The liberalization of the PCA

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Where's Jacob Aitken on this Monroe talk? The PCA tried planting a church there, my friend was the pastor but the session over him was a little heavy handed. My friend wanted to plant an old school ordinary means church, and the session wanted the church to be just like theirs. Didn't work out well, church plant failed.

There's a good ARP church there, not sure why the PCA desires to come in personally. Especially with a major factory closing down there soon. All that was off topic.

I was ordained in PCA in 2008, joined the RPCNA in 2018 with my congregation. We did not leave because of the PCA, but the current state of the PCA didn't help its case when my congregation was considering leaving or not. It does seem to be getting worse, generally, but there are still some good congregations out there.

Though I suppose you could have said the same thing about the PCUSA a few years ago, and the EPC now. The PCUSA for years has had congregations leaving for the EPC. Now because of that, a number of EPC congregations are leaving for the PCA.
 
Romans922 said:
Where's Jacob Aitken on this Monroe talk? The PCA tried planting a church there, my friend was the pastor but the session over him was a little heavy handed. My friend wanted to plant an old school ordinary means church, and the session wanted the church to be just like theirs. Didn't work out well, church plant failed.

There's a good ARP church there, not sure why the PCA desires to come in personally. Especially with a major factory closing down there soon. All that was off topic.

I was ordained in PCA in 2008, joined the RPCNA in 2018 with my congregation. We did not leave because of the PCA, but the current state of the PCA didn't help its case when my congregation was considering leaving or not. It does seem to be getting worse, generally, but there are still some good congregations out there.

Though I suppose you could have said the same thing about the PCUSA a few years ago, and the EPC now. The PCUSA for years has had congregations leaving for the EPC. Now because of that, a number of EPC congregations are leaving for the PCA.
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I'm just going to list the facts:

1) As Andrew noted, the PCA "tried" (not very hard) to do a church plant in Monroe 10 year or so ago. It failed (for various reasons).

2) There is a good ARP church 20 minutes from Monroe.

3) There is a conservative EPC church (my church). The pastor speaks on the banner of truth circuit and knew RC Sproul.

4) The area in which this new PCA plant is targeting is geared toward Century Link corporation, which is about to leave Northeast La.

I don't want to tell a person, "You can't start a church here." But I will tell you the facts.
 
Romans922 said:
Where's Jacob Aitken on this Monroe talk? The PCA tried planting a church there, my friend was the pastor but the session over him was a little heavy handed. My friend wanted to plant an old school ordinary means church, and the session wanted the church to be just like theirs. Didn't work out well, church plant failed.

There's a good ARP church there, not sure why the PCA desires to come in personally. Especially with a major factory closing down there soon. All that was off topic.

I was ordained in PCA in 2008, joined the RPCNA in 2018 with my congregation. We did not leave because of the PCA, but the current state of the PCA didn't help its case when my congregation was considering leaving or not. It does seem to be getting worse, generally, but there are still some good congregations out there.

Though I suppose you could have said the same thing about the PCUSA a few years ago, and the EPC now. The PCUSA for years has had congregations leaving for the EPC. Now because of that, a number of EPC congregations are leaving for the PCA.
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And both the RPCNA and the ARP can testify that a slide into liberalism is not inevitable. Both denominations flirted with it (the RPCNA around the same time as the PCUSA, the ARP around the same time as the PCUS) and both staved off the threat and were reformed by the grace of God and the efforts of good men who took a stand for God's truth. The ARP perhaps still has a little work to do but seems to be continuing a trend towards greater confessional fidelity. I pray that the same thing happens in the PCA.
 
Romans922 said:
Where's Jacob Aitken on this Monroe talk? The PCA tried planting a church there, my friend was the pastor but the session over him was a little heavy handed. My friend wanted to plant an old school ordinary means church, and the session wanted the church to be just like theirs. Didn't work out well, church plant failed.
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Sounds like a victory of hope over common sense.

BayouHuguenot said:
I don't want to tell a person, "You can't start a church here." But I will tell you the facts.
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Working on information that's at least a quarter of a century out of date, I'd look at West Monroe if I was planning a church plant.

