Let's pray as we get started here today. Lord, we thank you for another Lord's Day. Thank you for the privilege of having one day in seven where we can have a vacation as it were, a day of rest. And we pray that you would strengthen us to rest even this day. We thank you also that we have the privilege of meeting as your people to worship and to fellowship partake of the means of grace, and we pray for your blessings in this way today. We pray as we review the events of General Assembly, that you would help us in our understanding of broader things in our denomination, and that you would keep us informed and so on. We pray all these things then in Jesus' name, amen. All right, just a few things here as we begin. Of course, they give us a packet of all kinds of things, so I'm going to put some of them in the back here. Some of them I don't think are all that necessary, but they tell like this one's coming to college, and this one here was the bulletin we used for the three worship services. and this is M&A and this is RTS and anyway this one is you can scan it and there's a free parenting course on gender and sexuality this is Harvest USA so there's just a variety of things that we can look at here's the normal MTW magazine and this is the Basically the overall booklet that they give to us at the beginning So it tells you when things were the docket is in here now it changes a little bit During the week, but where things are the different seminars. So anyway, you can take a little bit Look at these things Now the As for the assembly itself Just to remind some of you and maybe inform others that this year was at Richmond, Virginia, and there were probably close to 3,500 people there altogether for the first worship service. That's always the biggest one. There were around 2,100 delegates. So it was one of the largest. I think I heard it was the third largest that we've had before. And the encouraging thing about that is it's more of the conservative element, smaller church, more ruling elders, some of those kind of things that are contributing to that. And of course, a few years ago with the whole gender issue, that kind of got people to come out of the woodwork, so to speak. So that's been good. So our numbers have been, you might remember I've said before, typically the votes are about 60-40, liberal to conservative, especially on hot button issues. Now it's closer to 50-50, depending on the issue. It's even more conservative to liberal. So that's helpful in terms of some of the votes. So just to, again, as a reminder for some and maybe new for others, we, the basic program for the week is beginning on Monday and then also Tuesday the permanent committees of the PCA meet and they share basically what's happened over the past year with a what we call committee of commissioners and then there's also some different votes and so on that they want those committee of commissioners to vote on for the forthcoming year and so on. So just to run down them here briefly, we have the Committee of Constitutional Business, so that one's a little bit different because basically it meets to review any overtures to see if they're consistent with the Constitution of the PCA. Then we have the Administrative Committee and the Committee on I never get this right. Cooperative Committee, Cooperative Ministries Committee, which is basically a committee to help all the other committees get along and communicate. So, you know, typical bureaucracy. Then you have the committee of... The Discipleship Ministries, this used to be Great Commission, now Great Commission is, the publication is under this broader committee. You have Mission to North America, which primarily has to do with church planting and any helps like disaster relief and so forth. Then we have MTW, Mission to the World, RUF, which is Reformed University Fellowship, our campus ministry. IRC, which is Inter-Church Relations Committee, so here primarily it's relating to the churches of Napark, but it also, they relate to other denominations that aren't necessarily Reformed. You have Covenant College, you have Covenant Theological Seminary. There is the PCA Foundation, which has to do with basically investments for the denomination. Then you have the Geneva Committee, which used to be... what was it? I'm drawing a blank. Anyway, it has to do with health care and life insurance and some of those things. Then there's Ridgehaven, which is the youth camp. And then you also have the Standing Judicial Commission, which is more or less the Supreme Court of the PCA. Then we also have the Theological Examining Committee and the Nomination Committee. And those, basically you nominate people to these ones that I've just listed. And then they're examined to see if they pass, more or less. So on Monday and Tuesday, each one of these committees meets and reports on what's happened, like I mentioned, and anticipating things to come. And then we have the committee of commissioners. And so you can have two commissioners from every presbytery. And there are, I believe, it's 88 presbyteries. and they can come and they will hear these reports and then they vote on any changes that the permanent committee wants to do. Then they bring those recommendations to the floor of General Assembly and the whole assembly votes on those things. Now when it comes to the permanent committees, I'm not exaggerating. I bet you it's 99.9% of the time everything is rubber-stamped. So whatever the permanent committee wants to do, the committee of commissioners