BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Old friends...

Back in the early nineties at Evangelical Community Church here in Bloomington, I started a Calvin's Institutes Reading Group and a young graduate student at the church named Steve Baarendsee helped lead it. For most of the twenty-five or so men and women in the group, this was their formal introduction to Reformed theology and to the PCA (at the time I was PCA)...

What's done in Atlanta stays in Atlanta....

Two years ago at the PCA's General Assembly our denominational stated clerk, Roy Taylor, spoke in support of an Administrative Committee funding initiative. In defending the proposal, Roy criticized unnamed PCA bloggers for lacking the courage to speak personally to the authors of the initiative before opposing it on the internet.

Because I had opposed the initiative on this blog and because I don't see myself as a shoot-from-the-shadows critic of PCA leadership, I made my way forward to introduce myself at the end of the session.

I told Roy I was one of the bloggers he had just accused of cowardice, but added that I hoped he would accept on the basis of my presence before him that I was willing to say in person what I said on my blog. Nevertheless, I added, despite speaking to him in person I held myself in no way bound by Matthew 18 to approach members of the committee personally before publicly criticizing their plan.

Roy responded that he hadn't been aiming his criticism at me individually, adding that he neither knew of me nor was familiar with my blog--though he corrected himself later by saying, "Oh, I think I did see that blog once."

The conversation was cordial and direct. I ended by telling Roy that I'm willing to be held accountable for the things I write while he reassured me he had not intended to malign me personally.

I tell this story in light of a ByFaith Online article about a conclave of "PCA leaders" held at Roy Taylor's behest last Tuesday in Atlanta under what ByFaith calls "Chatham House Rules" to discuss "causes for conflict in the PCA that hamper our ministry and unity."

Midwives, denominations, abortions, and my present political philosophy...

I don't write much about Indiana politics and government but it's caused me no small sadness to contemplate the term-limit-departure of our fiscally excellent governor a little over a year from now. Gov. Mitch Daniels will have completed his second term and will have to leave office.

If I am comforted in our loss of Mitch's magnificent fiscal leadership, my comfort comes from this: that his likely successor is a man, Representaive Mike Pence, who promises to govern with the same fiscal commitments while adding a theological framework to those commitments that promises to extend far beyond fiscal discipline, on to principles concerning many other areas of governance including the battlefields on which the destroyers of our nation and its states are focussing their revolution: sexuality, the Image of God in man, the origin and nature of sexuality and marriage decreed by our Creator in His Order of Creation, and so forth.

As you read through Daniels' penultimate State of the State Address delivered yesterday evening, you will gain a hint of why I respect him. He has been unflinching in disciplining the educationists of our state by a host of private initiatives that have finally brought competition into public education. True, he brags about over half of our state budget going to edcuation, and he seems to see higher education as an unqualified good. I disagree with both things as I disagreed with President Bush on similar matters. Mitch Daniels is not a wild-eyed enthusiast. He's a realist who really changed our state. Definitively. And reading, you'll see what difference it makes to each citizen of the state.

But there's something else I want to say, here.

Some thirty years ago, I was at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly to oppose their denominational abortion policy. My dear Mary Lee was pregnant and, since we were in the habit of having home births, I'd called the midwest representative of the PC(USA)'s self-funded independent medical insurance plan to ask if they'd cover the cost of our midwife? It was awkward. He hemmed and hawed and said he didn't know and would have to get back to me on it...

Heritage Conference in Vancouver, WA, this weekend...

Mary Lee and I are out in the Pacific Northwest for the 2011 Heritage Conference of Westminster PCA in Vancouver, Washington. We're looking forward to the fellowship with the brothers and sisters of Westminster and hope some of you will join us for the weekend.

Our sessions will be Friday evening, Saturday morning and early afternoon, and Lord's Day worship Sunday morning. It's Reformation Sunday this Lord's Day and our titles will be "Reformed Fathers," "Reformed Mothers," "Reformed Children," and "The Church Reformed, Always Reforming."

Here's the info. (TB)

Roman Catholicism is a medieval heresy...

Under the post, Repenting of parachurch, Baptist childhoods..., one comment elicited this response from your scribe. I posted it as a comment, there, but also put it here for the benefit of those who don't keep track of comments. (TB)

Brothers, allow me a few responses, although they must be hopelessly brief considering the weight of these matters.

>>Be careful when you sling around words like apostasy, idolatry (Per Calvin we're all "fabricum idolarum") and heresy.

We are careful. That is, careful--very careful--to keep them alive. The proper word to use concerning Roman Catholicism is 'heresy'. Read Joe Brown's Heresies. Reformed pastors and elders use this word following our Reforming fathers's example because Roman Catholicism is a system of doctrine that leads souls to Hell. Systematically.

The center of Rome's system is the merchandising of salvation through...

What about women in combat...

