The following is a production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and is made possible by the generous financial support of our listeners and friends. For more information about the seminary, how you can support it, or applying to become a student, please visit GPTS.edu. Hello and welcome to another edition of Confessing Our Hope, the podcast of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. My name is Zach Groff and I have with me in the studio today Pastor Peter Van Duterward of Covenant Community Orthodox Presbyterian Church here in Taylors, South Carolina. Peter, thank you for joining me. Zach, it's good to be here and glad to be of service. Pastor Peter and I will be discussing, as part of our denominational debrief segment that we're doing, we'll be discussing the 87th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which was held on July 7th through the 14th in Sioux Center, Iowa, on the beautiful campus of Dort College. Pastor Peter, as I said, is a local pastor here in Taylors, but he's also an alumnus of Greenville Seminary, class of 2007, and he and his wife, Laura Lee, have eight children. Now, Peter, just to kick some things off here, as we've observed on this segment in past years, the OPCGA is a delegated assembly. What this means is that designated numbers of commissioners are assigned to the presbyteries who then elect men from within their ranks to attend the assembly as representative commissioners or delegates. What preparations do you make to ensure that you are serving the best interests of the church as a whole, even as you're tasked with representing your presbytery as an elected commissioner? Zach, I should have said this a moment ago on the podcast, but I'm thankful to be here, thankful for the ministry of Greenville Seminary, and still fondly remember my time here and continue to pray for the Lord's very best for the school and its task in preparing men for ministry. I've also been a minister now in the OPC after graduating from the seminary for 13 years now, and very grateful to God to be a minister in the OPC. I'm thankful to be ministering at the local level. I consider my membership in the Presbyterian of the Southeast to be a great blessing and privilege to me as well. And then the opportunity to go to the OPC General Assembly, also something I love to do and consider it an honor to do. We do have a delegated assembly, that's right. And what that means is that every presbytery has a certain number of teaching elders and ruling elders. Yes, in our OPC Book of Church Order, we actually use those phrases as well, teaching elder and ruling elder, not as often. We more usually would say pastors and elders. Our presbytery has a certain number of Pastors and elders that we send a Designated number and every presbytery does and that's distributed across the presbyteries by the size of the presbytery It's larger the presbytery the more the delegates they sent Our assembly then is a little different than other assemblies for example the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church or the Presbyterian Church in America, which surely you're familiar with and Less of a grassroots assembly, more of a delegated assembly, and that does change a few things. I've been to a good number of PCA assemblies. And AARP Synod meetings. Yeah, and AARP Synod meetings as a fraternal delegate to both, and then I spent five years in the PCA as well and attended a number of assemblies. And being a delegate is a different sort of responsibility. Ideally, you should be active in your presbytery and know something of the mind of your presbytery. You have a sense of duty to think of the whole and not simply your own interests, which might be narrower than the interests of your presbytery. You have a duty to remember that you've been sent by your brothers in the presbytery to do a certain work. The second thing you have to do is be familiar with, like any other assembly, with your agenda and your committee reports and the issues of the day, and you do well to go well prepared. And at this presbytery in particular, the Presbytery of the Southeast, which I'm a member of, had some judicial matters before the assembly, and that put an extra amount of work into this assembly for our presbytery. And so there's there's a lot of preparation thought and prayer and again the idea of that smaller delegated assembly to allow more deliberation greater Opportunities to speak for each individual commissioner is it makes our assembly a little different in feel than the larger assemblies and It is something of a Presbyterian commonplace here in the United States anyway, that you go to the OPC General Assembly and what is missing is that call to question, which we hear all the time in the PCA. And it's largely because of this dynamic that you've laid out, that it is intended and designed structurally to be more deliberative. When a man rises, he doesn't rise simply on behalf of his session or of himself, whatever the case may be, but really rising on behalf of his presbytery, representing a much broader constituency. Yeah, there's one more thing about that. Our assembly runs, we have our opening service on a Wednesday night, and we finish Tuesday noon of the following week. So we not only have less people, we have more time. And that is an intentional design to give us time for deliberation. And we spend a Lord's Day together, not doing assembly work, and we have a lot of good fellowship. That's wonderful. Though I'll say this you frequently meet on college campuses and though I never lived on a college campus I spent enough time on on several during my college days. I would not want to be eating that food for Any longer than I need to so I would at least be motivated to make things move along more quickly than even the time allocated but Jokes aside, I'd like to kick off my conversation after laying that groundwork with just a review of some of the statistics. And Reverend Benjamin Snodgrass addressed the Assembly on behalf of Statistician Luke Brown with a report on the size and growth of the OPC this year. How many congregations are in the OPC today? So I think the number was 290. That includes 38 mission works. We have now 18 presbyteries after this General Assembly, and that's a net growth of one congregation. So it was encouraging to see, particularly in, as everybody knows, a complicated and difficult year that God preserved our church. How many members are in the OPC, at least according to the statistician's report? The report actually says 31,809, so about 