Editor’s Note: This article was first published in 2013 and was updated in 2024 to reflect current procedure.

Next week will see the meeting of one of the most misunderstood, important, and challenging bodies in the PCA – the Committee on Review of Presbytery Records.

A disclaimer is in order – I served on RPR twice, so I may have a certain prejudice concerning the importance and difficulty of its work, as well as a heightened desire to help others understand its work.

I believe RPR is misunderstood because many think of it as a Committee charged with combing presbytery minutes for minutiae: mistakes in procedure, misspelled words, misplaced commas, grammatical mistakes etc.  While it is true that the Committee is on the lookout for those things (labeled “exceptions of form” and “notations” in the Rules of Assembly Operation), that is not the heart of their work.

And it is the heart of their work that makes them so important. Their primary charge is to review the minutes of our presbyteries to make certain that their actions conform to Scripture and the constitution of the church. Errors of this nature are called “exceptions of substance.” When the General Assembly cites a presbytery for an exception of substance, the presbytery must approve a formal response to the next GA, either admitting their fault and reporting what they have done to correct it or defending their action. The RPR will then recommend to GA whether the response is satisfactory or unsatisfactory; if the response is ruled unsatisfactory, the matter may be turned over to the Standing Judicial Commission for action. This aspect of their review is so central to their mandate that I have personally wondered if the Committee’s name should be Review of Presbytery Actions (to correct the misunderstanding cited above).  

Typically, if a presbytery does something of questionable constitutionality, someone within the presbytery will file a complaint and if the complaint is denied, may take the  complaint to the GA. If properly filed, the complaint will be forwarded to the SJC for action. But suppose a presbytery does something unconstitutional but no one in the presbytery complains? How will the error be detected? RPR, as it reviews presbytery minutes, is charged with finding it. 

Don’t get the idea that RPR members read presbytery minutes seeking errors (that could produce an unhealthy “gotcha” mentality).  Rather, the committee flags actions to report to GA only when there is a clear violation of Scripture or the constitution, and often only after careful consultation with presbytery representatives. Like all the committees of our denomination, RPR’s first priority is to serve pastorally, even when they are also called upon to render judgment.  

By now you are probably beginning to understand why I consider RPR one of the most challenging committees in the PCA on which to serve. Consider the workload. There are currently 88 presbyteries in the PCA, and all are supposed to submit their minutes annually. Each presbytery is supposed to appoint a member to RPR; last year 79  presbyteries appointed a representative (a marked improvement over previous years) and 66 attended the Committee meeting. But any shortfall in membership adds work to the Committee members who serve.

The members of the committee are divided into Read Teams of three to four members and are assigned the minutes of three to four presbyteries, as well as any presbytery’s response to exceptions of substance to their minutes for the previous year. Each Read Team member reviews every set of minutes and responses assigned to his team. To give an idea of the size of the task: I serve as a presbytery clerk. The 2023 Minutes for our Presbytery came to nearly 250 pages. Imagine reviewing four sets of minutes that size!

Prior to the committee meeting, the Read Teams meet, compare their findings, and compile a Read Team Report for each of their presbytery’s minutes, identifying the exceptions of form, notations, and exceptions of substance, as well as proposing a recommendation concerning responses to the previous year’s exceptions of substance.

The RPR officers combine these Read Team reports into a Full Draft Report which is sent to all committee members the week before the meeting. At the Committee meeting itself, the committee reviews the Full Draft Report, presbytery by presbytery, and may adopt, amend, or strike the recommendations coming from the Read Teams. When the committee meets, it reviews every proposed exception of form and substance, but only exceptions of substance are reported to the GA for action (exceptions of form and notations are reported only to the presbytery). All of this adds up to a lot of work!

But in addition to the workload, there is also the challenge of maintaining consistency.  It is difficult to maintain consistency from one year to the next. Members serve a three-year term, so there is complete turnover every three years. It is also difficult to maintain consistency in the way the actions of different presbyteries are treated in the same year. Two presbyteries might take an identical action, and the Read Team for the minutes of one of those presbyteries might view that action as unconstitutional and report it as such while the Read Team for the minutes of the other presbytery might not consider it an exception and thus might not even mention it in their report. Over the years, RPR officers have worked to implement measures that improve consistency, but it is still a challenge.

Finally, there is what I believe to be the greatest challenge of all: the challenge of setting my personal perspective aside. This is particularly important when reviewing exceptions a presbytery approves for candidates for ordination concerning their differences with our doctrinal standards (as outlined in BCO 21-4f and g). I may find myself reviewing the minutes of a presbytery that allows an exception I personally don’t believe should be allowed, or the presbytery may deny an exception I believe should be allowed. Unless a presbytery’s action on a candidate’s difference violates a generally accepted tenet of Reformed theology, I should defer to the presbytery’s judgment because the presbytery is the body that has “the right and responsibility  . . .  to determine if the candidate is out of accord with any of the fundamentals” of our doctrinal Standards (BCO 21-4f). While it is hard to set my personal views aside, and while that which constitutes a “generally accepted tenet of Reformed theology” is not always clear, this is the approach required to serve on RPR.

So serving on RPR is challenging, important, self-sacrificing work. Please pray for its members as they meet next week.