WHY OUR REFORMED DENOMINATIONS ARE DYING (or are already dead):

 

By: Thomas F. Booher

The short answer is the faithful Elders, as a class, failed to heed Paul's words to the Ephesian Elders in Acts 20:28-29,

"Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears."

False teachers rising from among the Eldership is not a surprise, it's a Scriptural promise. Hence Paul warns the Elders to keep watch, vigilantly, and take swift action. Nothing will poison churches, denominations, the Christian faith at large, worse than its leadership being run by savage wolves in sheep's clothing, by false prophets, unregenerates appearing as angels of light when they are doing the devil's bidding.

Secondly, I have never seen a Reformed/Presbyterian conservative minister repent or apologize publicly for anything. I'm serious. Maybe there is some exception somewhere, I'd be glad to have a link to it. Tom Ascol in the SBC repented of being asleep at the wheel while the Southern Baptists drifted further and further away from fidelity to the faith. Then he took decisive action and is doing what he can. That's faithful shepherding, acknowledging your failure, repenting, then bearing fruits of repentance.

No, our Reformed Presbyterians are too smart and sophisticated to issue a straight up apology and repent with tears. We tout our ecclesiology as the Savior, "trust the process", and have our own version of the SBC's 11th commandment -- thou shalt not speak ill of anyone in your presbytery, or call them a wolf, because that's not the presbyterian way; only presbytery's can say if someone is a wolf or not.

So, when Jesus sent out His disciples in the midst of wolves and urged them to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matt. 10:16), we decided we'd be as wise as doves and as harmless as serpents. We get played by the progressives every time, thinking our Presbyterian system (a twisting and deformation of it IMHO) will save the day (dove wisdom), and therefore we wait in vain for years, for 2/3 of presbyteries to ratify an amendment to our book of church order for something that we should be able to just thunder down with "Thus saith the Lord" (that homosexuals cannot be ministers in our denominations -- here's looking at you PCA). So who gets stung in all this? The faithful men trying to enter ministry, who are killed in the "candidates and credentials committee" crib because the godless liberal Elders have stacked the deck there and serve as the gatekeepers and molders into pastoral ministry.

When faithful shepherds don't kill the wolves, especially the ones who have positioned themselves as shepherds, the wolves eat the sheep, or turn them into wolves in sheep's clothing with them.

So when this becomes so obvious that something official has to be done, what happens? We form the Gospel Reformation Network in the PCA many years too late and many decibels of intensity too short (Harry Reeder literally said the progressives in the PCA were, I kid you not, something like "sheep in wolves' clothing"; then you have Kevin DeYoung and Tim Keller buddying up on the sexuality report at GA, saying they are center right and center left, and basically declaring they are the uni-party in the PCA).

Then in Machen's warrior fanboy OPC, we have a who's who list of notable pipe-smoking sophisticates that sign a "much concerned" letter on high priestess Aimee Byrd's personal blog, who role plays as Machen's girlboss destroyer of biblical manhood and womanhood when it suits her, then quick changes into a damsel in distress needing a strong OPC Elder to deliver her from those bully GC men when they expose her for what she really is -- a Feminist bordering on mysticism. But boy did the men step up to the plate for her. https://aimeebyrd.com/2020/06/22/an-open-letter-from-concerned-ministers-and-elders-in-the-opc/

By the way, have any of these men publicly apologized for any of this? Shoot, I'd even take one of them publicly saying they are now "very concerned" about Aimee Byrd.

For decades, probably generations, our conservative Elders, as a class, have downplayed or simply not understood the importance of family and place. Sacrifice all to uproot your family, and then sacrifice your family for the sake of the greater ministry of the pastorate. Sure, they would never say it this way, but when you hear pastor's wives tell seminarian wives "don't expect your husband to take out the trash for you, he's too busy" you realize something has gone horribly wrong. And that's the conservative end of the spectrum. The liberal/progressive end is holding conferences for the cute "gay-but-celibate" crowd.

For years, writing something like this would get me in trouble, sometimes at the local church level, always at the presbytery level. So men like me realized we have one of two choices. Castrate ourselves, fall in line, tout "the presbyterian way, the presbyterian system" and post a lot of good reports on social media about progress in voting on something that is already crystal clear in Scripture and our confessions, and keep pretending that the opposition Elders in our own denomination are men of good faith, or that they are even men who have saving faith at all. Never question that, that would be to run ahead of the presbyteries, and then you might get put under swift church discipline yourself. Punch right, lean left, but say you are perfectly balanced, as if balancing truth and error is ever a good thing.

The other option, which many younger ministers are taking, is to get out of NAPARC denominations. But other men cannot or will not do this, because the cost is so high. They know how bad things are, say things when and where they can from within, but realize they are constantly being gagged -- by their own fellow Elders, by the presbytery, and by the General Assembly often times (I'm thinking of PCA especially here). But to leave NAPARC, and to further openly, publicly speak against NAPARC, you're cutting out probably 95% or more of Reformed/Presbyterian pulpits in North America, blacklisting yourself from all the Reformed seminaries and institutions of higher learning that could pay you a reasonable salary, etc. Right or wrong, some men try to work from within, falling in line to some extent, or pushing the limits until they are kicked out in one form or another, or find a church/presbytery that serves as a bastion of faithfulness in the midst of a crooked Presbyterian generation.

Some of our denominations ordain deaconesses, and some like the PCA would love to do so. Try returning to biblical fidelity on that issue, and you'll be told that some prominent churches/elders/ministers will threaten to leave the denomination. And it's not like the ARP has too many prominent congregations, or Ligonier Ministries wants to nix another teaching fellow that went semi-woke. Also, I keep hearing something about plagiarism being ignored or covered up if you are "too big to fail" but that's probably none of my business, as is everything I have written about here thus far, since that might wake people up, or offend someone, or slightly give the wrong impression.

I know some ministers/elders who have left NAPARC denominations because they got sick of this, and then of course many of them get chewed out, ever so gently and passively of course (publicly at least), for abandoning the fight. But staying to fight is to agree to fight with pillows, while your enemy has armored tanks. Pull out your own heavy weaponry, and inexplicably, those you thought were on your team start saying, "No, no, we aren't REALLY in a war, those on the other side are just a tad confused, they'll lay down their weapons once we reason gently with them. Maybe offer these pillows for their heads." What sane person wants to stay around for that slaughter?

Someone will say "Ah, but Greg Johnson left the PCA, see, we got a killshot; or, Aimee Byrd left the OPC, see? Presbyterianism FTW baby." Sure, they left. But there was never an immediate threat of church discipline coming down upon either of them. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, the Cerberus heads will grow back. No one has tried fleecing the wolves yet, that'd be risky, they'd show their teeth and bite and then everyone would know they were wolves. But that would put us in harm's way. Let's not go that route.

But finally, here's the biggest issue of all. Actual godly, faithful, confessional men in NAPARC are fewer and further between than we were led to believe, especially among the most prominent. Not all the high places will be torn down. Ligon Duncan is, to put it as politely as possible, a moderate. So is Kevin DeYoung. Others would call them liberals. That's fine, perhaps better, given the far left really are bloodthirsty radicals that want to tear down not just our churches, but sane society as a whole. Our GRN and various leaders, initially at least, pretended the other side had something of a point, something reasonable to say that had to be carefully corrected. A dead giveaway that DeYoung is controlled opposition more than a real fighter was DeYoung's own post on The Gospel Communist, I mean The Gospel Coalition -- the battle cry today must be carefulness, not courage, and DeYoung will lead the charge of careful warriors that "pay attention to our language and our definitions". By the way, he said that in regards to race, politics, and gender in our nation today. But brother Kevin, transgenders are shooting our Christian children, do you think being "careful" is what we need right now?!

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/why-reformed-evangelicalism-has-splintered-four-approaches-to-race-politics-and-gender/

(As an aside, this is one reason why most of these men have either openly despised or quietly ignored Doug Wilson. For all the things Wilson doesn't get quite right, he got family and polemics right, and those are two crucial things in this divided day and family hating era that we live in. Some seem to be softening toward him a bit and realizing he might have some things to contribute after all. Others, well, they'll keep on silencing you as if saying DW is saying the name Voldemort.)