Here is the Majority Report of the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military whose recommendations were adopted by General Assembly in 2002. Being this report's principal author, naturally I commend this document to our readers. If biblical Christians today studied this report and by faith embraced its doctrine of Creation Order sexuality, it would be a significant step toward the restoration of the unity of the Church. Too, these United States would again have salty salt and lighty light in the public debate raging over the meaning and purpose of sexuality. (TB)

* * *

MAN’S DUTY TO PROTECT WOMAN

We, the undersigned, endorse the Consensus Report, while realizing that Report lacks unity on the crucial matter of whether the recommendations it contains constitute the church’s wise counsel or a Christian’s scriptural duty. Believing that this is a matter of scriptural duty, we have joined together in writing this report to the end that we might set forth with confidence and clarity the full counsel—both New and Old Testaments—of the Word of God concerning this matter. Our report attempts to summarize three areas of evidence, as follows:

First, God the Father wages war in defense of Israel, His Bride; Christ our Savior fights to the Death defending His Bride, the Church; the Holy Spirit calls men as officers to guard and protect His Bride; the duty to protect the Garden of Eden and the warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given by God to Adam; husbands protect their wives, not wives their husbands. Thus we are taught the binding nature of man’s duty to guard and protect his home and wife.

Second, woman is the weaker sex and part of her weakness is the vulnerability attendant to her greatest privilege—that God has made her the “Mother of all the living.” Men are to guard and protect her as she carries in her womb, gives birth to, and nurses her children.

Third, we are to renounce every thought and action which tends towards a diminishment of sexual differentiation since God made it and called it “good.” [E.g. Scripture’s injunctions concerning women exercising authority over men (1 Timothy 2), women or men wearing clothing of the opposite sex (Deuteronomy 22:5), sodomy (Leviticus 20:15-16), etc.] Rather than a stingy attitude which minimizes sexuality’s implications, we ought to rejoice in this, His blessing.

It is our conviction that these areas, taken together, provide a clear and compelling scriptural rationale for declaring our church’s principled opposition to women serving in military combat positions.

When a man loves a woman, he will lay down his life to defend her, just as Christ loved His Bride and gave Himself up for Her. Men have proudly fulfilled this duty from time immemorial, demonstrating what A. A. Hodge in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith referred to as the law of nature, common to all nations, that is “unchanged” to this present day. Dying for their wives, regenerate and unregenerate men have done “by nature (the) things required by the law.”[1]

Hodge divides the Old Testament law into four categories...

Rev. Coffin's views on Church and state...

ByFaith Online points its readers to a recent interview of Rev. David Coffin in the Washingon Examiner in which David says that when churches become involved in politics, "It's a kind of apostasy." (You can find the interview here.)

It should be noted that the man who advocates a strict separation of Church and state in this interview is the same man who told my brother Tim, during the 2002 General Assembly debate, that the PCA should not oppose women serving as combatants in the U.S. Armed Forces.

So here's a minister of the Word of God pedantically parsing his Biblical obligations in such a way that he can justify turning an official blind eye to one of the most depraved aspects of our culture's destruction of women--almost as bad as urging them to kill unborn babies in their wombs.

To lodge his Uriah Heapish kowtowing to our culture's attack on motherhood in the Westminster Standards is ludicrous. Has David read Reformed history--any at all? And if so, can he be serious? The Westminster Divines agreeing with him that the Church should be silent about men commanding women to take up arms as combatants in the defense of their country? 

But worse, David claims God's approval of this ridiculous two-kingdom novelty, a claim worthy of condemnation by every shepherd of God's flock. Unfortunately, few will take him on. And that's where we find the PCA--lurching between Tim Keller's feminism and David Coffin's pedantry.

(DB)

 

"Turn him loose. He's no threat..."

Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:37)

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed to you by us... was not yes and no; but in him was yes. (2Corinthians 1:19)

An older pastor I respect is not opposed to women elders and pastors, yet I count him a close friend and listen to him carefully. Trained at Pittsburgh Seminary, he spent most of his life serving calls in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). Now though, like many of us, the PC(USA)'s promotion of sodomite pastors has led him to leave the denomination.

A few minutes ago, I received this e-mail from him in response to the video clip of Tim Keller being interviewed by Martin Bashir concerning the exclusivity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Heaven, and Hell. He wrote...

A tsunami of precious equivocation...

It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon—and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. - G. K. Chesterton

A number of people have forwarded this clip in the past two weeks and it's been hard to know what to do with it. Keller's interview is about as bad as it could be. When the interview hit cyberspace, Keller issued an apology for one or two things he said. But his unfaithfulness to Jesus Christ and the Word of God was no momentary oversight or accident. It was a tsunami of careful, precise, well-placed equivocation, so the apology only made things worse.

For years, now, the Redeemer pastor has demonstrated a heavily nuanced and timid support for orthodox Christian doctrine...

"A minister with a Scripture..."

A few days ago, Tim Keller used his own Gospel Coalition blog to issue an apology for this very bad interview he did back in 2008 in conjunction with the release of his The Reason for God. The matter came to light only now because the video of the interview was only just released by Veritas Forum. Keller's apology is good in that apologies generally are; but it's bad in that some aspects of the interview that are most unfaithful to Scripture aren't addressed by the apology.

Noting this, I submitted a comment under the Gospel Coalition's announcement of the apology. The comment appeared for a few minutes, then was removed. Five days ago I submitted a request to the Coalition's e-mail asking them to...

A New York state of mind...

Good girls gone bad, the city's filled with them...

                - Jay-Z, "Empire State of Mind"

Here's a list of the fifteen zip codes in New York City that have the highest rate of abortion. The graph was created by the Chiaroscuro Foundation and it tells us Manhattan's Chelsea - Clinton zip code has the highest rate of child-slaughter in all of New York City.

The Chelsea-Clinton zip code is the zip code of Redeemer Presbyterian Church...

National Presbyterian Church of Mexico meets and repudiates woman officers...

(Esta entrada del blog está dedicado al Sr. y la Sra. Josué Congrove.)

While Evangelicals of the mainline liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) are gathering in Minneapolis to figure out how to keep their precious woman officers and yet differentiating themselves from the wicked promotion of sodomy that their national association of churches has approved and will enforce, the two-million member National Presbyterian Church of Mexico (Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México [INPM]) is growing in obedience. Last week they held a special meeting to act on the ordination of women and voted not to allow woman officers by the margin of 158 to 14.

Redeemer promotes woman officers.

Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México opposes woman officers.

Considering the Anglican machinations of the past few years, one wonders whether INPM will consider taking on a theological presbytery here in these United States of congregatons leaving the PC(USA) and PCA? This would allow...

If you're in Spartanburg, we'd love to have you visit Trinity Church...

CTW's former associate pastor, Andrew Dionne, as of today is the newly installed pastor of Trinity Church (PCA) in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Here's Andrew leading the rhythm section of Christ the Word's band a few months ago. Click the photo to see his enthusiastic sense of rhythm.

Andrew will be a rich blessing to the work of Trinity Church PCA Spartanburg. Tim and I encourage you to visit Trinity if you're looking for a church in the Spartanburg/Greenville area. You'll find a church where the people are warm, the preaching is pointed and convicting and the Holy Spirit's power is valued as much as theological precision.

And here's a picture from tonight's installation with members of the Calvary Presbytery commission in the front pew, including our friend Joey Pipa.... (DB)

 

 

 

If you're in Bristol, we'd love to have you join us later today...

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19, 20)

My wife, mother, and I are in Bristol, VA, one week before the race for something infinitely more important: the baptism of my niece and nephew, Frances and David Bayly, upon their confession of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Pastor John Dawson and the church session granted me the privilege of administering the Sacrament later today at a worship service of Abingdon Presbyterian Church that will be held creekside near Pavilion D at Chapel Bridge in Steele Creek Park.

If you're in the area, we'd love to have you join us! The baptism will be under the bridge at 1:30 PM. (TB)

Church officers and fathers who cover up sexual crimes...

"Fathers need to know this: avoiding the potential shame by not providing justice for your daughter is a cowardly act that will be forever remembered..." - longtime PCA elder and father of little daughters just found to have been raped by a relative

Here's an e-mail we received responding to the post "With the souls of sodomites destroyed, children are next...". As you will see, the e-mail is filled with horrors--particularly the horror of Christians who refuse to recognize the horrors taking over our homes and churches and to respond to them Biblically.

Since posting this and the previous piece, it's become clear to me that readership of this post has been small. And I believe this means sexual sin and the rampant fornication and pornography that are its seedbed will live on in the church, gaining ground while church officers and household fathers abandon their flocks and talk exchange blog posts and comments about family-centered churches and post-millenialism.

The predators love this.

So please, look again at the pull-quote at the top and ask yourself if you and your church officers are beyond it? If you're such good fathers, pastors, elders, deacons, and Titus 2 women that you don't need to find out what it means or how to respond to this failure of fathers filling our churches with bitterness? I'm sure no one relishes reading such a rebuke, but then do we really think the Corinthians enjoyed the Apostle Paul's letters?

Note particulary the father's statement about the cowardice of fathers who try to cover up the crime rather than protecting their children. This is the reality of my pastoral experience, over and over again. Our session submits the criminal to the civil magistrate. Always. Immediately. And so must you.

Living in a university community, over many years, now, ClearNote Church has been blessed by God with a good number of opportunities to be servants of reconciliation in these tragic circumstances. We would be pleased to serve your church's officers by providing support and counsel when you need help with sexual abuse and crimes against our Lord's little ones. Please feel free to contact us.

Now, on to the account...

Wives, submit to your husbands in everything but your work...

This piece written by a longtime Redeemerite does a good job of showing what complementarianism has always been and what the PCA has become...

Redeemer's bondage to cosmopolitan conceit...

“Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name..." - Genesis 11:4

...if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment... - 2 Peter 2:6-9

We make it a habit to say less than we know when we oppose ministries and their leaders here on Baylyblog. We don't want to overreach. This has been true of our criticisms of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and her pastor, especially.

Back in the early nineties we first started recommending Redeemer to souls moving to New York City, and by now we have close to two decades of listening to those men and women who have become a part of Redeemer's congregations.

Our second thoughts about Redeemer started seventeen years ago...

Here at the PCA General Assembly...

David and I are here with David's eldest son, Nathan, at the PCA General Assembly. If you're here, too, and you'd like to get in touch, send me an e-mail.

(TB)

Straining at gnats, swallowing camels...

(June 2--Please note that TypePad only displays the first hundred comments on a post by default. Comments past 100 can be displayed by clicking the "More Comments" link at the bottom of the 100th comment.)

Is Federal Vision theology (FV) worthy of the intense opposition Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) conservatives dignify it with? I suspect not. For a number of reasons, I suspect such opposition to FV theology in the PCA is a sign of conservative weakness rather than strength; opportunism rather than courage. But first a bit of history.

Four years ago when FV was first dealt with by the PCA at her 2007 General Assembly (GA), conservatives rallied in support of a report condemning aspects of FV theology. The report was adopted and trials of Federal Vision supporters followed, the latest of which is the upcoming trial of Peter Leithart in Pacific Northwest Presbytery. It would appear, then, that the PCA is dutifully reforming herself and the cleanup is mostly finished.

