How can we define prayer as children of God? In this way: Prayer is a relational expression that vocalizes our trust in our Heavenly Father. At the same time, just as a son speaking with his father learns to think, speak, and act like him, so speaking with our Heavenly Father will conform us into his image. At the same time, prayer must be done wisely, according to God’s will, with an expectant faith and trust that he hears and answers his children in Christ, all for his glory alone. 

Prayer is, arguably, one of the greatest struggles of the Christian faith. While some may lament their poor Bible study habits, or their failure to share the gospel as frequently as they should, almost all would likely mourn over their poor prayer life. Almost no one will say that they feel they have reached the pinnacle of their prayer life; almost all are forced to admit that we do not pray as we should. And, yet, prayer is the oxygen of our spiritual life. Just as we need to breathe to live physically, we need to pray to live spiritually.
Prayer, however, is a privilege of the saint with many promises. For example, God promised in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that, “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” While that particular promise was given to ancient Israel through King Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, the principle remains the same: God will honor the humble prayers of his saints. If the saints today would submit themselves to God in humble contrition and earnest prayer, would not God still send reformation and revival as he has done countless times in the past?
Yet, we do not currently have revival or reformation. We do not see a white harvest being reaped by many laborers, though Jesus commanded us to pray for laborers to be sent into the harvest that is ripe and white and plentiful (Matt 9:36–38). Instead, we see the decline of Christendom in the West. We see morality on the downgrade. We see churches emptying and closing.
Ultimately, our culture partially reflects the failures of the Church at large. When our churches are healthy, functioning, and thriving, the culture is bereft of godlessness and full of holiness. But how does that happen? In part, it happens when our churches are full of saints who are warriors of prayer, praying as God intended.
Consider the great revivals of the past. When Martin Luther saw reformation, he was known as a man of prayer. One of his most famous quotes is, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” When Charles Spurgeon saw the Metropolitan Tabernacle filled with thousands in the nineteenth century in London, it was because he prayed earnestly. When the Puritans saw revival in England and America, it’s because they were men and women of prayer.
We must be people of prayer. We must be prayer warriors who pray as God intended. To borrow a line from William Carey, we must pray expecting great things from God, and then we must go forth to attempt great things for God, by his grace and for his glory. But it all begins with knowing how to pray, which Jesus fleshes out for our benefit in Matthew 6:5–9. Here, he aids us by offering us two warnings about what prayer is not and then shows us what prayer is.
Let us consider these truths and learn to pray as God intended:

1. Do not pray as the hypocrites do, to be noticed by others, but to be heard by God.

Jesus’s command in Matthew 6:5 is a simple one: “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” This is a picture of how the Pharisees evidently prayed. They would stand in public spots and pray long-winded, elaborate, and noticeable prayers. As they did so, they would be seen by people—which is exactly what they wanted!—and they would be praised. Surely, some would say of them, “There are none more holy than they!”
But that was it. Their reward was being praised by men. There was no answer from God. As it turns out, even if the content of the prayer was theologically accurate, God had no interest in answering because it came from a hypocritical heart set on others, rather than focused on God.
Before dismissing this warning as peculiar to the Pharisees, we must see this as a danger common to man.
Read More
Related Posts:

Whatever the motivations and intent behind secretive caucus groups, the reactions within the PCA follow a similar pattern: widening tribal differences, amplifying arguments between perceived camps, and breaking affinities into parties. 

Every Christian ought to heed Paul’s warnings to “have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths” (1 Timothy 4:7) and not to be found in “quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.” (2 Corinthians 12:20). Thus, we must be especially cautious when approaching a subject such as “Secret political caucuses” in the history of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
My aim in this post is to present a brief history of secret political caucuses in the PCA with only what can be sourced and deduced from information that is openly accessible. Because secret organizations are secret, this topic is difficult to study, and subject to vain speculation.
In the History of the PCA, we can be certain of the existence of three major organizations that have influenced the creation and the history of the PCA up to the present day. Here are the relevant criteria for evaluating whether or not an organization is a secret political caucus:

confidentiality in communication between participants,
confidentiality either over the group’s existence, its nature, its membership, and/or over the matters and strategy discussed to achieve its polity-related goals,
an ideological ethos or goal,
an agenda to accomplish its goals by staffing denominational agencies and committees, and
a strategy to accomplish those goals by coordination of votes in the courts and committees of the Church.

