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Ah yes, Peachtree...

by Tim Bayly on August 23, 2012 - 6:05pm

So here's where our brother Tim Keller is tonight. Likely he knows nothing of what he's dealing with--the PC(USA)'s a whole 'nother beast.

But come to think of it, why doesn't he simply move on over...

Woman pastors and deacons and elders and bishops (err, executive presbyters) and all that. It might be a good fit. In the PC(USA) he'd be on the side of the angels. He'd be a conservative among liberals rather than a liberal among conservatives.

Tags: 
Feminism
PCA
Deacons - Deaconesses

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Submitted by Alvin on August 23, 2012 - 10:18pm

I, too, grew up in the PCUSA. The church I went to was run by women and the only men who showed up were either browbeaten into attending or effeminates. We had Sunday school lessons using the writings of Henry David Thoreau as source material. I once recalled a sermon about how chauvinistic the Apostle Paul was. Most of the people there, like most socialists, wouldn't touch a poor hungry person with a ten-foot pole but railed and waxed on about the virtues of government welfare, public schools, and medicaid. A completely useless institution. I praise God for the faithful witness of a few of my friends at school from the local PCA church who actually presented the Bible as authoritative and where real men with broken and contrite hearts sang and led and preached. God is good.

That was late 1970/early 1980 and unfortunately the PCA is being pulled in a similar direction by misguided preachers who've been heavily influenced by the Redeemer brand of ministry. Most of these young ministers have not a clue as to what they're messing with. 

Submitted by David A Booth on August 24, 2012 - 10:24am

I have been following the Fellowship of Presbyterians movement for some time. Because God is God we can always hope for great things. Nevertheless, this appears to be a group of people who genuinely recognize that something is fundamental wrong in the PCUSA without ever considering the possibility that they themselves are in the wrong for remaining in the PCUSA. They are like the squishy evangelicals of nine decades ago that wanted to pretend that things aren't as bad as they really are - that the Presbyterian Church is somehow fundamentally sound. I suspect that we will only know that God is acting in this movement when we stop hearing about new ideas for ministry and start hearing about repentance - along with letting goods and kindred go.

Submitted by Tim Bayly on August 24, 2012 - 2:43pm

>>when we stop hearing about new ideas for ministry and start hearing about repentance

Absolutely right. These guys were my colleagues back when I was a professional, and no matter what happens, they'll think things only need a little tweaking. But that tweaking will never include repenting of the ordination of their wives and mothers and daughters. Take Jim Singleton, for instance, formerly ensconced in the wonderful living of First Pres. Colorado Springs, with his wife on his staff, and now promoted to the Gordon-Conwell faculty. Jim and Sarah lived down the hall from us at Gordon-Conwell and Jim is a perfect representative of hundreds and hundreds of so-called "Evangelical" PC(USA) pastors who have turned their backs on the Word of God in the most costly areas of obedience, and thus are fatally compromised in their work for any reform.

Calvin Seminary went from discussing the sin of women's ordination to discussing the sin of sodomy, and the PC(USA) is far down the wide and broad and crowded path Calvin is now travelling.

Let the dead bury the dead. There's work to do.

Love,

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