There are indeed many reasons to continue to be hopeful, optimistic, and engaged in the work of the PCA courts. The PCA continues to move slowly but steadily in a direction that reflects greater faithfulness and integrity regarding our confessional commitments and Reformed distinctives. 

The PCA turns a half century this year, and the 50th General Assembly meets in Memphis, Tenn. June 12-16. Numerous elders (e.g. TEs Jon Payne and the late Harry Reeder) have noted the fifty-year mark is a crucial milestone for faithfulness as a Church. Fittingly, the PCA has been engaged in a lengthy family discussion over the last few years over what sort of communion we will be.
Will the PCA be a “big tent” with wide latitude regarding what it means to be “Reformed” and “Presbyterian” (as in David Cassidy’s blog here) or will she be a house, with well-defined, clearly demarcated boundaries of what is in and out, as RE Brad Isbell articulates in his helpful overview?
The Scripture uses both analogies to describe the Church:
Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.(Isaiah 54:2–3)
That sounds like the design of the Church is to be a “big tent,” although perhaps without the clowns who normally populate such. But then again, in the New Covenant, we are exhorted not to long for a big tent:
We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.(Hebrews 13:10)
and
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.(1 Peter 2:4–5)
The PCA is nonetheless trending in the direction not of a “big tent,” but of a distinctively Reformed communion committed to the historic expression of Presbyterianism articulated in the Westminster Standards. In an interview with TE George Sayour, the legendary churchman TE O. Palmer Robertson reflected on this trajectory during his time in the PCA since 1973 and how the PCA has steadily moved in a more solidly Reformed direction.
1. The State of the PCA
The founding generation of the PCA envisioned her being a confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian faith communion:
…committed without reservation to the Reformed Faith as set forth in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. It is our conviction that the Reformed faith is not sectarian, but an authentic and valid expression of Biblical Christianity…We particularly wish to labor with other Christians committed to this theology.1
Over the last half-century, the PCA has indeed moved decidedly in that direction in terms of worship, polity, and piety. The founding generation of the PCA, largely educated in the institutions of the old PCUS, may not have had a rich theologically Reformed foundation, but it is clear they desired the new denomination to develop in that area and to raise up ministers who had such a foundation and could impart such commitments in the new denomination. Institutions such as Reformed Theological Seminary and fathers such as TE Morton Smith would instill in the first generation of men ordained in the PCA a love for the Reformed Faith and a desire for the nations to come to Christ to worship Him in Spirit and Truth.
This progress has been slow and not without regression or exception. But the PCA is becoming more distinctively Reformed with each passing decade.
A. Review of 2022 Overtures
TE Scott Edburg along with RE Joshua Torrey have maintained a helpful spreadsheet tracking each of the 49th General Assembly’s overtures. What follows is a brief overview of some of the most significant results of the last year.
The Character Overtures (Overtures 15, 29 & 31)
To the 50th General Assembly will come a number of overtures approved by the presbyteries for final ratification. While the presbyteries approved Overtures 29 and 31, which both serve to strengthen character requirements for ordination, the presbyteries failed to approve Overture 15, which would have added this clear and concise statement to the Book of Church Order:
Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.
While this amendment passed nearly 60% of PCA presbyteries, it failed to reach the necessary 2/3 majority to enable final ratification by the 50th Assembly. Even if Overtures 29 and 31 are ratified by this Assembly, there will still be no clear standard barring men dominated by unnatural lusts from ordination. A few “do-overtures” will be considered by the 2023 General Assembly in an attempt to spare the PCA further discord resulting from the new ideas brought in by some in Saint Louis and elsewhere who dwell in the bulwarks of nuance and ambiguity.
The Jurisdiction Overture (Overture 8)
A valiant effort was made last year by Houston Metro Presbytery to codify how scandal in one presbytery or congregation may be addressed by the wider Church. Currently the language of the constitution is vague regarding how a higher court may intervene in a scandal within a lower court, which has allowed a number of men to avoid judicial scrutiny of views and practices that are clearly deviant.
Critics of the overture at last year’s Assembly expressed concern that such a change to clarify the PCA Constitution would enable “witch hunts.”
Except for Overtures 8 and 15, all others sent to the presbyteries for approval received overwhelming support and will likely be ratified by the Assembly in Memphis.
B. Signs of and Challenges to Confessional Health in the PCA
There are numerous reasons to be optimistic regarding the trajectory and continued fidelity of the PCA. Since 2019, the Assembly’s acts and deliverances have generally tended to strengthen our commitment to historic Christianity and distinctively Reformed Presbyterianism. But congregations must continue to send their full complements to General Assembly in order to participate in the work of the Church and contend for the faith against those who would broaden or weaken our constitutional commitments.
Good Faith or System Subscription?
Long ago, the PCA wisely determined she would not require full subscription to every proposition of the Westminster Standards by her officers. Instead the PCA enshrined in her constitution what has come to be called “Good Faith Subscription” (GFS). In GFS, all a candidate’s differences must be submitted to the Church court for assessment and it is expected – in good faith – that the man has no other differences with the system of doctrine other than those few that he has articulated. The Presbytery then must determine whether those differences are acceptable and whether/how they impact the rest of the system.
GFS is not loose subscription or “System Subscription” in which a wide variety of differences may be held, practiced, and taught. In GFS, a man’s stated differences are presumed not to impact the rest of the system and that he is in agreement with everything else within the Standards except where has he has narrowly stated a difference. GFS is one of the more strict forms of confessional subscription.
In “System Subscription,” a man simply states his agreement with the system, but in there is no necessary check or examination to ensure the system the man claims to hold actually conforms to the system of doctrine contained in the Westminster Standards. It is important to remember, the Westminster Standards are themselves a system and to disagree with or reject one portion often results in a series of other disagreements, since much of the Westminster Standards are interdependent.2
Recently there seems to be a blurring of the distinctions between GFS and System Subscription by some within the PCA, but the two are not the same. In his farewell / sabbatical blog, SemperRef editor TE Travis Scott inaccurately equated System Subscription with the Good Faith Subscription required by the PCA’s constitution:
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And so does rejection of a gay self-conception united to one who is united to Christ. We cannot be those who apply good and necessary consequence to our doctrine, yet refuse to apply it to our ethics. Even though in this life Christians still battle and experience temptations and sin, such sins do not define us anymore. Those things are who we were, not who we now are. What defines those of us who have been washed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is that we are in Christ.

This year, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will once again be addressing issues pertaining to human sexuality in the church. This is because sexuality has become one of the primary points of conflict between the church and the culture of this age and, rather than being conformed to the world, the church of Christ must stand firm upon the truth of God’s word. One of the many questions facing the church today is whether or not a Christian may identify with a homosexual or transgender self-conception. More simply, can a Christian identify as a “gay Christian”? While there have been many excellent resources written on this topic, to my knowledge, none have interacted directly with the interpretative principle of “Good and Necessary Consequence.” When viewed through the lens of good and necessary consequence we will see that for a Christian to adopt a homosexual or transgender self-conception is an unbiblical contradiction in terms and must be rejected by those who view scripture as the only rule of our faith and practice. So, it is helpful to begin with understanding this principle.
Historically, Reformed Christians have adhered to and applied Scripture in accordance with a principle known as Good and Necessary Consequence. This is the approach to Scripture that teaches that we are to believe and obey not only those things that are explicitly stated, but also that which may be deduced or inferred from Scripture as a necessary implication. The Westminster Confession of Faith says, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (WCF I.6, emphasis mine). Some doctrines and commandments are spelled out for us, while others are implied or systematically pieced together. For instance, there isn’t a single verse citation we could make to spell out the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet by good and necessary consequence we rightly deduce that there is one God who exists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are the same in substance, equal in power and glory. This same principle that leads us to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity likewise has led Reformed churches throughout history to believe in and practice infant baptism, the regulative principle of worship, and Sunday as the Christian’s Sabbath. None of these doctrines are explicitly spelled out in the New Testament, yet we believe they are rightly deduced from Scripture by this principle of good and necessary consequence.
This principle can be demonstrated in numerous places in the New Testament, but the clearest example can be seen in Jesus’ dispute with the Sadducees found in each of the synoptic Gospels.[i] In Matthew 22:23-32 the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with a hypothetical scenario involving the obscure case law of levirate marriage, hoping to demonstrate that belief in the resurrection is ridiculous. Jesus’ response to their denial of the resurrection was to quote to them Exodus 3:6 where, when speaking to Moses at the burning bush, God introduces himself by declaring “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” With this single quotation, Jesus demonstrates that “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” and silences the Sadducees. Jesus proves that there is a resurrection by citing the fact that God introduced himself to Moses by saying “I am the God of Abraham,” and not “I was the God of Abraham.” His entire argument hinges on the conjugation of one verb in the present tense instead of the past tense, which is sufficient to demonstrate the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
Significantly, the passage from which Jesus quotes, Exodus 3, isn’t explicitly about the resurrection – it’s the call of Moses to be Israel’s deliverer. The passage doesn’t even mention words like “resurrection,” “heaven,” “hell,” “soul,” or “eternity,” all terms we associate with the resurrection. And yet Jesus’ rebuke of the Sadducees is to say, “You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” This harsh rebuke demonstrates that this is not merely a principle for Jesus alone to use in interpreting Scripture, but one he expected them to have applied as well. No Christian has a right to object, “If you can’t show me the Bible verse that says it, then I’m not required to believe or obey it.” On the contrary, if a truth or commandment may be proven from Scripture by good and necessary consequence, then yes, you are required to believe and obey it.
As Reformed Christians, this is a principle that ought to be kept in mind as we consider the question of a Christian’s identity. At the 47th General Assembly of the PCA, the assembly voted to declare the Nashville Statement to be a biblically faithful declaration on human sexuality. And yet, there were many who objected. Particularly, one stated reason was opposition to Article 7’s denial which reads, “We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.”[ii] Put simply, the Nashville Statement says that it is unbiblical to identify oneself as a “gay Christian.” While this statement is not explicitly spelled out for us in any one verse, it does not need to be because it is rightly deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence.
One of the places we see this most clearly is 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Paul writes, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (NASB). Notice the way Paul speaks of these Christians in verse 11. You were these things. Significantly, Paul does not merely say you used to practice these things. He goes beyond that and addresses their identity. It’s also significant that Paul says “you were” and not “you are.” In Greek the imperfect indicative ταῦτά τινες ἦτε makes the statement even more forceful, highlighting the radical change that has now taken place through union with Christ. The descriptions of verses 9 and 10 are who these Corinthian Christians were, not who they now are.  And this is a vital distinction. In Jesus’ own rebuke of the Sadducees this same kind of distinction was sufficient to demonstrate the resurrection of the dead and warrant the harsh rebuke that his opponents did not know the Scriptures. God is the God of Abraham. And who are Christians? You were adulterers, homosexuals, drunkards, and covetous, etc. And by good and necessary consequence the text teaches that this is not who a Christian now is. This is because to be washed by Jesus Christ cleanses us from more than just legal guilt. If you have been washed by Christ, you have a new identity.
This is why it is correct to say that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception or identity is unbiblical. As Reformed Christians, we cannot be those who apply the principle of good and necessary consequence to our doctrines of God, worship, and the church, and yet fail to apply it to our ethics.
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[i] For a full treatment of good and necessary consequence, see By Good and Necessary Consequence by Ryan McGraw (Reformation Heritage Books).
[ii] You can access the full Nashville Statement here: https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement/

Written by J. V. Fesko |
Thursday, February 29, 2024
The pastor reports to his elders—they alone have the authority to oversee the pastor and his conduct. Recognize the difference between matters of morality and Christian liberty. And don’t always assume that the pastor’s salary pays for everything that you see. It could very well be a gift or some other form of income that has provided him and his family with a needed amenity. Assume the best, not the worst, about your pastor and his family. And do what you can to make life in the bubble more bearable for them.

One of the challenges that pastors and their families face is life in the goldfish bowl. In many other vocations a person can go to work, do his job, come home, and his home life and family stay out of view. My father worked for a tech giant for 37 years and I can count on my fingers the number of times that I interacted with my father’s co-workers. The same cannot be said about the pastor and his family.
When a church hires a pastor there is the expectation that he will bring his family to church with him. This means, like it or not, everyone in the church observes the pastor’s family on a regular basis. For better or worse, people in the church see most everything that the pastor’s family does: they take note of the clothes they wear, the books they read, the car that brings them to church, the movies they talk about, and their behavior. For example, I once rented a car to drive to presbytery and the rental agency was closed on Saturday when I returned. I decided to drive the car to church on Sunday morning and then return it first thing Monday morning. Other factors in this scenario were: I received a free upgrade because the “fancy” car was all they had in the lot; my gas and the cost of the rental were covered by my presbytery, which reimbursed ministers for the mileage they drove. So, everything was above-board in this situation. Nevertheless, when I drove up to church that Sunday morning my wife overheard someone say, “Well, I guess we must be paying the pastor too much money if he’s driving a new car!” Rightly or wrongly, I gently informed this person of the situation and they seemed to be relieved.
In another scenario I was walking out of church after a Sunday morning worship service. It seemed like an ordinary Sunday—in particular, there were a number of small children and infants making their usual noises during the worship service. But whose child was singled out as making a lot of noise that morning? Yes, my one-year-old son. The reality of the situation was that my son wasn’t in the worship service that morning—
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