32,000 members. And again, in God's mercy, we've seen slow growth there, and we're thankful to God for that. And how many total ministers then? Just under 600, I think 570, and again, a net gain of two. A number of questions are asked at the beginning of the assembly. What year were you, what decade were you ordained in? And we have a, we go through the assembly to see the distribution. And we've had a period where we had a lot of ministers retiring, a lot of older ministers retiring, but at the same time, a lot of men being ordained, and so we still, in God's mercy, have a net gain. You know, there's a going to be a massive demographic shift as a baby boomers enter retirement age and then You know, we discussed this in the fundraising world as well as as that generation Passes away and leaves behind their earthly belongings to the next generation or to worthy organizations there's just going to be massive shifts and and I think we will see, by necessity, a big move downward in the average age of not just ministers, but doctors, lawyers, politicians, you know, soldiers. Every segment of American society is going to be affected by this demographic shift. And we're seeing it, as you've mentioned, here in the OPC, among its ministry. How many men can come to General Assembly as delegates if the presbytery sent their maximum compliment? It's actually 155 which is the the constitutional limit and then that number is distributed across the presbyteries and that's a That's a much smaller number than perhaps other denominations would be used to in their General Assembly And then not everybody ends up being able to show up. And so we may have some attrition from the presbytery allocations. But that number, if you said, let's say we had a number on average around 160 or 165, you can hear that that number is very, very different than other assemblies. We're talking about a significantly smaller group Oh, yeah, it's like you said a completely different feel it's a business meeting in the PCA we have an assembly within the assembly our overtures committee which functions like a Delegated assembly though on a really compressed schedule to do the work that they're tasked to do Because our assembly is this year more more biggest number ever was like 20 almost 2,200 Commissioners not delegates but commissioners. So how many days did you meet? Oh, we met for maybe four days. You see the sense of the way the work is done. It's completely, completely different. Now we also, certain aspects of our assembly do work leading up to assembly week, but it's still a completely different feel from what you have. And I've attended part of an OPC assembly one time when it was close to my home in Philadelphia and I was able to go for a day. Even then, when I was pretty inexperienced, I recognized a qualitative difference in the field. At the last GA in 2019, getting down to the business here, Mr. David Haney ably served the 86th assembly as moderator, and customarily the outgoing moderator then convenes the assembly and speaks in the opening worship service. However, Mr. Haney went to be with the Lord in August 2019, not long after he moderated that assembly. So who stepped up in Mr. Haney's place to convene this year's meeting? Just a couple of things, just when you mentioned David. Yeah. His service at the 86th General Assembly was extraordinary. He did a very good job as moderator, and that was perhaps, how would I put it, emblematic of his general service to the denomination in so many ways. It was, for us as a denomination, the Lord Blessed in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. And we know that David, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, is enjoying glory. But we miss him greatly, thankful for his service in our denominational office, on her committees, and as moderator of the General Assembly. So for us, that was, for our denomination, that was a significant loss, and we continue to pray for David's family, and we continue to miss him greatly. I considered him, in all my contact with him, I considered him a friend and a great encourager of gospel ministry, and that is missed across the whole church. John Van Meerbeek, the moderator of our 85th assembly, stepped in to ably fill Mr. Haney's responsibilities to convene this General Assembly. And did he preach at the opening worship service then? No, he didn't. Actually, it was Mr. Haney's pastor, Claude Taylor, who preached the opening worship service and very fittingly, again, reminded us of God's gift in giving us David in his service and also pointed us to Christ, the King of the Church. Who was elected moderator for this year then? Yeah, a man that I consider a friend and colleague in gospel ministry who I've always enjoyed good fellowship, Pastor Zach Keel of Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and did very ably in an assembly where he had to work very hard. Yeah, and let's talk about that a bit. This year the assembly was granted an additional day beyond the norm for its work. Why is that? So, uh, not surprising, but our assembly in 2020 was canceled due to, uh, the realities of COVID sweeping the globe and the questions on how best to be responsible about that. So our postponed assembly meant we had more work to do this year. No kidding. And, uh, anything else to make the schedule unique this year or the docket unique? Our OPC culture includes something that's also perhaps different in when we have judicial matters, appeals and complaints in particular. Those are heard in perhaps more significant detail, not perhaps, undoubtedly in more significant detail by the whole assembly than perhaps in some of our other fellow NAPARC denomination. Well, at least in the PCA we have a commission that is elected by the Assembly to act as a commission with the power of the Assembly to basically rule or judge judicial issues that rise to that level. Part of that is, I think that's a measure meant to help the Assembly in its work because we're so large and so we get a lot of these things. I also think that, you know, it's a bit of an accession to that reality rather than, you know, seeking to handle it in a more, I would say, rightly Presbyterian manner. I think I'm safe to say that, a bit critical of my communion in that regard. But also you all being in delegated assembly, I think are better able to ensure that the men who are involved are going to be informed and up to speed on these matters as they come up. I don't think we could rightly expect that of our assembly with 2,000 commissioners, but I'm open to