Bringing people to Christ to become learners is a high calling and a privilege. Human disciple-makers are powerless in themselves, yet they are accountable to Christ, and they are active in Him. So, move ahead in faithful obedience to preach the Word. The exalted Christ ultimately makes disciples as He causes His Word to germinate and grow through your work. Through you, Christ will win, build, equip, restore, and send learners to do His mission in this needy world.

When I started seminary in 1967, Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:18–20 to “make disciples” baffled me. There was something cryptic and mysterious about it, seemingly understood by only an initiated few. At the same time, Jesus’ words demanded comprehension and performance, and this started a pilgrimage of seeking to understand and practice “making disciples.” After many years of pastoring in the United States and teaching at a seminary in Uganda, I am still learning.
Let’s look together at three simple questions: (1) What is a disciple? (2) How are disciples made? (3) What kinds of disciple-making are there?
The Greek word we translate as “disciple” means learner. A disciple is a learner from the Lord Jesus. A learner is a listener and a practitioner. The Great Commission is a command to bring people to Christ to listen, learn, and practice. A disciple of Jesus becomes His learner forever.
Among the things that disciples are to be learning from Christ are:

To deny self and to follow Jesus with singular loyalty (Luke 9:23–26; 14:26).
To hate sin and love holiness.
To serve and love Christ’s church with all her imperfections.
To love the lost and the nations and to have a passion for gospel advance.
To “adorn” Christ’s gospel with good deeds of love, justice, and mercy (Titus 2:10, 12, 14).
To live by faith in Christ and the gospel (Rom. 1:17).
To rejoice that the humanly unattainable requirements of a clean record, new heart, and new power to live a holy life have been purchased and provided by Christ alone through grace alone, and they are received by faith alone. Regeneration, justification, and sanctification are all free gifts.
To boast only in the cross and the gospel and to flee all pride and self-achievement (Phil. 3:3–9).

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There has always been a degree of persecution for us in one place or another, and it is highly likely, even in countries where civil liberties are defended, that religious liberty will begin soon to be chiseled away. If the church is forced underground, it must have ready an organization that will avoid the evil of tyranny and dictatorship and yet maintains unity and cooperation.

