If God says sound doctrine is good for us, then that’s the way it is. If He says meditating upon His law day and night is what makes a man prosper and mature (Ps. 1:3), then that’s simply what we’ve got to do. It matters very little if our flesh objects otherwise. God’s Word sets the standard. Our part is to believe and obey. So what does this look like practically? In short, it looks like giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the means God has supplied for the instruction and upbuilding of His church. 

…being nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. (1 Timothy 4:6, LSB)
If you were to ask the average Christian today how they are “nourished” in the faith — that is, how they are strengthened, fed, built up, or trained in spiritual maturity — what do you suppose they would say? Many might answer something along the lines of: community, fellowship with other believers, listening to worship songs, or putting on a good podcast, all of which of course are good and helpful things.
But if you were to ask the apostle Paul, it might surprise you to find he had quite a different answer to this question. According to him, the way we are trained in spiritual maturity is not primarily through any of these means, helpful as they are, but rather through the plain yet powerful instrument of words: “…being nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following” (v. 6).
Words. Teaching. Sound doctrine. These are the building blocks of spiritual maturity, according to the apostle. They are the means God has supplied for nourishing and strengthening His saints.
Now, this is a very helpful thing to point out, especially since, for us, none of these things seem at first to be very nourishing. In fact, few things might sound more drab to our modern ears than “sound doctrine.” And yet, there it is, right in the text.
What we have to remember, then, in order to not be at odds with Scripture, is that we are creatures of our age.
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Must Christians renounce political and cultural power in order not to lose sight of the fact that heaven is their true home? Many evangelical leaders believe so. C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, recognized that it is entirely the other way round: “It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”

Last week we took a look at the debates over whether the elites in charge of evangelical colleges, seminaries, and other institutions, in their desire to gain a hearing in the world, have compromised key Christian convictions in the process.
This week we dive into a related topic making the rounds, the current fracturing of the evangelical world. Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote a much cited article in the Atlantic entitled “The Evangelical World is Breaking Apart” in which he contends that the evangelical churches are fracturing because they have become politicized and tribal “repositories of grievances.” David French (unsurprisingly) agrees.
Wehner and French’s contention can be boiled down to this: Christians who are politically active, more often than not, have exchanged Christian faithfulness for the resentful rage that defines the contemporary political scene.
A slightly different angle is found in Collin Hansen’s recent article about the final Together For the Gospel conference, to be held in 2022, where he laments the fact that “many pastors find more in common with even unbelievers who share their political and cultural assumptions than with believers who affirm the same doctrine.”
Unlike Wehner and French, Hansen doesn’t throw every politically right-leaning Christian under the bus, but he is also troubled by the same basic dynamic: those who would strongly insist that evangelicals should adhere to certain cultural and political priorities. Russell Moore shares Hansen’s concern, although he places those he criticizes in the category of heretics.
Wehner, French, and the myriad other writers churning out slightly different forms of the same basic claim, of course, always have only one group of evangelicals in mind: those on the right. While they may throw in a brief comment here or there about how this is a bipartisan issue, they never really examine left-leaning evangelicals at all. When Wehner mentions a pastor who has recently resigned his pulpit and left the ministry altogether because “he felt undermined by people in his congregation…who, it turned out, were less animated by spiritual matters than by political agendas” you know he isn’t talking about supporters of President Biden. Trump and evangelicals who support him are the problem. They are the ones who angrily denounce, ridicule, persecute, slander, and hound pastors from their pulpits. Crickets regarding those on the left.
One of the main ways this comes out is the anecdotes and quotes these authors choose to highlight. There will be a lengthy litany of abuses coming from those on the right, with an equally lengthy recounting of how mistreated and abused those are who righteously stand apart from politics, simply feeding God’s people with the unadulterated truths of Scripture. No doubt such mistreatment does occur. It should be opposed. But the selectivity of these authors is not accidental. It builds up a one-sided picture meant to send shivers of revulsion down the spine of any decent human being: “That kind of evangelicals, they are the problem. They have made an idol of politics. They must be stopped.” The recent special on CBS is a particularly egregious example of this kind of intentional selectivity. Those who, it is claimed, are politically neutral, are always carefully portrayed as being above the fray, their hands unsullied by worldly affairs. Instead, such pastors and leaders—so we are told—simply want to show us how the gospel shapes our understanding of race, gender relations, immigration, and more. Nothing political in that, right?
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This matter is remanded to MOP Presbytery with instructions that it “hold a new hearing” (BCO 43-10) which need focus only on the following matters: “What steps must MOP take to make clear to the broader Church the errors that were identified in Presbytery’s various investigations with regard to some of the teachings at Revoice 18, particularly with regard to Theological Judgments 2, 3, and 5, and what steps must MOP take to fulfill its responsibilities to protect the peace and purity of the broader Church under BCO 11-3, 11-4 and 13-9(f) in light of those errors?”

