Whether it is Pastor Story Hour or something else, we want our children to see us active in the world. We do not want them to grow up hiding from culture. We do not want them to believe that our faith is private, quiet, and secretive. We do not want them to grow up afraid to engage. We want them to feel encouraged to labor for Christendom. Excited and eager to see King Jesus reclaim territory for His Kingdom in their lifetime. And we want them to see themselves in that work, encouraged that God might use them to do something extraordinary for Jesus. When we model it to them, they will catch a vision of doing it themselves.

As people across the nation have been hearing about our Pastor Story Hour, I thought it would be helpful to sketch out some of my thoughts on why we are doing an event such as this. And while I prefer to sit and talk about this over a dark roast coffee, I would like to be brief enough here to be truly helpful. Of course, considering that I am a preacher, my goal may already be in jeopardy. Nevertheless, I would like to provide a few significant thoughts on why we believe this event is so helpful, useful, and necessary.
1) GOSPEL – The doctrine behind every conversion and the heartbeat fueling every Christian is the Gospel. It is the power of almighty God, and it is not only the MOST ESSENTIAL doctrine that we could ever learn as individuals, but it is the most essential doctrine that our children could ever learn as well! The Gospel is the doctrine that will guard their hearts and minds should they find themselves in a secular university. The Gospel is the balm for their weary soul when they walk through the pain and suffering life will inevitably throw at them. The Gospel is the life raft for their doubts, the comfort in their sadness, and the fuel for all their joy and gladness. As parents, we are responsible for preparing them for life without us. But, to do that well, we must actively, deliberately, and passionately teach them the Gospel.
As elders and pastors, we take that work seriously (1 Ti 4:1-2). We want to be a resource for our parents in helping you understand the Gospel so that you can also train your children to know God’s glorious Gospel!
2) PASTORAL LEADERSHIP – We believe pastors have been called to bring the truth of the Scriptures to bear on every facet of God’s people’s lives. We do not want to produce people who can behave like Christians during a Sunday morning service. Instead, we want to develop people who are impacted by the Gospel at every level, in every nook and cranny of their lives, so that all of their life looks like Christ. To do that, we must not take for granted that people are leaving the safety of our churches on Sunday to enter the battlefield on Monday. While we are reading commentaries and preparing messages throughout the week, our people are inundated with the enemy’s lies, saturated with every wind of cultural dogmatism, and pressured to compromise. Frankly, if we are not actively seeking to help our people develop a Biblical worldview, then we are preparing them for failure.
As pastors, we stand with one foot in the Biblical world of truth and theology and the other foot in the world of liberal and secular ideology. We stand on the wall and see the trends coming, the pagan philosophies forming, the secular ideologies gathering steam, and we are the exact people God called to help. We are the ones who help equip God’s people to think about things from a Biblical worldview, and that duty must never be abandoned. For this reason, an event like Pastor Story Hour is so helpful because we can pick and choose topics to teach that do not usually come up on a Sunday morning. Further, we can take those topics and use them as an opportunity to train our children and equip our parents. That is pastoral leadership.
3) FAMILY WORSHIP – The more we become acquainted with the Gospel, the more we realize that it is not just a Sunday doctrine and not the kind of thing that can be contained in a one-hour church service each week. The Gospel finds its way into every aspect of our life, which means we must also teach the Gospel in every area that our children live. This is why the Gospel must be read in books, sung in songs, prayed at dinner tables, tucked in with them when they go to bed, and the aroma of the home they will awaken into.
For this reason, Pastor Story Hour is not only for the children to learn the Gospel, but it is also an intentional environment for parents to come and watch us teaching their children and to observe how we do it. We want moms and dads to see how we do it and get ideas and inspiration on how to do the same thing for their children in their own homes. We want you to feel comfortable, competent, and confident in knowing how to instruct your children in the Gospel. We believe Pastor Story Hour can be a wonderful part of that! Our goal is that Pastor Story Hour will be a blessing to every member of the family and that it will invigorate family worship in our community and beyond!