votes almost unanimously, occasionally having an abstention or something, and then when it comes to the floor of the General Assembly, it's usually just a voice vote, pretty straightforward. As I've mentioned on other occasions, In my view, because we only see one General Assembly and Acts, I'm of the view that we should not meet every year, but only when necessary. And I also think because the locus of authority in the New Testament is in the presbytery and the local church level, that We shouldn't have permanent committees and agencies. Other than the administrative committee, I think that one is justified biblically. But I am very much in the minority here, so. But anyway, so just a brief overview in that way. And so then the things that the assembly starts officially on Tuesday evening with the worship service, and we have communion and such. And then we spend usually two hours or so after that doing some initial things. And one of the main things that we do on Tuesday night is we nominate and then vote on a moderator for the general assembly meetings. And they always go back and forth, teaching elder one year, ruling elder the next year. Last year was teaching elder. This year is ruling elder. And almost always, I'm not sure I can remember a time where it hasn't been the case, that two or sometimes three men are put forward in this. And then, of course, we vote on them and so on. Well, this year only one person was put forth, which I found a bit odd, and no one seemed to know why. I asked a few people why I thought that would be the situation, and I don't know. It was a very benign General Assembly, so maybe they didn't think it was all that important. Maybe it's because the guy who did it last year did such a good job that people were a bit hesitant to put their name in the hat. I don't know, but it was one guy, and he did okay. Not as good as last year, but there was this rather comical competition on who would be done first, the guy last year or the guy this year. Because we didn't have that much to cover this year. We could easily have met next year instead. But anyway, so there were a lot of jokes to that end, which alleviated some tension at times. All right, so that's the first main thing we do. And then we hear reports from the administration committee and so on. And then we vote on the BCO changes. You might remember, as I've said before, Presbyteries, or sometimes sessions, bring overtures to the General Assembly, and first the committee reviews it, and then if it passes and such, it comes to the General Assembly, and it's then voted on. And if it passes, it then goes to all the presbyteries, and every presbytery votes on it. And if we reach a certain threshold of two-thirds of the presbyteries agreeing to it, then it comes back to the General Assembly to vote on it the next year. So we had three of those to vote on this year. And you may recall, find my spot here again, you may recall I mentioned this last year, The one was this, it's to amend the BCO chapter seven, paragraph three, to add this statement. Furthermore, unordained people shall not be referred to as, or given the titles of, the ordained offices of pastor, elder, or deacon. Now, again, this went through the presbyteries. It passed, so it came back for a vote here. And we talked about it for a while. It did pass, but not without some debate. Some of you may be aware that the Southern Baptists met the same week that we did. And there was something called the Law Amendment that was up for vote in the Southern Baptists. And it's similar to this, but it's more than this, because you do actually have lady pastors or elders in the Southern Baptist denomination. And so the law amendment was to basically eliminate that, not just the titles, but actually the function. And it did not pass. It needed 67%. I think they got 62% or something like that. But they did. I don't know what term they used, but more or less excommunicated a church where they had a lady pastor. I think it was in Florida. I'm sure you've heard about the one in Saddleback out in California where they kicked that out of the denomination, what was it, a couple years ago or something like that. So anyway, it's a similar idea, and it has to do with two things. It has to do with some of the gender things that we have in our culture, and it has to do with, of course, women in leadership and that issue. And even though the Southern Baptist passed a pretty, can you say, hardline statement about women in ministry a number of years ago, it might even be 20 years ago or something, There's still been a number of churches where the women have become leaders in some way. So it was a similar point. And the OPC addressed this issue, I think it was last year. And so for us in the PCA, you do have some churches that are pushing for women to be deacons. And so some of them are actually set apart. They're given the official name of deacon or deaconess. And so on. And these typically, it was interesting, you know, I was sitting with Luke Bloom, and at one point in this conversation, every person that spoke against this was from a metro area. So the big churches in big cities are the ones that are really pushing for women in leadership. in an official way, and one guy actually got up and advocated for women as deacons, not just the title. So anyway, that's part of the debate in the denomination. Now, we still officially say you cannot have women as elders or deacons, but what's that? They're not ordained, but they are given