We begin our study with an organization that has influenced how people in the PCA have viewed such groups Though antedating the PCA itself, this organization was undeniably a catalyst for the creation of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
The Fellowship of St. James
The Fellowship of St. James was a secret organization that functioned in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS – the old Southern Presbyterian church that was the origin of the PCA) during the middle of the 20th Century. Most secondary sources relay the following basic details: The Fellowship was the brainchild of Ernest Trice Thompson, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. This organization was committed to broadening the theological tent of the PCUS, to working more ecumenically in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, and to eventually merge with the more liberal Northern Presbyterian Church.[1]
In 1963, the Fellowship was revealed and a group named the “Concerned Presbyterians” organized against it, publishing their first “Bulletin,” raising the alarm:
“Very few laymen are aware of the fact that over the last 15 years there has been a secret organization in our Church working quietly behind the scenes to gain control of the political machinery of our denomination. This group, composed mostly of ministers, called themselves the Fellowship of St. James. This relatively small but determined group influences and seeks to control the various agencies of the courts of our Church. In recent years they have succeeded in electing enough men of their choosing to enable them to control many of the important committees of the various Church courts and to have effective majorities on the governing bodies of many of the boards, agencies, and other institutions of the church.”[2]
In his history of the PCA, Sean Lucas reproduces the counter conclusion of Dr. Peter Hobbie, a professor at Presbyterian College and defender of Dr. Thompson, that the Fellowship was a dinner party and “they were largely focused on the work of the Presbyterian of the South, which later became the PO [ed: Presbyterian Outlook]. That they discussed denomination politics there is little doubt. But their work was no secret – it was evident in the editorial policy of the PO.”[3] PCA Historian Frank J. Smith received a correspondence from Ernest Trice Thompson himself insisting “We were all active churchmen, but we didn’t draw up goals or plans for the church courts.”[4]
So was the Fellowship of St. James not a secret political caucus? Certainly, since we know about it today, the Fellowship of St. James did not remain secret about its existence. However, it undoubtedly began in secret, its membership was not public, the methods of the group were not publicized, and history only knows about it because it was revealed in 1963 and publicly recorded in the Bulletins of the Concerned Presbyterians. That a group called “The Fellowship of Concern” would form later with many of the same actors, to do what the Fellowship of St. James was said to do in private is also curious. And while they worked in and were largely in agreement with the “Presbyterian of the South,” which became the “Presbyterian Outlook,” the Fellowship was suggested as the means to accomplish goals in a confidential and organized way apart from the activities of the Presbyterian Outlook. Ultimately, Frank Smith notes: “Half a century from now when closed archives are opened the exact nature of the group will be more obvious.”[5]
We see with the Fellowship of St. James another feature of such organizations in Presbyterian History, and that is the cross-pollination between the group and public faces. This cross-pollination becomes especially evident once the existence of the secret group has been made public. After the Fellowship of St. James was made public, soon a public face named the “Fellowship of Concern” enabled a measure of legitimacy for members who desired a public voice in addition to the private planning and coordination in the courts of the church.
The Concerned Presbyterians were in turn denounced as alarmist, and were condemned by PCUS presbyteries in Tennessee and Texas. [citation needed] The Concerned Presbyterians were easier targets for formal critique, largely due to being public with their concerns. Meanwhile, while the Fellowship of St. James remained shrouded in much secrecy. This fact frustrated many conservatives who believed at certain points they were the majority, yet they did not control policy or the polity of the PCUS, and their protests against such machinations of a secret group were met with condemnations of their concerns rather than investigations into the secret group.
The Concerned Presbyterian response to an organized secret society was to organize and leave the PCUS on the belief that the administrative machinery of the denomination was hopelessly lost to a small but well-organized caucus. Eventually, Concerned Presbyterians would make up one of the four major groups founding the PCA
The Vision Caucus—“Partisanship in the PCA”
The first two decades of the PCA’s existence were not without strong disagreement between elders in the Church. There is little evidence of formal organized factions in the first fifteen years of the Church’s history. Soon, however, two competing visions for the PCA emerged. Some elders developed concerns that the denomination was not consistently living up to its confessional positions. Others believed the PCA’s original goal was to be a big tent of conservative and orthodox evangelical Christians who allow for a diversity of ministry approaches (and a certain latitude of theological conviction).
In 1987, Founding Fathers Paul Settle and Jim Baird invited fifty people in the PCA to spend time together to discuss and understand “genuine differences.”[6] The event was not to be repeated, and instead many “big steeple people” formed a new Caucus that Frank Smith called “The Vision 2000 Caucus,”[7] Paul Settle termed the “Vision Caucus,”[8] and others have referred to it as the “Original Vision Caucus.” Participation was by “invitation only.”[9]
Paul Settle was obviously distressed that the efforts at open discussion were rejected for secret politicking, as he remarked in his History of the PCA: “Partisanship reared its ugly head.” The level of direction and organization was not known until 1991, when the Presbyterian Advocate printed a copy of the Caucus’s slate of candidates for agencies and committees in the PCA.[10] It became evident now that the Vision Caucus, in the words of Settle, “composed and circulated a list that identified some men on the Nominating Committee’s slate as undesirable. Then they arranged to have their own picks placed in opposition to those they deemed unfit.”[11]
While many knew that the Vision Caucus existed, the methods, membership, and efforts were secret, giving it enough in common with the Fellowship of St. James to prompt conservative elders to form a public group in response. This group was conspicuously named “Concerned Presbyterians.” The name was obviously chosen to assert the parallel these men saw between the Fellowship of St. James and the Vision Caucus.
Read More