correction on that point as well. I mean in a sense it's almost like if as I understand you're standing judicial commission, it's a sort of delegated It is smaller assembly in a way and uh And I think inevitably we're all wrestling with the same thing. We're wanting to to do well in the matters these weighty matters of appeals Yeah, be appropriately discreet and without being secretive So we want to be transparent and yet discreet. That's a difficult thing to do and especially once you get beyond you know, two people. Yeah, yeah. It is difficult. And I can appreciate why you all have that standing judicial commission. Our tradition, and this really goes all the way back to perhaps or denominate, well not perhaps, our denominational sensitivity on how we began and the whole questions of discipline surrounding the Machen trial. And we have sought to do these things deliberately, publicly, and carefully. And that meant that this year we had two years worth of General Assembly appeals and complaints. And not only that, we had 13 in total before us. Which is heavy even for two years. If we would divide that by two, or six or seven per year, that would even be significant. So this made our work. weightier than usual. Now we'll touch on these things toward the second half of the interview, but we're not going to get down into what I would think would be inappropriate or indelicate detail on a podcast. So before we get there, though, I want to cover some happier things. I know of several congregations in my denomination here in the PCA, including my congregation and the congregation in which I interned, which have purchased the Trinity Psalter Hymnal put together by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the United Reformed Churches of North America as a joint venture. Now that it has been out for a couple of years, how many OPC congregations are using that hymnal? So it's reported in the Assembly about 50%, and we also were heartened to hear that this altar hymnal is being used beyond our denominational bounds. It's a joy. We actually adopted it in our local congregation later than most, just this year, and we have very much enjoyed using it. It's a real joy to have a full Psalter and a hymnal in one volume. The Creeds and Confessions section is also helpful. And we're seeing it used, of course, broadly also in the URC&A, and we're thankful for that. We're very thankful for our joint participation with them. I mean, being co-laborers, it's a real honor to work with the URC. And then we're seeing other churches and other denominations pick it up, too. For me, I grew up in a church that used the 1912 Psalter, and there's a good number of selections from the 1912 Psalter in that, and that comes from the CRC and the URCNA tradition, that that was also a heavy influence in those churches. But what this Trinity Psalter hymnal, one of the joys for me as I travel, and there's a greater commonality in the language and song of our worship now across multiple denominations, and I think that's a good expression of our sweet fellowship in Christ. Amen. Amen. It is a great blessing to us. We're thankful for the OPC and the URCNA's work, fine work, in producing this resource to the church for our worship and unavoidably for our doctrine as well. Now, was there any report on how many copies of the Psalter Hymnal were printed and distributed in 2020? Yes, four printings, I think, about 63,000 copies. Amazing. Yeah, really, really something, and that just keeps going up. And they're on back order now, because I need a few more copies for our church, and I can't get it. Actually, my graduating class here at the seminary, we committed to purchasing, as soon as they're available, purchasing a set for use in chapel here. Right now, we're using the 1990 Trinity hymnal, which is a fine hymnal. My graduating class in consultation with the faculty and Dr. Master in particular landed on, you know, giving a few hundred dollars to get a set for the seminary. So hopefully we'll be able to do that soon. I have a request into Great Commission Publications to let me know as soon as they're off of back order. Now there was an overture put up in 2019. requesting that the denomination change its form of government with regard to the installation of elders or deacons that had been ordained in another denomination. What can you tell us about this overture and the proposed change that is now before the presbyteries for consideration? Just briefly. So it came from the presbytery of the Midwest and There's two things. Our Book of Orders is both seeking to maintain a recognition of prior ordination, for example, in another Presbyterian denomination of an elder or a deacon, just like we do with ministers. But there's a second question. We were, as I understand it, a little irregular in the the uniformity of our vows taken depending on your circumstance. We could have a licentiate being ordained, we could have a minister transferring in, we could have a ruling elder, a deacon being newly ordained, or we could have one transferring in. And there were little differences in the questions. So you could have officers in one denomination who had ultimately answered different questions concerning especially their disposition towards our standards and the Book of Church Order. So this was an overture to recognize both prior ordination to safeguard that language but also regularize our ordination and installation vows so all subscribe to the same standards. That's great. I'm looking forward to seeing how that affects the Book of Church Order for the OPC in the future, because it'll affect many of my friends, and certainly many of my friends who do transfer back and forth throughout their lives, either because of job changes or changes of call for ministers in particular. Peter, our graduates, yourself included, in the OPC are zealous for missions, both domestic and foreign. And so I always like to ask this, what were some of the notable Home Missions items of interest during the report from that committee, Home Missions being church planting here in the States? Yes, so I can think of, since this is a Dreamville Seminary podcast, I can think of two graduates of the seminary that particularly had Gave some encouraging words, Ethan Bolliard, who is laboring in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was one of your interns. Yes, he interned at Covenant, and a dear friend and brother in the Lord. Excellent preacher, by the way. Yes, yes. The Lord is gifted in many ways, and it's a real joy to see what the Lord's doing in Wilmington, a real joy. If you're ever traveling and you're in Wilmington, North Carolina, I can commend to you the ministry of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church there. Not only Ethan, but the session there. There's a good number of close friends on the session. Ethan was able to speak about how the OPC loan fund helped their congregation get into a better location, a better building, and the Lord really has supplied wonderfully for that fledgling congregation. beautiful facility with, it's a smaller building, but it has plenty of room and property to expand. So that's exciting. It's on a good thoroughfare there, outside of Wilmington, right in Wilmington. Yeah, and the OPC has a loan fund. It's part of the broader ministry of the General Assembly to help churches get into buildings and properties. It's the movement of church planning, often renting a place, and to have your own location does often very much help ministry, and this loan fund has been a great blessing to many, many congregations in the OPC. especially many church plants moving to maturity. The second one is Phil Proctor, who spoke about mother-daughter church planting. I have to say a couple things about Phil's report. The first thing is sometimes General Assembly, and this maybe only happens at the OPC, but you've heard a lot of reports and you've had a long day. It never fails that if Phil's going to give a report, he will break up the monotony. He's a great speaker. Yeah, he did such a good job encouraging churches to think about local churches to have in their DNA and in their mindset from the beginning, pray that the Lord might be pleased to use us to plant a daughter church. And there's a special mother-daughter church planting fund in the OPC to help with that. And that's great. And I think there was some discussion as well, if memory serves me correctly, of regional home missionaries, which were introduced to the OPC a couple years ago, and seems like it's doing well. Am I understanding that rightly? So regional home missionaries have been part of the OPC's church planting culture for a very long time. As a matter of fact, I can't think, as I think about reading OPC history, this has been almost a fixture in our history for a presbytery to have a minister at large whose particular call it is to encourage, foster, and help develop church plants within the bounds of the presbytery. Presbytery of the Southeast, we are We're blessed to have the longtime services of Reverend Lacey Andrews. And Lacey, for example, at the beginning of my own ministry as a church planner here in Greenville, an encourager, a helper, a man to pray with, to talk to. and also a circuit preacher through our presbytery who goes from church plant to church plant. We also have provisional sessions when we have a church plant, and Lacey is usually on every provisional session. And the Lord has used these men across our denomination to further the work of church planting in remarkable ways. And I encourage other denominations to think about it. It's a real home missionary. Were there any notable foreign missions, items of interest that you wanted to highlight? It was, as you can imagine, a difficult year for foreign missions. Our General Secretaries, Mark Bubin, Associate General Secretary, General Secretary Mark Bubin, Associate General Secretary Doug Clawson, they usually spend a great amount of their time, and their wives and families give so much of them. These men are on the road or really in the air. year after year, visiting field after field and lifting up the hands of our missionaries in prayer and in practical help. When COVID hit, They were grounded. Yeah, quite literally. And it was a lot of difficulty for a lot of our missionaries in countries where public assembly and public preaching was severely curtailed. Then we also had some fields where some of our long-term missionary endeavors were frustrated by increased governmental pressure. And so for OPC foreign missions in the last year, I would consider it to be a year where the Lord wonderfully and remarkably preserved our fields, but also we felt a good bit of pressure in different ways that we haven't for a long time. There are some acute difficulties that I heard about just here at the seminary with the field in Uganda and in a number of fronts But then also in Haiti with all the turmoil presidential assassination this past year general craziness endemic to Haiti And that's an important field as well for the OPC and that's not to men that's not to leave out other fields that beyond Uganda and Haiti I mean those aren't your only two you have plenty but um, you know, these are just some examples that come quickly to mind for me and Yeah, those are definitely, we just had Ben and Heather Hopp present at our local congregation. Ben was also able to come to the General Assembly. And in many ways, if I were to sum it up without getting into details, there was definitely a sense of the spiritual warfare of the ages, the fighting the good fight. But the Lord has preserved, and I think right now, and this is post-General Assembly, but our missionaries are having more and more freedom again to take up their labor. Praise the Lord. Well, it's hard to talk about OPC foreign missions without talking about Dr. Curdo here at the seminary. He's deeply involved not only in foreign missions, but also with the Committee on Ecumenicity and Inter-Church Relations, or CEIR. This committee presents fraternal delegates. This year, I think you had delegates from the PCA, the ARP, the RPCNA, the RCUS, and the BPC. but it also directs the denomination's involvement in the International Conference of Reformed Churches, ICRC. Was there anything worthy of note in the report of this committee delivered actually by our own Dr. Curdo? That committee had been so ably helped and served by the labors of Reverend Jack Sawyer. who, again, a dear friend of mine and someone who I was on the phone with usually once, sometimes twice a year with various matters. And a very well-known, both in our denomination, but especially in inter-church relations, a tireless traveler and ambassador of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church around the world. with deep connections in countries and to denominations. Again, I could list, some in particular, his connections to New Zealand were, the Reformed churches of New Zealand were profound, but really anywhere you went to a Reformed, an evangelical Reformed and confessional denomination, the OPC had been there, they would know Jack