But perhaps as noteworthy as what happened within the PCA at the 2007 GA and following is what did not happen. To understand this, we must consider a pair of strange couplings that took place that year.

The 2007 General Assembly was notable, not only for its debate and subsequent vote on the FV report, but also for several mésalliances forged in the lead-up to that vote. On one side, the middle-aged lions of the Keller/Redeemer/hipster/missional party provided some support for the FV camp. On the other side, the old lions of the southern/tall-steeple/rich/broadly Reformed party provided some support for the Truly Reformed (TR) conservatives of the PCA.

When the heat of battle passed, though, both the hipster middle-aged lions and the rich old lions woke up to strange bedfellows. Neither alliance could last. Redeemer hipsters...

So this hip-hop star walks into our art gallery and he's like...

Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:5, 6)

(NOTE: helpful obscenities ahead) Almost always, an absent father, father-hunger, and hatred define The New Yorker profiles of the purveyors of our Godless culture. Here we have a profile of the hip-hop group, Odd Future, and its best rapper, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (alias Earl Sweatshirt) who at the time of the song's release was sixteen years old. From The New Yorker's profile, "Earl Sweatshirt begins one track by sneaking some autobiography into...

Don't lie on Baylyblog...

Under this post, a man or woman identifying himself or herself as "Ben S" commented. On a hunch, I checked him or her out and found he or she's been using a number of false identities here on Baylyblog for over five years, now...

"But really, he's just not one of them..."

Here's an excellent summary of the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan by a fan of Scot McKnight and the Bishop of Durham. Don't miss the first comment.

(TB)

Excellent comments...

Several excellent comments have been made here and you'll want to read them.

(TB)

Blah blah blah blah blah I blah blah would blah blah blah definitely say blah blah blah blah blah...

Once again, we have that paragon among unreforming preachers asked about his take on sex--this time homosexual marriage.

Lauren Green of FoxNews did the interview March 28, 2011, as part of the Justice Event hosted by Redeemer's Hope for New York, Diaconate, and Grace & Race ministries. The place was packed, bases were loaded, bottom of the ninth, the pitch floated in waist high...

Welcome to the machine...

No doubt readers have noticed I've been trying to take Doug's advice and "stop throwing rocks at the moon." He's so wise.

But occasionally I howl, and tonight you may hear me after some idiot sent me to JT's blog and I saw this ad. Twenty percent off? How can a man resist? Talk about preaching to my heart! And you pomos aren't scandalized!

Preaching has become a commodity and we consume it as if it were yogurt or socks.

Money, it's a hit...

(TB)

Spring housecleaning of Evangelical missions long overdue...

Because hundreds of millions of dollars are given each year to Christian missionaries and missions organizations who are ashamed of and hide--or often, simply oppose--what is commanded in the Word of God, Baylybog works hard to expose those organizations. Churches, missions committees, and individual Christians give money to organizations like InterVarsity with faith these organizations will use the money to advance the Kingdom of God and His Church--not the Kingdom of Satan. But who will tell such godly givers and their churches when InterVarsity is using their money to pay the salaries of staff workers who are betraying God and His holiness?

Back when J. Gresham Machen was working for reform of the Presbyterian church, the battle lines formed around the church's missions. Missionaries and their missions organizations were betraying Jesus Christ in the Name of Jesus Christ while being supported by naive church members and missions committees who were clueless. So Machen joined forces with other godly men to put a stop to it.

The message went out far and wide that Presbyterian missionaries were betraying Jesus Christ and His Word. This infuriated denominational and mission executives...

byFaith's powder-puff journalism...

A couple months ago, brother David took part in a discussion on the floor of Ohio Presbytery (PCA) concerning the chronic deficit faced by the denomination's administrative headquarters in Atlanta. Some of the denomination's better-known men had joined together to try to get amendments to the Book of Church Order passed that would put in place a per/member tax on individual churches that, for all practical purposes, would be mandatory. Their effort was repudiated by the presbyteries, though, so it's been back to the drawing board.

As other less-drastic solutions were being considered, someone discovered the denomination's online and print magazine, byFaith, was losing money hand over fist and the money lost each year came from the denomination's administrative headquarters. Further, the amount of money headquarters was providing byFaith each year is roughly equivalent to headquarter's deficit.

Ding dong!

In the midst of a debate over how to address the situation, brother David brought a motion to remove the funding the PCA headquarters was providing byFaith, and the motion easily passed. So now there's an overture coming to this summer's General Assembly calling for byFaith to find its fuding somewhere else and it's likely this will mean byFaith will either have to gain subscribers or stop publishing.

If they stop publishing, it won't be much of a loss...

The hens are squawking and the goose is chasing David aross the barnyard...

(Tim) On the floor of Ohio Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of America, my brother, David, moved that the presbytery overture General Assembly to cut off the gravy train for the denomination's tiny circulation magazine, bYfAITH. The motion which easily passed calls for bYfAITH to be moved toward being self-supporting with all denominational funding to be cut off in 2012. bYfAITH responded this week with a piece leading one reader to comment: "The article is an excellent example of 'advocacy journalism,' albeit quite subtle, ecclesiastical-style."

Brother David made the motion because the denomination's administrators at the PCA's Atlanta headquarters have been pouring money into this failing venture year after year, all the while complaining that churches have not been faithful in funding their work. Turns out their shortfall each year has been about fifteen per cent of their budget, precisely the amount they have chosen to sink into a tepid, house organ that speaks only for the denomination's power brokers and the hip children they've spawned.

bYfAITH quoted David saying he didn't seek the end of support for bYfAITH because of dislike for bYfAITH. The motion had been written by others and was being taken before Central Indiana Presbtery. David was sent a copy of it, thought it had merit and when another church in Ohio Presbytery called for a study committee to address all AC publications and spending, David suggested the Indiana overture as a better alternative. It seemed like a good way to solve the chronic shortage of financial support the PCA's denominational apparatus suffers. Ohio Presbytery agreed and sent it on to General Assembly where the commissioners will watch as the Bills and Overtures Committee is lobbied by the good-old-boys and buries the overture.

So beyond its complete failure, financially, what's wrong with bYfAITH?

"This woman, at least, will be saved by childbearing..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Shelly) It disgusts me to have to direct Baylyblog readers to Roman Catholic sites as often as I do, but there's no helping it. Reformed men and women are so busy sinning so grace may abound that there's almost no comparable teaching in the Reformed world. And certainly not in the PCA--I defy you to show me one single article this spectacularly beautiful and sanctifying for women published anywhere under the auspices of the PCA. In fact, on any site having any affiliation to the PCA. Or rather, any site affiliated with any of the chest-thumping Reformed men: Together for the Gospel. Acts 29. Desiring God...

Brothers, if you want to do a more Biblical job of loving your wife, read this. Sisters, whether married or single, if you're willing to trade in your iPhone and laptop for the salvation 1Timothy 2:15 promises woman, read this.

There's nothing more foundational to godliness in Christ Jesus than your femininity.



Women warriors and the Church...

(Tim) On the subject of Joel Northrup forfeiting his state tournament wrestling match out of deference to a woman, one reader of this Baylyblog post called our readers' attention to a comment by a California high school wrestling coach on another web site. The coach's comment (No. 16) ended with this:

The Israeli army did extensive experiments in the 1960′s and 70′s trying to incorporate women into combat roles along side males, at a time when the survival of Israel was hanging in the balance. But the results were so disastrous, that they were soon abandoned. They found that men would routinely risk themselves and the units safety, and even abandon mission completion, whenever a female member of their combat unit was captured, or even injured. This protective role seemed to be so hardwired into these young men, that it was deemed impossible to “train out” of them. The Israelis determined that a boy would have to be trained from birth to disregard a foundational understanding (call it God given, or evolved) concerning the importance of women, as THE essential element in the continuum of human existence. To try and remove that understanding from the thought process of young men would result, I feel, in a world not worth occupying.

Few things are more indicative of these United States' moral and military bankruptcy than our ideological promotion of women in combat (of which women wrestlers are a sub-species), and few things are more indicative of the Reformed world's weakening commitment to the doctrines of Scripture than the PCA General Assembly AISCOWIM's split down the middle on whether or not to condemn women in combat (as well as the arguments made on the floor of GA when AISCOWIM presented its two reports). While it's true committee members talked much about the spirituality of the church, during internal debate it was always clear that...

Art ministry today: cool and hip...

(Tim) Whether in the U.S. or Western Europe, Reformed hipsters have fallen in love with art. For communicating the Gospel, preaching is out and art is in--it's the great white hope. Draw the Gospel. Sculpt the Gospel. Paint the Gospel. Use words only if you must.

David Baker is a student here at ClearNote Pastors College who, with his wife Marta and their children, were raising support under the Presbyterian Church in America's Mission to the World when God led them to move to Bloomington and begin training for pastoral ministry. David's a painter and he'd been headed to Dublin, Ireland, where he planned to be a part of an MTW team there, and to focus on the arts community. Recently, David corresponded with another MTW missionary in a Western European country about the arts movement within MTW and the PCA.

* * *

Dear (John Doe),

I should give you a brief background and update on what we are doing. As you may know we were on the path to work in arts ministry in Dublin, Ireland with MTW. We took a 5-year leave-of-absence from MTW for education and because of some other issues that made it clear that the yoking with the Irish church was not a good one. I'm now a pastor in training at ClearNote Pastor's College in Bloomington, Indiana. I continue to make art and I participate in a local gallery. I love using God's gift of artistic talent to His glory. He gives us these gifts.

When we were working on support raising we spent time with various churches around the country and we got to hear and see a lot of what was going on in the the arts ministry movement.

"Some of New York City's most prominent religious leaders" mourn city's aborted babies...

(Tim, w/thanks to Matthew M.) Religious leaders in New York City came together this past week to speak out against the pervasive slaughter of unborn children in their city. Of every one hundred babies given by God to women of the city, forty-one of these precious little ones are murdered by abortionists. (The figure is 48% in the Bronx, 38% in Manhattan; here are the stats.) The Sun reported:

Some of New York City’s most prominent religious leaders are making a public demand for answers as to why decades of social welfare programs aimed at making abortions a rarity have not only failed, but failed so dramatically.

The leaders — spanning Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant clergy — issued their demand at a press conference today at Manhattan. They said they are galvanized by new data showing that some 87,000 abortions were performed in New York City in 2009, a figure that accounts for 41% of all pregnancies across the five boroughs that year. That 41% rate is nearly double the national average.

“The Statue of Liberty should be the symbol of this city, not the grim reaper,” declared the current archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, the Most Rev. Timothy Dolan.

