Overture 21 is an attempt to satisfy the objections of last year’s Overture 8 thus enabling additional presbyteries to vote in favor to receive the 2/3 required. Overture 22 is a bit technical, but this overture is constructed in such a manner that there are no loopholes; the only thing it allows for is a minority report from the CCB on the reviewed minutes of the SJC in matters of procedural error, and that alone!

As the moderator of the session (First Presbyterian Church of Montgomery, AL), placing Overture 21 and Overture 22 before the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) 50th general assembly, I thought it might be helpful if I offered our fathers and brothers some of the rationale behind our session’s recommendation of these overtures. My comments are organized around two main points: 1) why the lack of Presbytery support, and 2) why vote yes anyway.
Why the Lack of Presbytery Support
As mentioned to me at last week’s Review of Presbytery Records (RPR) Committee meeting, Southeast Alabama Presbytery (SEAL) is respected and admired for its history of wisdom and stability in affirmation of both PCA doctrine and practice. As an adopted son of the PCA (since Sept. ’08), I affirm with hearty gratitude and rejoicing that this reputation continues among the fathers and brothers that make up SEAL today. With some hesitancy then, I offer the following opinions as to why SEAL did not support these overtures, and why our Session thought it wise to forward them to PCAGA50, nevertheless. The following are based on my recollection of the deliberation at our presbytery’s meeting on March 7, 2023 (hosted at our church facility).
Overture 21
This overture is in effect a replacement for PCAGA49’s Overture 8 which barely failed the 2/3 majority presbytery vote this past year. Overture 21 is an attempt to make the provisions of this prior overture palatable to enough additional presbyteries that it passes the 2/3 requirement (see further, below).
At the SEAL March 7, 2023, called meeting, the main argument offered against Overture 21 was that it would result in too much intrusiveness into the ministry of teaching elders (TEs). The argument was made that O21 would make it easier for ‘charges’ to be brought against a TE.
Agreeing that nuisance charges are unhelpful and contrary to Presbyterianism, our session disagrees with this opinion. Note that some presbyteries, agreeing with the need for clarification on a better definition for “refuses to act” (BCO 34-1; see O2023-21 p. 2.19-24), expressly voted against last year’s Overture 8 (Item 7 before the presbyteries this last cycle) because they believed that its proposed change of the threshold to 10% of presbyteries requesting original jurisdiction was too high! Furthermore, in the history of the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC), the current standard of two presbyteries has not resulted in the SJC assuming original jurisdiction over a case. Noting that SEAL overwhelming voted to approve last year’s Overture 8, we respectfully believe that they got the vote on our session’s replacement proposal wrong.
A secondary argument against Overture 21 was that the 1/3 SJC signature provision (p. 2.12) might be deemed unconstitutional. The Committee on Constitutional Business having vetted Overture 21 negates that concern.
Thus, with respect, our session thinks SEAL should have approved of sending Overture 21 up to PCAGA50.
Overture 22
This overture arose in response to last year’s ruling from the chair that a minority report from the Committee on Constitutional Business (CCB) was out of order. Our session sees Overture 22 as a companion to Overture 21. It also serves the goal of strengthening the functioning of the SJC (see further, below).
At the SEAL meeting on March 7, 2023, the arguments offered were in effect the same as those offered at PCAGA49 defending the chair’s ruling, to wit: the CCB is merely a review of procedural constitutionality, and therefore it is improper for minority reports to arise from its work.
Why didn’t this pass our Presbytery? Our Presbytery is a strong supporter of proper procedures being followed in our courts. As PCAGA49 declined to allow minority reports from the CCB, the sense among the elders at SEAL’s March meeting was that it was proper to vote against this overture as well.
Why does our session disagree with our fathers and brothers? Quite simply,  while we agree that the PCAGA49 chair got this decision right, there is nevertheless the need for a minority report procedure from CCB, when there is an egregious procedural failure in the SJC. Agreeing with our fathers’ and brothers’ sentiments to protect procedures, we believe Overture 22 actually supports that conviction and protects the SJC’s processes when there is such a procedural error.
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I certainly know that not all elders are qualified or godly. Vote out bad, unqualified elders. After reading this book and its sexist claims against godly elders, re-read the qualifications for elders and see if any of those are reflected in the disdain elders are treated with in Alongside Care. What is the denomination thinking? Are we wiser than God? More loving than he is? Do we love women better than God does? This book seems to think so.

A Review of the PCA’s Alongside Care, (Lawrenceville, Georgia: PCA Committee on Discipleship Ministries, 2024, $14.99).
Early in my marriage about 45 years ago, my husband and I were in a large liberalizing church where one of his responsibilities was to teach the Bible moderators—the Bible teachers for the many women’s circles which that church had. As often happens, bad teaching seems to seep in through materials marketed for women. As the PCUS wandered further from Scripture, their women’s studies were leading the way in liberalism. Having grown up in the Catholic church, I’d seen that shift but didn’t quite understand it in light of Presbyterianism. My husband gave me a great task of going through the denomination’s women’s studies with a fine-toothed comb and more importantly, with Scripture opened to each and every passage. This long-ago skill came in handy with Alongside Care. To riff on Abigail Shrier’s new title, there is much bad therapy here.
The recent PCA book, Alongside Care, is yet another subtle attempt to show why God probably wasn’t having his best day ever when he gave us the blueprint for how his church is to be governed and nurtured. Alongside Care pays lip service, almost as if AI-generated, to the idea that, yes, God placed ordained men to be elders and to lead his church—it’s just that they aren’t constituted to do it very well. Page after page follows with underminings of God’s order, advocating a handy replacement division of elite women who will handle the really vital things for the Session, since elders are so busy traveling and working and commuting and having families and basically becoming a hindrance to the church.
Further, along with its degrading of elders, Alongside Care suffers from its dueling tendencies to both try to infantilize some women and simultaneously turn the influencers, the leaders, into the female Illuminati they think the church needs.
The qualifications for elders are quite clear and seldom, if ever, referenced in this book. They are to be: above reproach, husband of one wife, sober minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, gentle, a good manager of his own family, and a lover of good. An elder is not to be a drunkard, or violent, or quarrelsome, or a lover of money, or quick-tempered.
Listen, first, to how qualified ordained elders are described in Alongside Care and how I hear those with my emphases, comments, and questions added at points.

“The burden of oversight can be heavy, and many ordained leaders feel inadequate to address some issues involving women. . . . For some, the nuanced emotional issues seem overwhelming. For others, the ability to communicate carefully amidst unequal power dynamics is particularly difficult.” (p. 45)

Yes, oversight of the flock of God is demanding work for sure. Question: Is that not exactly the work that elders are called to do?

“Elders are God’s ordained shepherds to care for his people. Part of their task is to recognize how God provides “necessary allies” among the women of the congregation to help them in their shepherding responsibilities.” (p. 48)

Question: When was this task assigned to elders? Don’t most of the elders have wives to help them? Shouldn’t all women be allies in their churches?

“Wise elders recognize the relational acumen of women and seek help to present biblical instruction in a way that nurtures relational connection and trust.” (p. 49)

Titus 1:9 says the elder must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may give instruction in sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it.  Question: Why do elders now need female Illuminati to show them how they are allowed to teach or nurture? Why do they suddenly need help instructing? That is their actual calling.

“The elder can work with a female caregiver to tailor a biblical message that accurately addresses the need.” (p. 50)

Hmmm, question: Why is that God’s word needs to be “tailored” for women? Do we have a different gospel for different genders? And if an elder needs a female caregiver, shouldn’t she be his wife? (See recent scandals where pastors and female caregivers have been arrested for, ahem, park passion).  

In many congregations the ordained leadership is comprised of “men who struggle to fulfill the responsibilities of businessman, father, and elder.” “Frequent travel and even more frequent meetings hinder an elder from cultivating deep relationships with members of the congregation.” (p. 50)

Isn’t it presupposed that one qualified to be an elder has a family and a job? Actually, elders do have deep relationships. In a recent ten-day period in our church, here are things—without even consulting this manual—that I saw elders do: worked in nursery, helped in the kitchen, taught the youth group, drove that same youth group to the airport at 5:30 AM, celebrated at graduation parties, taught in childrens’ ministry, hosted dinners in their homes, visited the hospital, taught Sunday School, met visitors, attended prayer meetings, took meals to families in need, washed dishes after a funeral, and had lunch for their shepherding groups after church—and there’s more that I don’t even see. Hardly, the insensitive, non-relational elders caricatured in this book.

“Limited opportunities for significant conversation affect the quality of pastoral care and oversight.” (p. 50)

Do women have unlimited opportunities for significant conversations, and can I be in that group? How do fewer words, if true, restrict pastoral care?

“When ordained leaders make a decision, they often prefer to focus more on proclaiming than persuading.” (p. 51)

Question: Do people not understand decisions or do they not like them? There’s a difference.

“Rather than get the word out and solve problems when they arise, elders should consult with [ed., Wait for it] tried and trusted leaders who can help shape communication.” (p. 51)

Question: Why aren’t elders considered tried and trusted leaders? Where in Scripture or creed are elders told to run everything by women consultants?
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Now listen to how ordinary, unordained women just like me are described. Spoiler alert: we are totally amazing, some might say superior!!

Women are “especially equipped” to help other women live out their callings as women. “We know what it is like to be a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister. We understand the unique challenges, longings, and heart issues women bear.” “The caregiver listens to the woman’s heart.” (p. 16)

First, you don’t have to understand someone’s inner thoughts to love them. Understanding is never a prerequisite for loving any person. If it were, babies would be abandoned at birth; toddlers would spend their lives watching Bluey; there would be no marriages nor friendships. Even the Apostle Paul admits that he doesn’t understand why he acts as he does (Rom. 7). Jeremiah 17:9 says “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?” I guess the Illuminati Care givers can, if the book is to be believed. Where are normal friendships?

Alongside Care is designed “to serve the Session, helping them in their calling to shepherd God’s people.” “No man understands experientially how it feels to be a wife, to have a menstrual cycle, to have a baby, or to go through menopause.” (p. 17)

What a ridiculous sentence! Women actually discuss menstrual cycles and menopause very little. Could anything be less fascinating? Well, watching paint dry, maybe. Now, the hidden feminism of these ideas is showing itself. Since no man knows “experientially” about menstrual cycles, childbirth, or menopause, clearly, we incredible ladies probably cannot even be shepherded by men. Should we lesbianize the church to be better understood?

Alongside Care is a “resource to the ordained elders in the church.” (p. 19)

Why didn’t God himself even hint about this fabulous resource?

“Alongside Care is not biblical counseling.” (p. 18) “A caregiver provides biblical counseling.” (p. 21)

Choose one, either one, which is it?!

 “If the woman feels she is in crisis, she is.” (p. 23)

Honestly, has there been a more laughable sentence? Does this mean: If a girl feels she is a boy, she is? If a toddler feels she is a unicorn, she is? If a wife feels she needs a side-hustle boyfriend, she does? For the record, most women would not fall for the line “If the woman feels she is in crisis, she is.” Discernment is a quite useful gift. Alongside Care would surely have benefitted from some.
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Written by R. Scott Clark |
Friday, September 3, 2021
Ministry is not an exercise of power. It is fundamentally service. It is the opposite of lording it over. The imagery here is not that of glass towers full of the powerful but of the Suffering Servant girding himself with a towel and washing his disciples’ feet (John 13;12).

It is an old habit but on Mondays I often reflect on the nature of pastoral ministry and the challenges pastors face.In truth, Monday is the second day of the week but for pastors everything leads up to the Lord’s Day. All their prayers and preparations have been pointing toward Sundays. For them it is the culmination of the week. On Mondays they naturally reflect on what happened and on how it went.
Background and Bona Fides
Yesterday and this morning I have been thinking about the church-growth movement in light of what the New Testament says (and illustrates) about ministry. When I was first introduced to the church-growth school of thought, in seminary, I reacted against it but after I was called as young seminary graduate, as an assistant pastor, to a small, near-urban congregation nine minutes north of downtown Kansas City, Missouri my new duties required me to give the church-growth school another look. Perhaps I had been too negative toward the church-growth movement? Perhaps I needed to be more open-minded? For most of six years I tried to learn what I could from the movement. I studied and practiced evangelism. We expanded the diaconal ministry per Tim Keller’s Jericho Road. We tried, within our limits, to implement The Phone’s For You (™) to capitalize on “the law of large numbers,” and Evangelism Explosion (™). I became an EE trainer and taught classes to the congregation and to young people who traveled from across the Plains to Kansas City in the summers for two weeks of ministry and fun. The CRC had SWIM. The OPC had SAIL. We called it Project Jericho. We were going to march around the city, as it were, until the walls fell. Weather permitting (and even when it did not) we stood in parking lots and evangelized. We made fliers for the local St Patrick’s Day parade calling attention to St Patrick’s Christian faith. The ink was not set and my tan gloves turned green. We knocked on doors. I preached in the City Mission. We recorded radio programs and commercials. I imitated Denny Prutow’s idea of a telephone answering machine with a gospel message. We advertised the number in the classified ads in the newspaper (the Craig’s List of its day). I recited that phone number so often that, 30 years later, I can still recite it in my sleep. We sent out hundreds of newsletters each month in hopes of connecting with people and attracting new members. We mailed out evangelistic audio cassettes (think podcasts). We held car washes to raise money for the local shelter for unwed mothers (as an alternative to abortion). Some of us picketed the abortion mill in Johnson County, KS and even the local hospital. I pushed to revise the liturgy and the music to make the church more “seeker-sensitive” and “contemporary.” We became a busy church. Like the Apostle Paul, “I am talking like a madman” (2 Cor 11:23; ESV) in order to say that I am not taking potshots from the sidelines. I gave the church-growth program a fair try.
One day, in passing, one of the young people in my congregation said something to me like this, “You spend all your time and energy trying to reach outsiders but you don’t seem to think about us very much.” That stung but she had a point. I worked hard on my sermons, Sunday School lessons, Bible studies, and catechism classes but I was very much oriented to church growth. I was not very much oriented to what I now understand to be be an ordained means of grace approach to ministry.
For all that I learned and tried one aspect of the church-growth movement, perhaps the most fundamental aspect, always made me uneasy and makes me uneasy to this day: the church-growth model was a theology of glory and it turned ministers, who should be theologians of the cross, into theologians of glory. The selling point of the various methods and mentalities was numerical success: look at this congregation.
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