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The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

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Rooting for President Trump...

Dad was from New York City. Until his sister came to live and die with us in 2001, her abode was the same Flushing apartment Dad found and moved his parents and sister into back in 1940 while he was a student at Wheaton College. Hear tell the building's owners had a blowout party to celebrate Aunt Elaine's departure after sixty years of rent control on her corner apartment.

So I've always known and kept track of The Donald, and for decades the souls I serve as pastor have observed my—shall I say it publicly?—loathing for him. My disgust with the man long predates his entry into politics. But if anything, The Donald's election as president has modulated my loathing. Yes, it continues; but now it's mixed with a certain grudging appreciation (as well as respect for the office of President)...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (10): what the Committee should have said...

(This is the tenth and final post in a series critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighth, ninth, and tenth.)

For this purpose (God) has set elders over His church, to force the re­fractory to order; and they are not to allow sin to be freely indulged in and to rage with impunity. ...there is no reason why they should allow the church to fall in ruins because of their sloth; there is no cause why they should sit back and connive at the wicked­ness of those who try to turn everything upside down. - John Calvin 1

It's time to bring this series to an end, but one last job remains on my to-do list.

Criticism is only as good as the vision that inspires it, so let me tell you my vision. Of course, it’s not my vision. It’s the vision shared among Biblically Reformed men who have read Scripture and church history and want to die having, by God’s grace, added to the capital our faithful fathers in the faith bequeathed to us. We want to die leaving the church better than we found it. Only by God’s grace, I am zealous to add.

We want to be faithful to fight the battles of today, pushing back against the heterodoxies, heresies, and wickedness we have discovered in our own hearts placed there by the Spirit of our Age. We refuse to spend our lives carving monuments to dead men and erecting museums filled with...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (9): Joey Pipa at the lowest pitch of expression...

Back in the study, I asked Solzhenitsyn about his relations with the West... "[Y]es, it is true, when I fought the dragon of Communist power I fought it at the highest pitch of expression. The people in the West were not accustomed to this tone of voice. In the West, one must have a balanced, calm, soft voice; one ought to make sure to doubt oneself, to suggest that one may, of course, be completely wrong. But I didn't have the time to busy myself with this. This was not my main goal.” (Solzhenitsyn, quoted in the New Yorker, February 14, 1994, p.74.)

It saddened me to read Joey Pipa's response to the Report of the PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church. As president of a South Carolina seminary offering a more conservative option to the PCA’s Covenant Seminary, I’d been hopeful his response, when published, would sound an alarm within the church against the Committee's 60,000 words conniving at the feminist heresy.

Apparently others hoped the same because Dr. Pipa begins by telling his readers that "many friends and former students" asked him to respond to the Report.

What a disappointment they all must have felt watching as Dr. Pipa preciously declines to engage the enemy. Reading his very short response—1,500 words is about one-third of a sermon—you get the feeling you’re watching...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (8): hiding out in a cave...

(This is eighth in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighth, ninth, and tenth.)

The primary need is the encouragement and respect of the church’s male leadership who can either nourish or break the heart of a woman who is trying to serve God. ...There is additional benefit to churches finding ways to deploy gifted women teachers in their midst. ...When churches recognize a gifted woman’s teaching ministry and incorporate it into the church’s ministry, the expansion of that ministry is an expansion of that church.

- Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church 1

[June 3, 2017: this post has been edited to turn its focus away from one individual.]

Does the Report acknowledge any Scriptural limitations on women teaching and exercising authority over men?

Yes it does, and for most that will be the end of it. As one southern pastor of my acquaintance effused in a fawning tweet, "how very grateful we all are for the wonderful work this wise and faithful Committee has presented to the church!"2

Stopping right there is what the Assembly will do: "Look, they said there are some things only men should do. Isn't that enough? What does it take to satisfy you? Must every last woman be married, barefoot, and pregnant?"

For a long time now, the pastors who posture themselves as conservatives during PCA general assemblies have specialized in avoiding the battle by giving private assurances of their manliness and Biblical convictions while publicly issuing...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (7): silence is obsolete...

(This is seventh in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighth, ninth, and tenth.)

