The fact that the session views as “attacks” the criticism that Memorial Church and Greg Johnson have received, since hosting the 2018 Revoice conference, is very telling. It’s telling because it reveals the session’s mind set as being highly defensive of its position, instead of being open to counsel from Christian brethren. It also shows why Memorial’s session has not moved from their theological error despite all their prayer and fasting.

We have read the report that the congregation of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, on November 18, 2022, voted by 92% to withdraw from the PCA. This was recommended by their session and agreed to by their pastor, Greg Johnson, who indicated that he will be leaving with the congregation.
The article noted that the session informed the congregation that their recommendation was coming “with a mixture of sorrow and hope … after fifteen months spent fasting, praying, waiting, consulting and listening.” The reason for withdrawing, the session explained, was “continued attacks” from within the denomination which were distracting the church from its mission.
The session’s statement is troubling to me. They claim to have spent fifteen months “fasting, praying, waiting, consulting and listening,” but still seem to have ended up with the same erroneous views as the ones they started with, namely, approving and promoting Revoice ideology in the church. Where is the repentance for, not only introducing the sinful impurity of Revoice into the PCA, but also violating the principle of maintaining peace in the church, by creating years of conflict trying to justify themselves. All their praying and fasting seems not to have had the corrective effect it should have had. Could that be because what they were praying for was not the will of God?
The fact that the session views as “attacks” the criticism that Memorial Church and Greg Johnson have received, since hosting the 2018 Revoice conference, is very telling. It’s telling because it reveals the session’s mind set as being highly defensive of its position, instead of being open to counsel from Christian brethren. It also shows why Memorial’s session has not moved from their theological error despite all their prayer and fasting. I believe that on this particular error, their minds are locked into what Paul describes in Romans 1 as truth suppression, where they’ve become futile in their thinking.
Critics have not been on the attack, but rather have been seeking to persuade Johnson, his session, Missouri Presbytery, and any others holding similar views, by speaking the truth out of love, in an effort to halt the slide into liberalism and return the PCA to the truth. There has been a noticeable movement in recent years of PCA slippage downward in a progressive direction. This has been led by progressives in the PCA who take an approving stance toward homosexuality, gender identity and other such priorities. Their support, even celebration, of Revoice is proof of that.
The Bible commands us to “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15), which is what critics of progressive views and actions are seeking to do in the present conflict. However, you can’t speak the truth in love, without having the truth. Truth comes first, then you can speak it in love.
Progressives reverse the biblical sequence when they, in loving concern for homosexuals, seek support in Scripture for teaching that agrees with their pre-conceived beliefs. Matthew Vines’s book, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships, is a case in point. Note that starting with homosexuality, Vines seeks to show biblical support for it. He argues that homosexual orientation and committed same-sex relationships are consistent with a “high view” of the Bible and evangelical Christianity. I believe he is badly mistaken about that. There simply is no biblical teaching supporting the LGBT agenda; the reverse is true. Revoice doctrine on homosexuality is constructed to meet the need; but being constructed opinion, it isn’t biblical, and it isn’t true, objectively speaking.
PCA progressives are simply repeating and extending the same discredited biblical arguments as Vines did in their efforts to justify the Revoice movement, and in their opposition to conservative efforts to restore the PCA to biblical soundness, after some serious slippage in recent years.
Progressives appear to be post-modernists. As such, they have a fluid, subjective view of truth and reject the concept of absolute truth. They receive the Revoice doctrine subjectively as “their truth” even though it’s been refuted objectively as false. Francis Schaeffer used to distinguish objective truth from post-modern, subjective truth by calling the former true truth, in contrast to the false constructions of “my truth” or “your truth” or “their truth.” The post-modern view is aptly foreseen by the prophet Isaiah (59:14) as truth stumbling in the streets, and by Daniel (8:12) as truth cast to the ground.
Thus, when progressives seek to speak the truth in love to homosexuals, they are speaking “their truth” to homosexuals, not “true truth.” You can see the big problem here for progressives, because it’s never loving to speak falsehoods to someone to whom you are trying to express loving concern. It’s like quoting Ephesians 4:15 to say: “speaking falsehoods in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
Obviously, that’s bafflegab. It’s perverting to God’s Word and actually unloving to homosexuals. Yet that is what progressives get by starting with what they think is loving concern for homosexuals and then looking for supporting Scripture truth, which they can’t find because it isn’t there. They have to resort to post-modern hermeneutical gymnastics to construct their own truth. Hence, unsound Revoice doctrine.
The real sorrow here is that Greg Johnson and the elders of Memorial Presbyterian Church seem blind to the realities of Scripture, and bent on continuing to pursue the destructive course they’ve been on. Since they have refused to repent and desire to persist in error, it is no doubt best all-around that they withdraw the PCA.
Douglas B. Ostien is a member of Chestnut Mountain Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in Chestnut Mountain, Ga.
Related Posts:

Another part of the wonder of this volume is the plain way with which Spurgeon writes even more as a Christian than as a pastor. What I mean is that his wisdom in being a pastor is merely a subset of his greater and deeper experience as a Christian. In one lecture Spurgeon warns “There is even a danger of loving some things which are associated with Christ as much as we love Christ Himself; and we must be on the watch against such a feeling as that.” That simple observation is what a living Christian feels who loves the ministry God has called him to, but who loves God more, and who (rightly) senses the danger in his own soul of loving the Lord’s work more than the Lord Himself. 

Almost a decade after Spurgeon’s death, his publishers (and Tabernacle members) Passmore and Alabaster brought out a book of 367 pages. It was filled with 40 addresses by Spurgeon, almost all of which were given extemporaneously at his church’s Monday evening prayer meeting. When I came to our congregation (originally named Metropolitan Baptist Church, presumably after Spurgeon’s congregation), I soon rearranged our prayer meeting. One of my most enjoyable reading experiences was earlier this year when I first read Mr. Spurgeon’s book Only a Prayer Meeting! I had bought my copy of the 1976 Pilgrim Publications reprint in 1984 in Inverness, Scotland. But it had lain unread among scores of other volumes of Spurgeon’s works, which, for some reason, got more of my attention.
Then I took it with me on a trip and began to read it on the plane flight across the country from San Diego to DC. It captured my attention. I couldn’t put it down. I found Spurgeon describing his own prayer meeting in terms at many points like our own! And I also read accounts of remarkable providences and Biblical wisdom as Spurgeon exhorted his own people to prayer. And regularly, more than a thousand of them would join him on a Monday evening for their prayer meeting.
Pastors, you will enjoy the outspokenness of Spurgeon in his opinions, even if you may not always share his view. In his first lecture, he is decrying the spectacle of street work of The Salvation Army, accompanied by too many passing false conversions. Spurgeon says, ‘Gold, silver and precious stones are scarce material, not easily found; but then they endure the fire. What is the use of religion which comes up in a night, and perishes as soon?’
Other times, you’ll find yourself chuckling in recognition or agreement. Practical wisdom is found on every page.
Read More
Related Posts:

Christ’s return will be accompanied by public proclamation. Jesus will first bring about the resurrection of His people who have died; then He will cause those who are alive to be caught up together with Him in the air. Scripture nowhere advances the idea of a secret rapture before a period of tribulation, but it does reveal that the second coming of Christ will be a most rapturous event for all believers.

A friend of mine once preached on the return of Christ in a church that embraced a view of the end times informed by dispensationalism. After the service, one of the congregants, apparently concerned by what he had just heard, asked him, “You do believe in the rapture, right?” My friend lightheartedly responded, “Oh, I believe that the return of Christ is going to be a rapturous event!”
Contrary to many widely accepted misconceptions about the rapture and the return of Christ, including those found in dispensationalism, Scripture knows of only two comings of Christ—the first at His incarnation and the second at the consummation. The New Testament revelation of the events that accompany the return of Christ includes the teaching of 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, a passage that many Western evangelicals misguidedly see as proof of an evacuation of believers to heaven to escape some or all of the tribulation that precedes the visible return of Christ. But this passage actually teaches that believers who are alive when Christ returns in glory will be “caught up” (i.e., raptured) at the time of this return, immediately after Christ raises His people from the dead at His second coming. In other words, the church is not evacuated before the final coming of Christ and is not promised an escape from tribulation.
While complicated proposals about the rapture and the return of Christ have been advanced through dispensational teaching since the late nineteenth century, a sweet simplicity belongs to the biblical revelation regarding these events. Scripture does not speak of three returns of Christ (or two and a half, as certain proposals insist); rather, redemptive history is structured by Christ’s first and second comings. The author of Hebrews teaches, “Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Heb. 9:27–28). This passage summarizes what the rest of the New Testament reveals concerning the two appearances of Christ and the hope of believers.
Read More
Related Posts: