This past year I continued hosting a monthly book club with the leaders (mostly aimed at elders) of my church, aimed at theological and biblical development, conversation starters for ministry, and growing in a shared, cohesive vision for our church. The year 1 list can be found here. Below are the books we read together this year.
This is a lightly edited manuscript of a training talk I delivered to my presbytery on Saturday, April 27th 2024 on same-sex identity and pastoral care. The audio can be found here. The assumed audience is a mix of pastors and lay elders who have a passing familiarity with the topic. They were provided this reading list in advance. This talk doesn’t nearly hit everything related to this subject (I’ve written a good bit on other aspects of it here) but was aimed at providing a Reformed, Westminsterian framework for ministry to those who are same-sex attracted. As an aside, I am very aware that I mispronounced “concupiscence” in my talk; alas, it is a mistake I slip into all too often!
Introduction
I’d like us to imagine two pastoral situations, that if you haven’t already encountered, you’re likely to. First, a man in your congregation comes to you and says “I believe in the traditional Christian sexual ethic, that sex is reserved for marriage and marriage is the monogamous union of a man and a woman. But I’ve always struggled with same-sex attraction. I don’t indulge that desire in thought or action, but that compulsion or orientation to same-sex attraction has been present with me my entire adult life. Pastor, do I need to repent of that orientation?”
A lot of us are wondering what the big deal with the question is. Half are probably thinking, “He’s not acting on it, so of course he doesn’t need to repent! He’s already given up so much for Jesus, it’s cruel to add new laws on top of him.” The other half are probably thinking “Of course he needs to repent! A same-sex orientation is sinful, and ignoring any remnant of sin is a form of indulging sin!…”
I have a review of Sarah McCammon’s book The Exvangelicals up at Mere Orthodoxy. Here’s an excerpt:
From time-to-time I write an extended theological essay for my church. These are intended to help guide conversation among the elders and then equip and edify the congregation. My church is beginning a weekly, Sunday evening worship service, and this essay was written to explain why we would want to do that. Our elders also read Harrison Perkins’ “A Rationale For Evening Services” in Modern Reformation, “The Forgotten Gift of Evening Worship” by Jim McCarthy in reformation21, and listened to Alistair Begg preach on the subject. These other pieces are either aimed at pastors or are explaining a current practice to a church; I wrote this essay to explain why we would want to start an evening service and emphasized a biblical vision of delight, joy, and wisdom…
Recently I have been pressed on two fronts about the ordination of women in the EPC. The first concerns my claim in Women’s Ordination in the EPC: Learning from the CRC that “[Women’s ordination] is not addressed in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and so lies outside the system of doctrine taught in the scriptures.” I have been challenged on whether this is an accurate representation of the Confession and Catechisms. The second concerns the absence of the topic in What the EPC Can Learn from the PCA, with some stating that for the EPC to grow numerically and to grow in doctrinal and confessional rigor requires repudiating the ordination of women.
In regards to the first claim, I have several starting presuppositions. First is that the Westminster Divines were familiar with and well-versed in the Reformational documents and debates on both the European continent and colonial America, and that these informed their deliberations and finalized standards. The second is that the Divines, as Puritans and scholastics, did not make theological or liturgical assumptions, but rather developed and defended their assumptions. The third is that the Divines were trying to forge a Puritan/Presbyterian consensus built on the pre-existing English, Scottish, and Irish Reformational confessions and liturgies. The fourth is the acknowledgement that the Assembly published more than the Confession and Catechisms, and so all of the Standards produced were intended to be taken as a unit. Yet, these additional documents were only ever adopted in Scotland, even if they influenced things in Ireland and America. The fifth is that the specific vow and formulation about “the system of doctrine” is not from the Assembly itself, but was developed by the Irish Presbyterian Church in the early 1700s and has been part of the American subscription formula since the founding of the American Presbyterian Church…
