The 51st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America was a success. It was a success because we came together as brothers, and even when we disagreed we remembered that we all serve one Master and Lord. There are areas where our church is not on the same page. There are areas where we need to find consensus. There is still work to do. Yet I always trust that Christ will not abandon his church. I trust that the Spirit will guide the church.
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the LORD has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.
—Psalm 133
Introduction
I love going to General Assembly. It’s always fun to see guys I know from seminary (who I get to see exactly once a year at GA). It’s great to participate in the worship services and sing Psalms and hymns throughout the Assembly. I love hearing the wisdom of my fathers and brothers on the floor of the Assembly. I love learning about what God is doing throughout the world as I visit booths in the Exhibition Hall. In so many ways, General Assembly is an opportunity to see the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer in the upper room when he asked the Father, “that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
Yet this desire on the part of our Savior is not yet fully realized. I don’t think it ever will be until he returns. Just as the individual believer is in the process of progressive sanctification (each day dying more to sin, yet never being free of it on this side of heaven), so the church is ever in a process of becoming more and more united around the truth. We want that perfect unity that Christ prayed for. It would be easy to get a superficial form of unity, but we want unity around the truth. After all, in the same prayer wherein Christ asked the Father to give us unity, he likewise prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” The 51st General Assembly was a time of striving for unity, for charity, but ultimately, we pray, a time of striving to be faithful to the truth.
Fun Stuff
Every Assembly has a fair amount of what you might call “fun stuff,” times when the commissioners to the Assembly make it clear that they actually do enjoy being there. The standard greeting when addressing the Assembly is “fathers and brothers.” Well, fathers and brothers laugh, cut up, tease each other, etc. It’s good to have moments where we all show that we like each other. When especially heated moments come up, the moments of levity remind us that we’re all fathers and brothers.
This year’s moderator was Ruling Elder Steve Dowling. RE Dowling was last year’s Overtures Committee chairman (probably the most “important” committee each year at the Assembly), and the entire Assembly remembered the masterful job he did as chairman of that committee. Ruling Elder Mel Duncan reminded us of RE Dowling’s faith in Christ, his love of his family (he and his wife have 9 children and 18 grandchildren), his honorable service to his country in the Marine Corps, and his qualification as a churchman to moderate the Assembly. After a speech like that there was no need for a second nomination. RE Dowling was elected by acclamation, and he did a fantastic job. We should all thank God that he has raised up faithful ruling elders like Steve Dowling for the Presbyterian Church in America.
After assuming the chair, RE Dowling felt the need to test out a mute switch on the podium microphone. This would allow him to confer with the Stated Clerk on a parliamentary question without being heard by the entire Assembly. Since our previous moderator had mistakenly done this last year (without using the mute switch), the moderator named it, “The Fred Switch,” after TE Fred Greco who moderated last year. Well, fast forward to the final day of the Assembly. Everyone is tired and ready to go home when there’s a procedural motion on the floor. Not wanting to do the wrong thing, the moderator turns to the Stated Clerk and says, “Alright, I don’t wanna mess this up twice.” The Fred Switch was not engaged…
I appreciate moments like that. It lightens the mood. It reminds us that men for whom we have great respect are still human. It just lets us laugh in the midst of a week that’s a firehose of polity. Whether it’s when the moderator (retired Marine) and a speaker on the floor (retired Air Force) are teasing each other about their respective branches, or a committee chairman responding to the moderator asking him to inform the Assembly “where we are,” by saying, “Mr. Moderator, we are in Richmond, Virginia,” no matter what the moment of levity, I appreciate them all. For all you future commissioners out there, go and do likewise.
Down to Business
But it wasn’t all “fun stuff.” We did have work to do. The first order of business at every Assembly is to hold a final vote on amendments to the Book of Church Order. These amendments passed the Assembly last year, and were approved by (at least) two thirds of the Presbyteries (so, of the 88 Presbyteries in the PCA, 59 had to approve them). Having accomplished this, the last step before they could go into effect was a final vote of the Assembly. Normally these votes are rather perfunctory. There was debate at the Assembly last year. Each presbytery had the opportunity to debate these measures in depth as well. Once a BCO amendment has survived that much scrutiny, it passes…usually.
This year there was one item that sparked the most debate I’ve ever seen during one of these votes. Item 1 sought to amend BCO 7-3 by adding one sentence.
7-3. No one who holds office in the Church ought to usurp authority therein, or receive official titles of spiritual preeminence, except such as are employed in the Scripture. Furthermore, unordained people shall not be referred to as, or given the titles of, the ordained offices of pastor/elder, or deacon.
This amendment is simple and straightforward. Don’t call someone a pastor unless he’s an ordained Teaching Elder. Don’t refer to someone as an elder of the church unless he’s been ordained as a Ruling Elder. Don’t call someone a deacon unless he has been ordained as a deacon. While this seems simple to the point of being obvious, there were two objections raised, one with which I sympathized, and one with which I did not.
The Korean Objection
The first objection I’ll address is the one brought by our Korean brothers. Of the fourteen Presbyteries who voted against this amendment, five were Korean Presbyteries. While three Korean Presbyteries did vote in favor of this amendment (by considerable margins, I might add), it is clear that the majority of Korean Presbyteries did not want this amendment to pass. The reason for this given on the floor was rooted in Korean culture. In Korean culture it is customary to address a man who is older than you by calling him “elder” in Korean. In the same way, all Christians will be addressed with the Korean word for “deacon” to show that we should all be servants (the meaning of that word) of Christ.
So, at first glance, this overture would seem to place an unnecessary burden on the backs of our Korean brothers and sisters. They now must change their entire cultural practice simply because we couldn’t be bothered to take them into consideration when we voted on this. There was even a protest submitted arguing to this effect. I understand this concern. I sympathize with this concern. I was not, however, ultimately persuaded by it. To explain why, I’ll borrow the wisdom of my wife. When I explained this to her, she rightly pointed out that we don’t simply want to police certain sounds that come out of people’s mouths, but rather the intention behind them.
Different cultures show respect in different ways. My in-laws think it’s quite strange that I refer to everyone as “sir” or “ma’am.” They don’t get it because they weren’t raised in the South. Here, you refer to everyone as “sir,” even if it’s a young child. It’s a sign of respect and common courtesy, and just because I call someone “sir” does not mean I’m saying he’s been knighted by the King of England. I don’t think there should be any problem with the practice of our Korean brothers, provided they remain true to the spirit of the amendment. Only ordained people should be given the titles of ordained office. If it’s abundantly clear from the cultural context that you’re not talking about ordained office, there shouldn’t be any problem.
The Other Objection
There was, however, another objection raised to this amendment. Many men stood up and said that their churches believed that women should be qualified for the office of deacon, yet because the PCA doesn’t allow the ordination of women deacons, these churches have, for years, and by their own admission on the floor of the Assembly, simply not ordained their deacons. They’ve nominated men and women as deacons. They’ve trained men and women as deacons. And they’ve commissioned, rather than ordain, men and women as deacons.
Now, let me be clear, the Reformed tradition is not unanimous on the question of whether women should be admitted to the office of deacon. Just to list some examples of confessional Reformed denominations in North America today, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, and L’eglise Réformée du Québec, are all solidly Reformed, and they all have women deacons (though, in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that the Reformed Church of Quebec only has five congregations, mais je vous aime encore mes amis!). There are differences in the wider Reformed world on this question, but the constitution of the PCA has always been clear. BCO 7-2 already stated, “The ordinary and perpetual classes of office in the Church are elders and deacons…In accord with Scripture, these offices are open to men only.”
While other faithful denominations may hold a different position than that of the PCA, our constitution has always been clear. The BCO restricts the office of deacon to qualified men. Officers in the church are not even allowed to be granted exceptions to the BCO, as they are with the confession and catechisms. You must agree with, and conform to, the statements of the BCO. Yet there were men who stood up and objected to the amendment to BCO 7-3 on the basis that their church had not been ordaining any deacons at all. They’d been commissioning their deacons so that they could have women who are deacons.
This has always been in clear violation of the BCO. BCO 17-1 states, “Those who have been called to office in the Church are to be inducted by the ordination of a court.” Therefore, congregations who seek to appoint women to the office of deacon should overture the General Assembly to amend the constitution to allow the ordination of women to that office. This is why I was unpersuaded by this objection. The courts of the church (of which the Session is the lowest court) must be in conformity to our constitution. The Assembly as a whole was not persuaded by either of these objections, and this amendment (along with two others) were passed and went into effect.
Review of Presbytery Records
Each court of the church must submit its minutes to the next highest court for what’s called “review and control.” This allows the higher court to exercise oversight over the lower court and make sure the lower court is acting within the bounds of our constitution. Our Session, for example, must submit all our minutes once a year to the Tennessee Valley Presbytery’s committee for Review of Session Records. At the General Assembly, Presbyteries must likewise submit their minutes for review and control.
There are several options available to the committee when reviewing the minutes of the lower court. The committee can recommend approving the minutes “without exception.” This means “you did a great job. Everything looks in order. See you next year.” Then, the committee can recommend that the minutes be approved, but with “exceptions of form.” This basically means that the lower court did not record everything in the way they’re supposed to, and so the Assembly simply notes that and tells them to do better next time. Then there are what are called “exceptions of substance.” This isn’t simply a clerical error, but rather a record of an action that would seem to violate either the Scriptures or the constitution of the church. If this happens, the lower court is given the opportunity to respond to the exception, and next year’s Assembly will decide if the response is adequate or not.