4) CHRISTIAN EDUCATION – Along with family worship, we believe the Church has a God-ordained responsibility to educate all of our people in the Gospel and to help equip them for service in His Kingdom.
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As fate—or perhaps providence—would have it, Darby’s premillennial eschatology and the stark intensity of his heaven-earth dualism caught on not just in Southern England, but in America. Reshaped in the hands of other ministers, theologians, and popularizers, his ideas and those of his Plymouth Brethren colleagues would in due time change the trajectory of American evangelicalism and the nation’s culture. The ideas presidents kicked around in the Oval Office can be traced back to his work.

A century ago, dispensationalism was the most dynamic force in American Christianity. Generations before Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind novels took America by storm, millions fervently believed the rapture could happen at any moment. The signs of the times seemed to say as much, since according to the dispensationalist reading of Revelation, plagues, wars, and a one-world government headed by the Antichrist would come as soon as Jesus spirited his people away to heaven. 
The institutional empire of nonprofits, colleges, and parachurch organizations built by Dwight Moody and his protégés grew in part out of this expectancy. So did the ministries of innumerable premillennialist evangelists, including the aging Billy Sunday. It is what drove sales of that landmark piece of dispensationalist scholasticism, the Scofield Reference Bible. Most important of all, belief in Christ’s imminent coming drew many thousands to burgeoning Bible colleges, serious-minded prophecy conferences, and missions agencies. These institutions inculcated the movement’s theology in a vast army of pastors and interested laymen, who disseminated it to their readers, followers, and congregants. While dispensational thought involved far more than eschatology, all this cultural momentum came from apocalyptic speculation and the scientific aura about its inductive, literalist approach to the Scriptures. A betting man might have put his money on dispensationalism swallowing the nascent Fundamentalist movement whole. 
A betting man would have backed the wrong horse. To be sure, other cultural and theological forces like covenant theology also had significant numbers of adherents in the interwar period. But as Daniel G. Hummel shows in his invaluable new book The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, neither liberalism nor covenant theology proved to be the movement’s undoing. It was instead dispensationalism’s own vast cultural appeal. By the turn of the twenty-first century, one could hardly find an evangelical theologian who took traditional dispensationalist ideas seriously. What remained, Hummel writes, was “a movement with no vested national leaders, a scholastic tradition with no young scholars, [and] a commercial behemoth with no internal cohesion.” Dispensationalism was dying.
Which is why the story Hummel relates badly needs telling. Magisterial studies like Matthew Avery Sutton’s American Apocalypse, Frances FitzGerald’s The Evangelicals, and George Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture left unexamined the depth of dispensationalism’s impact on the broader evangelical movement, and the roots of dispensationalist theology lay outside the purview of these studies. Hummel, by contrast, takes the reader back to Plymouth, a midsize port city on England’s southern coast that birthed the nonconformist sect known as the Plymouth Brethren.
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Third, this is a persistent issue. There have been efforts to address this issue such as the recently affirmed human sexuality report. We do have our helpful standards in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Some contend this is adequate and no more needs to be said, especially the proposed amendments. But help me if I am missing something (I am the new guy) but apparently these resources are not sufficient for the very fact that the issue persists.

Through the years I always sought the impressions of new guests to my church. Not that the opinion of a longtime member was insignificant, but it was the fresh eyes of new people who saw things others somehow didn’t notice or always appreciate. So as a newcomer to the PCA I thought my impressions might be of value to some as we enter the home stretch of voting on overtures 23 and 37. Now I should point out I am not a newcomer to pastoral ministry. I am a seasoned (that’s code for old guy) pastor from several denominational backgrounds.
So the first thing that strikes me is this, a real issue has presented itself. That may seem too obvious to bother mentioning, but the point is these overtures are not hypothetical or arbitrary. Rather, they are responding to real life circumstances. Real people are really advocating for a position that involves embracing one’s ongoing identity as gay and a potential officer of the church.
The framers and defenders of the proposed overtures did not go on a hunt into people’s private lives to find these issues. I am sure they would much rather focus on other pressing matters of life and ministry. It is not unkind or uncharitable, therefore, to support these overtures that seek to provide clarity in response to this real-life issue.
