This week my denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, held its 45th stated General Assembly in Detroit, Michigan. This is the annual meeting and council (synod) of my church, and every pastor has a right to attend and every congregation may send elder representatives. This was a quiet assembly, and in many ways an archetype of EPC gatherings. Lots of things went on at the assembly, but below is a summary of its official actions.
To amend the EPC’s constitution requires a majority vote of one assembly, a majority vote of three-fourths of the presbyteries over the next year, and then a majority vote of the subsequent assembly. The GA completed that amendment process to clarify how presbyteries deal with transitional pastors (interim pastors) who are ordained in other denominations, want to maintain their ordination in their home denominations, but still want to temporarily serve an EPC congregation in a transitional role…
I have an article on AI and online pastoral education up at Mere Orthodoxy. Here’s an excerpt,
The online pitch is: Our education provides good information cheap; you can stay home (convenience!) and formation will occur in your church where you serve.
The AI pitch will be: Our education provides even better information more cheaply; you still get to stay home and formation will occur in your church where you serve.
I serve on the Board of Directors for the World Reformed Fellowship and had the pleasure of organizing a recent theological consultation of North American Reformed church leaders to discuss Reformed denominations and denominationalism in our post-Christian context. The write up on the consultation can be found here, at the WRF site.
I am proud that we were able to get leaders from eight (!) different Reformed denominations in the same room and charitably and robustly engage one another. From the write up, “The goal of the consultation was not to rehash all of the same debates that have characterized Reformed churches, resulting in many different denominations, but to spark fresh ways to consider the topic and foster cooperation considering our current cultural moment. The goal was not to resolve our differences, but to speak to Christ’s call for oneness from our differing positions.” I think we did that successfully, and I am optimistic that this is the first of many steps encouraging greater Reformed, confessional cooperation across denominational lines.
The great Cappadocian church father Gregory of Nazianzus, who chaired the Council on Constantinople which settled the Nicene Creed, said “I saw the end of not even one synod as being useful”. Replace “synod” with “presbytery” and you get the idea. Herman Bavinck relays a proverb, “Every [church] council gives birth to [further] battles.” To riff on Ecclesiastes: Of meetings there is no end.
I was asked to speak on that exciting topic of “review and control” and Westminster Confession of Faith 31, “On Synods and Councils”. This risks significant boredom in our listener, or alternatively, perhaps the polity nerds are the ones already here. Yet the subject of review and control has great relevance to the ministry and mission of the church
“Review and control” is a phrase used in the EPC’s constitution and throughout American Presbyterianism, and means that higher church courts (presbyteries to sessions, general assemblies/synods to presbyteries) have the right and responsibility to review the actions of their subordinate courts and to correct them if necessary. This relationship has a confessional basis. WCF 31.2 states…
