The Jonesboro 7 did not merely want a man to whom MNA had given the “green light,” they wanted a man in whom they had confidence. They wanted a pastor who would lead the congregation in the old paths of the Reformed Faith. As Mr Lance Schackleford put it: “We wanted a reformed Presbyterian church here, PCA church.” And the Jonesboro 7 were not confident TE Wreyford would do that.

Editorial Note: What follows will be controversial and disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. In preparing this series, official documents and public comments have been extensively used to compose the narrative. No attempt is made to assign motives to any of the parties in this case. Reference will be made to inferences drawn by the judges on the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission as they carefully reviewed the case and noted the process was “abused” and offenses “imagined” by a Temporary Session of Elders against the Jonesboro 7. Any objection to the use of the term “abused” should be directed to the SJC Judges rather than the author of this series who simply reports the judgment of the PCA General Assembly regarding the actions of the Temporary Session in this case.
This is part two of four; you may read part one here.
The church plant needed to be dissolved; its culture was “toxic,” the members of Covenant Presbytery were told. The Christ Redeemer church plant had already been the source of one complaint (BCO 43) adjudicated by Presbytery and now seven men from the congregation had been investigated (BCO 31-2), indicted (BCO 32-5), found guilty, and censured with “indefinite” suspension from the Sacraments (BCO 30-2). And now they were appealing their case to the Presbytery.
The members of the temporary Session (BCO 5-3) had resigned, the church planter and staff had been paid out severances. All that remained was to close up shop; the church was “toxic” after all.
Given the summary of facts above it would be easy to conclude the members – or at least a significant portion of them – were “toxic.” Investigations, indictments, trials, censures, appeals, complaints, and all this before the congregation was even particularized? Surely the best thing for Covenant Presbytery and the PCA to do was shut it down, wash their hands of it, and get out of Jonesboro.
But all was not as it seemed.
Tucked away in the 2023 Commissioner Handbook with all the other decisions from the PCA General Assembly’s Standing Judicial Commission is Harrell, et. al. v. Covenant Presbytery. As I read it recently, however, I was shaken, I was grieved, I was genuinely frightened and scandalized by what happened to the Jonesboro 7.
But as I read I was also profoundly encouraged and grateful for the integrity of the judges who sit on the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission. They observed a case in which the process had been “abused” such that seven of Christ’s lambs were falsely convicted, censured, and – after a timely appeal of the verdict – their elders all resigned and recommended the church plant be dissolved.
A Question of Fit
In 2015, Christ Redeemer PCA began meeting as a church plant of Covenant Presbytery. TE Jeff Wreyford was called by Presbytery to be the “organizing pastor” to begin the work in Jonesboro (BCO 5-5a) and a Session of Ruling and Teaching Elders from IPC Memphis was appointed by Presbytery to serve alongside him (BCO 15-1). Importantly, TE Wreyford was not the pastor called by the church; he was called by Presbytery as the church planter/organizing pastor.
The work was going well; the congregation, according to Mr Paul Harrell, was gathering about 45 people each Lord’s Day by 2020 and it seemed to Harrell and others that the church plant was getting close to becoming a “particular church” (i.e. no longer a church plant with a Session of elders from other churches, but a congregation that has called its own pastor and elected its own elders and deacons).
The Lord was doing great works in Jonesboro at the church plant, yet several men in the church had reservations about the philosophy of ministry they perceived in TE Wreyford. The SJC notes Stephen Leiniger and Wesley Hurston met with TE Wreyford to share “a set of concerns” they and others had about his ministry.
To be clear, they did not accuse TE Wreyford of anything unethical or immoral; it was simply that they did not think he was a good fit or supported by a significant portion of the congregation to be elected the permanent pastor (BCO 5-9f).
Later on August 30, 2020 seven men from seven different households in the church plant met with the “entire Session” to again share their concern that TE Wreyford was not suited to be the pastor of the congregation once it was organized into a particular church.
Mr Stephen Leininger summarized the position of the Jonesboro 7 saying simply, “In our opinion…Jeff is not the one to be the pastor of Christ Redeemer as it particularizes and moves to its next level of ministry. We recommend that Jeff remove his name from consideration as pastor.”
In a meeting with the Jonesboro 7, TEs Ed Norton and Clint Wilcke responded to their concerns of the church members about TE Wreyford by highlighting the credentials and qualifications possessed by TE Wreyford and the fact that MNA assessment had given him the “green light.”
But the Jonesboro 7 insisted, despite the endorsements TE Wreyford had received and his credentials and degrees, the issue was many in the congregation simply disagreed with TE Wreyford’s philosophy of ministry. The “Jonesboro 7” explained they were more traditional in their subscription to the Reformed Faith than the philosophy of ministry they had observed in TE Wreyford.
No amount of endorsements from MNA or church planting networks could overcome the reservations the men had with TE Wreyford’s philosophy of ministry. They wanted a PCA church in Jonesboro that was distinctively, historically Reformed in character.
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Just as you cannot do algebra without numbers, so you cannot know, discover or communicate meaning without clear, accurate, and precise language. It is not too much to say that bad grammar is the enemy of truth. Christians should then prioritise language, since it is the media of propositional truth.
For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.– Dorothy Sayers
Words are our only means of knowing the world as rational beings. You cannot think without words. Go ahead, and try it: try thinking without words. Form pictures in your mind without words, but you will soon find yourself naming those objects, and even making short sentences about them. You cannot know the world without thinking in words. Words are the basis of rationality and self-awareness.
Not surprisingly, we read that creation came into being through words, and John’s Gospel tells us that those words spoken at the beginning were through the Word of God Himself. God’s Eternal Son is the Word: the communication and explication of the life of God. God knows Himself through His Word by His Spirit.
The written Word, God’s special revelation, is the foundation of knowledge about God, ourselves and the world. Words themselves are part of general revelation: language mediated through culture, through which we obtain light. All we know comes through words.
Richard Mitchell’s Less Than Words Can Say may seem like an odd choice for as a book to explain Christian education. After all, Mitchell did not profess to be a Christian. At times, he can even be lewd. But Mitchell is one of the few writers who understands that language is more than a convention: it is the very filter we use to understand reality.
Less Than Words Can Say starts, as The Abolition of Man does, with some errors committed by professional educators. In this case, the error is not logical positivism, but a kind of bureaucratic-speak that steadily destroys meaning while posturing as formal and educated. Mitchell shows this is more than irritating; it represents a hollowing out of meaning (a worm in the brain, as he calls it) and this by people who are meant to teach meaning to younger minds.
To illustrate, Mitchell then imagines a tribe of people, the Jiukukwe, who have few active verbs in their language, and plenty of passives and indirect forms of address. He pictures these people doing little in the way of forming a civilisation, except clawing for food out of tree bark. The problem with these people is not a lack of sophistication with words or grammar (for their language is highly complex). The problem is that their language spirits away personal responsibility, and the resulting worldview creates a passive and complacent way of life. The way the Jiukukwe understand reality is shaped by their syntax and grammar, not by some outside force. The meaning of the world comes at them through the filter of their language.
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There you shall be kissed by your beloved Saviour.  You shall be allowed to put your arms around Him as you tell Him you love Him. There it won’t be as if loving Him from a distance. There you will be with Him and He will be with you; and He who has loved you with an everlasting love will go on loving you. He who has borne with you through all your sin and failure and faithlessness will still love you when in heaven you are no more faithless and sinful.