It would appear that I have been around Westminster Theological Seminary as long as anyone else here. It might, therefore, be useful to note what such a person sees of temporal contrast in the activity of an institution and a faculty that still, I think, considers its purpose to carry on the work of Princeton Theological Seminar as it existed before 1929.
Vision of a Christian Nation
American religious history really begins with the Puritans. Their keynote was not repression, as most people appear to think, but was, instead, the relating of everything to the purpose of God. They intended to build a Christian commonwealth. To a great extent, they succeeded, and England became something of a pattern to the world.
A century later, Jonathan Edwards saw America as the primary scene of a millennial kingdom that would spread its glory over all the earth. His prominent disciple, Samuel Hopkins, reinforced the vision, and the idea that America would become a great, powerful, and glorious Christian nation, a pattern for the whole world, spread throughout the colonies.
That vision survived the Revolution and took on new life with independence. A great Protestant republic with Christian principles penetrating its every action was to evolve.
No less a person that George Washington informed the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1790 that “it is rationally to be expected from [all men within our territories]…that they will all be emulous of evincing the sincerity of their professions by the innocence of their lives and the benevolence of their actions.” (Minutes of the General Assembly of the PresbyterianChurch in the U.S.A., 1790).
In 1802, the General Assembly adopted a report which said, among other things: “Though vice and immorality still too much abound…yet in general, appearances are more favorable than usual; the influence of Christianity, during the last year, appears to have been progressive…The aspect of an extensive country has been changed from levity to seriousness; scoffers have been silenced, and thousands convinced ‘of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment’ to come…The prospect of the speedy conversion of the Indian tribes appears to be increasing; and the Assembly cannot but hope that the time is not far distant, when the wilderness on our borders, shall bud and blossom as the rose; when the cottage of the pagan shall be gladdened by the reception of the gospel, and the wandering and warlike savage shall lay the implements of his cruilty at the feet of Jesus. Delightful period! When sinners shall flock to the Saviour as clouds and as doves to their windows! When an innumerable multitude, gathered from among all nations, shall sing redeeming love, triumph in the hope of a happy immortality! When the church shall ‘look forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners!’” (Minutes, GeneralAssembly, 1802)
To accomplish this end men joined together in stalwart voluntary societies to circulate the Bible, found Sunday schools and churches, lay down a saturation barrage of tracts, to uproot the evils of slavery, of prostitution, of secret societies, to build a wall against Rome. Human bondage would be done away. Demon Rum would dry up. Sex prejudice would be eliminated.
The results were favorable enough to give some substance to the dream. After the war of 1861–1865, slavery was ended. Northerners poured into the South to make freedom a reality.
The moral fervor of Americans seems to have been impressive. Francis Grund, a native of Germany, is quoted as saying: “Change the domestic habits of the Americans, their religious devotion, and their high respect for morality, and it will not be necessary to change a single letter of the Constitution in order to vary the whole form of their government.” (Francis Grund, The Americans in Their Moral, Social, and Political Relations, in Commager, America in Perspective, 75; see also G. L. Hunt, Calvinism and the Political Order, 99).
Building the Kingdom of God
But for the present, work began on the next stage of the realization of the vision: the elimination of the saloon and the intoxicating beverage. In these excitements weariness overcame the task force that was performing the more important task of working for black education in the South, and racial relationships began to return to an approximation of their former state.
In addition to this dedication of the church to the cause of prohibition, there was the growing emphasis on interdenominational mass evangelism. Biblical doctrine was being eaten away by radical literary criticism, but few paid any attention.
As prosperity mounted after the 1870s, the great dream resumed its sway over the American Protestant imagination. We were building the kingdom of God. State and county prohibition covered more territory, evangelistic meetings drew more people, the impact of Christian principles on social evils began to be noticed. Interdenominational efforts became more comprehensive. The W.C.T.U., the Prohibition Part, the Anti-Saloon League were founded. A little later came the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, then the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. The individual and the social gospels were making America a Christian nation in a finer sense than ever before, thought many unsuspecting men and women in the pew.
Ernest L. Tubeson quotes the late Senator Albert J. Beveridge, about the beginning of this century, as saying:
God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No. He made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigned. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this, the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the redemption of the world (Redeemer Nation, p. vii).
The Dream Begins to Wilt
The first world war and its aftermath began to open the eyes of the Christians in the nation. Peace was not secured. The League of Nations was not joined by the United States. The World’s Christian Fundamentals Association reminded all Christians that doctrine was still the heart of the Christian faith. The dream of inevitable advance began to wilt with the deaths of Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan. J. Gresham Machen sounded a call to remember that Christianity was a religion that did not exist without its historical foundations.
