Evangelical ministers, sessions react to General Assembly decisions
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 5, 2006
Ministers and elders of evangelical congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) have begun reacting strongly to some of the 2006 General Assembly’s actions.
The two major issues are 1) the approval of an authoritative interpretation that allows presbyteries and sessions the right to ordain people who are sexually active outside of marriage and 2) receiving a paper that suggests alternatives to Biblical Trinitarian names – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some of the options include Mother, Child and Womb.
In Baton Rouge, the Rev. Gerrit Dawson of First Presbyterian Church told the congregation during the June 25 worship service that commissioners “took actions to render our denomination irrelevant to the mission and ministry of this congregation.”
Therefore, Dawson added, “I have instructed our finance office not to make any payments of our per capita assessment, the denominational head tax, before the session meets in July. At that meeting, I am confident that your leadership will make such an action official.”
“Our congregation can be assured that your gifts are not going to fund the denomination. Secondly, and even more importantly, the national witness of the PCUSA may be confused about what is true and not true, what is right and what is wrong,” Dawson said. “The leadership of the First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge is not confused. We are united in our convictions and enthusiastic in our witness. Your elders are lit with a passion for the gospel. They are enflamed with zeal for the truth. This situation with the denomination has not daunted us. It has kicked us in the pants to get on with the real work of the church, to seek out the least and the lost and to share the gospel in word and deed, to pump some concrete into this culture.”
In North Benton, Ohio, the session of North Benton Presbyterian Church adopted a declaration contending that, “By opening the door to no-holds-barred ordination/installation, this action of the assembly defames the Lord Jesus Christ, defies the Bible, denies the historic creeds and confessions of the Church, decries the advice and counsel of the global Christian community, and destroys the constitutional fabric of the PCUSA.”
The session refused to “accept, support or tolerate” the authoritative interpretation and pledged to “be diligent to enforce the ‘fidelity and chastity’ requirement for ordination and installation.”
Instead, the North Benton session added, “As a New Wineskins Initiative-endorsing session, we intend to maintain and develop our relationship with like minded colleagues and congregations. With them, ‘we rejoice at the sense of common purpose that increasingly characterizes our mutual efforts as . . . we work to preserve a Biblically faithful Presbyterian fellowship.'”
In Atlanta, the Rev. Vic Pentz, pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church – the largest congregation in the denomination with more than 8,400 members – called the approval of the report by the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity “cognitive dissonance at best, hypocritical at worst.”
“The future of the national structure of this denomination is in serious trouble. It’s one thing to have people in the church in conflict over important issues. But it’s dysfunctional when the church tries to resolve these conflicts by actively espousing doctrines and standards it just as actively works to undermine and sets each of those processes in motion within minutes of each other. Such an institution will have hard time being taken seriously. The leaders who favor the PUP report celebrate its passage by calling it ‘a new way of doing church.’ It is more accurately ‘a new way of doing in the church.'”
Peachtree will host a new movement called “Presbyterian Global Fellowship” in August. Its purpose is to provide an evangelical mission program separate from the PCUSA’s Worldwide Ministries Division.
In Dallas, Ron Scates, pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, informed his congregation that its “session expressed before the General Assembly its opposition to this authoritative interpretation and worked for its defeat. Prudently, however, the session has also given previous study to what course HPPC would take if it passed. In the months to come, we will send representatives to several gatherings of like-minded churches involved in the renewal movement of the PCUSA and discern with many other churches the appropriate response. We will also communicate our concern with Grace Presbytery and presbytery leaders.”
“You can be sure of one thing – HPPC will continue its steadfast devotion to Biblical orthodoxy,” Scates added. “Our commitment to Biblical, evangelical and Reformed theology and values will not waiver. We remain one of the over thirteen hundred Confessing Churches within the PCUSA and an inviting church of the new Presbyterian Global Fellowship (a possible new way of being “PCUSA” in the years ahead).”