these terms by these churches and there's some kind of ceremony that goes along with it. So it's like, it's kind of like a Baptist church. You do everything except put the water on the baby. So it's a similar thing here. They do everything except actually lay on hands and ordain the woman in these churches. This is why it came up. And it did pass. I didn't get the number. It was relatively close. All we needed was a majority on this particular vote. But I didn't get the number. We were having trouble with our clicker voter things for a while. And mine wasn't working right. So I didn't get this number down. But it did pass to include this. you know, I can't say to Miss Susan over here, you know, that you're a deaconess, or something to that effect. Or maybe more appropriately, I can't say to Paula Shawl that she is a deaconess. Okay? Now, maybe in a general sense, she's the wife of a deacon, but you have to be careful with the terminology. This then brought up, I believe it was the next day, a protest. And so the guy stood up and said, I want to protest the vote that was taken, and so on and so forth. And then we spent all this time talking about the protest and whether or not it was appropriate. And then, should we respond to the protest or not? And it took, I think, a couple hours to work through all that. And one of the reasons that was given for the protest is that the Korean churches very commonly use the terminology of elder, especially for older people. So, you know, like Elder Dale, not in an official sense, but you're an older person, right? So, well, hey, you're older than me, so. And so they use it in this cultural, respectful kind of way. And so the argument was, well, if we say we can't use this terminology, it's going to impact the Korean community, and we don't want to be offensive, and yada, yada. And during that conversation, I thought, boy, it sure sounds like a lot of woke talk going on here. the way they would say things and word things. I'm like, are we in, you know, are we at Harvard or Columbia or something hearing all these? Yeah. So the guy, one of the guys in Luke's Presbytery is from China. And he is now ministering in a church in Duluth, Minnesota. And he made two comments. He said the OPC passed this last year and it hasn't proven to be a problem. The Korean churches have just adjusted in the OPC. Now, granted, there are less of them in the OPC. And the other point is, that he made was not all Korean cultural communities do it this way. So it does affect some, but not everyone. And in his view, from someone that's culturally close to the Korean community, he's like, I don't see why this is a big deal. But anyway, the protest was allowed, and people signed their names and so forth, but it didn't change the vote. So the vote again was to say, let's be very careful about the terms that we use. And it's not just so that we're using the right term, but because people are using terms as a backhanded way of more or less ordaining women, especially as deacons. So if we were in a church that had a children's pastor, and it was a woman who was the children's pastor, we would have to change the term to children's coordinator or something like that. Now, in one sense, you're like, what's the big deal? The problem is, and I was actually talking to Jeremy last night at this graduation party, and he said, what bothers me is people get all upset about this issue. And he's like, but if they weren't pushing the limits, we wouldn't have to do this. And so the progressive people get all upset, and yet they're the ones forcing us to take a stand in this way. So anyway, this was probably the, there were three lengthy discussions, and this was one of the three. So anyway, do you have any questions or comments to this effect? Yeah, Dale. Elder with lowercase e, right? How does he enforce? I mean, if a congregation of... I know that the General Assembly said... Do we want to honor them in any way, this way? Does somebody have to report them, or is it a tagline, or whatever? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, our rules of discipline start with the complaint. So yes, it's kind of like tattling. And then. Right. Right. Yeah. So that's how it would be enforced. Yeah. So it started on that level. Maybe people in the church or in the presbytery would respond to it initially. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And those who are really trying to get around it are not going to put it in their minutes. They're going to word it differently. So, yeah. But, I mean, this is what you have in a free society. You know, people can get around the rules. But again, the point here is to encourage what we believe God's word teaches. It's not that women are incapable or inferior, but God wants men in leadership. And so that's what we're trying to uphold. And again, because of the rise in conservatives coming to General Assembly, something like this, can pass, and so forth. And the progressive voice isn't as loud, you might say. So, yes, Susan. I think it's something that you often emphasize in a sermon is that God's not in our salvation and everything. It's not so much the outward, I'm calling this religious or ecclesiastical, but it's in the heart, the attitude, You've enabled us to see how born as you are. You've enabled us to see that your way is the right way, and really the way that brings blessing, and that our whole culture restrains evil, and it allows the blessing of the good. So like, say, starting with the male and female roles that God established, the husband and wife, male and female, corporately to be reflecting God's image. And so there's parts where the man is showing God's protection, provision, et cetera, and the woman is showing the church's role in responding, in being respecting and accepting that worship, and then being a helper to the end goal. And then God has that all designed to work out to bless us and make the culture better And it just seems generationally, we shift a little bit. And then we shift a little bit the next generation. And then finally, we just put a lot of portions, except we put them in shifts more and shifts more. And eventually, now it's all gendered. And I think we're thankful that our personagery is working to keep these standards. And it's explained that, look, it does matter. But then the point that you go off and bring up is it puts on us all more for our hearts to really be aching and hungry. Lord, please restore in the heart the attitudes. Not just our rules, but in our nation, within the church. Me, within myself, as a woman, I would take it more serious that it does matter. And while we're teaching the next generation by what we let Well, and that's my view on this whole thing. On the one hand, I'm like, why do we need this? I mean, if you really want to push the limits, then go to the EPC or somewhere else that allows for women in leadership. Why stay in the PCA? Because really, it's a heart issue, a theological issue, and so forth. But, because we have people who'd rather stay in the PCA and are pushing it, I'm not opposed to this, because I think it's become somewhat necessary. So, yeah, anyway, this was one of the matters that was addressed. The other BCO change that we had to vote on had to do with, you might remember in the last few years people have been trying to add to the requirements for leaders in the church a statement some way addressing the issue of the gender issues and the gay Christian, the side B issues, revoice and so forth. And you might recall that in the past, some of these overtures were very specific, specifically saying, identifying as a gay Christian or something to that effect. And in each of those occurrences, it did not pass. People didn't want to be that specific for various reasons, I'm sure. But this one did pass. nearly unanimously, and so the language is basically this, he should conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in his description of himself, and in his convictions, character, and conduct. So it's general enough to apply not only to the gay Christian issue, but even some other things. So whether it be some other cultural issue, you know, even sins of pornography or obesity or, you know, a variety of other things can be subsumed under this issue. So that's, I think, why it was so unanimously approved, because of the generality of it so it could be more broad, but I think for some people it's also back to your heart issue, maybe we can get around this rule too, if it's not specifically stated about Side B Christianity and so on. So, and just maybe to refresh your memory, if you don't remember Side B is the idea that you can be a Christian, you can identify as gay, as long as you don't practice it. As a denomination, we have concluded, no, you can't identify according to a particular sin, even if you don't act on that sin. Because the desire for same-sex things is in itself sinful. You can't say it's neutral or even good. So, this vote here was really the culmination of at least five or six years of working through this. and not just from last year. So that was the other one. Yes, there. Yeah, this is in BCO 8 and 9 to the officers. qualifications, more or less. So he should conform to the biblical requirement of chastity and sexual purity in his description of himself and in his convictions, character, and conduct. So it's still focusing on the sexual things, but again, it's general enough that you can expand beyond that. Who are we listening to the other day? Weston? Preston Sprinkle, yes. And he said that Being a gay Christian, being attracted to the same sex, is not inherently wrong. As long as you don't act on it. That kind of expresses out what my thoughts are, even for myself and I think all of us as Christians. We need to have this really on our hearts, that this is something to really be praying for, because what is coming out of me, that only God can roll in the heart at the level that he can divide this lot from that lot. I can't think how it is for a church to divide us. Yeah. Joints and marrow in touch. Yeah. Absolutely. But he can, and he has to have history done where culture has gotten like ours is. And yet, he has worked by his spirit's power to start putting this on people's hearts of, you know, more play in the skin. Well, if I can find it this way, then it's not really. And we do that, you know. So I didn't really tell why. I was just a little bit. That's in our father nature. But God is the one that can actually cut through all the excuses and justifications and really grab our hearts and say, no, that's not what my Lord says. This is what my Lord says. And bring our, turn our, within the church and within our society around. But I think it's important to be taking the stand you're taking as an outward measure Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm looking at the time, and I have a fair amount more to cover, so let me try to bring it to somewhat of a conclusion here in the next ten minutes. There was one more vote for us to do from