It was in this period that Westminster Theological Seminary was founded. Many convictions undergirded its structure. Some of them came from the experience of Princeton Seminary before 1929. Others were developed by the founders. Among them was the intention to develop and train men for the parish ministry; the conviction that life flows from belief, from doctrine; the assurance that the basis of the Christian faith is the inerrant Word interpreted as a group of historical documents; that this basis is indispensable to the continuance of the Christian church; that truth can best be understood by contrasting it sharply with error; that teaching and library facilities are more important than luxurious or grandiose buildings; that knowledge is an indispensable foundation for the sound practical application and accomplishment; that standards of learning must be maintained at high levels; that the Christian church was founded upon and has always continued to maintain the necessity of a biblical system of truth; that honesty and frankness are of great value in the church.
Decades of Radical Change
In the more than forty years since the founding of Westminster, it is likely that the world of the mind has changed more radically than in any previous forty-year period in its known history since the creation. The church and theology have not been exempt from this change. Its beginnings were earlier. C. G. Jung is quoted as saying: “Long before the Hitler era, in fact before the first World War…the medieval picture of the world was breaking up and the metaphysical authority which was set above this world was fast disappearing.” (C. G. Jung, Essayings in Contemporary Events [Eng. tr. 1947], 69; in E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, 4).
It has now been alleged that God has died. The Father is no longer needed. Parently authority has gone. The Son is but a human example who was mistaken about the future. The Holy Spirit is reduced to attempting to communicate in meaningless gibberish.
For more learned people, religion has ceased to be relevant to the task at hand. It is to be discarded as possibly formerly helpful but now misleading at best and deleterious at worst. Such people see nothing in their world to lead them to believe in God. The shape of the future will be outlined by natural science of human inspiration. Ethical questions are to be solved by mechanical study of procedures and their results in the world of nature. N. H. G. Robinsons says, “There is certainly no factor left in man’s world that is plainly and unambiguously identifiable with God or his will” (F. G. Healey, ed., What Theologians Do, 276).
The outcome of these trends is not entirely to be deplored. The dream that America is to be the great crown of Christian civilization and a pattern for the rest of the world is now very difficult to sustain, and rightly so.
The present upsurge of interdenominational evangelism may be temporarily refreshing but its permanent value depends upon how effectively it is accompanied and followed by more penetrating biblical instruction.
The overwhelming, tyrannical ecumenical combines and “trusts” of the ecclesiastical world have lost a little of their self-confidence. It has even come to the point where a few of their supporters have thought that it might show a profit, in the long run, to offer some charity and attention to the evangelicals of the world. Thomas Carlyle said that the French aristocracy thought little of Rousseau’s ideas, but the second edition of The Social Contract was bounded in their skins. Perhaps something like that might inadvertently happen to the ecumenical aristocracy.
A Future on Scriptural Principles
Woodrow Wilson once said that “education puts men in a position for progress, but religion determines the line of [that] progress.” (Journal of Presbyterian History, v. 49, 330). Westminster Seminary is both an educational and a religious institution. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to consider the prospect for the future for a bit on the basis of what we have indicated about the past. This does not mean that I am about to assume the role of a prophet. An historian is not a prophet, though he is constantly mistaken for one. An historian uses the past as a guide for action rather than for an attempt to read an inevitable future from it. He urges people to action rather than telling them what is sure to happen.
We no longer need prophets in the way in which God’s people needed them in Old Testament times. Revelation is complete. There are few chairs of prophecy in educational institutions, even in Christian ones. Most professional prophets work in “think tanks,” and their work is usually not trumpeted abroad. But if America is to have a future of promise under God, it must be upon the basis of the eternal principles of the Word and quite different from the rosy dreams of the earlier centuries.
So it seems useful to ask how Westminster Seminary should fit into that future and how it should help to prepare for it. My aim is to be specific and forthright.
Independence and True Knowledge
Basic to the Seminary’s work is its independence from external control. This is partly a matter of the promotion of intellectual honesty. The institution must itself determine what the application of the Bible and the secondary standards to the problems of the day brings forth. It may not leave this decision to any church, any philanthropic agency, or any regulatory commission. The Seminary alone must determine what the Bible says in any given area. And it must be free to say what its findings are.
There is a further reason why it may not be under church control. A school does not exist for the purpose of developing the spiritual lives of its students. That may be and probably everyone here, including the speaker, hopes that it will be a concomitant of the years in school. But it is the formal responsibility of the church with which the student affiliates himself. Every Seminary course provides material that can be used by the church to that end. That is the objective of the church, of every church that is doing its job. So the Seminary is primarily making the acquisition of knowledge possible, and if it is true knowledge, it will bear fruit in spiritual growth.
In presenting true knowledge, the Seminary contrasts it with error. The observer sometimes confuses this with intolerance. Not at all. The search for truth is open to all, and the presentation of honest results is the responsibility of every man making the search. The contrast with error makes the truth stand out; black type on white paper is sharper than gray type on pink paper. Let us continue to make the contrast vivid. It is important.
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Against the decision of the 220th General Assembly of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church to dissolve the Second Presbytery of the A.R.P.C. – and all associated Index #11 decisions tethered thereunto – without first upholding the giving of the ‘due process’ that is required to be given, per the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline, to those presbyters and select groups of presbyters specifically named in Index #11 of the published reports that were submitted to Synod (2024).

