Lady Preachers in PCA Pulpits?
Being authentically presbyterian when an egalitarian culture is so decidedly against the truths of God’s word and his design for his church is hard. And though it is hard and unpleasant work, faithful churchmen must call to account those who would deviate from God’s blueprint for His church and her worship.
Presbyterianism is pretty simple. As the name suggests, presbyters (elders) are essential to the church. Congregations elect qualified men to ensure that the means of grace (word, prayer, and sacraments) and discipline are maintained. These men—one or more of whom is an elder qualified and approved to preach—constitute the local session, and are accountable to higher courts that have the oversight of larger geographical areas (regional presbyteries and synods or general assemblies). The various local churches and courts are vitally connected primarily by a common confession of faith and a common church order—not primarily by experience or ardor (more about that later).
Bonds of love and trust between churches in a presbyterian denomination rely on common belief and common, accountable order. Essential to that order are the clear definitions of office and preaching. And this is why the fact that women are filling pulpits and expounding Scripture at the center of stated Lord’s Day worship services in the PCA is so troubling, and why it bodes so ill for the peace, purity, and sustainability of the PCA.
Yes, you heard correctly: Women have recently preached (by any commonsense definition of preaching) in PCA churches, and PCA women (including pastors’ wives) have preached in churches of other denominations. I will not post links to videos and websites here that prove this contention (though hundreds are aware of them and they are not hard to find), since there are active or pending complaints and communications about these incidents at presbytery levels. One thing is certain—you will hear about some of these cases before long.
Why is this happening? Previously-stated justifications given for women expounding the Scriptures during stated Lord’s Day worship services involve finely-drawn distinctions between teaching and preaching. Some have contended that there is nothing in our standards that absolutely says women cannot read, give the sense of, and apply Scripture during a worship service. They might even say that the Westminster Divines or authors of the PCA Book of Church Order never defined preaching as clearly as they should have.
Is it surprising that the divines did not defend truths and concepts that were not under attack, nor define subjects about which all 17th-century Christians were agreed? Likewise, one reasonably assumes that the founders of the PCA assumed that women would never be preaching in PCA churches so long as the office of elder was limited to men.
Why is it that women are barred from preaching in conservative Reformed churches? Our sisters can speak well and even produce impressive spiritual experiences when they speak. They can study and have biblical knowledge and wisdom just like men. So why not preach?
The short answer is that our scripturally-faithful books of order limit preaching to those men who are called and approved to the teaching office of elder, or else to those who are in training for the office and under the care of presbytery. The Larger Catechism provides some clarity:
-
We Love What We Do
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, June 11, 2023
If you want hearts to change with minds you need to change what we do as well as what we think. Try celebrating the Supper more frequently, as the climax to your meeting, give it time and I think the Lord will do his own work. Habit combined with the Holy Spirit is an unstoppable combination.It surprises many people I talk to, but it’s true that the more you do something the more you like it.
Most of us assume that we keep things special by only doing them occasionally. There is a pleasure that comes from the occasional activity, but what we love we do. Our tastes are formed by what we put ‘in our mouth.’ I’ve told the story before of my colleague who gave up sugar, retraining her palate such that she no longer liked sugar, but carrots were wonderfully sweet. Our habits form us.
Which means we should think about habits carefully. If you want to love reading the Bible, read the Bible. You can train your loves by choosing discipline and we need to know this so that we persevere through the time when we don’t love something until we do.
This, framed the other way around, is why habitual sin is difficult to break: because we love it. We don’t want to, and the Spirit reframes our loves for us, but we’re trained by what we do. Our affections are more malleable than you might think.
This has lots of applications in the Christian life and in the Church. If you pray, you’ll grow to love prayer. If you stop going to church, you’ll stop wanting to. There are a thousand other examples.
Of course, there are a multiple of reasons that it’s not as simple as that to retrain our habits.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Should Churches have a Vision?