The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. (1 Corinthians 14:34)

In a long section titled "The Roles of Women During the Apostolic Era," the PCA's General Assembly Study Committee on Women's Roles in the Church goes on at great length about what this and that New Testament passage does and doesn't mean. They quote lots of scholars saying one thing and another about the meaning of this and that Greek word. Some of it is unobjectionable, beyond the fact that the reader is left exhausted; and maybe that's the point?

Finally, though, the Committee is forced to conclude something or other about the texts' application to congregations within their own religious non-profit association. Given the spread of their legs from the concrete and timber dock of Jackson, Mississippi to the sleek yacht with a gaping hole in her hull up there in New York City, it's hard for them not to embarrass themselves by...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (6): no minority report...

(This is sixth in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighth, ninth, and tenth.)

Now Herod and Pilate became friends with one another that very day... (Luke 23:12)

The first thing Presbyterian officers will note about this Report is that it is a consensus report. All Committee members signed off on it, agreeing with the Report as written:

We debated all the matters put to us by the General Assembly and were, by the grace of God, able to arrive at an overwhelming consensus. 1

A consensus isn't a mere majority. Merriam Webster lists "unanimity" as a synonym, yet the Committee feels the need to assure the Assembly their consensus is "overwhelming."

Why speak of an "overwhelming consensus?"

In an earlier post I warned against this Committee's exaggerated...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (5): the ministry role of washing saints' feet...

...if she has washed the saints' feet (1Timothy 5:10)

(This is the fifth in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighth, ninth, and tenth.)

Talking about this Report with my wife Mary Lee, I picked up my laptop and did a search for "wash" or "feet."

Nothing, and the absence of these words is damning. But first, a few sentences about a word the Committee loves...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (4): read Warfield for yourself...

(This is the fourth in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighthninth, and tenth.)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Princeton's Benjamin Warfield argued for deaconesses, writing that the office of deaconess would help bring women's leadership in the church into direct accountability to the church's male officers.

The study committee's Report cites Warfield several times in their attempt to get the PCA finally to normalize the Kellerites' practice of woman officers. What they don't explain...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (3): texts left on the scrap heap...

(This is the third in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighthninth, and tenth.)

The Committee's Report comes in at 63 pages and 32,000 words. Before they're done, the Committee has tipped their hat to many of the exegetical inventions and talking points used by feminists these past fifty years to justify their rebellion. Bad as it is to read the Committee paying their respects to feminist revisionist arguments about this and that passage of Scripture, it's even worse to note the Scripture texts the Committee excludes from our consideration.

This, for instance...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (2): they are "joyfully committed"...

(This is the second post in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighth, ninth, and tenth.)

On to our examination of the Report itself. We'll use screen shots so we can refer to line numbers.

In the first sentence of the Report (Line 10), readers are assured each of the Committee members are "joyfully committed" to "the Bible's teaching on the complementarity of men and women."

First, that word "complementarity." "Complementarian" is a shibboleth, a word used to communicate the man entering the camp is not the enemy. Among most Evangelicals, saying you're a "complementarian" makes you OK whether or not you can spell it.

Trust is important in our age when sex is such a bloody battlefield.

Many pastors and elders opposed this study committee because they were concerned it would lead to capitulation to the forces of feminism. Then, when the Committee's members were announced, they were even more concerned watching Tim Keller's wife, Kathy, seated as a voting member.

In direct violation of Scripture and the PCA's Constitution, Tim Keller has long had women officers in his church, so the appointment of his wife to the Committee was a clear statement...


Report of PCA Study Committee on Women in the Church (1): Kathy Keller "Voting Member"...

(This is the first in a series of ten posts critiquing the Report of the Presbyterian Church in America's Study Committee on Women Serving in the Ministry of the Church: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventheighth, ninth, and tenth.)

Preparatory to their 2017 General Assembly to be held in June, the Presbyterian Church in America has released the Report of their study committee on "women serving in the ministry of the church." This is the first in a series examining this committee's work.

When I served on a similar PCA General Assembly study committee on women in the military a few years ago, no woman was appointed to our committee. Study committees of the PCA General Assembly examine the interpretation of Scripture on theological matters where there is a need for the church to come to an authoritative judgment. Thus these study committees have been composed of pastors and elders—officers called to adjudicate conflict and make authoritative judgments. For this reason, many found it disheartening that Pastor Tim Keller's wife, Kathy, was placed on this study committee and that she agreed to serve.