Which religious leaders joined in the public lament? The New York Times...

Luther on the Gospel-grace of the Law...

(Tim) At times, it seems best to promote a discussion to the main page. Readers lose track of discussions in the comments under old posts. Here's one such discussion that I'm promoting for reasons I hope are obvious.

It's my conviction that the endless mantra of grace that permeates our Evangelical/Redeemer/Westminster/Campus Crusade/R2K/Covenant world leads to us knowing little of grace because we despise God's Law and repentance.

In the midst of a discussion bearing on this matter, the historian Darryl Hart asked me to clarify what I meant when I spoke of the grace of the Law--that to preach the Law is Gospel preaching and that the Law is our Gospel schoomaster or tutor? Here I respond:

Scripture says:

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24).

This is the great failure of Gospel preaching in our time, and the reason for the absence of fruit within our churches. We fail to preach the Law, instead trying to save unregenerate sinners from the indignities of repentance. We preach grace without leading souls there through the Law. We repudiate the Schoolmaster. It's the habit of pastors only to address the regenerate within the Covenant Community while outside that Community we gag preachers, leaving Gospel proclamation and conversion to Campus Crusade...

A must-read for anyone considering deaconesses or woman deacons...

(Tim) Looking for Christmas presents? It's too late, I guess, but readers who want to be innoculated against dogmatic pronouncements by people who don't know what they're talking about concerning women officers or woman deacons or deaconesses in church history would do well to buy and read these two books:

Deaconesses: An Historical Study by the eminent Roman Catholic historian of liturgy who died in 2000, Fr. A. G. Martimort; and A historical and Biblical examination of women deacons by Brian Schwertley.

If you're going to buy only one of the two, make it Martimort. He's the final word and you can take a peek at his work here.

"People in the PCA who freak out over this..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Wes) Out of context, here's one of Jim Jordan's pronouncements:

Deaconnesses (not lady deacons, but a different function) are something the Historical Catholic/Liturgically Reformed [groups within the Reformed church] have in common with the Evangelical Postmodern/Urban Reformed group(s). Deaconnesses are all over the Bible, and all over church history. ...Women served at the Tabernacle, at the Temple, served Jesus, and served in the early church. It is odd to me that there are people in the PCA who freak out over this, but I think you may be right that this is an issue that will finally split the PCA.

"Not lady deacons, but a different function" is the whole ball game. Does Jim really not see that?

Redeemer Presbyterian Church's seminary in Dallas...

(Tim) Since we removed the comment feed, here, it's become difficult for readers to keep track of active discussions. Let me note here two discussions you may have missed that are developing under the comments below these two posts (as well as the two comments under this post which pertain to the first of the two posts, below:

Discipline, denominations, and blogs...

Abortion, "prophetic rhetoric," and "over the top condemnations"...

Discipline, denominations, and blogs...

(Tim) Below a recent post, we've been having a discussion of the nature of leadership and discipline in the church, and I'd like to call attention to this exchange in which I respond to a few comments. Likely, readers need to check out the larger context of the earlier post before they'll understand some of what's written, here, but it's not necessary.

* * *

>>a) Carl Trueman is ordained in the OPC, which means he really doesn't have a reason for making comments about his PCA boss, Peter Lillback, one way or the other.

What? Whatever happened to the church and to church associations (which we call denominations) being confessional communities rather than institutional self-perpetuation machines? This is one of the principal things that disappointed me about the PCA: over and over on both the presbytery and general assembly level men would be zealous for their institutional interests in a way that bypassed or harmed the purity of the Church and Her doctrine. Trueman may not have the ability to discipline Lillback formally within his own denomination, but Lillback is much more accountable and vulnerable to Trueman than he is to the members of his presbytery. Behold, the two men work together! If Trueman thinks Lillback is in error...

Mutiny in the church...

(Tim, w/thanks to Steve M.) Read this post by Carl Trueman. It's almost excellent.

Almost because, sadly, the salient point to make about it is that there are no specifics mentioned, no men and their errors exposed. Sadly, that neglect says more than the good words Trueman has written.

To warn against theological and ecclesiastical and confessional and Biblical rebellion without warning against any particular man is to gnaw with gums instead of chewing with teeth. Until you name names, it's only one more hypothetical construct.

It wouldn't surprise me if reformation 21 had a policy against questioning or warning against any particular man's faith or practice--particularly if that man sells lots of books and is cited more than anyone else by Reformed pastors, today.

Court jousters...

(Tim, w/thanks to David G.) In the particular denomination calling itself the Presbyterian Church in America, here's what it's all come down to. WWTD.

This as reported by the PCA's monthly promo magazine, byFaith:

PCA pastor calls for more state control over home...

(Tim) As I've mentioned before, one of the most important journals for elders, pastors, and Titus 2 women to read as we shepherd God's flock and our own families is the Howard Center's "Family in America." (Full disclosure: my longtime friend, Bob Patterson, edits the journal.)

In order to live and lead "wise as serpents and harmless as doves," we should spend time studying our culture. There's no issue pastors, elders, deacons, fathers, and mothers of covenant children should study more carefully than the interface between the church, her families, and the civil magistrate--an area of the public square commonly referred to as family policy.

Recently, a friend of mine who's stated clerk of Central Indiana Presbytery (PCA) wrote an oped piece for his local paper calling for more review and discipline of homeschoolers by state government:

What do we do with home schools?

Leave them alone? Regulate them? Ban them?

