by Jim Henkel, pastor of North Benton Presbyterian Church, North Benton, OH

In response to the growing number of congregations that are choosing to disaffiliate or to request dismissal from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the team of Andrew Purves and Mark Achtemeier contend that: “In leaving [they are] either … making the fearful judgment that Jesus Christ [has] wholly abandoned the proclamation and sacraments of the PC(USA); or, [their] departure from a church where Christ [is] still present would suggest that Christ’s presence is not enough to establish the church’s hope for the future! Such a separation effectively proclaims that the hope of the church must lie elsewhere than Christ’s reality and reign, perhaps in the supposedly superior moral purity and theological righteousness of its leaders and members” (this and all the italicized quotes that follow are drawn from Mark Achtemeier and Andrew Purves, On Unity: Jesus Christ, The Hope of the Church, Presbyterian Outlook, 10/29/2007, www.pres-outlook.org).

This “portrayal” of their “separation-minded colleagues” is just as regrettable as labeling all of those who are determined to stay in the PC(USA) “as sell-outs, as compromisers, as ‘lukewarm Laodiceans’ who have sacrificed theological and biblical integrity for the sake of unity-at-any-cost.” Other than the weak claim that “the marks of the true church” might yet - by the sole grace of the Lord Jesus Christ – be found present in the PC(USA) in some measure, Achtemeier and Purves do little in their brief paper but join the fray in casting baseless aspersions at the other-side-of-the-aisle.

By way of rebuttal, I want to first note that the Presbyterian family vineyard in these United States of America bears witness to numerous leave takings and homecomings. Given our history, it is neither new nor shocking that some Presbyterian congregations are presently seeking dismissal or disaffiliation from the PC(USA). A steady ebb and flow between reunion and realignment is commonplace within the stream of American Presbyterianism.

Few would think to suggest that an individual who chose to transfer his or her particular membership from one Christian congregation to another had abandoned Christ Jesus by that act. There is general agreement that it does not hurt Jesus Christ or harm his Church when a person transfers his or her affiliation from one local church to another.

Neither is it an insult to the Church nor a denial of the reality and reigning Lordship of Jesus Christ for a particular congregation, or several local churches in concert, to realign with a different denomination than the one in which it/they previously held membership. There is no merit to the claim that a move from honoring Christ as a PC(USA) member congregation in order to glorify Jesus as a member congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church New Wineskins Presbytery imperils the exaltation of Jesus as Lord of all and Head of the Church.

The certain truth that Christ Jesus is Lord and Head is acclaimed wherever a fellowship of local churches covenant together to demonstrate “the marks of the true church” - within the life of each particular congregation and in their collective assemblies and joint undertakings - by “purely” preaching and hearing the gospel, rightly administering the sacraments “according to the Christ’s institution,” and fairly exercising ecclesiastical discipline in agreement with the admonition of Scripture (Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.1.9-10, The Scotts Confession, Chapter XVIII, C-.3.18). Any local church would be well served by entering into such a covenant community.

Imagine a local church which chooses that exact path; but then, after decades of cooperative ministry and mission, discovers that the leaders pledged to uphold their common covenant allow a significant minority of covenanted congregations to preach and practice precepts that are the antithesis of its foundational affirmations. Imagine further that said leaders not only defend the minority in operating outside the bounds of the covenant, but also assist in engineering a loophole that formalizes the right to side-step covenant requirements at will. Now, keep imagining: picture a scenario wherein these same leaders do not stop at handing the minority the right to ignore covenant provisions, but press on to compound this “systemic error” by advocating that primary covenant pledges should be stretched to the point of normalizing the aberrant preaching and practice of the minority; all while insisting that the majority should remain bound to covenant loyalty by past vows.

This imagined scenario is the present reality within the PC(USA).

“The problem that stands at the center of the” conservative/evangelical “breach with the” PC(USA) is “not that pastors and leaders [are] confused or incompetent, but that” unfaithfulness is now legal. Unfaithful “preaching and administration of the sacraments [are] not just” permitted; “they have been officially” ruled lawful by the Authoritative Interpretation of 2006. Even those who would assert that a Permanent Judicial Commission verdict is required to further clarify this reality, should readily admit that the necessity for an appeal to our ecclesiastical supreme court certifies the chronic nature of the “systemic error” infecting the PC(USA).