A previous General Synod had appointed a Special Committee to Investigate Second Presbytery’s Handling of Certain Allegations Against A Minister. The Special Committee reported to the 2024 Synod. The report expressed multiple challenges including the massive nature of the case and the difficulties in dealing with members and officers of Second Presbytery. The Committee completed its investigation and presented twenty events that had happened, two of which were deviations from the Book of Discipline, while the others touched on lack of requested records and how matters were processed by the Presbytery. Following the report to Synod, the Committee’s recommendation was approved: “That Second Presbytery be dissolved as of September 1, 2024.” It was against this action of General Synod that two Complaints have been filed.

COMPLAINT #1
To: The Principal Clerk of the General Synod of the ARP Church
We the undersigned, being members in good standing of Second Presbytery under the jurisdiction of the ARP General Synod, file this Complaint, pursuant to Book of Discipline 5.13.
On June 12, 2024, the General Synod voted to dissolve Second Presbytery, effective September 1,2024. This action was beyond the constitutional authority of General Synod.
Form of Government[1] 12.22 states: “The General Synod shall advise Presbyteries in its processes, but not the outcome, of the actions of the Presbyteries, in order to: A. Organize, receive, divide, unite, transfer, dismiss, and dissolve Presbyteries in keeping with the advancement of the Church ….” (Emphasis added.)
It is clear that the General Synod does not have the authority to initiate and execute the dissolution of a Presbytery. Rather, the General Synod shall advise a Presbytery if a Presbytery pursues dissolution and requests the advice of General Synod (FoG 12.22.B.).
Moreover, Second Presbytery is a corporation under the South Carolina Nonprofit Corporation Act and with the South Carolina Secretary of State (See attachment)[2]. As such, the corporation must be dissolved pursuant to either South Carolina Code of Laws Title 33-31-1401 or 33-31-1402 (See attachment), and the action by the ARP General Synod on June 12,2024, did not comply with either section. Therefore, the action of the ARP General Synod is unlawful, illegal, and unjust.
The Executive Board of the General Synod should declare this Complaint an emergency, pursuant to Manual of Authorities and Duties p. 13, and vacate the decision of the General Synod dissolving Second Presbytery.
Respectfully submitted,
Anthony R. Locke [email protected]Peter Waid [email protected]Brion Holzberger [email protected]Jonathan Cook [email protected]Bill Smalley [email protected]John Cook [email protected]RJ Gore [email protected]

