Thoughts on the ARP Special Committee on Women Deacons Study
I realize that this compromise solution will not satisfy those who honestly believe that the Bible teaches that women should be ordained to the office of deacon, nor will it satisfy those who believe that keeping existing female deacons in their office is a scandal, but it is simply impossible to propose a solution to this issue that will satisfy everyone in the ARP, and I honestly believe that this one would satisfy more people on both sides of the issue than maintaining the increasingly contentious status quo.
I’ll admit that I was disappointed by the study. It was my hope that after the painstaking exegetical work that was done by First Presbytery and Dr. Bob Cara, the Committee would also seek to wrestle with what the Bible teaches about the office of Deacon and who may hold it. Even if they didn’t agree with the conclusions that First Presbytery had come to, I hoped that they would show via exegesis and argument why women as well as men should be allowed to hold the office of deacon. Sadly, the report contained no exegetical work but argued rather that the status quo (“The Session of each congregation shall determine whether women can serve as deacons in their own particular congregation ARP FOG 5.4) should be continued primarily because:
I) Two other NAPARC churches have female deacons (the RPCNA and the ERQ) and members of other NAPARC churches have unsuccessfully attempted to introduce female deacons to their own denominations. Therefore, since NAPARC allows for a difference of opinion on this subject, we are merely mirroring the overall NAPARC position (Sections 1 & 5 of the Committee Report)
II) The office of deacon, as it is currently explained in the ARP Form of Government is not one of authority and does not require the obedience of church members. (Sections 3 & 4 of the Committee Report)
III) There are differences of opinion on this subject in the ARP and presumably a change might damage the current balance and cause churches that have female deacons to withdraw. (Section 5 of the Committee Report)
IV) There have been orthodox Reformed theologians who have held to the position that women can be deacons (Section 7 of the report)
My thoughts in response are that:
1) We are a denomination that specifically states that our government is to be founded upon the teaching of scripture in the Old and New Testaments (FOG 2.2) not the practice of other denominations, the beliefs of individuals, nor even a desire to avoid conflict. Therefore, we need to face the fact that whatever the actual practice of the New Testament church was regarding deacons, it was not the current practice of the ARP. While an argument might be made that the New Testament church had female deacons, there is no evidence to suggest that some congregations had deaconesses and others explicitly denied them. If Phoebe was an ordained deaconess in Cenchrea (Romans 16:1) rather than simply a servant of the church, then she did not cease to be a deaconess when she reached Rome because some or all the congregations in that city held a different opinion regarding who should be ordained to that office. What the committee needed to do was to examine the scriptures and come to a conclusion over whether women should or should not be ordained to the office of deacon rather than concluding that we need to reaffirm a position that I don’t believe any of us believe is the one taught in Scripture. Additionally, since we believe that it is the Holy Spirit who gifts and calls people for office in the church, do we really believe that the Holy Spirit does so according to geographic location calling and gifting some women in one location but declining to call and gift them if they are in another? Additionally, I would argue our current position isn’t even Presbyterian as Presbyterians have always held that church office is universal rather than merely congregational.
2) The Committee report also does not address the fact that the ARP did not ordain women to the office of deacon from its inception until 1971. This was a major change in historic ARP polity that came as part of the revisions to the Form of Government brought by the Committee to Revise the Constitution. While most of the other revisions passed with little debate the revision to allow congregations to elect women to diaconate was highly contentious and Ware and Gettys note in their History of the Associate Reformed Presbyterians, “The proposed constitution passed the overture votes easily except for chapter VII. That chapter allowed for the election of “persons” to the office of deacon… The vote in overture on this chapter was 154 to 73. Two-thirds majority was required and this chapter passed, but by only five votes.” They go on to note that resistance to this radical change in ARP polity continued and Mississippi Valley Presbytery created its own committee to study the issue and then sent a memorial to the 1973 Synod asking that the chapter be changed back to its original position restricting the office to only males. However, the synod denied this memorial. (The Second Century, A History of the Associate Reformed Presbyterians 1882-1982, p.387-388)
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I Always Feel the Worst Sunday Night, or How to Pray for Your Pastor
Written by David M. Hare |
Saturday, April 1, 2023
The fruit: your pastor, along with his congregation, will fail. He will say stupid things at times, and be wrong. (Just so you know, you pastor probably gets far more complaint emails than letters of gratitude.) However, undoubtedly his ministry is not only characterized by failure. God uses His Word, almost exclusively when preached by a weak vessel. Pray that your pastor would remember the fruit, remember the times that God has used his preaching to convict, convince, change, and save.Throughout this year of home assignment, I have had numerous opportunities to preach and share at churches all around the US. I am not much of a preacher myself, but I am glad to have the opportunity to share about what God is doing and encourage churches to think about and pray for the unreached peoples of the world. But I have noticed a funny thing that happens every time I preach: I feel the worst that I ever feel on Sunday night.
