While I ordinarily prefer the old tunes over the new, this is not about a matter of style. I am not asserting General Assembly worship should only feature old hymn and psalm tunes. There is a place for new tunes, but new tunes should be introduced in a circumspect manner. TE Sean Morris recently noted regarding worship in Scotland that it was the rural churches there who were demanding new tunes for the psalter. Whether we sing old or new tunes, my concern is that General Assembly worship ought to manifest our Reformed Principles of congregational participation and covenantal dialogue with God.

In my previous article, I reflected on the public worship often offered at PCA General Assembly in contrast to my experience of public worship in local PCA congregations. Worship at the General Assemblies typically seem more like concerts with performers than Presbyterian worship services.Presbyterian worship services ought to be God’s people interacting with their Covenant Lord, as RE Brad Isbell explains about a typical PCA worship liturgy:
The dialogical pattern of God speaking by his Word and his people responding in prayer, praise, and confession is obvious.
While many General Assembly worship services may have a liturgy that reflects a dialogue, that dialogue is often eclipsed by the complexity of the forms of the worship service
Worship & Presbyterians
Worship is the most important thing we do; worship is the reason we were created. Worship is one of the three crucial markers of the true church:
This catholic church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less, visible. And particular churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them. (WCF 25:4)
Occasionally PCA candidates for licensure and ordination will be asked “What are the three marks of the Church,” and they will respond incorrectly with the three marks of the Belgic Confession.
1 In our Westminster Standards, the PCA confesses the three marks of the true church to be:

The Preaching of the Gospel
The Administration of the Sacraments
Public Worship

Since the PCA confesses public worship to be one of the three marks of a true Church, we ought earnestly strive to offer pure worship, biblical worship in all our public assemblies. And General Assembly ought to serve as a model, an exemplar of biblically ordered, confessionally faithful Reformed worship.
Worship & the Congregation
In the worship at our General Assemblies, the congregational singing is typically drowned out or emaciated. As I reflected on that assessment initially I thought perhaps that was the result of poor acoustics in the convention halls. But then I remembered the hymn and psalm singing during the assembly business is typically quite powerful as TE Larry Roff simply accompanies the Assembly on the organ.
2 The problem, it seems, is not one of acoustics; the problem is one of complexity and form.
This was also noticed by TE Kyle Brent who took to Twitter to highlight both where the Memphis Assembly did well and where there were opportunities for improvement in terms of public worship:
I’m more inclined towards traditional worship music and instrumentation but I much preferred the music and instrumentation of the second service of the #pcaga despite it being more “contemporary.” Why? It aided, and didn’t hinder, congregational singing.
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When we create our identities by our own individual fiat rather than receive our identities from God’s words of life, we create counter-creations, fictional worlds which have no correspondence to what is real and true and good. The great misconception, however, is that Christians affirm that God hates us, when in reality it is that God hates our hatred of the good words he has spoken. The great irony of holding that God’s speech is hate speech is that such disdain for God’s word is hatred for the only words which present the world to us as it actually is, who we truly are, and how deeply we are loved.

