A Summary of Actions Taken by the 43rd General Assembly of the EPC
This week my denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, held its 43rd stated General Assembly in Denver, Colorado. 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 the first GA I did not attend since I was ordained in the EPC, though my congregation did send representatives. This GA was also unusual in that it was officially treated as a conference (“Gospel Priorities Summit”) wherein the training and plenary talks were intermingled with business, were thematically connected to the EPC’s strategic (now “gospel”) priorities, and had a 3-day runtime instead of four. Below is a summary of the official actions taken by the assembly…
Women’s Ordination in the EPC: Learning from the CRC
The EPC occupies a rare place in Reformed evangelicalism. We allow for the ordination of women, but we do not require our officers to affirm women’s ordination, nor require churches to ordain women, and permit presbyteries to have male-only teaching elders. This subject is one of the few the EPC has formally identified as a “non essential” where there is room to disagree.
The EPC is not unique in our approach. The Christian Reformed Church of North America (CRC), which is an official ecumenical partner of the EPC, has a very similar position. Unlike the EPC, which was founded in 1981 and has had this position on women’s ordination since then, the CRC is a church with its roots in the Neo Calvinist movement in the mid-19th century and only began allowing women’s ordination 25 years ago. That led to schism and the formation of the URCNA. For the EPC, the issue is one we have settled from the outset: freedom for all views. For the CRC, the ordination of women is seen as part of a larger trajectory, for good or for ill.
How’s that going? Following the CRC’s recent adoption of their human sexuality report, a group has emerged calling for the church to adopt a third way, allowing room to agree to disagree on LGBT issues. They cite the CRC’s success with women’s ordination as an example of this possibility. CRC Pastor Eric Van Dyken assessed the state of things recently, and this excerpt is worth including at length…
The EPC and the World Communion of Reformed Churches
Below is a report I wrote in 2021 assessing my denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, remaining a member of the global ecumenical body the World Communion of Reformed Churches. I wrote this as a member of the EPC’s committee on theology to assist our committee on Fraternal Relations to think through that membership in light of the EPC’s revised endorsement policy. At the 2022 General Assembly, the committee on Fraternal Relations was instructed (at their request) to formally evaluate the EPC’s membership in the WCRC and to bring a recommendation for action to the 2023 GA. While the official recommendation has not yet been made public, the expectation is that it will encourage us to end our membership in the WCRC. The WCRC is more aligned with mainline and liberal churches in North America and Europe (such as the PCUSA) than evangelical churches, and the North American and European contingents dominate the ethos and meaningful leadership of the WCRC. This is the real reason the EPC would consider leaving: the WCRC is not a good fit for missional partnership.
I believe the EPC should remain a member of the WCRC, though only if we’re willing to actually engage it. There is a significant shift happening on a global level in the church (e.g. the changes in the Anglican Communion and among the Methodists) where the leadership is moving towards evangelical churches in the majority world. I think the EPC could stand to benefit from being part of global council of churches committed to the Reformed tradition, especially as things are changing. So below is a lightly edited version of the report I submitted in July 2021.
Historical Considerations
In 2011 the EPC instructed the Fraternal Relations Committee to evaluate all of our fraternal partnerships. This included the WCRC. At the time, part of the concern over the WCRC was our sharing a membership with the PC(USA), which had just revised its ordination vows to accommodate homosexual relationships. The FRC’s report, adopted by the GA in 2012, said this about the WCRC…
Can EPC Congregations Renounce Jurisdiction?
No, they cannot. Sorta.
This will be my final post for awhile on EPC-polity insider baseball. I can’t keep boring all of my half-dozen readers.
The context and explanation of this question and answer are important for EPC polity. The “renunciation of jurisdiction” is a constitutional principle of the EPC that is a natural consequence of our ecclesiology. Courts of the church (Sessions, Presbyteries, the General Assembly) have spiritual jurisdiction over their constituents (members of the local church, pastors and churches of the presbytery, the presbyteries of the church; BoG 16-2, BoD 1-11, 4-2.) Each court only has authority – which is spiritual in nature and only relates to the function of the court – over the people that belong to it. So local church X does not have authority over the worship and membership of local church Y. Nor does local church X have authority over people who are not members or participants in its worship.
This is relevant to the issue of church discipline. A local church may only exercise discipline over people within its jurisdiction: members and participants in the life of the congregation. But the EPC is not a cult; no one is ever compelled to remain a member of an EPC congregation…
Connectionalism and Confessional Exceptions
Can EPC Presbyteries exercise authority over a local church’s election, ordination, and installation of officers? On the one hand, local congregations have the irrevocable right, in perpetuity (BoG 6-2, 25-2B), to elect their own officers. On the other, there are numerous restrictions and mandated procedures for how that election process should be done (e.g. BoG 10-10 on nominating procedures, 11-3 on preparation, and 12-6 on examinations). Each court of the church is required to annually submit its minutes to the court above it. So Sessions need to submit their minutes to their Presbytery, and the Presbytery must review those minutes to ensure the local church is in conformity with the EPC’s constitution. If the local church is not, the Presbytery is allowed to require a revision to the church’s practice to meet the EPC’s constitutional standards. This process is called “Review and Control” (BoG 2-4)…
