Ecclesial Harmony and the Appeal of the Gospel

This talk was originally given at the 2025 PCA Next Generation Forum hosted last week in Chattanooga.

I thought I might begin by talking about something I know pretty well: my church, Trinity PCA in Hinsdale, Illinois. Because I think its story is illustrative of something important. 

Hinsdale is one of those suburban towns where everyone appears to have it all together. Houses are large; lawns are well-manicured; and people are beautiful. So you can only imagine what it must have been like for our church, one year after being particularized, when its planting pastor was very publicly, and very embarrassingly, involved in a scandal.

In the Chicago Tribune on May 12, 2008, the headline ran, “Arrest of Pastor Saddens Church.” The lead sentence: “Days after their pastor was arrested in an undercover prostitution sting, members of his Hinsdale church gathered Sunday to pray and begin planning a new future for the congregation that [this pastor] helped create.” Everyone in our town knew of our church’s shame.

And yet, as awful as that event was for our young congregation, in the following months, our church experienced something truly good. A small armada of pastors and elders from the area stepped in to help. Some brought the fallen minister through the necessary process of discipline. Many others, week after week, provided faithful preaching. And a few more seasoned leaders offered continued guidance to our very recently ordained ruling elders seeking to care for this bruised and battered congregation. In this wonderful expression of presbyterianism as it’s supposed to work, this fledgling church experienced the beauty of Christian unity.

And in this town where you’re supposed to look perfect, something strange happened amidst this church’s humiliation: the congregation grew. Sure, there were people who left. But surprisingly, there were even more who began to come.

And I think this is part of what Jesus was talking about when he said to his Father, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” Through the unity of the church working together, with shared conviction and purpose, people came to see more clearly the glory of Jesus.

And if you want my vision of what we can be, what the PCA is called to be, it’s this: to be a denomination where our harmony in Christ can increasingly draw people to his glory. Where the beauty of our real unity helps accomplish the mission Christ has given us. This is what Jesus prayed for. This is what Jesus calls us to pursue.

I’m hardly the first person who has noticed how Christ’s high priestly prayer in John 17 connects the depth of our unity to glory and accomplishing our mission. 

When I was in Sydney for seminary, I discovered that in Australia the second largest Protestant denomination, behind the Anglican church, is the Uniting Church. The Uniting Church was formed about 50 years ago when the Methodists, the Congregationalists, and most of the Presbyterians came together. Perhaps even inspired by Jesus’ words, they said, “Let’s form one composite denomination.” 

But you know what didn’t happen? Immediate success in mission. There was no revival to speak of. You didn’t have people in the community saying, “Look, these denominations now have a shared name, 'The Uniting Church.' That’s beautiful! Clearly the gospel is real. What must I do to be saved?” Because Jesus is talking here about something more than just sharing a name and a common system of government. 

And we understand that. We in the PCA are generally not swayed by the errors that led to the failures of the ecumenical movement. We understand that trying to achieve the appearance of unity by pretending that differences don’t matter is a false shortcut. Jesus prayed that we would be one even as he and the Father are one. And that unity goes far deeper than a shared name. It involves a shared purpose, shared convictions, and so much more. 

But there is another false shortcut to unity, and I believe it is one that we as a denomination are far more tempted by. That false shortcut is the pursuit of uniformity through legislation and elimination. 

We all know that there are real differences among us. There are differences in how we understand the role of women in elements of public ministry, differences in how we conduct Sunday worship, in how we understand obedience to the 4^th commandment, differences in our political theology, just to name a few. 

From its founding, our denomination has always had differences such as these, but in the age of social media and podcasts, those differences feel more pronounced and urgent. Perhaps you’ve seen the comic with the picture of the man fixated on his computer screen: “Are you coming to bed?” he is asked. “I can’t, this is important.” “What?” “Someone is wrong on the internet.” We feel something like that: that some people in our denomination are wrong—or at least, wrong in our eyes. And we feel we need to do something about that.

So what do we do? How do we fix our denomination so that nobody is wrong anymore? Well, the simplest and cleanest way, it would seem, would be to set a new standard and make sure everyone follows it. To add clarifications and specifications to our Book of Church Order (BCO), to increase oversight, to centralize power, so that everyone will either agree and comply or, if not, well, they can find some other denomination. The most efficient way to resolve our denomination’s differences is to force people either to see things as we see them or else to leave. 

Yes, sometimes, out of allegiance to Jesus, a denomination must draw a clear line and in doing so explicitly cut some people off from their fellowship. But can we not agree that whenever this must happen, it is a tragedy that at least temporarily mars the beauty of Christ’s church? Can we not agree that allegiance to Jesus also constrains us to handle most of our differences differently from this?

Christ calls us to pursue a unity without shortcuts. A unity that, yes, does not paper over deep divisions by slapping the label “United” on it but also does not achieve uniformity by forcibly eliminating all differences. 

Isn’t this exactly what we find in Paul’s instructions in Romans 14 and 15?

It appears that in Rome the churches there were navigating a tension between Jewish Christians, who were the founding members, and the Gentiles who had more recently come to faith. The Jews, of course, had lived all their lives with important, formative traditions—practices related to how they ate, how they observed the Sabbath, how they sought to maintain allegiance to God. They had experienced the goodness of these practices, finding them to be important guardrails for faithfulness. 

But as Roman Gentiles became Christians—and more than that, as they took on positions of leadership, things began to shift. They didn’t seem concerned with eating kosher; they were more relaxed about Sabbath observance. And so the Jews became concerned. Didn’t these newcomers understand the importance of the ancient practices for their own spiritual wellbeing?

