As the PCA’s 50th General Assembly nears, church leaders have the opportunity to consider not just where the denomination has been, but where it is going. Last year, PCA Stated Clerk Bryan Chapell invited a panel of teaching elders to reflect on their hopes for the denomination; this year, he invited a panel of ruling elders to outline what PCA faithfulness might look like in the years to come.
Ruling Elder Gif Thornton of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville began the panel. “I believe there has never been a better time to be a Christian,” he said. “What the world thought would provide the answers 60 years ago has not provided the answers. We have the answer.”
His charge to the church is to proclaim Christ confidently and joyfully as the answer to a dying world; exalt Jesus and cast down imaginations and every thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ; be a denomination characterized by humility, and a denomination characterized by prayer.
Thornton emphasized that there is far more that unites the PCA than divides it. What if, he wondered, the PCA once and for all dropped the moniker the “frozen chosen” and became known as a denomination that prayed without ceasing? “I think it would be electric, irresistible to the world.”
Brad Isbell, a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, emphasized how the Presbyterian model of parity of elders is faithful to Scripture. “My hope for the PCA is that she remains a thoroughly Presbyterian church, maybe even becomes more Presbyterian, not less,” he said.
Isbell offered four reasons for strengthening the parity of elders. First, it’s good for members when the burden of teaching and shepherding is spread not just among a pastor and staff, but among all the elders. It’s also good for pastors; as pastors depend on their ruling elders to help lead, they stay longer and remain healthier. Third, it increases diversity among leadership. “Ruling elders are naturally and necessarily a more diverse lot than teaching elders are,” Isbell said. Finally, Isbell said the church needs the “common sense and realism” of ruling elders to help maintain orthodoxy, preventing the church from following trends or veering off on cultural tangents.
Former General Assembly Moderator E.J. Nusbaum’s vision for the PCA is simple: “When the men and women in our church on Sunday go to work on Monday, they will know and believe and be animated by the fact that God has called them to that station for His purpose. He supports their work because it is his work.”
Nusbaum believes the Christian’s highest calling is to be in Christ, to be the children of God. Next, Christians are called to follow the declared will of God and become more like Christ. Third, we have a particular call, “a confidence that the events in our lives have been so ordered that each of us is stationed where God wants us to be right now,” he said.
Teaching and ruling elders can help their congregants understand the connection between their faith and work with simple questions. Nusbaum suggested that after asking a person what he or she does for work, follow up by asking, “How do people benefit when you do your job well? What would the world be like if no one did what you do?”
“These questions help connect people’s work with God’s work,” Nusbaum said. “As people begin to connect their work to God’s work, they will have a renewed sense of joy and purpose.”
Glen Berkel is a ruling elder at Christ Central in Durham, North Carolina. His vision for the PCA is a church known for both its orthodoxy and orthopraxy. He hopes the PCA would love its neighbors by seeing those who are not in Christ as in need of the gospel. Second, he wants the PCA to embrace its multi-ethnic heritage by embracing those whose life experiences are different than ours.
“Whether you’re part of a church with multiple cultures or a monocultural church, let’s work to embrace traditions and people from other cultures,” he said. “Maybe you need generational cultural diversity, not ethnic.”
Third, he hopes the PCA will embrace a robust “womb-to-tomb” pro-life approach, one that prioritizes preserving life and offering comfort to the distressed, as the Westminster Larger Catechism says. For some this will mean working with crisis pregnancy centers, others will work on job skills for the unemployed, while others bring help to the hungry.
“Faithfulness means stepping out in obedience to the Great Commission and preaching the gospel in word and in deed,” Berkel said.
Rounding out the seminar was Jim Wert, former General Assembly moderator and a ruling elder at Intown Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. He hopes that the PCA can continue to be a denomination that loves the Lord with all our minds and hearts, and that we would bring “robust, peculiar fellowship with one another as we do those things.”
Wert ended where Thornton began, reminding commissioners that what unites the PCA far exceeds what divides the church. He urged the PCA to be the kind of church that Jesus prayed for in John 17:23: “I in them and you in me, that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
Watch the seminar here, beginning at 46:20.