Summary of the Case
In July 2018, Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA) (“Memorial”) in St. Louis hosted the first Revoice Conference (“Revoice 18”). Thereafter, several individuals, sessions, and presbyteries communicated concerns to Memorial and to Missouri Presbytery (“MOP” or “Presbytery”) regarding Revoice 18. In light of these concerns, in October 2018 the pastor of Memorial, TE Greg Johnson, and its Session requested that MOP accept, as a BCO 41 Reference, the Session’s request to investigate it with regard to the allegations pertaining to the hosting of Revoice 2018. MOP voted to approve a lengthy report issued by its investigative committee in May 2019. The report contained, among other things, nine theological judgments. Complainant complained against MOP’s adoption of the nine theological judgments in July 2019. MOP partially sustained his complaint in October 2019 and voted to reconsider its affirmation of the nine theological judgments at a future called meeting. Complainant unsuccessfully tried to add a question about adoption by gay couples and individuals to the matters to be considered at the future meeting.
In December 2019, at a meeting called to reconsider the nine theological judgments, Complainant raised a point of order concerning the procedures used by MOP’s Administrative Committee in preparation for the meeting, but Presbytery’s Moderator ruled the point of order not well taken, a ruling that was sustained after challenge. MOP reconsidered the nine theological judgments and adopted amended statements to eight of them, referring the ninth judgment to an ad hoc committee for reconsideration. In January 2020, Complainant complained against MOP’s actions at the December 2019 meeting, a Complaint which Presbytery denied in July 2020. Complainant then carried his complaint to the SJC. The Panel conducted the hearing on September 14, 2021 and recommended that the Complaint be denied. The full SJC reviewed the case on March 3, 2022 and approved the following decision to sustain the Complaint in part and to deny it in part.
The SJC considered three issues, the first of which was:
At its December 7, 2019, Called Meeting, did Missouri Presbytery (MOP) err in approving six theological judgments (specifically, Judgments # 1-5 and #9) recommended by CIM (Committee to Investigate Memorial)? Complainant’s 34 specifications of errors concern:
MOP Theological Judgment 1 (“Origins of Homoerotic Desire”)MOP Theological Judgment 2 (“Terminology”)MOP Theological Judgment 3 (“The Gay Beneath the Gay”)MOP Theological Judgment 4 (“Gay Identity”)MOP Theological Judgment 5 (“Spiritual Friendship”)MOP Theological Judgment 9 (“Roman Catholic Speakers”)
The SJC judgment on this statement of the issue was: Yes, particularly with regard to MOP Theological Judgments 2, 3, and 5.
The Decision concludes with Amends directed to Missouri Presbytery with instructions from the SJC.
This matter is remanded to MOP Presbytery with instructions that it “hold a new hearing” (BCO 43-10) which need focus only on the following matters: “What steps must MOP take to make clear to the broader Church the errors that were identified in Presbytery’s various investigations with regard to some of the teachings at Revoice 18, particularly with regard to Theological Judgments 2, 3, and 5, and what steps must MOP take to fulfill its responsibilities to protect the peace and purity of the broader Church under BCO 11-3, 11-4 and 13-9(f) in light of those errors?”
In its new review, we encourage Presbytery to consider interacting with the May 2020 Report of the General Assembly’s Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality and how specific statements of some speakers at Revoice 18 may have differed from the propositions in that Report. We understand the AIC Report had only been published for two months when Presbytery declined to sustain this Complaint, and we recognize the Report does not have Constitutional status.
Read the entire Decision.