I agree with Purves and Achtemeier that, even in the face of this pervasive infection, it is still possible for “the decision to remain in the PC(USA)” to involve “neither a softening of confessional commitments nor a sentimental minimizing of the problems afflicting the denomination.” Yet, I encourage them and others to recognize that, like their own “commitment to hold firm in common life with our fellow Presbyterians” in the PC(USA), the choice to break away from that covenant community may also be “grounded in the recognition that the hope of the church lies nowhere else than in the saving Lordship of Jesus Christ its Head.”

In truth, when the choice to break fellowship with the PC(USA) results in uniting with a covenant community that recognizes and preaches the essential “saving Lordship of Jesus Christ” with unequivocal and univocal clarity, reliance upon him alone is confirmed. The counter-claim that such a move disgraces Christ Jesus evaporates in the bright light of the Biblical affirmation that “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3b).

The Bible says: “God has given” the Holy Spirit “to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32). Again, Jesus declares: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments and I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:15-17a). Those who obey Christ Jesus by keeping his commandments - which begin with love for God and for others, but are not limited to love alone - are blessed with the sustenance, protection, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. While the strength for obedience is itself a gift from the Father of all through Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit, individual disciples and the covenant community as a whole are accountable to employ God’s gift. The Church and its membership are obligated to obey.

Any who refuse obedience defy Christ. They resist the Holy Spirit. They reject God the Father. Hear the Word of God written: “Brothers [and sisters], we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his [or her] own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother [or sister] in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever rejects this, rejects not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8).

Since the Biblical, Apostolic, Christ generated “instructions” on abstaining from “sexual immorality” are among those measures of our common covenant that PC(USA) leadership urge our fellowship to disregard, it does not insult Jesus when some of our congregations choose to step out from the line of fire of his own avenging wrath; once we ourselves have been duly warned and have sounded the alarm for all to hear.

I do not disdain any who choose to remain in the PC(USA) in order to keep ringing the warning bell to the very last, theirs is a godly vocation. Christ Jesus himself continues the clarion call for flight from a covenant community that keeps yielding to Babylonian influences, saying: “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Revelation 18:4).

It is not an “abandonment of hope in a living, acting, and reigning Lord Jesus” to abandon the PC(USA) to the full exercise of his good judgment. To trust Christ’s righteous rule enough to respect and respond to his admonition to get-out-while-you-can, is not a “contradiction of the Gospel;” even when it requires breaking fellowship with a specific tree planted in the Presbyterian family vineyard.

The PC(USA) stands in that vineyard barren as a fruitless fig tree that is forever desolate by the judgment of Christ (Matthew 21:18-22; Mark 11:12-14, 20-25). Yes, Jesus can resurrect that denuded tree and make it fruitful again - there is always hope for a tree (Job 14:7-9). “It is Christ’s presence and strength, not ours, that alone is capable of guiding and preserving and sustaining the [PC(USA)]. It is Christ’s holiness and righteousness, not ours, that brings hope of renewal in the face of all the [systemic] error, weakness, and incompetence” afflicted upon it by human hands and ideas. It is Christ’s choice, not ours, to leave this withered trunk decaying in the ground or to lift it up to new life.

Indeed, and it is the prerogative of Jesus Christ to prune from the barren PC(USA) any branches that may yet be green with trust in him alone for life and to graft them into a different tree within his vineyard.

Christ Jesus has dominion. He is Lord of all. We belong to Jesus Christ; whether we continue clinging to our original stump with a tenacity born of his own tender mercies, or we submit to being grafted by him into another tree in a surrender that flows from his own extreme grace.

There is no doubt that the pruning is painful, but there is also no question that it is necessary in training us to bear the fruit of the Spirit (John 15:1-8, Galatians 5:16-26, Hebrews 12:7-17). Rather than railing at one another, all of us - who are or have been members of the PC(USA) - should be searching for the lessons Christ Jesus wants us each and all to learn, in this present season of discipline and pruning at the hand of our Lord: “For it is time for judgment to begin in the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the Gospel of God? And ‘If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?’” (1 Peter 4:17-18).

One such lesson is that we can utterly rely upon the written Word of God in whom we trust. Therefore, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Cast all your cares on him, for he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:5b-7).

Remember, especially in the face of present struggles and sufferings, that “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 5:10b-11).

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 8:46 am and is filed under New Wineskins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.