Sawyer. Yeah, he was, he suddenly, passed away and Dr. Curta was able to speak to the assembly about his very faithful labors to our Lord in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and we were able to receive that report with gratitude to God and prayers for his family. His passing together with David Haney's passing were, again, for our assembly, two faithful servants of the church taken in one year was a weighty matter for us. Really, actually, within one week, it seems like Mr. Haney passed into glory shortly after Pastor Sawyer did back in August of 19. So that was again a matter for reflection for us. Thanks to the Lord for their labors in the Lord and reflection on the brevity of life. And I think CIR also was dealing with an issue in the ICRC regarding the reformed churches in the Netherlands, a denomination which is a member denomination of ICRC, which recently begun, or within the last couple of years anyway, to ordain women into office against the counter-council of other churches in ICRC. How did the OPC assembly deal with that this year? Yes, that would in particular be the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands liberated. Yeah, that's right, because there's a couple varieties. A number of varieties. The Scottish tradition of Presbyterianism and the Dutch Reformed traditions perhaps rival each other in their ability to form various streams. We have nothing on the Baptists. various streams but in the netherlands it is the same uh the corresponding denomination here would be the canadian and american reformed churches uh the the name perhaps uh that you you all might know listening is a claus gilder is the uh central figure in the formation of that denomination and that the history of that church dating back to the 1940s a division from the um uh Christian Reformed Church of well, actually the Technical name is the GKN the former GKN in the Netherlands divided in the 40s Because of some controversy around the ministry of Klaus Skilder a man whose writings are very useful and helpful, but not to get into all of that that denomination since has I Taken up the matter of the ordination of women has commended it to the churches has made a decision to begin ordaining women into office and the churches of the ICRC have Definitely counseled against that and the OPC in particular. We have a long-standing relationship with this denomination and It was a sober thing for the Assembly to direct our representatives of our committee to go to the ICRC and put forward a motion to terminate the membership of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands liberated from the ICRC. That is a weighty matter and I remember a personal note here while Dr. Curdo was was dealing rather heavily with this issue and even going to the Netherlands to plead with the brothers there. not to engage in this course of action, to give the counter counsel, as it were, on behalf of CEIR of the OPC. I was in class with him, and so I think we missed a day of class that semester so he could go to the Netherlands, and he asked us to pray, and he brought back a sad report of how the council was really largely brushed aside and rejected. And so, you know, we place our trust in the Lord in these difficult matters of polity and what we would regard as poor and unbiblical thinking and decision-making in expressions of Christ's church around the world. Now, moving on from that, the OPC Committee of the Historian had a momentous occasion this year. This committee is tasked with preserving the historical record of the denomination, and especially for a small, tight-knit group, you all are very good about publishing fine reports and historical records of what is going on in the life of your church. And this year, something significant in the history of the historian took place. There was a changing of the guard. Am I right? Yes. John Meather of Alvedo, Florida has ably served for 20 years, two decades. And when I heard that number at the assembly, I mean, I knew that was true. When I began my ministry in the OPC, let me think, he'd been historian for five or six years, and suddenly it's 20. John has tirelessly poured himself into this work, and that preservation of the history of the church is something really taken seriously by our historian, the Committee for the Historian. His books that he's co-authored with D.G. Hart, they're very well written, full of great information. They don't, I mean, they do not, you know, fall into hagiography by any stretch of the imagination. And they're just good history accessible to the average reader. And I commend them to our listeners. We read them here at the seminary, part of our Presbyterian Church history class. Yeah, I mean the uh fighting the good fight. Yep um is uh, one of those great volumes the That kind of work is very important for a denomination and to do it. Well it to do it without Getting into hagiography, but at the same time commending and preserving the very best and I mean, it's it's it's uh It's a kind of work that just it's the continuation of the narrative of Christ's works in history through his church and it's an important work and that history needs to be preserved. So after John comes Camden Busey. Dr. Busey is known to many through the Reformed Forum and also a dear friend and brother in the Lord and Known here also around here Delivered a lecture. I think last year the inaugural it might be two years now because I don't think we did it in 2020 It was in 2019 the inaugural Jerry Crick lecture on apologetics. It was excellent. He was treating particularly of Van Til's use of common notions and, you know, the relation between that and natural theology, so to speak, and general revelation, these kinds of themes. It was a really good lecture, very helpful to our students, helpful to me. And Dr. Busey's a friend. He's a fixture at our conferences now. He comes and sets up a Reform Forum booth and a frequent contributor to our journal, the Confessional Presbyterian, which is ours now. And he's also on the board of Mid-America Reform Seminary, a sister school with whom we have much affinity and in high regard. So I was excited to see a familiar name stepping into the work. And John Meather was immediately elected to the committee. And so now, though he's no longer the historian, he's emeritus, I suppose, he's serving on the committee, I'm sure helping Dr. Busey get settled in. What it comes down to, he's got big shoes to fill. He really does. But a big opportunity. A big opportunity, and I think the Lord's equipped him to do it, and I'm thankful to have him doing that work. Well, we have a couple more issues here to bring up, and this is where we're getting kind of into the nitty-gritty. There were two special committees that reported on Friday evening of July 9th to the Assembly. Both committees were heard and tasked with continuing their respective work for another year. Now, whereas the First Committee is involved with a sensitive matter of serious contention in the Presbytery of the Dakota is something I really don't want to get into, the Second Committee is involved in a task it was given way back in the 85th GA in 2018. And my understanding of the mandate here for the Second Committee is to propose specific linguistic changes to the doctrinal standards of the OPC. I've discussed this at length in the past on this podcast with jim stevenson And I think brad peppo and I talked about it a couple years ago But what can you tell us about this project in particular by way of updates that committee report was uh, fairly fairly brief, uh, the the committee had done some some representative work and presented uh suggested changes The report was more of a communication a communication update on the work how it was going What kind of work the committee was doing an invitation? for ministers to review Ministers and elders to review and think about and even the committee's open to correspondence There was no specific action taken and the work of the committee continues on it is it definitely is It's a project I have mixed feelings about as a presbyter and then a delegate, a commissioner to the assembly. And I, I know, and many others are watching it closely. Inevitably, language changes over time. And we need to recognize that. And there's something good about this. Some of the implications of making those changes are very significant. And the question how to do that well Particularly with a document that not only represents our confession but a broader confession of Presbyterianism It's not a small question the doctrinal or doctrinal fidelity Is a big question how to make changes and then the implications of changing a document that's that is really an ecumenical document are all still in my mind. The men on the committee, I think, understand those things and are working hard with all those things in mind. I'm thankful for the care of the OPC in how we do things, but I'm sure that that remains a weighty project and something that the Assembly will carefully review in the coming years. I think those of us in other denominations, particularly, that have a form of the Westminster Standards, one form or another, we are all keenly interested to see what the OPC does with this. Because it will certainly, if any changes are adopted, it will certainly affect, you know, how we frame vows when ministers transfer and the like, as we've already discussed. Really, the big bombshell thing from the OPC assembly this year was a de novo motion. That means it's a motion that came kind of, not out of the blue, but just didn't have a clear place to fit into the docket as adopted at the beginning of the assembly. It was a motion to invite a parachurch organization called Grace to come in as a contractor, if you will, of the denomination to investigate or examine, inspect the denomination's practices regarding the sensitive matter of abuse, allegations, instances of abuse, pastoral and otherwise, and how the denomination can best serve the sheep in these very delicate and difficult situations. You know, I know this is a difficult thing to even talk about because it was met with some contention on the floor, but can you walk us through what exactly happened and what the fallout of this is or what the ramifications of what happened may be for the OPC? Yeah, sure. I mean, this is a topic you can't help but read about. Everywhere Southern Baptist Convention and then the last 20 years of kind of the public history of the Roman Catholic Church We have a study committee right now in the PCA that was just renewed for a second year studying this very issue particularly on domestic abuse. Yeah, there's I think we would be very wrong as the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ not to think carefully about these categories and ask ourselves hard questions. Have we been doing well before the Lord to care for those who find themselves in terribly difficult situations? in their homes, the place where the love of Christ is supposed to reign in marriage and family and relationship between husband and wife and parents and children. And when that's broken and the aftermath of such, of serious sins behind the closed doors of a home, This would be a good moment to learn. I myself am reading a number of books on the topic. I'm reading When Home Hurts from Christian Focus. I'm actually just last night ordered Mez McConnell's book, The Creaking on the Stairs, and I haven't read it yet. But I'm devoting a good bit of my time this year to reading on the topic. And by ministry, I've seen sadness. And it's an issue that's near and dear to my heart. Our Presbytery has had to deal with some hard cases. And I think we've dealt with them firmly, but could we learn from how we dealt with them? Could we do better? I think so. Could the whole church have that conversation? I think so. And I think the motion that was made on the floor, and I know a number of the people who were concerned and supported that motion, I share a lot of those concerns. Let me get to the second part of my answer to your question. the wrong organization. I'm even concerned that in a prestigious denomination it's just the wrong thing to do. We had some debate on whether or not to hire this organization, whether or not the de novo motion was in order. And that had to do with the technicalities of how to put a docket together. And there was a substitute motion to have a committee on the investigation. I can't remember what it was, but on the more general topic of abuse. The General Assembly voted those things down. I hope not for any reason, and I have no reason to think for any reason that it's not concerned about these categories. The question is, how do we do it best as a church? I'll say a little bit more. I had a concern. I didn't say too much on the floor of the Assembly. I was ready to if we moved ahead with the Grace Organization. There's people in that organization who have done very good things to expose real problems of abuse in Christian organizations that are heinous and shameful for the church. Cover-ups and sins and just very bad ways of dealing with things. At the end