It has long been normal practice for women to be present and participate in elders meetings at Tim Keller's Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Mrs. Keller's appointment to this General Assembly study Committee is in line with the egalitarian practices Redeemer has long been practicing in her own fellowship, and advocating within her denomination.

But whereas the women attending Redeemer's elder meetings have been...


Tim Keller's legacy...

I am one of those women who have worked under Tim Keller’s leadership at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. [Tim] hired me to envision and develop an entire ministry to equip and mobilize men and women in Redeemer’s congregation to work with gospel-centered vision and integrity out in the world. We partnered in the establishment of the Center for Faith & Work, which may have done as much as any church in decades to honor Abraham Kuyper’s vision of humble, respectful engagement in a world of many faith perspectives.

- Katherine Leary Alsdorf, "Tim Keller hired women in leadership: Katherine Leary Alsdorf responds to the Princeton Kuyper Prize controversy" in A Journey Through NYC Religions.

Far above all other blog posts I've done through the years, the things I've written criticizing Tim Keller have cost me the most in terms of being viewed as an outlier among Reformed Evangelicals. "Who on earth would want to criticize Tim Keller," people ask; "he's the best we have!"

Maybe he's the best of my generation, but sorry to say, that's not saying much. Based upon the past generations of leaders I've known personally, as well as my reading of fathers in the faith who preceded us across the centuries, it's my judgement those of us leading the church today are moral, theological, and spiritual midgets. Children. Infants.

A little less than a century ago, J. Gresham Machen observed that America...


In order to form a more perfect Union: California dreaming...

CalSecessiion.pngI'd like to help you in your struggle
To be free

You Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
 1

Honestly, if California seceding from these United States is the fruit of voting for President-elect Donald Trump, I'd do it a thousand times. I'd preach that it's a mandate of Biblical proportions for every Christian.

Just imagine. I'm almost giggling with excitement.

Sure, we'd lose Kobe, Hollywood, Berkley, and Tim Cook, but we'd also lose Fuller, Rick Warren, Westminster Escondido, and the Castro. Not a bad trade-off.

Anyone heard if they're talking to Seattle and Portland? Miami and Manhattan?

Denominational reform by other means.


"Gay Christian": An excuse clause for obedience to God's Word...

PCA pastors publicly proclaim the importance, even the precious necessity and gospel utility, of using the designation "gay Christian" for men and women who profess faith in Christ while lusting in the same-sex direction. Those promoting this new label say that same-sex desire is a result of the Fall and a part of human brokenness, but it is most certainly not sin. They tell the church it is honesty and humility that have given birth to their new "gay Christian" identity. They were born gay and born-again Christian, and each and every moment is impacted by those two important personal identities. 

Mrs. Rosaria Butterfield, former lesbian feminist professor of English and women's studies, comes to a drastically different conclusion. To insist—as she did before her conversion—that her personhood was defined by her sexual desires... 


The PCA and the ordination of women...

Presbyterian_Church_in_America_logo.jpeg-200x288.jpegAt her 44th General Assembly in Mobile, AL, the pastors and elders of the Presbyterian Church in America debated whether to form a study committee "made up of competent men and women representing the diversity of opinions within the PCA" whose task would be to study "the issue of women serving in the ministry of the church." The proposal did not come through the normal channel of a presbytery overture, but rather by recommendation of the Administrative Committee via their recently-formed Cooperative Ministries Committee (CMC).

Here is the language of their proposal focussing their study committee's work on whether Christ's Church should have women officers:

• That the Assembly form a study committee on the issue of women serving in the ministry of the church (RAO 9-1; 9-3). The Assembly authorizes the Moderator to appoint the study committee. The study committee should be made up of competent men and women representing the diversity of opinions within the PCA (RAO 9-1; Robert’s Rules of Order [11th edition], §13, pp. 174-175, §50, pp.495- 496, §50, pp. 497-498 §56, p. 579]).

• That the committee should give particular attention to the issues of:

(1) The biblical basis, theology, history, nature, and authority of ordination;

(2) The biblical nature and function of the office of deacon;

(3) Clarification on the ordination or commissioning of deacons/deaconesses;

(4) Should the findings of the study committee warrant BCO changes, the study committee will propose such changes for the General Assembly to consider.