The sacred season of “Pride,” the month-long panoply of indulgence and identity, recently came to a close. Through it all, many Christians have remained publicly steadfast to orthodox commitments to biblical sexuality.
In America, we saw the campaign to establish “Fidelity Month,” which sought to honor commitments to marriage vows, the family, and one’s community. We also witnessed Christians confidently expressing their convictions through Target boycotts, calling out BudLight, and lending support to a US Supreme Court case which sided with religious liberty over the LGBTQ movement’s tyranny of conscience.
But even as Christians must remain bold in their public witness, we should take seriously the questions our society often raises against our faith. Our testimony to a lost world can never merely be, “God’s word is right, and you are wrong. So repent!”
This is always essential, but we should also take seriously the deeply existential questions about whether the Christian faith is actually true, good, and desirable. Then we must offer good-faith arguments not only for why God’s words are actually true, but also demonstrate compelling reasons why they are both believable and present a way of life in the world that is actually inhabitable and leads to flourishing. Such is the task of apologetics for the Christian faith.
Are God’s Words Hate Speech?
In the wake of a month in which our whole culture is hyper in-tune to issues of gender and injustice, one timely question we need to take seriously is, “Are God’s words actually hate speech?” If what God has spoken is perceived to marginalize, deadname, or nullify someone’s chosen pronouns, surely those words must be hateful, right?
Many today certainly think so. In a society enthralled with self-pronounced identity, any limits on what one can desire or attain is deemed an injustice. So, it is no surprise that what God has spoken is quickly discarded as hateful and beyond the pale of what polite society can tolerate. In a plot twist which would be deeply ironic if it were not so shocking, many in our society have turned to Satan—whether they actually believe in him or not—because he offers complete affirmation of one’s desires and self-expression.
In the rest of this article, let us consider what God has spoken, if he is indeed hateful, and how we Christians might speak God’s words of life in a world of death.
The Subjectivity of Hate Speech
Hate speech is notoriously difficult to define. We all tend to have a sense that it is wrong to be hateful towards someone else. But what does it mean to hate something, and do we each have a right not to be hated for the way that we are or the things that we do? A simple definition might be that hate involves disdain or severe disapproval towards something. But are such sentiments themselves always wrong? In certain cases, it seems clear that there are things we should indeed hate, like the killing of innocent persons or taking advantage of the vulnerable. God himself, who says he is truly loving, hates these things (Prov. 6:12-15).
The great debate of our times seems to be not whether to hate, but what to hate. Our culture ironically tends to express great hatred towards perceived bigotry or religious intolerance. In such instances, we do not seem to be ridding society of hate so much as we are flipping the script on those that we think are showing hatred, by choosing to actually hate them ourselves.
Opposing what many today identify as hate speech does not involve true tolerance, but rather demanding everybody get with the program and accept only the sanctioned beliefs of good and evil. So, identifying something as “hate speech” is often just a veiled moral judgment of our own that we do not like what someone else is saying about us.
So, what about when it comes to what God has said? Does God hate me when he says things that I think cannot possibly be true or good? We might perceive such words as hateful, but are they really and how can I tell?
Our culture has devised a disastrous stalemate, in which the standoff between our own self-perceptions of what is hateful and whether God’s words are actually hateful in reality cannot be arbitrated. We have so elevated the individual as the supreme source of moral good and meaningful identity, that nothing can trump the self. Our mantras show this is so: “You do you” and “Be true to yourself” or “Live your truth.”
It seems that the only way forward is to invite the skeptic to step into the world God’s words create and see for themselves if there is life and love within it.
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Christian, you are a runner in a race. The race you are running is the most important race you will ever run. You have everything to lose if you quit, but everything and more if you finish. Therefore, run to win. Run together to the end. Keep your eyes on the prize and run with confidence. Run without any burdens and discard entanglements. Finally, look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of your faith.

One of the many lessons I learned from my cross-country ski coach was to keep my head up and look ahead when skiing, particularly when skiing up a steep hill. Going up a sharp incline is hard work, and it is natural to look down when you are tired. The problem, however, is that looking down leads you to focus on the pain and impedes your forward movement. By looking up and ahead, you are in a better mental and physical position to drive yourself forward up the hill.
In a similar fashion, when we run the Christian race, we need to look up and ahead to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2). By encouraging us to look to Jesus, the author of Hebrews is not saying that we should merely think of Jesus, but that we ought to grasp the practical significance of who Jesus is and what he has done.
Specifically, what should we think about when we think about Jesus? When we look to Jesus, what should we see?
Our Trailblazer
First, we should see our trailblazer. The author of Hebrews says that Jesus is the founder of our faith. The word “founder,” which is also used in Hebrews 2:10, may be translated as “pioneer.” The context in Hebrews strongly suggests the idea of a pioneer, who lays down a path for others to follow. In some of the cross-country ski races I attended, the racetrack had not been set by the morning of the race. This might have happened because of a lack of equipment or because of a heavy snowfall the night before. In such situations, it would be a serious handicap to race at the front because you would have to blaze the trail yourself, which would require a lot more effort. To make the race fair, two or three non-racing skiers would ski the course early in the morning to lay the track for everyone else to follow. They would be the trail blazers.
Similarly, Jesus is our trail blazer who has paved the way to God for us.
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