Second, this is a complicated issue. The concern that the wording of the proposed overtures is complicated and introduces new language to the standards of the church should not be alarming. The presenting issue is complicated. And again, this issue was not chosen by the framers or defenders of the overtures. It was chosen by these who are supporting such a novel and complicated position.
If a secular court has to deal with a malpractice suit involving brain surgery, they cannot complain that it is complicated. Brain surgery is complicated. Likewise, human identity and sexuality are complicated. If the church courts are forced to struggle with handling complicated and novel issues like human identity there is no one to thank but those suggesting the position in which we find ourselves. Therefore, no one should vote against the proposed overtures simply on the grounds that they are complicated or deal with new vocabulary.
Third, this is a persistent issue. There have been efforts to address this issue such as the recently affirmed human sexuality report. We do have our helpful standards in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Some contend this is adequate and no more needs to be said, especially the proposed amendments. But help me if I am missing something (I am the new guy) but apparently these resources are not sufficient for the very fact that the issue persists.
It would be unnecessary to add specific cases to our constitution if it was sufficient to handle the real issue before us. But obviously something more is needed. And there are times when the constitution needs to be amended to make plain the will of the body. Therefore, no one should vote against the proposed overtures on the grounds that they are unnecessary.
And finally, it is an urgent issue. In a recent men’s Bible study at our young church plant the issue of the overtures and the position of “side B Christianity” came up. (Trust me, I was not the one who mentioned it.) Men were immediately alarmed and confused. They wanted to know how long this had been going on. I mentioned a couple years. What is being done? they wanted to know. I tried to explain the difference between the court cases and the proposed overtures. I tried to explain how the system of Presbyterian government works (or is supposed to work).
From the looks and comments that night, I am not sure our church plant will survive if these overtures are not passed, or some definitive action is taken to make clear it is not okay to be an officer of the church and embrace the identity of a gay Christian. But we’re a small bunch and this is not a threat. The point is I have been down this road before. As the pastor of a large church in the PCUSA, I saw the same look in people’s eyes. I heard the same questions and frustrations. I found myself saying the same hollow words- “It’s not exactly what it sounds like.” “We can make a difference.” “This doesn’t reflect who we are as a church.” You know how well that turned out.
Coming into the PCA I was aware there was a diversity of views and even movements within the denomination. But I also saw a denomination that had exciting prospects to fulfill an essential mission. I also strongly believed (and still do) that the vast majority of people within the denomination would not support the position of an officer of the church embracing an ongoing identity as a gay Christian. And while I have learned that people can appreciate debate and due process, they won’t endure protracted procedures that yield mixed messages, or when a system cannot accomplish what is the apparent intent of the constitution and the will of the body.
I have learned that people leave churches like churches leave denominations. Some in groups, some as individuals. Some leave in a huff, some quietly, still others may stay but don’t engage. We should be very concerned about the moment in which we find ourselves.
It is time to address this. If you feel it is appropriate at this moment in our denomination to allow for officers of the church to embrace the identity of a gay Christian, then vote against the overtures. Let me simply ask that you begin your comments whether in formal debates, in social media, or in any other venue with the fact that you do feel this is a viable position and you embrace it. And let me ask that you are forthcoming with your congregation and let them know your position as well. Don’t be like the many pastors and elders I have seen through the years who mislead their flock as to their views and positions.
If you feel this is not the right position for our denomination to be known for (and I can tell you from experience we will be known for it) or the position that allows us to fulfill our mission, but you still have some reservations about the specific overtures, please reflect on the fact that this is indeed an urgent and persistent issue that though by nature complicated, needs to be addressed. Even if you feel the proposed overtures are less than perfect, that is not a reason to vote against them.
It is not the lack of clarity of an overture or the uncertainty of its imagined outcome that we should be most concerned about, but the emerging lack of clarity about who are as a denomination and the uncertainty we will have in fulfilling our mission if these overtures do not pass that should most concern us.
Alan Hager is a member of New River Presbytery and the Organizing Pastor of Grace Church in Buckhannon, WV.