The upshot of this decline will be that many Americans enter adulthood without having been intellectually challenged. The phrase “mind expanding” will exclusively apply to psychedelic drugs, not higher education. Professors for their own survival will play it safe and avoid anything that might, somehow and in some way, offend those who complain when their cherished beliefs are disputed. The triumph of woke dullness. Absent this exposure to the give and take of competing ideas and all else that defines intellectual debate, honest disagreement will become “hate.” It all adds up to a perfect recipe for killing serious public discussions.

Professors often complain about the current crop of students being less intellectually talented than when they began their careers decades back. Such griping is, of course, easy to dismiss — it has occurred for millennia. Unfortunately, this time around the grumbling may be true and not the usual nostalgia for “the good old days.”  The anecdotal evidence from textbook reading levels, shortened college syllabi, scrapbook-like research assignments, proliferating college remedial classes, grade inflation, and the popularity of “gut” college majors such as Gender Studies, is indisputable. We have also invested hundreds of millions in our schools yet test results such as the SAT are flat over the past half century. Add the countless stories of illiteracy among high school “graduates” despite falling class size and expensive reforms. Judged by the standards of evolution, Americans may be going backwards.
The best evidence of this decline are data from the highly respected General Social Survey on mean IQ by decade among graduate students, undergraduates, and high school students (a tip of the hat to Charles Murray on Twitter). This is a complicated subject given how America’s demography has altered, and measuring IQ via surveys might be iffy, but the numbers, even if a bit unsure, are alarming.
These data are divided into three groups: those with high school diplomas, undergraduate degrees, and graduate degrees. Then the data are then divided by decades beginning in the 1960s through to the 2010 onward decade. The overall pattern is a steady decline in IQ scores for each group from decade to decade. For example, high school graduates in the 1960s had an average IQ of 99.3 but this figure declined so by 2010 and onward, it was 93.5. A similar drop occurred among college graduates — from 113.3 in the 60s to 100.4 in the 2010 decade. For those with graduate degrees, the fall was from 114.0 to 105.8.
These are depressing numbers. That in 2010 the average college student had an IQ of 100.4 (almost exactly our national average) signifies that we are miles away from trying to educate the brightest youngsters. Worse, with an average of about 100, many of those enrolled must score below 100 and thus suitable only for low-skill occupations. This picture may even be worse than these numbers suggest if we subtract out the many smart international students now enrolled in U.S. higher education.
This decline has wide-ranging implications for college teachers. Save at the most selective schools, many undergraduates are incapable of grasping complicated arguments, even unable to distinguish what the teacher explained as opposed to what the teacher personally believes. The statement “Many Germans thought Hitler a savior” becomes “the Professor said that Hitler was a savior.”  Nor can many of these intellectually challenged youngsters grasp the idea that something can simultaneously be both good and bad. Try explaining that for a statement to be scientifically correct, it must in principle be amenable to falsification. Even a lame joke about affirmative action may be misunderstood as a hostile remark.
Read More
Related Posts: