Count the cost. Don’t be naive. You could have a mass exodus of close friends leaving the church. The church could split. You could get fired. Any number of things could happen, so it is best to be prepared for anything. Prepare your own soul. Meditate on Matthew 5:11–12 and the book of 1 Peter. Pray that God will strengthen you to “suffer for doing good” (1 Pet. 3:17). Read memoirs and biographies of your Christian heroes who courageously endured great trials. Acknowledge your own errors. If you’ve changed your view on something (or many things), acknowledge them publicly. Don’t be afraid of saying, “I used to think X, but now I’ve come to believe Y. Let me show you from Scripture how I came to this conclusion.” 

Over the past ten years or so, pastors have navigated some of the most morally complicated and emotionally turbulent ministry environments they’ve ever experienced. The world has changed around us in unprecedented ways that we’ve only just begun to comprehend.
One of the most helpful explanations of these cultural changes is the “Three Worlds of Evangelicalism” rubric proposed by Aaron Renn. His core observation, which began as an essay and later developed into a book, is that American society has grown increasingly hostile towards Christianity. Christianity was once regarded as a positive good for society by Christians and non-Christians alike. Renn calls this “positive world.” As the new millennia approached, that perception softened as Christianity was demoted in favor of a pluralistic “marketplace of ideas.” Renn calls this “neutral world.” But from around 2015 onward, our society’s view of Christianity has turned decidedly dark. Renn calls this “negative world.”
This simple formulation has great explanatory power to comprehend the immense ministry pressure modern pastors face, many of whom were trained in “neutral world” ministry tools that have become obsolete in the “negative world” we now occupy. This is not some abstract sociological phenomenon for professors to discuss in the faculty lounge. Nor is this merely an online phenomenon where keyboard warriors spar on social media about controversies that will blow over when a new controversy erupts. It’s much more practical and personal than that.
Whether we want to accept it or not, the “negative world” of 2024 is not the same as the “neutral world” of 2004. Every pastor must unflinchingly reckon with this new reality, though many will not be inclined to do so. Why?
The Challenge
Busy pastors have little time or interest in keeping up with the latest cultural trends or evangelical gossip. That’s what “discernment bloggers” spend all their time worrying about. But ordinary pastors I know don’t care about that stuff. It seems petty and immature. They want to preach the Bible, share the gospel, and disciple their people.
Besides, cultural discernment seems best left to the niche specialists who pay more attention to social trends than everyone else. Most pastors don’t have the time or energy to figure out how to “understand the times” like the men of Issachar (1 Chron. 12:32). It can be tedious trying to pay attention to who’s saying what, what they are saying, what they are refusing to say, and who they are associated with.
Many pastors are beginning to awaken to the cold, hard realities of the negative world. Bad ideas travel at lightning speed through the Christian subculture faster than pastors can keep up. Influential Christian thinkers are no longer seminary professors or experienced ministry practitioners. Now, the most influential Christian thought leaders often have zero theological or biblical training. Instead, they have an iPhone and charisma. Their ideas trickle down from social media channels to your small groups and Sunday school classes. The most pressing doctrinal issues of our day are framed more by influencers than those who have dedicated their lives to rigorous theological study. Ordinary people in our churches read their social media posts, listen to their podcasts, and watch their TikToks. Allie Beth Stuckey, a 32-year-old Christian influencer and social media star, probably has as much influence over the minds of Christian women as their pastors.
Observant pastors try to maintain a bird’s eye view of their congregations. They notice certain trends that play out in the lives of their people, such as those who demanded masks and jabs during COVID, who supported #blacklivesmatter by turning their profile pictures into black squares on Facebook, and an alarming number of kids in the youth group claiming to be gay or trans.
As a pastor begins to realize that something has radically shifted in our culture, it hits him hard. This is his “men of Issachar” moment, where the sober fact dawns that his ministry world has been turned upside down. The state of the world is much darker than he’d realized before, and he can no longer afford to pretend otherwise.
I’ve been through this and heard similar testimonies from more pastors than I can count. One pastor said, “As the world got crazier, my thinking got clearer.” He realized that naiveté was a luxury he could not afford. God called him to “shepherd the flock of God,” and their souls were at stake. He could not allow himself to be naïve, turning a blind eye towards the evil as it encroached upon his people. He was becoming more sober-minded, choosing to courageously face unpleasant ministry realities.
He is now a pastor who, after recognizing the “negative world, realizes he is leading a church that still thinks it is in the “neutral world.” He needs to make some changes to prepare for what lies ahead. So what should he do?
Counting the Cost
First, he realizes that if he talks about the truth of reality as he sees it and with the urgency the moment requires, his congregants could become angry, panic, and revolt. If he tells them what he really thinks, they may push back and send him packing. But if he says nothing, their errors will go uncorrected, and they’ll be left increasingly vulnerable to whatever heresy some 19-year-old kid with a YouTube account happens to be saying.
As pastors awaken to the evils that have taken hold of our society, I’ve noticed some of them becoming more vocal online. Plain-spoken boldness is a muscle they’ve not exercised in the past, but they’re hitting the weights now. As they express unpopular opinions, with the perceived requisite of great care and nuance, they are like kids at the pool checking the water by dipping their toes. The same happens in churches. Little by little, they get bolder in the pulpit, inching dangerously close to the line of controversy without crossing it.
There is a legitimate fear these pastors experience. I get it. They don’t want to be seen as unhinged provocateurs recklessly stirring up controversy. These pastors are trapped in broadly evangelical churches with anxious people who have a low threshold for conflict. The functional liberalism of some portion of the congregation is a conditioned response to the neutral world tools that formed them, such as gospel centrism, winsome third-wayism, faithful presence passivity, and punch-right-coddle-leftism. All these ministry strategies were effective at drawing left-leaning urban millennials, the most coveted demographic of the neutral world church planting boom. But now, these same left-of-center millennials are the pastor’s biggest liability. If a pastor, waking up to the importance of biblical fidelity in a negative world, crosses the line, they’ll sabotage him.
Some of the left-leaning urban millennials he reached a decade ago with neutral world tools have now become key donors, ministry leaders, and elders. Some of them are now in the prime of their careers, comfortably cocooned in their middle-class lives. He’s afraid of losing them. He wants to courageously lead and protect them, disciple them towards greater faithfulness, and equip them for the dark days ahead. But they are reluctant to change. Some of them now occupy the most visible positions of influence in the church. Anxious people crave familiarity and routine. They like their neutral world church mirage and don’t want any red-pilled pastor leading them out of it.
But these congregants don’t realize that the neutral world is gone. The negative world is here. And from how things are going, we’re headed for a clown world circus show in the years ahead.
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For men equipped with the keys to some of the most sacredly precious positions in the Kingdom of Christ, O15 simplifies the decision-making on our version of the broader homosexual clergy question. Is the man describing himself (present tense) as a homosexual, all equivocations aside? If so, as this means he is NOT above reproach, we can be sure that the Spirit has not called him to sacred office in the Church.

A fellow PCA elder, a brother in Christ whom I am indeed grateful for, asked for my reaction to some arguments he was going to make before his session, urging them at their upcoming presbytery meeting to vote against Overture 15. In keeping with the best of biblical (i.e., presbyterian) practice, he asked for the reactions of someone he knows would most likely be opposed to his reasoning. (Well done, brother, well done.)
PCA presbyteries are now taking up this overture, with the first one to vote on it passing it (8/27/22, Central Carolina, 41-11-1). O15 is considered a long shot for receiving the two-thirds majority yes votes from our presbyteries. Accordingly, appreciating this brother’s integrity, and disagreeing with his reasoning for a “no” vote on O15, I thought I might edit my comments to him, and post them for consideration by others. My goal (as a faith-exercise of my calling as an officer in the PCA) is to see the Spirit use these admittedly imperfect arguments to persuade other PCA elders to support O15’s passage.
Here is O15, as passed by the PCA 49th GA (Birmingham Al, ’22):
“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.”
I want to offer two arguments for why this overture should be passed:
1) It avoids the identity language equivocation trap, and
2) It provides a simple and straightforward way of applying the above reproach standard.
The Equivocation Trap
Almost all the arguments I’ve seen against O15 anchor themselves on a reason for the failure of overtures 23 and 37 from the previous GA (48th, St. Louis). The main argument against them (persuasive in about forty percent of our presbyteries) was that the language of identity was problematic. Particularly, they noted that the teaching elder exemplar in view (i.e., the “poster child” prompting these overtures, no denigration intended) maintains that in his use of identity language (e.g., a homosexual pastor, a Christian who struggles with same-sex attraction as much as he did the first day he was saved) is nothing more than apologetic-ordered language intended to help in ministering to those struggling with the sins of same-sex attraction. The opponents to these overtures also noted that the TE in question also affirms his agreement with the biblical doctrine of new identity in Christ. The same arguments are being raised against passage of O15: such men are not identifying as homosexuals; instead they are identifying with those struggling with same-sex attraction.
Inside and Outside Definitions
I agree that the exemplar TE’s description of himself in terms of a believer who struggles with homosexuality fits both the inside and outside the PCA. He is able to do so not because he uses the same description inside that he does outside. Instead, he is able to do so because he uses the post-modern technique of equivocation. In the most egregious examples, this brother uses the same language inside and outside, qualifying his usage with descriptions fitted to each context’s own meaning of identity. This is equivocation. Using this technique, this brother can use self-descriptive language as a same-sex attracted pastor, in two diametrically opposed contexts, and affirm that he is consistent with the doctrine of both.
The Equivocation Trap
To push this a bit more, consider the self-description this brother offers in both contexts. His inside self-description as a homosexual pastor is more or less consistent with the Bible (as summarized in the Westminster Standards). The brother maintains he is merely “identifying” himself with besetting sins that he nevertheless biblically describes and seeks to biblically deal with.
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Unbelievably, our legislature and governor have now provided “immunity” for IVF clinics. On March 6th, 2024, they passed a new IVF law which provides “civil and criminal immunity for death or damage to an embryo to any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.” All truly pro-life Alabamians agree that human life begins at conception/fertilization. This means intentionally destroying embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization is murdering babies. To grant IVF clinics immunity to do this is to give them the license to kill. 

What does “going to church” have to do with what happens to embryos in IVF clinics? If we understand the God of the Bible, we will grasp how the two are vitally connected.
God commands that we assemble to exalt His name in song, prayer, offering, the Word, and the Lord’s Supper. But God rebukes His people when they fastidiously perform acts of worship while neglecting to do anything about the oppression happening all around them.
In Amos 5:21-24, God says:
I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
The Lord is not pleased with our assemblies when we ignore the cries of the oppressed. The evidence of true worship is the pursuit of justice for the weak. 
Author Erwin Lutzer tells of a man who lived in Nazi Germany. This man said: 
I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because what could anyone do to stop it?
A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in cars! Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us.
We knew the time the train was coming, and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church, we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more. Years have passed…  But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene.
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