last year that went to the Presbyteries, and that was just a rule of discipline, BCO thing. It's, you know, it's getting in the weeds that I'm not sure is all that important for us to talk about, but there was one more. And then we had another rather lengthy discussion on the review of Presbytery records. We give our minutes to the Presbytery to review, And it's more or less a checks and balance to see if we're doing things correctly according to the rules that we have and our theological views and so forth. So views and practice. Well, we do it on the same level at the General Assembly. There's a committee that reviews the presbytery minutes. And this has become a... In my view anyway, a rather hot-button matter that I do not recall being such a hot-button issue, because 20 years ago approximately we made a decision as a denomination not to be a strict subscription or whatever term you want to use there, because people use different terminology, We would not be such as a denomination. And what this means is, when you read the Westminster Confession, are you agreeing to all of it except for maybe a few things, or are you agreeing to the general teaching of it? Well, the vote that was made back then was, well, yes, we need to abide by the Confession, but we are going to allow for exceptions. And this is where striking at the vitals language came from, and so forth. And the point is, instead of having a uniform standard, more or less, from the General Assembly level down, similar to Acts 15, here's the rule. Gentiles are included. All they have to do is believe in Jesus. We want to encourage them to stay away from blood and sexual morality. This is the universal standard that applies to all churches. We did not do that as a General Assembly. As a denomination, roughly 20 years ago, we put the locus of authority on the presbytery level. Now, in my view, because of that, the review of presbytery records became more important. And so the second longest thing, second of three, I don't know the exact minutes, but the second of three of the longest things that we covered was this. And we, I don't know if it was two hours, but we spent a fair amount of time reviewing this. And one of the things that adds to the challenge is that normally you vote yes, no, or send it back to the committee. But when you're doing the review of presbytery records, you can make motions to amend things. And this can take a long time when you're on the floor of general assembly. And so that's part of it. But what happens is you have some people who want to maintain the presbytery, I don't know if autonomy is the right word, But the locus of authority on the presbytery level, yes, some people would try to maintain that, and any creep from the General Assembly to try to control what they're doing is, right, we can't let that happen. Because, again, some of these metro presbyteries that are pushing the envelope on some of these progressive ideas, right, they don't want the oversight. but then you have the other way around you have people who say I didn't like that vote I want to maintain this this top-down standard and so if there's any objection on the press trade level in the review then we need to side with the General Assembly so you kind of have this push and pull on this issue and That's how I see it anyway, and so we had some of that going on, and there wasn't really anything to point out in particular. But you might remember me saying 20 years ago when that vote happened that the very next thing that was addressed in General Assembly was a presbytery that allowed someone to become a pastor or transferred in or whatever it was and he had some rather bizarre views on the Trinity. And well, we now said the Presbytery is the one to deal with it, rather than General Assembly. And I mean, that's a fundamental issue. It's not something that's not quite so significant. So there's this push and pull. There's more of a desire to control things through the review of presbytery records. So hopefully I made some sense in explaining that. But I've just seen this become more and more a time element in our assembly. And I think it's for these reasons. So just to mention it in general, not necessarily bringing out anything specific from it. But do you have any comments or questions? All right, let me. Well, yeah, there's some of that. But the Constitution is our primary universal authority. right and that's yeah yeah well not I think I'll leave that for next time so but let me let me bring this point in You know, on Monday and Tuesday, they have various seminars that you can go to. And they have, I don't know, whatever it is, 50 different ones that you can go to. And then they usually have one that has to do with the whole General Assembly can go to one particular seminar. But then you often have other groups meeting, sometimes for a lunch or a dinner, sometimes even during General Assembly. And I usually don't go to those because of that. But I did decide to go to one, it's called the Tanglewood Group, because Rosaria Butterfield was speaking there, and Rob, I'm not sure how to pronounce this, Pacienza, he's the pastor at Coral Ridge now, where D. James Kennedy used to be. And so they spoke. And so I did miss a little bit of assembly because of it. One of the points that they were bringing out is, Well, let me set it up like this. Maybe some of you have seen some of the response to General Assembly here in the last week or so, and I've been hearing a lot of positive things. You know, this is