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, September 30, 2023
You need some sense of where you’re going long term—that could be supporting missionaries, it could be sending people to pastor elsewhere, it could be planting churches or sites, it could be growing until you’re of a size to do a particular thing (though I’m wary of this last one, because growth soon becomes its own goal; growth is only good when in service of other goals). These are all valid, other things will be too, and they are a unique vision in the sense that not every church will do the same things with their limited resources.It’s common these days to expect a church to have a specific vision, often expressed in a pithy statement about what they will or won’t be seeking to do in their location. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a mission statement—which sometimes is the same thing, but at least in business speak isn’t—though these are more common in churches that drew on a slightly older stream of business insights.
Is this a good idea? I’ve gone on record as thinking that lots of churches in the spaces I move in have missed what the church is for, and think this can be symptom of the same thing.
However, we should distinguish carefully because there is, I think, a good and a bad way to do this.
Good Vision
My late friend Zoltán Dörnyei was a Professor of Psycholinguistics who later in his life completed a PhD in Theology. One of his interests was the place of vision in the Christian life, due to his work on the importance of ‘mental imagery’ in acquiring a second language.
The scriptures tell us that without vision the people perish (Proverbs 29). In order to go anywhere and do anything, you need vision. In other words, to do something you have to first visualise it. Zoltan would teach that you needed to both appreciate the benefits of the thing you are considering and consider the costs of failure.
In church life, if the body is going to do anything—and we mean here acts as diverse as witness to their friends, move to a new venue, give their money, volunteer their time, support a project helping the poor, make friends who aren’t like them, and many more—then the elders of the church will need to articulate a ‘vision’ of why this is worthwhile as well as the potential costs of failing.
This isn’t business speak, it’s clarity and ‘leadership’. It’s also not anything super-fancy, for all you can be better or worse in how you go about it. By vision we mean simply painting a picture with words so that people understand why they might choose to take some concrete actions.
We can’t function without this, for all it can easily stray into manipulation—which is true of much of what we call leadership—where you make the vision sound compelling so that people are more likely to take those actions. That’s a tempting thing for a pastor to do, but honesty is integral for Christian leaders in these matters.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Mercy, Justice, and the Academic Effects of Covid
Professors everywhere noticed the surge in urgent requests for mercy, for extensions, commonly presented days after an assignment was due or graded. For several seasons, faculty showed great patience and compassion. At length we realized that the virtue of compassion had become the vice of indulgence. Instead of showing patience, we were enabling irresponsibility. Further, when a student claims he can’t turn in a paper due to anxiety, we feel compassion, but we also know that we don’t relieve anxiety by permitting late work, we increase it, as the burden of unfinished tasks lingers and lingers.
Last January, a new professor wrote with a little conundrum. A student scored a 27% on his final, realized that he might fail the course as a result, and called the professor three weeks later to plead for mercy – a second chance – so he could pass the course. The student explained that he had been sick, his dog had been sick, his aunt had been sick, and he thought it would be enough to write a good term paper, so he didn’t really study for the final.[1] Would the professor let him study more thoroughly for the exam, take it again, and let that result stand? What, the compassionate new professor asked, should I do?
Give him the F he earned, I replied.
I wasn’t quite that blunt. I commended his compassion. I told him it’s his call, since he is the professor of record. But still, if the student earned an F, let his grade show it. There are practical reasons for this, but the theological basis is simple. God is both compassionate and just. He is merciful, but he does not leave the guilty unpunished (Ex. 34:6-7). For the Christian parent and leader, discipline is essential. We love people too much to let them think that irresponsibility is “no problem,” that every error will be forgiven and the consequences erased.
Actually, consequences rarely disappear; they simply shift to other people. In this case, student irresponsibility transfers to the professor. The second chance requires the professor to write a new test, arrange for the student to take it, then grade it, and take the necessary steps to change his final grade. The professor will be fortunate indeed if the process is completed within three hours and with fewer than ten emails.
But there are other considerations. The consequences of Covid and online education continue to rattle through the academic ecosystem. The greatest issue is the shift to an asynchronous education.
Read More
Related Posts:
