To leave the church that ordained me was a decision I reached with great sadness. In , the PCA began in the southern states as a conservative breakaway movement. Issues related to the mainline church continued: compromises with the Word of God and aggressive promotion of liberal secularism. In more than 40 years of its existence, the PCA has grown from 40, adherents in one region, to about , in nearly all parts of the nation and Canada. We have been blessed by God with rapid growth.
Our own Westminster congregation is bursting with about new members each year, all hungry for forthright Bible teaching. In , a happy union came about with the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, which broadened our base of churches nationally. The PCA, although a relatively small denomination, sends into the foreign field the world's largest Presbyterian missionary force, carrying good news of redemption in Christ to many nations.
Missionary outreach in obedience to the Great Commission is a high priority. We sponsor a rapidly growing campus ministry at many colleges and universities called Reformed University Ministries, and have numerous military chaplains in all branches of the U. Armed Services. PCA ministers and officers take a solemn vow to affirm the inerrancy of the Bible as their supreme authority and must endorse the entire Westminster Confession of Faith as a creed summarizing the doctrines of Scripture.
We believe laxity toward God's written Word opens the Pandora's box of errors humanistic theology has unleashed. People are eternally lost and need a divine Savior. Our pulpits seek to expound the Bible as transforming truth; we do not major in politics, faddish pop-psychology, or sociology. Ministers, ruling elders, and deacons in the PCA are men only, in obedience to the New Testament standard for those who rule the church and teach doctrine, though women have a wide range of use for their gifts in our churches.
The PCUSA endlessly debated homosexual ordination, which is not debatable in the PCA, since Scripture clearly condemns active homosexual practice as sin to be repented of by God's enabling grace. In , the PCUSA approved ordaining persons in an active gay lifestyle as ruling and teaching elders.
In light of Scripture, this is an abomination. The PCA has no participation in either organization. In the PCA, all church property belongs irrevocably to the local church, but in the PCUSA if a congregation votes to leave, the real assets of local churches become property of the denomination.
PCA congregations do cooperate in relationships with other sister churches through presbyteries and general assembly. We consciously avoid a top-heavy denominational system that gives manipulative power to a national "headquarters" staff, who generally tend to become detached from concerns of people in local congregations.
We in the PCA are interested in preaching and living out in a positive manner the gospel of our great God and Savior. We don't even bring the subject up very often, as I have here. In comparison, a prevailing view of the OPC is that it espouses a pilgrim—rather than an evangelical—mentality. Charlie Dennison, one-time historian for the OPC, reflects on this issue:.
While everyone in the OPC understands our opposition to liberalism, some have had trouble understanding the aversion that others have to evangelicalism. They have been unable to accept the conclusion of Cornelius Van Til and others that evangelicalism, as a system, is Arminian.
Modern practical theology, however, has moved in a man-centered direction, having adopted a worldly agenda for remedial goals and perceivable gains. Growth and year-end statistics have become gods. Christian maturity is confused with the mastery of methods, managerial skills, and the ability to cope. Modern practical theology trivializes the biblical vision by exalting incidental matters to the level of greatest concern. This is usually done, sometimes unwittingly, through a blend of social sciences, religious technology, and commercialism.
In its more tragic expressions, it is ridiculous. If you feel that Dennison is speaking to some deep part of your soul, giving voice to latent eschatological purpose, you may be a pilgrim. I believe Danny Olinger captured it well when he spoke of John P.
Galbraith understood his ecumenical work within the context of a separatist church that nevertheless was not isolationist. He was an engaged pilgrim. The two ecclesiastical bodies are united ecumenically as closely as our polity allows.
We often share pulpits among our sister churches, and many of us have been members in both denominations. We join together in substantial unity wherever and whenever we can, even while we continue to labor as two distinct ecclesiastical bodies under the same head, Jesus Christ. These [pagan] philosophers in their appearance of wisdom [schijnwijsheid] had only imagined things about God and about the way to the supreme good, which these teachers would mix with the Gospel, as do also the scholastic teachers in the Papacy, whereby the simplicity and straightforwardness of the saving doctrine of the Gospel is considerably darkened and distorted.
According to Karl Barth, the Bible is not revelation. While it was written sixty-nine years ago,. It is a great strength of our Presbyterian and Reformed ethos that we are historically conscious. We enjoy history and pride ourselves on being self-consciously rooted in.
References: [1] Source [2] Source [3] Source [4] Source. The Roman Catholic and Presbyterian branches of the Christian faith trace their origins to Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles, as well as their writings that comprise most of the New Testament. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
Continue Reading. During the American Civil War, the northern body, i. In , after years of division, they merged. Historically, Calvinist; some evangelical members and churches, but many more moderate-liberal members and churches. Westminster John Knox Press. The inclusive-language edition of the Confession; The Book of Confessions , and all the books included in it.
The Bible is inerrant i.
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