of the day, however, it's an organization that has deep ties to liberal mainline Christianity. And I'm concerned about their views of human sexuality. Boaz Trevijan, I'm not telling you anything that he doesn't post on Twitter, is an open supporter of the LGBT movement, and I'm deeply concerned that in a denomination that's spent the last 80 some odd years carrying on the tradition of Machen to push against liberalism, I'm not terribly interested in those who don't share my convictions on human sexuality investigating a denomination on questions that pertain to human sexuality. I think The impulse Helpful the organization chosen in the first motion deeply unhelpful, and I hope we never do such a thing Should we have these bigger conversations about the topic? Yes, I'd be strongly supportive of that and I'll say one more thing. It's the things that even evangelical churches have Not dealt with well are one reason to deal with this topic and a pressing reason. There's a second reason. In my ministry, every week more and more, people who walk in through the doors have been abused, have never seen an intact marriage or home, have been physically abused, have been sexually abused in relationships or by family members. And as the concept of home and family unravel, our ministries are going to have more and more need to be equipped to deal with these categories faithfully, biblically, and as a reflection of the good shepherd of the sheep, Jesus Christ. These are massive issues in our culture, and they're startling. I grew up in an urban working class environment, densely populated, tons of broken households around me, in a broken household myself, and yet I'm still surprised by things I hear, both as a pastor and as a seminary student in the past, and as a friend of pastors and elders. Not that we go around gossiping or anything, but, you know, we seek each other's counsel without names being named. And I frequently leave conversations with my heart broken over what Christ's dear sheep are suffering at the hands of those who claim to be Christians and those, you know, who sneak into the church otherwise and into the home otherwise. Yeah, and I'd say one more thing, particularly a burden on my heart is, God forbid we tolerate such sins amongst those who are ordained to represent the Lord Jesus Christ. This is, I think, a great betrayal. And it's happened far too often. And I don't think, our denomination is, we definitely ought not to be allergic to asking ourselves hard questions. And if we are, there's a problem. And not just asking questions, but how can we better serve Christ's church and lift up his name? In a increasingly broken world, the church ought to be a refuge for Christ's sheep. Absolutely. And at the same time, the church can't engage in the problematic discourse of the world compromising to sexual deviancy, and certainly the church cannot be a cancel culture mill either. And so there's, is there a fine line or is there a big line? I don't know, but it's something navigating this issue takes a great deal of wisdom. But you know, the hope is, and I come back to this all the time in my life, in my ministry, James chapter 1 verses 5 and 6, if any would desire wisdom, ask of it from the Lord and you will receive it. What a glorious promise. And you'll receive it liberally without reproach. Yeah, he will pour it down in abundance. Does that mean we're gonna be perfect and we're gonna handle every situation perfectly if we pray? No, not necessarily, but God has made a promise to us. And when we go to him, we take heaven by storm and you plead with him and you argue even and say, Lord, you promised me wisdom for these issues, to be a pastor, an elder, a faithful church member. Please grant me this wisdom, because I don't know what to do. Yeah, this is definitely a big issue. I think it's timely. It's right for the church to consider. I want to be careful we do it the right way. Yeah, of course. Again, I can go back to my local ministry. The heartaches that I've seen in 13 years inside homes where the name of Christ was professed Our Romana, Romana Heartbreaking Reality. I just mentioned the book When Home Hurts. It was given to me by a woman in our church who suggested I read it and very, very, so far very helpful and practical book. Yeah, if this issue comes around again in our denomination, our general assembly in another way, I think we could do well to help the church serve the sheep better. Another sensitive issue, because why not? How, if at all, is the OPC dealing with COVID at the national level? Were there any motions brought to the floor this year, overtures brought to the floor for the denomination as such to take any particular actions in response to COVID? Yeah, so there was an overture for the Presidio of the Southeast. And that overture engendered a little, probably a little spirited debate. It was an overture if I were to summarize it encouraging the church to continue on particularly in her public worship and with the central action was to call for a day of prayer and fasting, denomination-wide day of prayer and fasting. It was on the floor of the assembly. When it came out of the advisory committee, the advice was that we essentially not take up the overture, and I was making a speech asking that we would. I believe that what happened in 2020 and what we're still going through is unprecedented. Now, it's not unprecedented in terms of the degree of sickness. There's been the bubonic plague in Europe, and there's been other periods where there's been far greater sicknesses. But I can't help but think of what happened in April of last year. Almost globally, the public worship of God was almost entirely halted for weeks. At the same time. At the same time, the whole world I wrote an article on Reformation 21 titled COVID-19 Repentance. I've been reflecting on, this is an act of our Lord Jesus from the throne. The Lord's Supper not being served, the public gathering of the saints and the preaching of the word. And you can't help but think about this in the sweep of history. I think it was right to call for a day of prayer and fasting and be reminded that when Christ acts in history and in a way that humbles us, this is a serious sickness. It's a sickness that has affected many people that I know. We've had some of our families in our congregation have lost family members, not in our church, but outside of our congregation. It's sobering. God's brought us up to face our mortality as the world. The OPC canceled its assembly in 2019, just out of an abundance of caution, and