It is a little hard to describe. There is a shade of me questioning how well I preached, wondering if I kept the main thing the main thing. There is pure exhaustion from the effort it takes to teach for an hour, plus the many conversations, often with people I have never met before. There is the tension of leaving church to come home to a family that requires me to be engaged and thoughtful, no matter how tired I am. There is the emotional tug from a concern both for those we have left behind in Cameroon, as well as for the state of the American church. Whatever the cause, on Sunday nights I find myself feeling what can be best described as despair.
I have come to better understand Spurgeon who once wrote,
“I have suffered many times from severe sickness and frightful mental depression seeking almost to despair. Almost every year I’ve been laid aside for a season, for flesh and blood cannot bear the strain, at least such flesh and blood as mine. I believe, however, the affliction was necessary to me and has answered salutary ends.”
I have read many reasons people have given for Spurgeon’s depression, but honestly I think in part it may have been due to the frequency of his preaching. It is said that Spurgeon preached up to ten times a week!
I will cut to the chase: I believe that preaching is more than just a man standing on a stage presenting truth. I have taught classes, done presentations in classes, even defended my master’s thesis and did not feel this exhausted and depressed. I believe that preaching is war. Preaching is exhausting on a spiritual level, not just physical and emotional.
I certainly do not want to communicate that my experience is universal, nor Spurgeon’s. However, I think it is likely that your pastor hits their lowest point each week on Sunday night. Satan is a real enemy and he without a doubt is most active against those on the front lines. So, here are two requests that we can bring before the Lord today, and perhaps every Monday:
1. Pray that your pastor keeps his eyes off himself.
One of the most difficult aspects of preaching is that it is a task that is too large for men. If a pastor has a right view of himself, he knows that he is not worthy to speak for God. In a very real sense, it is like trying to wield a power greater than yourself. There is a reason that James warned us, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1). Teaching then, is not something that should be taken lightly, and if you pastor is humble, that truth will weigh on him.
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The Hard Sayings of Jesus
Sure, Jesus said many warm, inviting, comforting and loving things as well. But the sad truth is, most folks today only want to hear those sorts of words, while ignoring the rest. But that cannot be done. It is not up to us to pick and choose what we like about the teachings of Jesus. We either accept the whole package or we get none of it at all.
How often do we hear Christians say the following sorts of things? ‘Let’s make things as easy as we can for the non-believer. Let’s just tell them that God loves them just as they are and they need not do anything to be a buddy with Jesus. Let’s forget about rules and regulations and theology and just tell people that God is crazy about them.’
But it is not just a desire to make things easier for their non-Christian friends to be open to the gospel. Plenty of believers want to make things easier for themselves! They do not like the hard and demanding things found in the Bible. They do not like the things that challenge them and make them feel uncomfortable with their selfish and sinful lifestyle.
They just want to hear the good things, the happy things, the nice things, the pleasant things. Nothing too demanding. Nothing too onerous. Nothing to make them change their way of living. Nothing to make them feel ashamed of what they are doing.
Just an affirming celestial grandfather or butler who always pats them on the back, always smiles at them, always gives them nice things, and is always there to serve them when they have needs. That is the sort of God most folks want.
Well, they can crave such a deity, but they dare not then pretend they are serving the God of the Bible. They dare not claim to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was nothing at all like these sentimental and sickly sweet pictures of some buddy God who would never make things hard on you or ask anything too onerous of you.
But don’t take my word for it. Simply start reading the Bible. I mean really reading it, from cover to cover, and not just flicking through a few psalms once or twice a month. No one who actually reads the Bible carefully can ever come away with these false images of God.
Indeed, simply read through the four gospels and see the sort of Jesus being presented there. Anyone honestly and earnestly reading through the gospels will in fact likely be shocked at what is there. They will not find the tree-hugging peace-nik Jesus there. They will not find the heavenly Jeeves there. They will not find the pandering granddad figure there.
They will find the genuine Jesus who made hard demands and who said some very hard things. And that is exactly why so many people rejected him and hated him. If Jesus HAD been this Mr Nice Guy who simply caters to your every need, the masses would have loved him.
Let me share just some of the quite hard and harsh things Jesus said, especially to those who toyed with the idea of following him. But because the gospels have so much material on this, I am forced to just pick one of them. Here are some of the hard sayings of Jesus as found in the gospel of Matthew:
Matthew 6:19-24 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Matthew 8:19-22 Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
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Love Like Men (Part 3 of Biblical Manhood Series)
Do not let the enemy win in your marriage. And do not let the enemy win in your season of preparing for marriage. Repent when you fall short. Stand up, trust the Lord, obey His Word, and repeat when you miss the mark.