COMPLAINT #2
Per:  The A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline, 5.12-13.
RE: Against the decision of the 220th General Assembly of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church to dissolve the Second Presbytery of the A.R.P.C. – and all associated Index #11 decisions tethered thereunto – without first upholding the giving of the ‘due process’ that is required to be given, per the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline, to those presbyters and select groups of presbyters specifically named in Index #11 of the published reports that were submitted to Synod (2024).
This June 2024 dissolution decision by the General Synod also effectually served as an “act” (per B.O.D. 5.12) of roadblock – whereby the potential allegations named in Index #11 do not just suffer ‘a neglect of prosecution’, but will forever be unprosecutable once the court to which the alleged offenders are primarily/directly amenable is dissolved. For a court of the church (viz., the General Synod) to neglect to encourage the upholding of an application of the Standards of the A.R.P.C. church (viz., the Book of Discipline) in the present and/or to inhibit any legitimate future application of said church standard unto the published instances of known/stated offence (in Index #11) – before it chooses to dissolve a presbytery – is a serious error that merits a reversal of Synod’s improper ‘dissolution decision’ of Second Presbytery.
Filed by: Rev. Jack Van Dyk, Northeast Presbytery – A.R.P.C. Date: July 8, 2024
GROUNDS (the “supporting reasons and evidence” – B.O.D., 5.13.A) for this COMPLAINT:
The matters of legitimate ecclesiastical discipline, contained in the Index #11 report that was supplied to all delegates of the 2024 General Synod, simply cannot be overlooked. Many of them involve Second Presbytery functioning as the court of ‘original jurisdiction’. Any dissolution of that court places all potential and alleged offences outside of the mandated ‘original jurisdiction’ prescriptions of the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline. An ‘automatic transfer of allegations’ stipulation – to some other court of the church, upon dissolution of any ‘court of original jurisdiction’ – is simply not found in the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline. Dissolving Second Presbytery leaves ‘unfinished business’ unfinishable.
The integrity of the court must be maintained so long as there are publicly named real and/or potential ‘outstanding offences’ yet to be prosecuted. The Report itself leaves no room for doubt that matters of serious offence and grave import are before the court. From start to finish, a total of twenty items are enumerated as being the foundational merits upon which the recommendation that Second Presbytery be dissolved rests. More than mere trifles, or singular ‘irregularities’, the Standards of the A.R.P.C. are cited as what was being violated time and time again.
“Serious errors were made at every turn . . . ” (emphases mine)
“The Lord has not been honored . . . ”
“The Standards of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church have been exploited . . ”
Some form of the phrase “deviation from our Standards” is found no less than seven times on page 2 of this Index (#11) alone.
Furthermore, Index #11 assures the reader that: “The following events all happened in time and space, and therefore, the court must contend with the reality that they present.” (Index 11, page 2, paragraph 2). Fair enough. But isn’t the court ALSO REQUIRED to ‘contend with the reality’ that both the Scriptures and the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline present? Both of these documents specify quite clearly how the assured “reality” of Index #11 is to be dealt with. And neither of these documents state that it is to be by ‘the dissolving of a Presbytery’. That administrative act was an unjustifiable substitute for the requisite (biblical) ‘gold standard’ prescription of: confrontation, repentance (or ‘censure’), confession, forgiveness, restitution, and restoration. In like manner, the 2024 General Synod’s corpus of ‘Index #11 decisions’ created an inadvertent(?) bypassing of a following through to a judicial conclusion what is also clearly prescribed in its very own ecclesiastical standards – namely, the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline.
When the 2024 General Synod received Index #11, a long list of what was purported to be thoroughly investigated matters (and what was, therefore, to be trusted as being confirmed ‘facts’), it ought to have immediately sought to enforce an application of the Book of Discipline to those matters – before any decision was made to dissolve Second Presbytery. It is odd that Second Presbytery is faulted, in item #1 of Index #11, for something that the 2024 General Synod itself backhandedly committed when it voted to dissolve Second Presbytery – namely, a failure to appropriately apply 4.2.A of the Book of Discipline in the face of known viable allegations.
However, the ultimate self-indictment that befell the 2024 General Synod – in its decision to receive Index #11, and to then subsequently vote to dissolve Second Presbytery – is found in the last six words of that Index (right before its Recommendations):
“ . . God’s Word has not been followed.”
IF this statement really is true, then why is the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline not first being applied – to ALL matters of legitimately real and/or potential allegations in this Report – before the dissolving of Second Presbytery takes place? When were the ‘due process’ rights, of all of the members of the A.R.P.C. that are named in this Index #11, afforded to them – before this Index #11 ‘verdict’ of guilt was pronounced (and the ‘penalty’ of ‘dissolution of the Presbytery’ thus imposed)?
It was an error of the 2024 General Synod to have both ‘decided’ and ‘acted’ against Second Presbytery before a proper application of the Book of Discipline could be made to so many alleged violations of both Scripture and the A.R.P.C. Standards.
A REDRESS OF THE ERROR: That, upon further review, all decisions made regarding Second Presbytery – on the basis of the stated Index #11 ‘grounds’ for doing so – at the 2024 meeting of General Synod are now determined to have been made in a manner that was procedurally ‘out of order’ and/or constitutionally ‘in error’ with respect to the explicit prescriptions stated in Scripture and/or the A.R.P.C.’s Book of Discipline (as noted by the specific reasons stated throughout the ‘GROUNDS’ section above) and that all Index #11 decisions regarding Second Presbytery are thereby now rendered ‘null and void’.
AN APPENDED PLEA FOR EXPEDITED ACTION:
The Book of Discipline requires that this Complaint be taken up by General Synod (or its Executive Board) “at its next stated meeting” – OR: “at a called meeting prior to” (5.13.A).
Convenience and expediency may incline the Executive Board of General Synod to simply ‘wait’ (until the next Stated meeting to take up this matter). However, in light of the fast-approaching September 1, 2024 ‘dissolution of Second Presbytery’ date – at which time almost all of the alleged offenders and alleged offenses contained in Index 11 will automatically pass beyond the reach of biblical justice per the A.R.P.C.’s Book of Discipline Standard – it is essential that the Executive Board of General Synod hold a Called meeting within the next few weeks for the purpose of responding to this Complaint. The relationship of the dissolution date – to the date of the next stated meeting of General Synod (or even of a Stated meeting of its Executive Board) – catapults this matter (of evasion of ecclesiastical discipline and avoidance of ‘due process’) into the category of a denominational ‘emergency’. It should be declared as such by the Executive Board – inasmuch as it has occasionally made said declaration regarding a number of other matters over the course of these past 2-3 years – and then dealt with them accordingly.
In light of the above circumstance, please do honor this very reasonable request for immediate action.

[1] The Form of Government is a governing document of the Standards of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
[2] This certification can be found at https://businessfilings.sc.gov/BusinessFiling/Entity/Profile/6aafe746-2276-429a-9aa5-b83e09e9e256

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