great, we're returning to our roots as a denomination, and the different votes that I just talked to you about is one of the reasons why, and so forth. And so there's a lot of encouragement. We're doing well. And we've pulled back from this progressive drift and so on. And I think there's some truth to that. But one thing, maybe you heard Rosaria Butterfield spoke at Liberty University here recently. And there was this big brouhaha because she made a comment about Crewe. It used to be Campus Crusade for Christ. Now they call themselves Crewe. And John Harris was there with her. And he spoke up, because they were starting to basically attack her verbally about those comments. And he's like, oh, wait a minute. And he went through the whole curriculum that CRU now is using and showed all of these woke progressive elements in it. Yeah, because of it. Yep. Yep, yep. And Rosaria Butterfield spoke the night before at a group of about a thousand. The one that I went to was maybe a hundred. But anyway, she said some similar things in both places. But her point was one of the key, what's the right word, contributors to this curriculum is a PCA pastor in Florida. And her point is, and this Rob Paciente's point, is, OK, we've passed some of these gender things. We said revoice is wrong. Side B is wrong. That's good. But it's still out there, even in the PCA. Let's not let our guard down. My view, as I was just assessing what was going on over those few days, is that there are some encouraging things in the PCA, but I heard a lot of people saying things in a way that sounded to me like they were indoctrinated with woke thinking. They were careful with how they worded things. But I'm like, every once in a while, they would come up with a term. I remember last year, one guy was using the term binary. I'm like, why are we using that? That's what the woke people use. We need to speak differently and think differently and, of course, act differently. So anyway, you might remember I mentioned last year that for three years in a row, people wanted us to deal with the CRT matter, and nobody's wanted to do it yet as a denomination. And so here's my assessment of of General Assembly, I think there are some positive things. But I think I would describe it as an uneasy peace right now. I think on the surface, we're putting forth a good front. And there's some good things about that. Don't misunderstand me. But there are still some rumblings deep down. Because as I've taught to you before, The critical theories are a worldview. It's not just the gender issue. It's not just side B. You have the CRT issue. You have the colonialism issue. You have a variety of things. It's a worldview. It's post-modernism applied through activism and so forth. So, what I find troubling, yet, is I think people have gotten the sense, oh, we've dealt with this issue. We've squashed progressivism. And in some ways, that's true. But it's still there in other ways. And it's just more below the surface at the moment. And so you hear people talking about indigenous people. So, you know, we're in Richmond, Virginia. There's a lot of history there, right? And some people talked about, oh, we went to visit, you know, we went to Williamsburg or, you know, whatever. And you hear something about indigenous people. And I'm like, don't use their language. We need to speak differently. Just like, you know, don't say capitalism. That's their terminology. You know, use the free market. That's, you know, historically the terms that we've been using. You know, things like that. And terminology does say something about what you actually believe. So I am grateful that there are some positive things in the PCA. I think it's encouraging. I think we have stemmed the tide to some degree. But if we do not address the progressive Christianity as a denomination, It's going to take us over. It might take a generation, but it's going to happen if we don't do it. And we're seeing that in the Southern Baptists. We're seeing it, obviously, in the liberal mainline denominations. So I think it's an uneasy piece at the moment. That's my assessment. Now, I was hoping to get farther today. And so I guess we'll go ahead and do some more of it next week and talk about primarily the overtures that we addressed this year that are now going to be voted on by presbyteries and will vote on again next year. And there's quite a few of them. I didn't add them up. There's like 10 or 12 of them. So I wanted to address some of that as well next time. All right, we better quit. So if you have any questions, write it down. We'll bring it up next time. So let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your church. And we are thankful that the gates of hell will not prevail, but boy, are they active. And we pray, Lord, that you would preserve our denomination And we are thankful that the ways that even this year that you have done some of that, but we pray that it would continue and that you would preserve us. We pray for that on the presbytery level and even the local church level for our church, especially. We pray that you would be merciful in this way and keep us true to your word. not just in words, but as Sue has mentioned to us from the heart, that we would love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Lord, we pray as we come now for our worship corporately, that you would strengthen us to use the means of grace, and that you would be honored in each of these things. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.