BayouHuguenot said:
There is a good ARP church 20 minutes from Monroe.
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Have things settled back down there? We should all remember what happened when they had a fairly rigid pastor at that church.
 
Edward said:
Working on information that's at least a quarter of a century out of date, I'd look at West Monroe if I was planning a church plant.
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Better place than Monroe or Sterlington. The church formerly known as AAPC moved to one of the main streets in West Monroe. There is also a Reformed baptist church nearby, but it's pretty small.
 
I think the trajectory of the PCA is sort of a dog's breakfast right now and I'm not sure how it will turn out. There are parallels to prior times but disjunctions as well.

The parallel is what Machen called conservatives who were "sweetness and light" kind of conservatives. There is a sometimes shocking amount of ambivalence and ignorance about our system of doctrine.

I think I sometimes feel like there is less of a widespread concerted move to a particular position and more of a "flowing with the culture" because many are not well rooted in our doctrines and are prone to apply "pastoral theology" in a way that is not grounded in a deep understanding of the Scriptures and our theology. I am not sanguine about the future of Covenant Seminary and would not commend it as a place for people considering the ministry.

That all said, the PCA is not quite "liberalizing" in the sense of "we no longer believe the Bible is inspired and we're embarrassed about inspiration and such". I think what we're seeing is a neo-Kuyperian movement that is moving the center of theology away from a Reformed center and into a pseudo-Reformed center in terms of its doctrine.

I think this interview with Bill Dennison is really one of the most useful summaries of what is going on with the neo-Calvinist Transformationalists: https://reformedforum.org/ctc497/

It's no accident that CTS is renamed Missional Theology because I think the transformational theology fundamentally sees Romans 8 not as a statement about what God is doing in creation for the sake of the elect but what God is doing in creation for the sake of the world. Thus, the center of activity moves from the work to gather the Church to the role of what God is doing to "redeem the culture", etc.

Now, to be fair, when Theonomists focus on this issue, many Christians are kind of cool with it because it sees at its end a sort of "conservative agenda". Now that you have neo-Calvinists who are focused on progressive causes then it becomes much more apparent where the whole project is amiss.

I think the reason it is accelerating and is popular is because it is popular with the culture. If my "redeem the city" or "redeem the culture" theology looks and smells like something the world appreciates then I'm not a subject of being reviled by the world. I'm just sort of "cleaning up" that bad ways people are bringing about my same agenda. If I'm a theonomist, however, then I'm sort of a pariah to the world which is why it's not a really popular way to be a neo-Calvinist. In other words, DW is a jerk but Tim Killer is cool and I want to hang with that guy.

Hence, without really saying it, there's a lot of "friendship with the world" going on because being a woke transformationalist is not at all costly when you're marching against the police with Black Lives Matters. You can pull off just about anything you need to when your a transformationalist because you sort of have a theological way to justify just about any kind of transformationalist activity that looks like the world and still convince yourself that your a conservative inerrantist.
 
Semper Fidelis said:
I think the trajectory of the PCA is sort of a dog's breakfast right now and I'm not sure how it will turn out. There are parallels to prior times but disjunctions as well.

The parallel is what Machen called conservatives who were "sweetness and light" kind of conservatives. There is a sometimes shocking amount of ambivalence and ignorance about our system of doctrine.

I think I sometimes feel like there is less of a widespread concerted move to a particular position and more of a "flowing with the culture" because many are not well rooted in our doctrines and are prone to apply "pastoral thoelogy" in a way that is not grounded in a deep understanding of the Scriptures and our theology. I am not sanguine about the future of Covenant Seminary and would not commend it as a place for people considering the ministry.

That all said, the PCA is not quite "liberalizing" in the sense of "we no longer believe the Bible is inspired and we're embarrassed about inspiration and such". I think what we're seeing is a neo-Kuyperian movement that is moving the center of thoelogy away from a Reformed center and into a pseudo-Reformed center in terms of its doctrine.

I think this interview with Bill Dennison is really one of the most useful summaries of what is going on with the neo-Calvinist Transformationalists: https://reformedforum.org/ctc497/

It's no accident that CTS is renamed Missional Theology because I think the transformational theology fundamentally sees Romans 8 not as a statement about what God is doing in creation for the sake of the elect but what God is doing in creation for the sake of the world. Thus, the center of activity moves from the work to gather the Church to the role of what God is doing to "redeem the culture", etc.

Now, to be fair, when Theonomists focus on this issue, many Christians are kind of cool with it because it sees at its end a sort of "conservative agenda". Now that you have neo-Calvinists who are focused on progressive causes then it becomes much more apparent where the whole project is amiss.

I think the reason it is acclerating and is popular is because it is popular with the culture. If my "redeem the city" or "redeem the culture" theology looks and smells like something the world appreciates then I'm not a subject of being reviled by the world. I'm just sort of "cleaning up" that bad ways people are bringing about my same agenda. If I'm a theonomist, however, then I'm sort of a pariah to the world which is why it's not a really popular way to be a neo-Calvinist. In other words, DW is a jerk but Tim Killer is cool and I want to hang with that guy.

Hence, without really saying it, there's a lot of "friendship with the world" going on because being a woke transformationalist is not at all costly when you're marching against the police with Black Lives Matters. You can pull off just about anything you need to when your a transformationalist because you sort of have a theological way to justify just about any kind of transformationalist activity that looks like the world and still convince yourself that your a conservative inerrantist.
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A.Joseph said:
The more I look into classic or consistently conceived theonomy the less legitimacy it seems to merit as far as our place here on this earth. JDHall does a pretty good job here:


But the flip side is quite troubling
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It's tricky. Theonomy divides into a myriad of sub groups:

1) The American Vision theonomists will be Social Justice Warriors within the next two years. They are like the Old Testament version of the Gospel Coalition.

2) Rushdoony's disciples have done very little in the past few years and will probably fade into a deserved obscurity

3) Then you have the Covenanter Theonomist types. While I have problems with Covenanter thought, these guys are superior to (1)-(2) and usually come down on the right side of social issues.
 
BayouHuguenot said:
It's tricky. Theonomy divides into a myriad of sub groups:

1) The American Vision theonomists will be Social Justice Warriors within the next two years. They are like the Old Testament version of the Gospel Coalition.

2) Rushdoony's disciples have done very little in the past few years and will probably fade into a deserved obscurity

3) Then you have the Covenanter Theonomist types. While I have problems with Covenanter thought, these guys are superior to (1)-(2) and usually come down on the right side of social issues.
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Thanks for the taxonomy. That said, I think we do have to reckon with the "distortion field" created by putting "cultural transformation" at the center of our theology. It probably irks some to no end to think that Michelle Higgins is sort of the "polar political opposite" to some bearded conservative pushing for women to wear long skirts but they are shoots off the same shoot. In the past I've found some theonomists to be mostly annoying. There are some really great guys so I"m not trying to paint all as jerks. That said, some are so obsessed with government that they're harmless "annoyances" because they sort of pipe up about something and sound like conspiracy theorists to a lot of people. The Higgins' brand, however, has a lot of traction with young people. It's hip. It's where the culture is. It's the way people are thinking these days because the culture has molded their thinking so it spreads like a malignant cancer in a way that theonomy never could because the ground was so rocky to think that way.
 
BayouHuguenot said:
It's tricky. Theonomy divides into a myriad of sub groups:

1) The American Vision theonomists will be Social Justice Warriors within the next two years. They are like the Old Testament version of the Gospel Coalition...
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Joel McDurmon is already there. He's also apparently not a theonomist anymore in any meaningful sense.
 
BayouHuguenot said:
The church formerly known as AAPC moved to one of the main streets in West Monroe.
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I am behind the times.

I just looked at their new location, and when I said West Monroe, that wasn't exactly the area I had in mind.

I would have thought they would have at least linked from their old web site to their new identity.
 
Edward said:
I am behind the times.

I just looked at their new location, and when I said West Monroe, that wasn't exactly the area I had in mind.