When DeYoung says we must be careful, stylizes himself as center-right, and is chummy with Tim Keller and describes him as center-left, you would think masses would realize they are being played. When OPC scholars are sucking up to Aimee Byrd (I chose not to use some of the more modern language here to describe this), when an RTS President is seeking to essentially bring another Minister under church discipline for he/his session not clapping hard enough for his traveling wife scolding other churches over who knows what, probably not listening to women voices enough, and these guys during the daylight pretend to be our betters and conservative stalwarts, it's time to ring the bell. These men who are supposedly our conservatives would have been the progressives just a decade or two ago! But that's the thing. Many of these men likely had these sympathies or leanings a decade or two ago. It just wasn't revealed yet.

When conservatives like DeYoung (I think it is he/his church, could be another one, I am sure if I am wrong I'll be ordered to repent immediately or face God's wrath by some lion of the conservative establishment AKA damage control specialist) have women reading and/or praying in the worship service, I do not know in what sense he ought to get to wear the badge of conservative. When he snuggles up to Tim Keller, someone who leans if not outright is a theistic evolutionist, a Democrat, and who knows what he even thinks on Abortion, why would any sane minister of the Gospel, let alone any Bible-believing Christian, want these men for generals? I've been at Presbytery with DeYoung, he's a great preacher, but he isn't a fighter, he's not a General.

The PCA is the cutting edge of departing from the faith, but many (most?) of NAPARC is not far behind, at least the denominations that can muster triple digits in numbers of churches. And of course, the PCA is larger than all the other NAPARC denominations a couple times over.

But the bottom line is we have compromised, often cowardly men fighting with compromised, limited machinery against the liberals who have control of the chess board. They've swapped out several pawns for Queens already, and they'll probably get away with dressing the bishops as Queens soon enough (tis a joke today, a reality tomorrow).

But there are faithful foot soldiers who will blindly sacrifice their lives, their tithe money, their blood, sweat, and tears, for acronyms, for the PCA, the OPC, etc. They still believe the GRN or the OPC powers that be are rock-ribbed confessional conservatives. I can sympathize, I used to think so too, not all so long ago (well, not the GRN, I was pretty sure they wouldn't quite rise to the occasion from the outset). After all, it is from these men that we often learned about the Reformed faith, learned what it means to be confessional, and even among the church historians, learned what it means to truly fight for the faith once delivered. The problem is, these men, with some rare exceptions, don't practice what they preach, don't put their book-sales and conference speaking monies where their mouth is when and where it actually counts -- on their social medias, and even more importantly, in the presbyteries/church courts. They are as silent as lambs there, or soft as a feather in their words, when we need lions, we need strong shepherds.

So our Reformed/Presbyterian denominations will continue to die. And What I am most concerned to see happen is pivoting away from these supposed conservative men who, whether in one year or 5 years from now, will give some PR release and spin doctoring to say they now grant popish permission to join them in their new denomination. If they didn't fight in the old and lost the play fight they waged, why would you follow them into a new denomination? The rot will set in. Yes, it may take a decade or two, but it will come, and in this environment, it will come much faster than what it took the PCA, for example, to get where it is, or the OPC to take 80+ years to wobble. It will only be a decade, or two at most.

So come out from among them, and be ye separate. Wake up, and repent. Fight the good fight of faith. There are better, godlier ministers to look to for the future of the Reformed faith in our nation. They are usually the ones who got ostracized for crossing the conservative establishment. They may well not have prominent or large churches. They may well be utter unknowns, or voices crying in the wilderness. But let's promote them, let's not let them be wilderness voices any longer. They may be rough around the edges, but we could use some of that. And God willing, He will bless them and those congregations in the years ahead.

The alternative is the slow death and gradual apostasy of our most prominent NAPARC denominations, permitted by men who claim to be conservative and confessional, men who just so happen to have the comfiest positions in the colleges, seminaries, and pastorates, and will see to it that it remains that way. Gut them. Let these apostate institutions die. Take your kids out of them, and your money from them. Build new institutions with godlier men and leaders who have stood courageous over the last 10 years or so of all the madness we have faced.