCA and the practice of having unordained deaconesses is contested (see this year’s Overture 26, for example), PCA churches may be pressured not to report deaconesses, even if the practice is de facto in place. Indeed, many of the websites we found mentioned “deaconesses” or “women on the diaconate” without listing the number or names. These churches were coded as having zero deaconesses for the purpose of our analysis. As such, we suspect that our findings are a lower bound estimate, underreporting the practice in the PCA.

Our method does not allow us to account for churches that forgo ordination of deacons and commission “mercy ministry teams” in lieu of a diaconate (e.g., Evergreen Church). or in addition to a diaconate (e.g., Christ Presbyterian in Santa Barbara, CA). These were not counted in our data. Others list deaconesses with a clarifying note that these are not considered ordained officers (e.g., University Reformed Church).
Different readers will come to different conclusions about our assessment of titles and practices, so we expect there will be competing views about the inferences that can be drawn from the data. Nonetheless, we believe it will be helpful to both sides of the debate to have some data on the issue.
Findings

PCA churches have nearly as many publicly listed deaconesses on average as the RPCNA, a denomination that allows for women to hold the office, but the practice is less widespread in the PCA.

In our website searches, we found that PCA churches have 0.19 deaconesses listed on their websites on average while RPCNA churches have 0.27 deaconesses listed on their websites on average. However, only one in twenty-five PCA churches listed deaconesses and six presbyteries did not have any deaconesses (Ascension, Canada West, Georgia Foothills, Ohio Valley, Tidewater, and Westminster), while the practice was almost three times as common in the RPCNA. The PCA churches listing deaconesses had 4.3 deaconesses on average and RPCNA churches doing the same had 2.0 deaconesses on average. The 101 OPC churches in total listed zero deaconesses on their websites.

2. PCA churches are more likely to give the impression of being “staff led” and OPC and RPCNA churches are more likely to give the impression of being “officer led.”
This is not to say that PCA churches are not in practice “officer led,” but as far as what is reported on their websites, they are more likely to give the impression of being “staff led.” A smaller proportion of PCA churches list only a TE on their websites (17%) than either OPC churches (21%) or RPCNA churches (21%). Similarly, a smaller proportion of PCA churches list only elders (ruling or teaching) on their websites (21%) than either OPC churches (46%) or RPCNA churches (41%). In contrast, PCA churches are more likely to list only TEs and staff (16%) than either OPC churches (one church) or RPCNA churches (zero churches).

3. The practice of having deaconesses appears to be common in some presbyteries, less prevalent in others.
On average, most churches in our analytic sample list between one and two TEs, two and four REs, and two and four deacons. There are, of course, some exceptions to that rule. Churches in Central Carolina and Tidewater had over five ruling elders on average and, in the latter presbytery, over six deacons on average. Much of this variation is explained by church size and membership.
There is more variation when it comes to having deaconesses. It should come as no surprise that not all presbyteries are the same with respect to this practice. Six presbyteries in our sample did not have a single deaconess listed on their churches’ websites (Ascension, Canada West, Georgia Foothills, Ohio Valley, Tidewater, and Westminster). Metro Atlanta had the most, with 0.79, followed by Central Florida (0.34), Pacific Northwest (0.28), and Great Lakes (0.19).
Matthew Lee is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fayetteville, AR, where Liam Carr serves as a deacon.
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