An Update on the 53rd General Assembly

The 53rd GA of the PCA met in Louisville, KY this year. This was an historic meeting for a number of reasons. First, was the largest GA with 2400 commissioners in attendance (TE’s & RE’s), beating last year’s record. Second, this year we saw the largest attendance of RE’s since the early 90’s (close to 800). Third, we had the largest and most complicated docket in the history of GA. The Assembly received 90 overtures plus 1 from last year. Fourth, we heard from two study committees one could be described as historic as it works on making our Directory of Public Worship Constitutional. The other addresses the Christian Nationalist movement. Both committees were approved to continue their work for another year. Both have asked that their initial reports be shared with the denomination for feedback. Finally, this year we had two important elections. We elected RE Mel Duncan, brother of Ligon Duncan, to be our Moderator. It is only the second set of brothers in the PCA who have served as moderator. Mel did a fantastic job, especially as we had severe issues with our voting devices. We also elected TE Fred Greco to be the sixth Stated Clerk of the PCA. This is a vital role in the life of our denomination. Fred is by far one of our greatest parliamentarians. He is highly qualified to lead this position and promised to be a servant to the church, a position the previous Clerk, Bryan Chapell sadly failed to uphold.

What did we do?

1. Approving BCO Amendments - whenever we adopt an overture that desires to update the BCO, those recommendations are then sent down to all the presbyteries in the PCA. The presbyteries then vote them up or down. The BCO requires a ⅔ majority vote from the presbyteries to update the constitution. We then finalize these amendments with one more vote at the following GA. This is important because GA is a temporary court. It is only in session when we meet. In times past, it has happened that an assembly approved a change, the presbyteries approved it, but it failed at the next Assembly. This happened this year. We approved 8 out of 10 of the amendments sent back to the assembly from the presbyteries. 
2. Committee Reports
   1. CoC’s - Part of our polity is that the general assembly reviews the work of all our permanent committees: Covenant, Covenant Seminary, RUF, Ridge Haven, MTW, Geneva Benefits, PCA Foundation, the Administrative Committee, CDM, and MNA. 
   2. MNA - all of our committee reports were encouraging. The Lord continues to bless the PCA! Covenant College reported its third year of consecutive growth, their financials are stable, and they have a solid strategic plan which includes creating a sizable endowment and alternative forms to federal aid. This is important as higher education has been weaponized by the current and past Administrations. This will ensure that should the Federal government put any kind of pressure on institutions receiving federal aid, Covenant would be secure and fund students without relying on their aid. The PCA Foundation reported strong financial numbers for the denomination and shared about the many opportunities available to congregations seeking to plant, build churches, and renovate. There were sadly two reports that were slightly discouraging. The Administrative Committee recommended, and the assembly approved, increasing the cost of attendance for ALL elders. For the past several years in order to encourage more RE attendance, it cost $350 for REs to attend and $575 for TEs. Beginning next year, it will be a flat $650 for all commissioners. It costs a lot of money to hold the assembly and this will help the AC continue to run the assembly well. On the downside, this hurts churches in the long run as everything has gotten more expensive. One bold commissioner pointed out that the AC has made a big deal about going paperless for commissioners, yet they produced a large amount of high-gloss and custom made brochures, hand outs, and other paper based items that were then given to every commissioner and in some cases every attendee. Please pray that we find a better solution to run the Assembly, something they are looking into. The most encouraging and discouraging committee report came from MNA. At last year’s GA, the previous Coordinator, TE Irwin Ince, barely survived a vote to continue in his role. This was due to a lack of confidence by the assembly and the CoC after discovering a 2 million dollar deficit in the budget. Ince later had to resign after a separate scandal where he was involved in blessing a PCA TE in a worship service who during the sermon announced his departure to the Roman Catholic Church in his sermon then proceeded to administer the Lord’s Supper. RE Steven Dowling, a prior Moderator of the GA, was asked to serve as the interim coordinator with the explicit charge to clean house. He has done so and that is the encouraging part. Through his work, he discovered that the Disaster Relief agency of the PCA was a significant contributor to the financial situation in MNA. The head of that ministry was fired for his performance and budget issues. I want to briefly share what those were and where we go from here. When disasters happen, like Helene, MNA through Disaster Relief solicits financial donations from churches and individuals. Those gifts are designated for that particular disaster. It was discovered during a forensic audit that not all funds were used for the specific disasters they were designated for. What’s more, money would be taken out to fund other things like backpay for employees, funneled back into the MNA general fund, and other areas. While not naming the individuals, it has been shared with the Assembly that there are serious tax and even criminal issues with these actions. They are currently working with the IRS and the proper authorities and it is likely that there will be criminal charges brought to one or more individuals involved. I’ll end with some final encouragement from MNA. We continue to be a church planting machine. We continue to see growth in giving towards church planting and other local missions efforts. We, as a denomination, continue to be the only Protestant and evangelical in the US to grow. Finally, we had a record number of adult professions of faith this year, over 5k!
   3. RPR - continues to be an important mechanism for review and control. This committee is tasked with reviewing all Presbytery minutes for compliance and noncompliance in those presbyteries of the PCA. They will cite presbyteries for judicial issues, recording issues, and credentialing issues. 
      1. Paedocommunion - Once a divisive issue within the PCA, came up again in the RPR. A man had an exception to the Standards approved for his pro-paedocommunion view. The question has always been is such a view allowed to be held as long as not taught or practiced. The assembly’s decision in this particular case was that the man’s view, while not promotional, was still hostile to our system of doctrine. 
      2. 2 and 4th commandments - there were several exceptions noted as approved in error. The assembly, after some debate, sustained RPR’s decision that these exceptions should not be granted and asked presbyteries to go back to the pastors for further clarification. Many men state differences with our doctrinal documents at these points. The issue here was we found their stated differences to be vague or confusing. 
   4. Study Committees
      1. Directory for Public Worship - We are the only Presbyterian body in the United States (conservative and liberal) that does not have a completely constitutionally binding Directory for Public Worship. This was the first document published by the Westminster Assembly back in 1644. We started to adopt it when our denomination was founded but over the years the project lost steam. This has led to diverse, in some cases extremely diverse, worship practices. A constitutionally binding directory would not resolve this diversity issue completely, but it would provide guardrails on certain issues. The directory is not a prayer book like in the Episcopal Church. It is meant to serve as helpful instruction on how the Lord’s Day should be observed, who may do what in a service, and how to conduct special services. The committee was formed last year and produced an excellent recommendation. It received wide acclamation from across the PCA. Unfortunately, some fears were stoked from both progressive and conservative wings of the PCA. This led the committee to ask for another year to deliberate before presenting their final report with recommendations. It is likely we will receive that report and vote on their recommendations next year. It is also likely that if voted down or not received, the PCA will continue its current practice of having a non-binding Directory. 
      2. Christian Nationalism - At last year’s GA, we established a study committee on Christian Nationalism. They produced a partial report that includes attempts at defining Christian Nationalism, a series of affirmations and denials, and guidance to presbyteries on how to handle men with certain convictions related to Christian Nationalism. This report received mixed reviews. Dr. David Strain of 1st Presbyterian Jackson serves as the chair. He addressed the many people who provided feedback to the committee. He and the committee members are committed to addressing legitimate concerns and questions. They will, by God’s grace, return at the 54th General Assembly with a complete report. An edition of the Committee’s partial report will be made available to the public soon. 
      3. Artificial Intelligence - This request came to the 52nd GA but was tabled until this year’s. Constitutionally, we can only approve 2 study committees at a single GA. This committee was overwhelmingly approved. It was good to see a broad spectrum of men from across the PCA speak to the seriousness of the issues AI is creating. Since this committee was just formed at the General Assembly, it is the privilege of the moderator to appoint the members of the committee. We should hear who those are in the coming weeks. 
      4. What are study committees? Study Committees are formed upon overture related to many different areas. We’ve had ones on creation, women in ministry, the church’s relationship to the state, abortion, and Domestic and Sexual Abuse. These reports are non-binding upon the body. They are received as pious advice and pastoral counsel. Recommendations out of those committees may turn into overtures that change our constitution, but the study committee itself has no power to do that independently of the church courts. 
   5. Overtures - with 90 overtures to get through you might be surprised I am even here today. The Overtures Committee was ably led by Dr. Guy Waters who had an ingenious solution to navigate the assembly through the overtures. He presented several omnibus motions based on votes within the Overtures Committee. This meant that when we got to the narrower margins of votes, men were able to pull out particular overtures that they would like to debate. This meant in some cases, as many as 20 overtures were approved with one vote. 
      1. Ordination of Women and FFO overtures - The committee received 11 overtures either asking for broader acceptance of women officers or narrowing the language of or BCO further. The committee handled this by answering one overture in this category in the negative and then referring all other related overtures to that vote. The overture they used was O37 which asked for the full ordination of women to the office of deacon. This would have been a massive change to our polity, constitution, and doctrine. We entered into year three of debating women deacons and officers. This arose when several churches were found to be circumnavigating the BCO to have women serve as deacons or functionally as elders. The end result was a voice vote strongly in favor of agreeing with the OC against women’s ordination. Only a small handful, by some estimates 20, of men voted to answer this question in the affirmative. At the same time, there were several overtures that sought to further narrow titles, offices, and roles women could play in the life of the church. These were resoundingly defeated by the vote on O37. This is good news as many of these overtures were reactionary in nature and would have had potentially extreme consequences to the church at large. This means you may hear some moan that the PCA does not appreciate women because we do not believe they can be ordained to church offices AND that we are going liberal because we would not go farther than our current constitution and practice. Both of these arguments are false and divisive. 
      2. Funny overture - We were asked to start serving wine at GA during communion, alongside juice. We approved this overture with a simple request to the AC to make this possible. As one elder put it, “this could have been an email.” 
      3. Overture 43 - This would have changed the term of coordinators of permanent committees and the Stated Clerk to 4 year terms. This passed in overtures but was answered in the negative by the floor. Currently, the Permanent Committee Coordinators and Stated Clerk are elected every year. Men have held onto these positions for as long as 20 years, like Roy Taylor, a previous Stated Clerk. The Assembly was not persuaded to extend it to four years as we have never voted a man out of this position at an assembly. This would have been a huge change to our polity, and we usually don’t like doing that unless a problem arises. 
      4. Overtures 45&47 - these sought to limit floor nominees. Our Nominating Committee receives nominees for permanent committees. They then recommend men for those positions. Sometimes after reviewing the list, men are dissatisfied with a nominee. If that is the case, they may put forward a “floor nominee.” Last year, several floor nominees were put forward and many beat the NC recommendation. This year only one out of I think fourteen floor nominees was elected. This is an important privilege that many sought to retain. Both overtures were defeated and our current practice of floor nominees is intact. 
      5. Overture 7 - Would have altered our Review of Presbyterian Records Committee into almost a commission. This was a reactionary overture trying to bypass our current practice of the Assembly debating and finalizing RPR decisions. 
      6. Overture 61 The Danvers Statement - The Danvers Statement was written in 1987 in Danvers, Massachusetts at a meeting of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Many leaders in the PCA have served on the council at one time or another. We approved a similar outside statement in 2019, the Nashville Statement which addressed biblical sexuality. This vote was close - 934-841. There were solid principled arguments against adopting it. The main being we have the Bible and our BCO. Reasons for adopting it is that it is clearer on biblical gender roles than our BCO and offers both a criticism against rising forms of egalitarianism and gender confusion on the one hand and toxic masculinity on the other. 
      7. The most passionate floor speech - We had several overtures asking the Assembly and PCA churches to have an official act of prayer giving thanks to God for our country’s 250th anniversary. As with the women deacon overture, we approved one and referred all the others to that approved overture. The recommended overture was amended from its original version, making it shorter, which reads, “Therefore, be it resolved that the 53rd General Assembly encourages all congregations in the Presbyterian Church in America to give thanks to the Lord for the United States of America as we approach the 250th Anniversary of the Nation’s Founding.” The first floor speech to debate approving this overture was a speech against. The argument was made that this is not appropriate biblically or theologically. Unfortunately, it is appropriate biblically and theologically. According to our Confession, “Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the Church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger.” (WCF 23.3) WCF 21.5 recognizes that churches may call for “thanksgivings upon several occasions; which are, in their several times and seasons, to be used in an holy and religious manner (Esther 9:22; Ps. 107).” WCF 21.5 Many rose to speak in favor of adopting this Declaration of Thanksgiving. The most impassioned, powerful, and hilarious was from TE Jackson Lin who shared his personal story of being a boy in Taiwan to emigrating to the US to study at seminary to becoming a US citizen. He reminded the Assembly that like any nation there are unhealthy aspects and histories. But the Lord has blessed this nation with great freedoms that have secured liberty of worship and brought about the greatest missionary country in the world. We approved this almost unanimously by voice vote. 
3. Conclusion - God was faithful to the PCA this year. Many commissioners reported a feeling of peace and unity throughout the assembly. We have much to be thankful for regarding the health of our denomination and ministries. We are adjourned as an assembly until the 54th assembly convenes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.