About a week ago I had the pleasure of spending time with a couple thousand teaching elders and ruling elders from the Presbyterian Church in America at our annual General Assembly. For about 5 days, the city of Chattanooga was flooded with a sea of blazers and khaki pants, filling coffee shop upon sandwich shop upon bar in the downtown metro area.
One highlight of the assembly for me was simply getting to know elders from various kinds of churches across the spectrum of the PCA. If you're conversant with Tim Keller's famous piece on the subject, that means I ran into folks from the confessional wing, the culturalist wing, and the pietist wing (categories he gets from Mark Noll). The simpler dichotomy is guys on the “confessional” end or the “missional” end of the denomination. (I refuse to call anybody who subscribes to 98% of the Westminster confession and affirmed the PCA’s human sexuality report an actual progressive or liberal.) Nevertheless, we all know there are tribes, and I happen to run into from folks of just about every stripe.
While I was generally encouraged by much of what I saw, like most folks, I have a sense that there are areas in which the health of the denomination can be improved. Perhaps the simplest and most important is the basic matter of mutual trust across party lines. At some point in our lives, most of us have met and interacted with folks with whom we disagreed on matters of principle, but whose character and basic goodwill we could not doubt. It is this kind of trust of which I speak.
I do not imagine that in a denomination the size that we have, with its various socio-economic, regional, educational, racial, and political ranges, that we are ever going to settle all of our differences of principle. I do not imagine we can arrive at perfect uniformity. I do think it is possible for us to arrive at improved levels of understanding, forbearance, and that sort of mutual trust with our brothers who occupy different wings within the denomination.
To that end, I want to propose two simple suggestions for how we should conduct ourselves within our presbyteries, online, and especially at places like the General Assembly, both of which I hope will be congenial to Presbyterians. First, make an argument. Second, grab a beer.
First, make an argument. Now, this appear to be advice that is either redundant at best, or inflammatory at worst to inhabitants of a tradition with a long tradition of disputations and pamphlet-writing. Nevertheless, I will say that there is a difference between making an argument and merely arguing.
Arguments proceed by way of presenting lines of evidence in favor of premises, that when put together, lead to a conclusion. Arguing may include this, but often seems to take place without it, or include much more within it that blunts its force: brute assertions flowing from identities, anecdotal experiences, vibes, and varieties of fallacies, histrionics, catastrophizing, ad hominems, the imputation of false motives, and so forth.
I will say, the best speeches I heard from the floor were those where a gentleman rose, made clear, concise, verifiable (or testable) claims, made his conclusion and appeal and sat down. All this without pomp, without grandstanding, without over-emotionalizing, without tones of outrage or “more in pity than in anger”, without the implication that the brothers who don’t agree are perverse in their refusal to see the point and so forth.
In other words, even if they regarded matters that touch our affections, they were appeals to our reason that did not give way to the passions that constantly mark the discourse of our age. These are the sorts of appeals that are fitting for brothers and elders in the church of God to make on the assumption that our fellow commissioners are (a) mature, (b) regenerate and possessed of the Spirit of God, and (c) men of good will who are hear to listen and discern the truth for the sake of the body. They engender trust, good-will, and edification of the body because it is a form of treating your brother with the dignity with which you wish to be treated and honoring them by expecting them to be able to deal with the subject matter at that level.
Second, go grab a coffee or a beer with folks—especially folks outside your tribe. This sounds so basic as to be trivial, but most of us who have been pastors long enough know that many marriages, families, churches, and spiritual lives have (or could have) been saved by a simple return to the basics.
In his book, I Beg to Differ, Tim Muelhoff points to the difference between ‘phatic’ and ‘emphatic’ speech—basically the difference between low-temperature conversations around shared interests and high-temperature conversations around contested issues. The point he made is that in order to maintain relational equilibrium, you can't just have emphatic conversations—you need the phatic ones talking about baseball or what-have-you, that remind of your shared humanity, that keep you from reducing the other person solely to their position on the issue you disagree on.
Here's the thing, if you talk to any teaching elder or ruling elder walking around at General Assembly there is a 98% chance that any of them will get excited about a story about a new baptism that's happened at your church; they will have a dog-eared and highlighted copy of John Calvin's Institutes on their shelf; they will be actively trying to figure out how to reach their friends and neighbors for Jesus; they will be trying to help their congregation grow internally healthier in depth and worship; they will be striving to navigate how to disciple their children in a sexually confused and permissive culture according to the words of Jesus; they we'll have a story about needing to learn of the Lord's sovereign kindness during a time of physical illness, or tragedy within the life of their family or their church.
Here are two examples.
First, on the day after General Assembly, I got breakfast with a new acquaintance who, let's just say, enjoys content at the Gospel Reformation Network. At work we sat there and talked about life, our children, what sermon series we had worked through, recent commentaries, and our mutual excitement at the fact that very shortly he was going to get to baptize a neighbor, and I was going get to baptize a student that I've been meeting with for several months. We were excited about the way God was at work in our missional, outward-facing ministry efforts.
Just a couple of days earlier I was chatting with an old friend who is…someone on the missional wing of things. One of the main issues that came up is the way the current moment demanded a more unabashed (even if theologically careful) declaration of moral truths in the public square as a contextual preaching of the gospel, and the way that had provoked forceful reactions from neighbors and friends.
I am not saying that you’ll find out you really don’t have differences or that there aren’t issues to sort out. There obviously are! But what I am saying is that were these two brothers on different wings of the PCA to sit down, grab a beer, and talk about the bread-and-butter issues of ministry day-to-day, evangelistic and discipleship patterns, basic issues in helping folks from hyper-individualist, dopamine-addicted, consumer culture grow in holiness... well, there would be much higher levels of trust when they finally got around to talking about whether or not only ordained officers can distribute the elements of the Lord's Supper.
Will these two suggestions radically reshape or alter the PCA? I hope not. I like the PCA. I don’t think it needs a radical overhaul. But can they maintain the health it has and continue to build a foundation for a healthier future? By God’s grace I hope so. And if you don’t agree—well, maybe we can grab a beer next GA and you give me your best argument as to why not.