the churches across the nation. In 2020. Sorry, 2020, yeah, 2020. Because of COVID-19. Because of COVID, yeah. And the churches across the, our presbyteries and churches across the nation did different things in different jurisdictions, probably like every other denomination. I think there's some sensitivity about that still in the church, who did what was right. And some of that probably came up on the floor of our General Assembly. I was happy to see that we maintained a day of prayer and fasting. I think it's the right thing to do. But the overture itself, as it was presented, was tabled indefinitely. So it wasn't voted down, but it wasn't voted up. Well, it was a little bit more complicated. The committee made a recommendation, yes, to not take it up, but then later in the assembly came back around to call for a day of prayer and fasting, and I think that was good. And that was the thing I thought without getting into the weeds of how best in every jurisdiction to respond to COVID. That's a question that presbyteries and local congregations had to wrestle with. And it's hard for me to, I have a brother who's a, administer in another country where the lockdown rules are quite profound and there's a lot of question about where's the limit of government power and these questions are profound and they're important, but they're also difficult jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And I think there's something about the assembly being careful about that, that was good. But I was very happy with a day of prayer and fasting. Now, it's my practice on these podcasts not to discuss in any significant detail matters pertaining to judicial cases, appeals and complaints, namely. But as we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, there were 13 such matters that came before the assembly this year, which is a massive number. Are there any general comments you think would be helpful for our listeners to consider since these things were such a present and time-consuming part of this year's assembly? Yeah, they weren't just present and time consuming. Some of them were pretty public. And that reality is what it is. There were matters from the Presidio of the Northwest, the Presidio of the Dakotas, Presidio of the Southeast. And, you know, overall, the Assembly did its work carefully, judiciously. And with a very good spirit. And I was grateful to God for that. I don't want to really get into all the details of all of them. It's more complicated. If we did do that kind of thing, it would warrant another episode. But I've said to other podcasters about this kind of stuff, it's just not advisable to do this. It's not the best medium. And it's a distraction from really the purpose of the debriefs. Yeah, you can't really do it. And the other thing is that you have to be careful. The Assembly, together, prayerfully, led by word and spirit, made some decisions, hard decisions on hard cases. And I'm thankful for the good work that was put in and the maintaining of the unity of the Church. The way the Orthodox Presbyterian Church does these things is very deliberate and careful. And there's a lot of good men that put in a lot of hard work. So I'm very grateful to God for our denomination and pray that God would continue to help us grow in that area. Well, let's end on a high note. Not that that wasn't a high note. That was actually as high a note as I think you could hit on that kind of issue. But what was the single most encouraging takeaway from General Assembly for you? It could be something that we've mentioned already, or it can be something else entirely. You know, frequently what I hear from guys is the fellowship of the Saints, is being with brothers, meeting like-minded brothers from across the OPC who maybe perhaps you haven't met before. Some of our graduates who were there on behalf of your presbytery told me, man, they were just so encouraged to meet brothers from out West whom they've never met before and make those connections. You know, I've been encouraged in general by our discussion today about your assembly's work and, you know, the modest but stable growth of the OPC in trying times and the continuing advance of the gospel at home and abroad. Anything else that you might want to throw out there for our listeners' consideration? So it's hard to pick one thing. I mean, who doesn't enjoy fellowship at General Assembly? Even if there's one thing that our assembly has, particularly because it's smaller, we have fellowship times built in in the evenings. The president of Dort College, who has his residence just on the edge of campus and a great backyard and a big fire pit, I mean, every night we debated during the day and sometimes not always on the same side of the question. And in the evening, we were able to fellowship, talk, encourage one another in the Lord. And there is a good spirit in the denomination. I'm thankful to God for that. The OPC General Assemblies for me have always been encouraging. This one for me in particular was, and personally, was a little more hard work representing the Presbytery of the Southeast. But even in that, I never come away from an assembly without, by God's grace, more friends. and more encouragements in the Lord to keep preaching Christ and Him crucified. There is a sense of holy fellowship, and we're doing holy things, and we're doing it for the best of causes, Christ and His kingdom. And yeah, I count it an honor to go, and pray that if God calls me again, I'd both be able to serve well and enjoy all those good blessings. Peter, as always, it is a pleasure to spend time with you, and this conversation has been instructive for me and just enjoyable as I plow through my denominational debrief series this year. I think I have one more that I absolutely must need to get done, and then I'll be able to roll into some more of my regular programming. Thank you so much for coming into the studio today. Zach, grateful to be able to do it and to tell you a little bit about the church that Christ has called me to serve in, and also grateful for the continuing ministry of Greenville Seminary. So may God receive the glory. Thank you for listening to this edition of Confessing Our Hope, the podcast of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. To help ensure that we can continue to produce content from a Reformed and Confessional Presbyterian perspective, please consider making a gift of support in any amount at gpts.edu. For more information about Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, please visit gpts.edu.