It’s not hard to imagine what ensued: the meetings, even conferences, where Jews rallied together around the goodness of kosher practices and Sabbath celebrations, while the Gentiles would have had their own “Freedom in Christ” rallies. It was a big deal.

Now how does Paul handle this? Honestly, not how I would have expected. To Paul, this is not one of those issues where there is more than one right approach, like whether a pastor on Sunday should wear a clerical robe or the PCA uniform of khakis and a blazer. No, Paul’s pretty clear here. From a theological standpoint, the Gentiles are right, and the Jews are wrong. Old Testament practices are no longer binding. 

And yet, surprisingly, that on its own doesn’t settle the matter. Paul doesn’t add a new chapter to the Roman Church’s BCO; he does not set a new standard for ordination, where the Jews either have to change their tune or start a new church. Rather shockingly, he actually allows the differences at least temporarily to remain: “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Because Paul sees this as being about more than getting people’s opinions aligned. 

His focus instead is on living out a unity in Christ that is so deep that it is able to hold, even amidst ongoing differences. The surprise, in fact, is that their disagreement is not identified as an obstacle to Christian unity but actually as an opportunity for it to shine forth in all of its beauty.  

Because these Jews belong to Jesus, they are called to work through their discomfort and be willing to accept and respect those who don’t hold to the old traditions. Because these Gentiles belong to Jesus, they are called to be willing to forego their steak and cabernet whenever that might help their Jewish brothers and sisters. Because of the unity they already have in Jesus, both sides can work patiently and slowly through their disagreement. And it is precisely as they do this that they are able to display the power of the unity they have in Christ. As Paul concludes this section he prays, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” One voice, somehow different and yet united, not in complete unison, but rather in beautiful harmony.

This is our calling as well.

I wonder if having to go through 2020 helps us to understand this a bit more clearly. Perhaps yours was one of the rare churches where everyone saw things the same way, but ours was not. On one side we had Covid skeptics who thought it ridiculous to wear masks, and on the other we had some who believed it dangerous for us to worship together, whatever precautions we took. A unified understanding of this issue was not something we could attain. But what, by God’s grace, we did have was a deeper agreement: that we were brothers and sisters who belonged to Jesus and that we needed to find a way to worship together. And so I saw people who rarely left their homes, fearfully, and yet bravely, coming to church. And I saw others who never voluntarily chose to wear masks willingly donning them the moment they stepped in—covering both mouth and nose—to care for their brothers and sisters. Many of you, I’m sure, have similar stories. And do you know what? Every time I think about it, I feel a kind of awe. Because it was beautiful. Amidst differences, some of them passionate, we expressed a deeper unity: with one voice we glorified God together.

My longing for the PCA is that this increasingly becomes the kind of story that we can tell about our denomination. That we have a unity so strong and deep in Jesus that we are able to be kind and patient in our disagreements and work through them in a way that only is possible because of the Spirit. That is beautiful. That is compelling.

Again, I know there is a tension here. Yes, there are some issues so clear and so significant that faithfulness to Christ requires people having to take a stand, and lines have to be drawn. But we live in a time when anger and distrust and polarization are so much in the air we breathe that unless we are careful, we will become disfigured by our world. Unless we keep reminding each other that we have the responsibility to do the hard work of expressing our significant unity amidst our less significant differences, we, like the world around us, will become splintered by tribalism. Now, more than any time before in our denomination’s short history, we must consciously, proactively, and side by side fight for the visible unity we have in Jesus, for this is how he calls us to show his glory. 

How do we do this? As I finish, let me offer three brief suggestions.

First, to grow in the unity to which Jesus calls us, we must deepen our commitment to sola Scriptura. 

As important as precedents and past luminaries are, the ultimate arbiter of our disagreements must be Scripture. A truly shared understanding will not come through appealing to one authority figure versus another or by arguing over which way is more presbyterian, but by doing hard exegetical and theological work together, as was exemplified in human sexuality study committee report of a few years ago.

Additionally, Scripture must also norm our sense of proportion. Some beliefs, such as the bodily resurrection of Christ, are vital. Romans 14 and 15 show us that there are some disagreements we can patiently work through. And on some points the Bible is silent. For example, the Bible gives us a theology of the Lord’s Supper, but it does not specify who should distribute it. In such instances, we should not bind each other’s consciences. 

Second, to grow in the unity to which Jesus calls us, we need to remain faithful to our grassroots origins. L. Roy Taylor has written that one of the key differences between us and the PCUSA has to do with hierarchicalism. He argues that the PCUSA over time became increasingly top-down and correspondingly developed a much more detailed BCO, so as to exert more centralized control. “The PCA BCO,” Taylor goes on to write, “is written more as a set of principles, emphasizing the use of discretion and wisdom by the lower courts.” 

Such an approach is what allows different churches to apply these principles appropriately to their unique context. Maintaining our grassroots ethos, I would suggest, is crucial to maintaining unity amidst our differences. Yet in many of the more recent Overtures and the RPR reports, we are seeing a trend toward greater centralization and legislation. In this we are unwittingly following the path the PCUSA has taken.

Finally, I believe that to grow in the unity to which Jesus calls us, we must require of ourselves virtuous discussions of our differences. “Let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” is a standard Paul gave the Christians in Rome that can equally be applied to how we must conduct ourselves online. I don’t know how we can move forward until we learn to do this.

I commend Jared Nelson’s essay about the Directory of Public Worship and Howie Donahoe’s subsequent interaction with it as an example of how we can do this well. The disagreements were real, but the respect was also real, and I learned from both. It is by thoughtful, respectful conversations like this that we can learn to move toward deeper unity.

And I hope that this, tonight, is one such conversation.