Even though the PCA consists of men who love the Lord and love our standards, it is greatly divided.  The future still looks dim, but light continues to shine in the most unusual places at the most inopportune times. I attribute this to fervent prayer. Never discount the providence of God to change things.  My fear today in the modern evangelical world is that energized holiness is being replaced by quiet piety, and therapeutic theology under the guise of love has replaced the Law of God. 

I was not there, but I watched most of the 49th PCA General Assembly (GA) online. I’m actually elated, if only for a short time.  Let me tell you why.

The enrollment was the largest ever with 2380 commissioners registered. I don’t have the demographics, but this indicates to me that many ruling elders from our most conservative churches, especially in the southern states, turned out in large numbers. People in the pew are angry with the direction of the PCA.  I know of a number of churches who sent commissioners telling them “to fight for the truth.” These churches had not sent commissioners to the GA for many years.
If the National Partnership (a progressive caucus of well-known leaders in the PCA) was active, its influence was not detected. No doubt they lost on a number of key issues. It is encouraging to think that the National Partnership (NP) cannot overrule the actions of the commissioners at the General Assembly. The NP has endured bad PR over the last year, and they have not recovered.  What we saw in the Assembly was a “popular revolt.” The candidate of the conservative Gospel Reformation Network (GRN) was not elected as Moderator, but unlike the Southern Baptist Convention who elects a President with numerous powers, the PCA elects a moderator of the assembly whose influence stops after the Assembly.  Highly capable and virtuous men are usually elected as Moderator, and such was the case again this year with the election of RE John Bise.
The first major victory for the conservatives was the vote to withdraw from the National Association of Evangelical (NAE). The NAE has become part of the woke movement, and their political statements do not reflect the sentiments of most members in the PCA. This proposal has been before the Assembly on a number of occasions in the past, but was always defeated, usually after a speech by Dr. Roy Taylor, the former Stated Clerk.  Respect for him has always been so high that he would usually tip the vote in the direction of staying in the NAE.  Not this year!  The vote to leave was approved by a 60-40 ratio.  Taylor filed a protest, but that was all he could do.  The Assembly had spoken.
The major event again this year was the issue of homosexual officers. The proposed amendments to change the Book of Church Order last year failed, but this did not stop the grass roots from coming back again. Two new overture numbers you now need to remember are 15 and 29.
Overture 29 cleaned up the language of the proposed changes to the BCO that failed last year, and was easily adopted. It will be sent back to the presbyteries for a 2/3 vote, and I suspect that it will pass not only at the presbytery level, but also at the GA meeting next year in Memphis. I call it the generic overture. It reflects the position of the Ad-Interim Committee Report on Human Sexuality which has been widely praised by the PCA as a whole.  TE Greg Johnson rose to say that he could accept the wording of this proposed change to the Book of Church Order (BCO), but he also said that it was not kind and loving enough to the gay community. This confirms my point in a previous article in The Aquila Report that the language of this Overture can be so tweaked that it will change nothing “Targeting Homosexual Officers in the PCA Again: Are We Being too Nice?”
The “Jack in the Box” of the whole Assembly was Overture 15 which came out of Westminster Presbytery.[1] This Overture to amend the BCO was submitted last year but was rejected by a simple reference to the actions of the Assembly on other related overtures.  Last year it disappeared into the darkness.  The original wording stated, “Any man who identifies himself as a homosexual (even if his practices celibacy in that self-identification) shall be disqualified from holding office in the PCA.”  It was edited slightly before passage.  One of the weakest arguments against this overture was that it proposed a change to the wrong place in the BCO.  A common strategy in assembly meetings is death by procedural maneuvers.  It did not work this time.  Many members of the Assembly were “hungry” for a statement like this.  Concise and to the point!  Early in the debate, one commissioner rose and stated his disappointment with Overture 29 since it did not speak specifically to the issue of homosexual identity.  What was he going to tell his congregation at home?  He knew he needed some good news, and Overture 29 did not give that to him. He was told to wait until the consideration of Overture 15.
