Confessing Church pastor leaves pulpit to organize a new PCA congregation
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 31, 2006
Mark Spence, who was baptized as a 7-year-old at First Presbyterian Church in Beeville, Texas, and served as its pastor since 1998, has resigned and now serves a new congregation that is part of the Presbyterian Church in America.
After 30 years as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Spence preached his first sermon Sunday in the new Providence Presbyterian Church in Beeville, a mission project of the PCA. About 30 people, most from First Presbyterian, attended the service in a Beeville motel room.
Spence says he left the Presbyterian Church (USA) because the 2006 General Assembly approved an authoritative interpretation that allows ordaining bodies to decide on their own whether to ordain homosexuals.
Mission Presbytery issued a statement declaring that Spence is misreading the authoritative interpretation. But Spence’s interpretation is widely shared – even by members of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity that proposed the authoritative interpretation.
The task force said candidates for ordination should be allowed to declare a “scruple” against G-6.0106b, the “fidelity/chastity” requirement in the Book of Order. Furthermore, several members of the task force repeatedly said that G-6.0106b and other constitutional requirements are “standards” to which candidates should aspire and not “essentials” unless ordaining bodies declare that they are.
Even before Spence resigned from the pulpit of the Beeville congregation to become a minister in the PCA, he tested the ordination requirement through a disciplinary complaint against another minister in the presbytery. He accused the Rev. Ilene Dunn, pastor of Madison Square Presbyterian Church in San Antonio, of violating her ordination vows by participating in the ordination of officers in her congregation.
After a six-month investigation, the Mission Presbytery determined that the session had ordained six homosexual elders and deacons in the last five years, but dismissed without explanation the charge against Dunn. If the case had gone to trial, she could have faced penalties ranging from a reprimand to loss of her credentials as a minister of the Word and Sacrament.
Dunn never denied the charge, but she said she did not knowingly participate of the ordination of homosexuals because “I haven’t been in their bedrooms and we don’t question people about their sexual preference,” according to The Express-News of San Antonio.
Nonetheless, Dunn said she did not believe that homosexual conduct was sinful. “Many of these people have been banished from churches and spiritually abused, yet they still believe in the power of love over hatred. They still want to be church members and respond to God’s call to ministry,” she told The Express-News.
Dunn’s case was one of three in which Mission Presbytery exonerated ministers accused of violating the constitution. Two complaints were filed against Jim Rigby, an Austin pastor who was accused of conducting a marriage service for a homosexual couple and admitting into his congregation’s membership a University of Texas faculty member who publicly claimed to be an atheist. Although he acknowledged that he conducted the service for the homosexual couple, Rigby was exonerated of that charge. The presbytery did instruct him to remove the atheist from the membership roll.
In an interview with The Layman Online Monday, Spence said he is eager to get on with his ministry within the PCA and not to rehash the disagreements with the PCUSA or Mission Presbytery, which attempted to make him ineligible for ministry in the PCA by declaring that he had forfeited his ordination.
But the PCA accepted him, Spence said, adding that he is excited about beginning a mission church. He noted that the PCA gave him a thorough examination. The toughest question, he said, was, “What took you so long?”
Spence said the ordination of women was not an issue with the PCA because “I’ve always opposed women’s ordination.”
The July 28 Beeville Bee-Picayune published an article quoting Spence and Sylvia Washer, Mission Presbytery’s executive presbyter.
Spence said the authoritative interpretation crossed the line. “The Bible clearly prohibits homosexuality and infidelity, so how can [the church] believe it is OK to allow homosexuals and adulterers to serve as elders, ministers and leaders?” Spence told the Bee-Picayune.
The newspaper reported that Washer said, “The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s commitment to Jesus Christ and to Biblical standards has in no way been changed or compromised. Rather, the discussion and decision simply re-affirmed our tradition of allowing local churches and presbyteries to make their own decisions about who they choose as their leaders.”
“Some Presbyterians believe this action in some way compromises Biblical standards for leadership,” she added. “The majority of commissioners sent to make decisions for the church, however, saw it as a return to the tradition of allowing local governing bodies to conduct their own examination and ordination of leaders.”
First Presbyterian in Beeville, population 13,500, is a 263-member congregation that is listed as one of the 1,314 Confessing Churches in the PCUSA. Spence recalled that it was a close vote of the session – 5 to 4, with one abstention – that made the Beeville congregation a part of the Confessing Church movement.