The Bible teaches us that before the return of Christ there is a bliss that our souls will enjoy in the presence of Jesus, but that bliss is not the full glory to come when God makes a new heaven and a new earth.
What will it be like?  I want to name 5 things that will characterize the heaven to come.
First, there will be an end to everything that is evil.

No more aches and pains,
no more weakness and tiredness,
no more disease,
no more brokenness or disability,
no more confusion or memory loss,
no more wicked perversions,
no more haters of God,
no more idol worship,
no more heresy,
no more blaspheming the precious name of Jesus,
no more weariness in worship,
no more hard heartedness in praying,
no more rebellion,
no more dishonesty and stealing,
no more anger or disappointment or misunderstandings or broken relationships.
no more covetousness, but only contentment.
no more sadness and tears, but only joy.

Second, perfection.  What I have already described may sound like perfection, but in heaven there will be something more than the absence of all that is wrong.  Our bodies and our souls shall be made perfect. Right now “eye hath not seen or ear heard the things which God had prepared for them that love him.” Our eyes can’t see, but then we will be able to see.
Think for a moment about what it will mean to have glorified bodies. A blind man can be told about the beauties of God’s creation.  You can tell him, for example, about a sunrise, and about the beauty of spring. Similarly you can tell him about mountain ranges, prairies, flowing rivers and waterfalls; but you can’t make him see. So what if one day he could see? Then he would understand in a way he could never before.
Or think about the deaf man who can’t understand the beauty of music, and so with sign language you try to help him understand. But he can’t understand unless you can make him hear.
In heaven there are things we will see with eyes that can see. There we will hear with ears that can hear. Such a change will come over us that it will be like a blind man given sight and like a deaf man able to hear. We shall hear perfect heavenly music with perfect ears.  We shall see heavenly sights with perfect eyes. It won’t merely be that heaven shall be many thousand times more glorious than this world, but there our bodies will have the capacity to take it in and enjoy it.
Third, knowledge.  When you have found something that interests you you love to learn.  The process of discovery and accumulating knowledge is wonderful. But all of it pales beside the knowledge of Christ!  You take up your Bible, and its wonderful how it leads you into a great knowledge of your beloved. In those moments perhaps you say to yourself, “O His mouth is sweet.” Sometimes as you have meditated on the truths of Scripture, and as you have turned your eyes and thoughts toward heaven
you have caught a glimpse of Christ.   And seeing Him by faith you were overcome by joy.
Richard Baxter asks, “Christian when after long gazing heavenward, thou hast got a glimpse of Christ, dost thou not sometimes seem to have been with Paul in the third heaven… and to have seen what is unutterable?  Art thou not with Peter ready to say Master it is I good to be here… Didst thou never look so long upon the Sun of righteousness till thine eyes were dazzled with his astonishing glory?  Did not the splendour of it make all things below seem black and dark to thee?” He then added, “But, This knowledge which have given you such heights of joy and wonder  is as nothing to what you shall know; it scare in comparison of that deserves to be called knowledge…”
In heaven you will know things you can’t now imagine. Here you have been scratching the surface of the riches and the majesty of Christ, and you have called it excellent. But then you shall learn what knowledge is.
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