The highlight of the Assembly was the appearance of Dr. O. Palmer Robertson who has been absent it seems for decades. I sat under Dr. Robertson as Professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia (1969-1972).  Robertson has been serving in Uganda as a missionary for 25 years and it appeared to me that he has not been keeping up with all the dialogue about homosexual officers. However, he was like a man resurrected from the past who spoke a different language than what is heard today in seminaries and progressive churches.  He spoke with intellectual passion and read Romans 1:26-28.  He pointed to the word “perversion” and how words like “sodomy” and “sodomite” were not used any more.  I believe his speech tipped the Assembly to approve Overture 15.  If nothing else comes from this Assembly, then at least modern seminary-trained teaching elders now are able to see how much seminary training has changed over the last 50 years. To listen to Dr. Robertson’s speech go here.
Overture 15 passed by an initial vote of 1094 to 1044, just a 50-vote margin. Yes, I understand what most people are saying about this.  It will never pass the high threshold of 2/3 of the presbyteries.  I will say two things about that. First, I never thought it would even make it to the floor of the General Assembly for a vote, but I was wrong. I don’t think it will pass the presbytery vote either, but I could be wrong again.  A year is a long time, and sometimes providential events change the course of history. Second, even if it does not pass the high bar set by the BCO, it was a moment of jubilance anyway.  It was needed to encourage the souls of those who have been losing most battles in years past.  I’ll take the joy and wallow in it for a while. If all the conservatives who have left the PCA would have stayed and fought with us, the victories would have been larger and sweeter.
Other items to note include the fact that 25% of the Assembly voted not re-elect the current Stated Clerk. This was highly unusual.  However, the missing link in the Assembly was the absence of any discussion about the $13.5 million taken by the PCA Boards and Agencies from the federal government (via the Small Business Administration) during the covid crisis.  See the Aquila Report “PCA Committees and Agencies Received At Least $13.5 Million From the Small Business Payroll Protection Program in 2020.” Under what was called the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), these entities received money from the federal government in the form of loans.  If those loans were properly used as restricted by the federal government, then they were forgiven.  They never have to be paid back. The PCA is proud of her heritage of not getting involved in political matters (except by way of humble petition), but when it comes to taking free money from the State (taxpayers of whom many who are not Christians), there appears to be no conscientious objection. Nothing was done illegally, but it’s amazing how the modern church can take taxpayer money for free from the State and use it for building of the Kingdom of God. The same civil government that legalizes homosexual marriage and is pushing ungodly transgenderism is the same entity that we go to when we need money. The same State that is targeting the church as an enemy has become our trusted philanthropist in a time of need.  What every happened to the separation of church and state?
Even though the PCA consists of men who love the Lord and love our standards, it is greatly divided.  The future still looks dim, but light continues to shine in the most unusual places at the most inopportune times. I attribute this to fervent prayer. Never discount the providence of God to change things.  My fear today in the modern evangelical world is that energized holiness is being replaced by quiet piety, and therapeutic theology under the guise of love has replaced the Law of God.  But brethren, I am hopeful!  Take heart, we who love the PCA are in this for the long run.

Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
[1] The following is the wording approved by the General Assembly: “Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.”

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The Bible’s grand story is not complete without the bodily resurrection of God’s people. It is blessedly true that the spirits of our loved believers who die before the return of Jesus will immediately be welcomed into his blessed presence upon death. But Jesus did not come merely to provide a detour around death for his people. He came to destroy death. 

31:2. At the last day, such of the saints as are found alive, shall not sleep, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies, and none other; although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.(1 Corinthians 15:51, 52; 1 Thessalonians 4:17; Job 19:26, 27; 1 Corinthians 15:42, 43)
31:3. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to dishonour; the bodies of the just, by his Spirit, unto honour, and be made conformable to his own glorious body.(Acts 24:15; John 5:28, 29; Philippians 3:21)
Second London Confession, 31:2–3
It was a cold, gray February afternoon when we buried my grandfather. The ground was still muddy from the snow that had melted earlier in the week. Every tree was bare. The small crowd under the tent shivered against the cold as the national guard officers folded the American flag they would present to my grandmother. But into the sorrow, the gathering of family members and friends read the Apostle’s Creed from the tiny bulletins issued to them by the Methodist minister: “…I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, Amen.” I was struck by the power of that ancient Christian confession against that bleak backdrop. It was also struck by how few funerals I attend ever even mention the hope of bodily resurrection.
In most funerals I attend, and in most popular discussions about death I observe, the focus of the Christian hope falls almost exclusively on what theologians call “the intermediate state:” the promise that upon death, the believer’s spirit leaves the body behind to dwell in the presence of Jesus in heaven. On the one hand, this emphasis is perfectly reasonable, since it is the immediate hope of all the saints who die before the Lord’s return. We are right to celebrate Jesus’ assurance that, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43) We rejoice that “the spirits of the righteous” are now “made perfect” in the heavenly assembly (Heb 12:23) . We find unspeakable comfort in the truth that to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord, that for the believers, to die is gain, and that it really is better by far to depart and to be with Christ (2 Cor 5:6; Phil 1:21, 23).
But while our immortal spirit’s reception into heaven is the believer’s immediate hope, the Bible teaches that it is not our ultimate hope. As wonderful as the intermediate state will be, it is, well, intermediate. An even great future awaits the people of Jesus! A hope even richer, more thrilling, more satisfying. It takes the whole story of the Bible to understand this audacious Christian confession: I believe in the resurrection of the body.
“To the Dust You Shall Return”
The Bible’s first two chapters map out God’s design for human life: embodied human beings made in his image, living forever in fellowship with him in a perfect, physical creation. This, God says, is “very good.” (Gen 1:31). But by Genesis 3, the rebellion of those image-bearers has destroyed God’s beautiful design. Sin’s consequences are not only spiritual and moral, but physical: the once-submissive creation now rebels against its former caretakers, and bodily life is now marked by pain, sickness, weariness, and, ultimately, death. The man formed from the dust, made to live forever in face-to-face fellowship with God, must now return to the dust (Gen 3:19). The relentless recitation of the deaths proceeding from Adam in Genesis 5 bears grim witness to the awful wages of sin, and to the unyielding truthfulness of God’s Word: “in the the day that you eat of it, you will surely die (Gen 2:17; Rom 6:23).”
These opening acts in the biblical drama remind us that there is nothing “natural” about death. Death instead is an “enemy” (1 Cor 15:26), a sinister intruder on God’s good design for human life. The Genesis patriarchs wept over the bodies of their dead loved ones for good reason (Gen 23:2), and so do we. All human beings—whether they affirm the Bible’s account of reality or not—instinctively know that death is not the way it was meant to be. I can see it in the “gone but not forgotten” memorial decals on the pickup trucks in my hometown. You can sense it in the feverish attempts to stave off the aging process in fitness centers and cosmetic products. I can hear it in the quavering voice of the old bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley, pleading: “O death, won’t you spare me over til another year, won’t you spare me over til another year…”
The apostle Paul tells us that these are all so many manifestations of creation’s “groaning” under the unnatural curse of death; we long to be “set free from [our] bondage to corruption (Rom 8:21).” But will anyone hear these groans? Can anyone deliver us from death?
“…Those Who Sleep in the Dust of the Earth Shall Awake”
Yes! Standing in the ruins of Eden, God not only pronounces judgment, but promises salvation: “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” God tells the Serpent, “and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Gen 3:15). God did not disclose the details of his plan, but he made it clear that he would one day restore the beautiful kingdom our sin had destroyed, and deal with the awful curse of death itself.
For the rest of the Old Testament, God’s people cling to the persistent, if shadowy, hope that Yahweh would overcome death for them. One catches the patriarchs’ hope beyond the grave in their insistence on securing burial plots in the land of promise (Heb 11:22). We hear it also in Job’s confession that, “after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another…” (Job 19:26–27)
The prophet Isaiah foresaw a day when the Lord would spread a feast for his people on Mount Zion, and “will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken (Isa 25:6–8).” Near the end of the Old Testament, Daniel articulates God’s coming victory over death explicitly in terms of a bodily resurrection: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever (Dan 12:2–3).” By the time Jesus comforts Martha at the grave of Lazarus, it seems Daniel’s expectation has taken hold among God’s people: when Jesus tells Mary that “your brother will rise again,” Martha immediately responds “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” (John 11:23–24)
One thing this brief survey indicates is that, the saints of old longed for more than a strictly spiritual “life after death.” Rather, they looked forward to the complete undoing of death, in a glorious, bodily resurrection at the end of history. They did not know that before that could happen, Someone would first blaze a trail through death, right smack in the middle of history.
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A quick search of the PPP databases suggests that hundreds of local PCA churches received relief funds as well. One large PCA church with an associated school was approved for almost $3.2 million. Others, such as Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, never applied for funds.

The agencies, institutions, and committees of the Presbyterian Church in America were approved for at least $13.5 million in relief from the U.S. Small Business Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in 2020. All the loans appear to have been forgiven according to publicly-available information.
A few mentions of the loans were made in last year’s General Assembly minutes and reports, but a complete picture is not yet available. Also unknown is how many (if any) of the loans were repaid or returned in part or in full.
According to the U.S Department of the Treasury website:
The Paycheck Protection Program established by the CARES Act, is implemented by the Small Business Administration with support from the Department of the Treasury.  This program provides small businesses with funds to pay up to 8 weeks of payroll costs including benefits. Funds can also be used to pay interest on mortgages, rent, and utilities.
The ProPublica website, one of many tracking the PPP loans, reported that 11.5 million loans were approved and $714 billion out of $793 billion approved were forgiven.
A quick search of the PPP databases suggests that hundreds of local PCA churches received relief funds as well. One large PCA church with an associated school was approved for almost $3.2 million. Others, such as Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, never applied for funds, and Briarwood pastor Dr. Harry Reeder wrote forcefully against taking the Federal funds in April of 2020.
Discussion of the ethics, advisability, and wisdom of churches or church institutions, agencies, or committees receiving Federal funds of this type has been scant. Decisions to apply were taken quickly, lest the funds run out. There is anecdotal evidence of churches receiving funds and quickly returning them for reasons of conscience or as it became obvious that funds would not be necessary for the continued operation of churches during Covid.
Doubtless, some churches suffered greatly in 2020 and 2021, but there are many stories of churches whose giving stayed constant or increased in the same period. The non-effect of Covid on finances was also evident in the case of the PCA Administrative Committee, according to a report included in this year’s General Assembly Commissioners’ Handbook. And the PPP funds were part of the reason for an increase in “income.” After noting strong contributions, the report said:
The higher Earned Income was, of course, driven by the largest General Assembly in our brief history. All of this was enhanced by the “Below the Line” income (the earnings from investments and the PPP Grant) of $367,374, enabling Total Net Income for the year to reach $418,918.
The Stated Clerk’s report to this year’s General Assembly suggests the PCA was more generally blessed:
Remarkably, despite some early pandemic shudders, (local) church giving has been strong overall. Total PCA disbursements were up $25 million, approaching $1 billion. Total contributions were down $43 million last year due to some unusually large gifts in 2020 but are still trending up significantly for the 5-year period. Despite the downturn in church attendance due to Covid, giving in most of our local churches has stayed strong. Those always faithful have seen the necessity of their generosity in a tenuous time, and have continued faithful, particularly to local church efforts. Per capita giving has actually risen during the Covid years.
The question may seem like Monday-morning quarterbacking, but it must be asked: Did most PCA churches, agencies, committees, and institutions who took the PPP funds even need them? As many have noted, those public funds were not “free money.” Public funds are more properly thought of as the taxes our neighbors have paid if not the public debt our grandchildren will inherit.
The PCA’s 49th General Assembly will meet next week in Birmingham (June 20-24, 2022), and though the exact disposition of PPP funds received is unclear, there are a host of committees of commissioners who will examine minutes of the denomination’s agencies, committees, and institutions and question their officials and leaders. Faithfully fulfilling this duty of oversight may help prepare the denomination for the next crisis.
Here are the amounts of the PPP funds approved and “forgiven” by the Federal government for PCA entities:

Two loans of $270,684 and $116,289 for the “Presbyterian Church in America” and “Presbyterian Church in America, Inc.” in Lawrenceville, GA, assumedly for the  Administrative Committee (and possibly another committee) totaling $386,953
Committee on Discipleship Ministries – $108,063
Reformed University Fellowship – $5,325,019
Mission to North America – $877,000
Mission to the World – $1,918,630
PCA Retirement and Benefits, Inc. – $351,601
Covenant College, Inc, – $3,240,522
Covenant Theological Seminary – $1,102,300
Ridge Haven (camp and conference center) – $196,700
Denominational total: $13,506,788

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