Introduction
Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the fact that there is a masculinity crisis in this world and nowhere is that felt more profoundly than in marriages. You can think about it this way: if healthy marriages are the bedrock of a community, and healthy communities unite together to form vibrant cultures, then the best way to topple a society is to attack its marriages. If you break that grand institution down, if you spoil the marriage, then you will cripple the nation. And there is no better place for Satan to begin an all out war on marriage, than to focus on the one God called to lead in the home, and that is man.
And, I want you to think about it this way, if manliness, godly masculinity, and a man’s role in the home is a targeted attack launched consistently by Satan, then what we really need to know and understand is how to fight back. And we do not fight with swords and shields…We do not fight with domination and aggression…We fight by orienting our life to what the Bible says, by doing what it tells us to do, and by refusing to be moved when the fiery arrows of Satan come! That is our warfare, brothers. To know and understand what the Bible says about Biblical manhood, to orient our lives in that Godward direction, and refuse to be moved from off that spot.
The enemy may attack and he may win a ground back in this culture. But we must be resolved that he will not win in this arena. He will not move us from our purpose as men. And there is no better passage to teach us about this than Ephesians 5:23-33, where we learn 5 ways that we must love like men!
And the first is that we must have a Shepherding kind of love. Ephesians 5:23-24 says this:
Shepherding Love (Eph. 5:23-24)For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
The first aspect of manly love is godly leadership. Men have been called to lead in their homes in the same way Christ provides love and leadership to His church. And this is not a suggestion.
Think about it like this, the Church is blessed because of the leadership of Christ. We do not moan and groan under His sovereign rule; we flourish under it. And that is the case because we are no longer wandering in the valleys of the shadow of death, we have been brought into His strong, life-giving, stabilizing love, and we are infinitely better off because of it. We joyfully follow Him out of death and enjoy the life giving benefits of His rule without a whimper of objection.
Well… In the same way, men, God has called you to diligently lead in your homes. He has called you to bring your family together under your leadership. He has commanded you to bring life into your home through your godly care. He has called you to provide the same kind of benefits Christ brings to the church, albeit in a temporal way.
Suffice it to say, your family ought to flourish, spiritually speaking, under your consistent, godly, Christ honoring, active leadership. If you are leading correctly, your family will thrive. If your family is spiritually weak, emotionally sickly, relationally at each other’s throats, experiencing interpersonal decay, chaos, in-fighting, rampant immorality, or is declining in any perceivable metric, then your leadership needs adjusting and repentance.
It is not enough to point the finger at your wife and kids like Adam. And you certainly cannot succeed as a husband and family head if you adopt Adam’s passive care. You just can’t.
You have to stand up, buck up, grow up, man up, and lead. You have to take a look at your family and ask some hard questions about yourself. Are they struggling because of my failed leadership? Are there things I need to stop doing? Things I need to start doing? So that I can be more like Jesus, a better head over this family, and so that my clan can more faithfully honor God?
These are hard questions, but the buck stops with you. You did not marry into a democracy where everything is decided after spirited debates on a senate floor. You are a God appointed King, called to rule with the love and affection of Christ, for the good and health of your family. If you fail, the family will suffer. If you repent, the family will grow.
The first aspect of loving like a man, is having the guts to lead like Jesus. To shepherd like Jesus. To have a shepherd’s love.
The second aspect of Loving like a man, is to have a Sacrificing kind of love. Look at verse 25 of this incredible passage.
Sacrificing Love (Eph 5:25)Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
Here the love that Christ has for the Church is qualified in His desire, and joy, to give Himself up for her. His love was demonstrated by His willingness to give His life for her, and her life, health, and vitality, would be impossible without His sacrifice. These are wonderful and glorious truths of the Gospel that we celebrate and say amen to each week…
But what we as men often forget about is that these things have been required of us. Paul begins with “husbands love your wives”. And just in case you are not clear on what that means, it means being like Jesus and giving yourself up for her.
This means that your leadership cannot be used to advance your own agenda. You wake up for your family, go to work for your family, provide for your family, serve your family, go to sleep protecting your family, repeat and die in honor like a man who sacrificed for His family
And not just in those ways…Think about what Jesus did. He went to the cross! He gave His life for the spiritual well-being of His bride!
That means manly love sacrifices everything to make sure the people around us are thriving spiritually. It means praying with your wife. It means leading family worship with your kids. It means making them go to church when they do not want to go. It means modeling Christ like leadership when others want to cut corners. It means pointing to Jesus in the way you discipline… It means comforting your wife and children with the Gospel. It means putting yourself second so that someone else can benefit!
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