• The committee will have a budget of $15,000 that is funded by designated donations to the AC from churches and individuals (RAO 9-2).

• A Pastoral Letter to be proposed by the ad interim study committee and approved by the General Assembly be sent to all churches, encouraging them to

(1) promote the practice of women in ministry,

(2) appoint women to serve alongside elders and deacons in the pastoral work of the church, and

(3) hire women on church staff in appropriate ministries.

The proposal that a pastoral letter encouraging the promotion, appointment, and hiring of women in the ministries of the church be sent out to the whole denomination even before the study committee is formed or begins deliberation shows the conclusions denominational leaders expect their hand-picked study committee members to bring back to the assembly at the conclusion of their work. The results of the committee's work, whatever it may conclude about the proper subjects of ordination, must make a move toward the expansion of women's work in the church. Forged after decades of functional egalitarianism in the PCA, the Cooperative Ministries Committee's proposal was about as groundbreaking and exciting as the leaves of Autumn falling and rotting.

Note the difference between the arguments of those for and those against the formation of the committee...


What to do when Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump is your president...

The sons of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and they took their daughters for themselves as wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.

Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, so that He sold them into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia; and the sons of Israel served Cushan-rishathaim eight years. When the sons of Israel cried to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for the sons of Israel to deliver them, Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother. (Judges 3:5-9)

Under the post "Wayne Grudem's ethical casuistry," Mr. Alex Guggenheim commented: "You are going to get either Trump or Clinton. It's time to grow up and take responsibility for delivering one or the other to us."

Here's my response:

Dear Mr. Guggenheim,

You're avoiding the long game. I understand why you're doing so, but don't accuse those who think about history and judgement or blessing in more than four-year increments of being immature and irresponsible. I would say it's precisely the opposite—that those incapable of thinking and choosing anything other than short-term goods are the ones who are immature and irresponsible. Contrary to what all Donald Trump's supporters are telling the church right now, this election cycle...


Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

Addition not subtraction. Triangulation. The Third Way. These are terms of political tradecraft. They signify the politician's transcendence above the liberal-conservative divide. Working in government, I see this principle in constant operation. 

A politician can triangulate in the mix of policies he adopts. For example, an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy means the politician supports traditional oil and gas exploration as well as ethanol subsidies, all while paying lip service to renewable solar and wind power. This strategy lowers the decibel level from environmentalist opponents if not neutralizing them entirely. 

A politician also triangulates with rhetoric. He need only strike the right pose and emit the proper buzzword. From illegal drugs to education to welfare, a politician can navigate beyond any seemingly binary framework by talking of and emoting compassion. If he's really sophisticated, a politician utters certain phrases that are seemingly insignificant and benign to almost everyone while being fraught with meaning when decoded by a special interest group. This is what the political class calls...


Homosexual marriage: where are our judges' pastors...

In response to my post yesterday condemning Judge Tanya Walton Pratt for her religious commitment to the slaughter of babies, a Christian attorney I'm close to wrote, 

The sad fact is that the federal Constitution, as defined by SCOTUS, gives any woman the right to kill her baby.... So a judge has no choice but to apply that rule... I don’t think you can fault a judge for applying even a terrible law. She has sworn to do that.

The lawyer and I both come from a long line of Presbyterians, so his remonstrance yesterday popped into my mind when, today, I read this headline about Mississippi's judicial battle over the protection of religious freedom:

The Latest: No judges sought recusal from doing gay weddings

Seriously? No judge—not even one? (And only one clerk.) 

So what does this have to do with Presbyterian pastors?

I was under the impression that First Presbyterian Church of Jackson owns the money and leadership of this small capital city (only twice the size of Bloomington, IN) of this small southern state. In fact, what about all the churches in Mississippi...


The discontent demographic...

This post by Wendy Foulke, Director of Women's Ministries at Christ the Word, demonstrates the kind of leadership we need in the PCA. Christianity Today's article on the PCA study committee on women in the church referred to the PCA having been formed from churches "opposed to women in church leadership." Not true; in fact, disingenuously tendentious. We'll place our female leaders against any church's at any level and in any capacity: intellectually, organizationally, knowledge of God's Word, ability to teach, wisdom.

The only "leadership" realm we'd likely fall short in is discontentment...