I would have thought they would have at least linked from their old web site to their new identity.
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Their new choice of location is brilliant on one hand, but in terms of their classical school, it's a nightmare for picking up and dropping off kids.
 
I found this interesting. I don’t really have an opinion on Tim Keller. .... an interesting aspect of this debate is how different parts of the country breed different cultures. But there is a danger of adopting the culture you are placed to minister. The wealthy elite and many millennials are attracted to equal justice and ‘progressive’/collectivist causes like amnesty, welfare, affirmative action, distribution of wealth, etc... https://pulpitandpen.org/2017/12/26/conservative-pundit-warns-pca-about-tim-keller/
 
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A.Joseph said:
I found this interesting. I don’t really have an opinion on Tim Keller. .... an interesting aspect of this debate is how different parts of the country breed different cultures. But there is a danger of adopting the culture you are placed to minister. The wealthy elite and many millennials are attracted to equal justice and ‘progressive’/collectivist causes like amnesty, welfare, affirmative action, distribution of wealth, etc... https://pulpitandpen.org/2017/12/26/conservative-pundit-warns-pca-about-tim-keller/
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Mixed bag. Almost anything Pulpit and Pen writes is wrong, so take it with a grain of salt. Keller's ballet dance was sort of the anchor that broke the camel's back. But keller has also done some good stuff.
 
BayouHuguenot said:
Almost anything Pulpit and Pen writes is wrong, so take it with a grain of salt.
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And almost all of that which they produce that is true or right is presented in such aggressive, sometimes offensive, and Christ-dishonoring language that the flame of any good its truth might otherwise accomplish is doused by the flood of vitriol.
 
Taylor Sexton said:
And almost all of that which they produce that is true or right is presented in such aggressive, sometimes offensive, and Christ-dishonoring language that the flame of any good its truth might otherwise accomplish is doused by the flood of vitriol.
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They are the Westboro Baptist Church of the Internet
 
BayouHuguenot said:
Mixed bag. Almost anything Pulpit and Pen writes is wrong, so take it with a grain of salt. Keller's ballet dance was sort of the anchor that broke the camel's back. But keller has also done some good stuff.
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Fair enough... here’s the original source material from conservative columnist Erick Erickson who I did not know is a member of the PCA. https://www.themaven.net/theresurge...ica-heed-the-warnings-vMWNv0-p902qXNkbSSsCyA/

JD Hall is very smart. I don’t know what his defect/disconnect is that he can go so far off the rails. It’s like a part of his emotional maturity is stunted along with a touch of narcissism not completely foreign to certain circles of ministry where accountability is lacking
 
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Edward said:
I don't know. It looks like a better location for the Assembly of God congregation that moved out. j
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It's good in that it is on one of the busiest roads in NE Louisiana. Church parking, accordingly, and pick up, is a nightmare.

The location to which the Assembly of God church moved is much better.
 
And almost all of that which they produce that is true or right is presented in such aggressive, sometimes offensive, and Christ-dishonoring language that the flame of any good its truth might otherwise accomplish is doused by the flood of vitriol.
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Is this kind of a thing within some RB circles? It seems that more than half the time when I come across scathing criticism on the Internet couched in really unhelpful language they tend to be RBs - not always and not all of them but from my perspective it seems a bit disproportionate. It's been kind of discouraging.

Keller's ballet dance was sort of the anchor that broke the camel's back. But keller has also done some good stuff.
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I think of Keller as a "brilliant tragedy." So much good mixed with so much "What in the world are you doing/talking about?" Must read with a very high level of discernment in my opinion.
 
TheInquirer said:
Is this kind of a thing within some RB circles? It seems that more than half the time when I come across scathing criticism on the Internet couched in really unhelpful language they tend to be RBs - not always and not all of them but from my perspective it seems a bit disproportionate. It's been kind of discouraging.
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Trust me, Baptists don't have a corner on being jerks. There are plenty of Presbyterians. We're all sinners. That said, it is nice to have a court above the level of a session to whom charges may be brought.
 
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