...So I ask: is it in the interests of the state, to keep an eye on this? I say yes....

I pray for those "who are conflicted in their desires...and would like to determine themselves differently..."

(Tim) Pastor Sam Andreades, a longtime member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, now serves New York's Village Church affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Recently, Pastor Andreades did a five minute spot on WFMU's Seven Second Delay radio show concerning Village Church's willingness to help those "who are conflicted in their desires and their identity and would like to determine themselves differently." (Here's a pic from the occasion.)

Near the end, Pastor Andreades was asked if he wanted to lead in prayer? The interview begins around 18:30 and the concluding prayer at 23:30. Here's Pastor Andreades' prayer:

HOST: Sam, would you like to lead a prayer?

SAM ANDREADES: Uh, I'd be willing to pray if nobody laughs; if we can do it reverently.

HOST: Sure, let's give it a try and see what happens, OK? Ready?

Live by faith, vow a marriage, have babies, plant a church, start a school, college, and seminary...

(Tim) Back in 1993, I wrote an article on a conflict over the policy of Westminster School in Atlanta that required board members of this private Christian school to be confessing Christians. The New York Times had done an article on the controversy and I took the piece as a jumping-off point to say a few things about home, public, and Christian schools. Since then, Mary Lee and I have educated our five children (as well as several other children who lived with us through the years) in each of those ways--home, public, and Christian school. This is the final year we have a child at home and Taylor, our youngest, is finishing high school at the school my wife Mary Lee, with a couple others, founded and served as principal--Lighthouse Christian Academy.

It's been years since we've had a child at LCA. When it put up a building, we watched its former commitments decline. It seemed bent on becoming the sort of Christian school that, from the beginning, we'd worked hard to avoid. But this is the ho-hum way of all institutions, Christian or otherwise, and there have been some encouraging changes at LCA the past couple of years--hence Taylor's presence there this year.

But as I point out in the article below, the best antidote to school decline is the founding of a new school. It worked with Yale as a reform of Harvard, Princeton as a reform of Yale, and it's still working with schools like New St. Andrews being a reform of Wheaton, Westmont, Gordon, and Covenant.

Tired and timid souls always laugh at the upstarts...

Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State, after all...

Following Tim Keller, Redeemer, Metro New York and Northern California Presbyteries, as well as all the seminaries, churches, and pastors who believe in women teaching and exercising authority over men as long as it's not in the pulpit Sunday morning or voting on the discipline of a man in a session meeting, the PCA's Mission to the World e-mailed the following announcement across the world at the end of the day, yesterday:

From: (Mission to the World)
Date: September 10, 2010 10:34:32 PM GMT
To: Undisclosed recipients
Subject: New Senior Team Members!

Dear Colleagues;
 
I am pleased to announce that Jill Milton and Heidi Harrison have been appointed new members of the Senior Team for Mission to the World.  Jill has been with MTW since 1981 and has served in various capacities during that time.  In 2009 she assumed the role of Director of the newly created Resource Team Department.  Heidi has been a part of the MTW family for 17 years and has served in various roles during her time in the office.  Most recently she been the Assistant to the Coordinator in addition to her role on the Latin America/Africa Resource Team serving missionaries in Africa.  She will be adding the role of Project Coordinator for the Senior Team to her responsibilities.
 
Please join us in thanking God for Jill and Heidi.
 
In Christ,
(Mission to the World)

So here we have this unilateral announcment exhorting us to "thank God" for women getting seats at the table that sets governing policy over MTW ministries and personnel...

The gospel of art...

(Tim) From ClearNote Blog: The notable disciple of Spurgeon, Archibald Brown, warns: 

The devil has seldom done a more clever thing, than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out the gospel, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses!

...In vain will the epistles be searched to find any trace of the 'gospel of amusement'. Their message is, "Therefore, come out from them and separate yourselves from them... Don't touch their filthy things..." Anything approaching amusement is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon. (Read more.)

Disciplining racism: It all came down to just a couple votes...

(In September of 2008, preaching in the midst of a raging controversy over racism that was dividing his own congregation) Pastor Bulkeley condemned the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, saying its leader taught that Nazism was the "racial order" of God and that Jews should be eliminated. "This teaching was evil," Bulkeley told his congregation. "It is heretical. It is from the pit of hell and it's a direct offense against the gospel. There should be no mistake about that. It is completely contrary to everything the Bible teaches."

(Tim, w/thanks to Joel B.) Here's an article and sidebar from the Summer 2010 issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report telling the story of good church discipline carried out in Friendship Presbyterian Church outside Asheville, North Carolina. The discipline ended up also being adjudicated by the congregation's appellate court, Western Carolina Presbytery (PCA). (And if you don't understand why I'd refer to a PCA presbytery as an appellate court, read Brother David's superb commentary on the state of the PCA post-General Assembly union, here.)

Racism was the sin, and thus the Southern Poverty Law Center this one time stood on the side of the angels. Both the article and the sidebar attempt to provide some of the historic context for the battle against racism throughout the history of the PCA--very much a southern denomination with its roots deeply embedded in "The Recent Unpleasantness."

These articles have both the weaknesses and strengths of their origin outside the PCA. I hope you'll take the time to read them.

First, though, one prefatory remark. Dealing with abortion or racism or feminism is a bloody work...

Reflections on GA: Dialogue with David Wallover, part 2...

