Under the post, "Intown's Brian Prentiss comes out of the closet...," one reader asked, "How long before the PCA ends up in the same slough of despond, and heaven knows what else, that has claimed most of the PCUSA?"
Since the PCA is a largely southern denomination, her failures will always lag behind other denominations, and her wealth will give it a better face than most. But she'll have to stop giving northern liberal churches/pastors a pass despite knowing disciplining them won't get good press. At this time the PCA's failures aren't even in the same ballpark as the PC(USA). At this time.
The troubling thing is that the PCA is following the same path the PC(USA) and her predecessor denominations followed in trusting famous men of wealth and influence rather than following little boys named "David" with just a slingshot who are determined to slay the giant using "only" the means of grace: discipline, from the least formal private discussion and exhortation all the way to heresy trials.
In this context of Intown, Pastor Prentiss has been giving signs of heterodoxy for years and I'm guessing nothing has been done by anyone on any faithful personal level. That's the norm within PCA presbyteries. We don't want to deal with men individually through private remonstrance and exhortation and rebuke, and that for a whole host of reasons including...
our own failures and sins. So we leave discipline for the seductive strength of numbers, and usually general assembly rather than even presbytery. Then down on them with ten tons of bricks!
When Pastors Keller, Jason Dorsey, Brian Prentiss, and their friends (Covenant Seminary's Jack Collins, for instance) start pushing the boundaries of orthodoxy and brotherly submission, that is the time to deal with them firmly. But then, they grow. They publish. They sell. They bring in lots of money and build their kingdom with it. And what are southerners going to say to these men? Their trade is prospering.
So they kowtow to them and lose their integrity. And the boundaries are lost. Genesis is wrong. Hell is a choice. Women officers and teachers and (not yet) Sunday morning preachers. And of course they will not have a faithful witness on any moral issue of the day. They've been cutting corners for the sake of money and numbers for years and no one's loving them enough to make their attendance at presbytery or other pastoral gatherings uncomfortable. Who wants to be uncomfortable?
Even here on this blog, Pastor Prentiss has shown his hand multiple times. It's not hard to know what you're dealing with concerning these guys. Five minutes personal conversation done rightly would show his treason to anyone who desired to open it up and treat it.
But no one cares. Or rather, no one cares about God's truth and the souls of these men and their flocks as much as we care about our comfort and presbytery vibes and cuddling up to numbers and money and eyeglasses.
Observations after a decade in the PC(USA) and two in the PCA.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