"We don't want our denomination to develop a master plan for us. With due respect, we don't need the PCA to plan seats at our table or safe places in our assemblies. What we want and need are faithful courts--bodies that will hold us to our biblical, confessional commitments..."   - David Bayly

(David) Below is the second installment of a dialogue with David Wallover, a friend and fellow PCA pastor. David Wallover's initial email was in response to this post giving my reflections on the Presbyterian Church in America's 2010 General Assembly.

Dear David (Wallover),

Your presence in the Ohio Presbytery was one of the reasons we chose to cast our lot there so I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my post about the PCA's recent General Assembly.

An initial correction: you speak of the three of us having been in the PCUSA together. Though you and Tim were in the PCUSA in the 90s, I was in a non-confessional Brethren denomination which we left for reasons centering around their acceptance of Open Theism and Inclusivism and their ordination of women to pastoral office rather than the issues that caused you and Tim to leave the PCUSA.

I suspect the differences between our views of the PCA today find their root in the unique circumstances of our respective entries into the PCA.

It was as the pastor of a new church with a functioning elder board and 150 members that I entered the PCA. We weren't searching for identity in entering the PCA, we were looking for a confessional home for an already-established church. We weren't lacking energy, history or character. We didn't need external vision to guide us in serving as salt and light in Toledo. We needed a denominational home that would, should we encounter difficulties beyond our capacity to solve, serve as a 21st-century expression of the Jerusalem Council for us.

Newcomers to the PCA are often surprised to hear...

Reflections on GA: Dialogue with David Wallover, part 1...

(David) I received the following email message from my good friend and fellow PCA pastor, David Wallover, after posting my initial reflections on the Presbyterian Church in America's 2010 General Assembly (GA). I've asked David Wallover if I could present both his thoughts and my subsequent response on this forum and he has graciously agreed. David Wallover pastors Harvest Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Medina, Ohio.

Hi, David (Bayly)-

I originally wrote the note below to be a posted reply to your blog today, but on reflection, thought I'd send it to you personally. You can decide if you want to use it on your blog or not.  It's not a contrary opinion, per se, but it is a perspective from a different angle.  Let me know your thoughts.

Your friend,
David (Wallover)
________________________________

My dear brother, David (Bayly)--

What's at stake here?  You, your brother, and I came up through the "bloodbath" of the UPCUSA/PCUSA.  Did you imagine when we each found our way into the PCA, that it or any other manmade denominational institution, could possibly remain focused?  What I said to my wife upon entering the PCA is, "Well, now we trade heresies on the left for heresies on the right"--my point being that fidelity to the truth, which is itself a fixed target, remains elusive because we are constantly shifting around the target. And even if the PCA falls prey to the old heresies on the left (which would be ironic in light of the whole "Federal" controvesy, which is a "heresy" on the right...), it still will be a result of OUR inability to stay fixed on the truth, veering as we do either to the left or the right.

Certification of non-ordained men and women in the PCA...

(David) A Marxist political science professor in my college taught a course on licensing in which he argued that licensure and certification processes always stem from the desire of elites to monopolize and control.

Perhaps the rank and file of the PCA could learn a thing or two about the link between depravity and the processes of power from a radical Marxist...

As the PCA considers a Strategic Plan which includes the goal of "Establish(ing) standards for voluntary certification of men and women for specific non-ordained vocational ministries" in order to "Endorse the importance of lay men’s and lay women’s gifts in non-ordained church ministry" within the PCA, let's consider the forms of ministry this will actually lead to, where power will accumulate under the plan and who will lose if the proposal is enacted.

Under the Strategic Plan's playbook the following steps are necessary for the achievement of this goal:

1. CEP, RUM, Covenant College, & Covenant Seminary jointly test theological & practical preparation

2. Presbyteries & regional CEP Women’s Ministries experientially examine & certify

It's immediately apparent that big winners under this plan are Covenant College (CC) and Covenant Theological Seminary (CTS) which are granted the key role of designing (and perhaps applying--the plan is vague at this point) the testing for such non-ordained certification.

Sending in the cheerleaders...

(David) As the Church of Christ goes about its business in this world it's important for us to remember what that business is. Our purpose is victory: the name of Christ proclaimed in the midst of His enemies, sinners snatched from the fire, glorious good deeds exalting our God.

Our purpose as the Church of Jesus Christ is not to be winsome--no matter how valuable winsomeness is in its own right--but to win. 

It is essential that we be winsome in winning. But the goal is victory--the kingdoms of this earth becoming the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ--not simply having others appreciate us.

I say this because as I listen to declarations of purpose by leaders of "missional" churches, it strikes me that they often confuse character with goal. They've made winsome character paramount, and while winsomeness is a very good thing in its place, it becomes a bad thing when it's confused with the ultimate goal of the Church: living to the glory of God, declaring His name, advancing the Kingdom of Christ, transforming the kingdoms of this earth into the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.

It's as though the coach of a Christian football team facing a formidable foe tells his players to show love to their opponents, to display the character of Christ on the field so that they bring glory to God, and the team, hearing their coach speak of love and winsomeness decide that, rather than risk looking nasty by playing to win, they'll honor their coach's command by fielding the cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are pretty...

Park Slope Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn...

We've decided to thank certain web sites for their promotion of Baylyblog through the years. We start today with one of the sites and ministries most constant in their support: Park Slope Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Brooklyn, New York.

We appreciate all the readers you guys send us. You're very kind.

Love the threads!