Shepherds, Brothers, Witnesses: A Vision for Pastoral Life Together

These remarks were presented at the Presbyterian Church in America's first ever Millennial Forum held earlier this week in Richmond VA prior to the denomination's General Assembly.

I consider myself to be something of a late-comer to the Presbyterian Church in America. I wasn’t baptized on the 8^th day like every good presbyterian child and didn’t own a pair of Chacos until I was well into my twenties (bowties also made an appearance during this time). That said, I am honored to share my hopes for the denomination that I hold dear and know that all of you do, too.  

There are three hopes that I have for the PCA in the coming decades, three very basic, and with the Spirit’s help, attainable goals that I want us to realize as a denomination:

I want us to be good shepherds.

I want us to be good brothers.

I want us to be good witnesses.

I liken the relationship between these three hopes to three dominions falling in order, starting with our first responsibility to shepherd the flock of God that is among us (1 Peter 5:2). Only once we have been faithful to our charge to feed Christ’s lambs locally can we labor alongside one another as brothers and co-laborers denominationally. It doesn’t matter how well respected and connected we are at the denominational level; we cannot enjoy true unity as church leaders unless we are leading our own churches week in and week out. And in order for the third domino to fall, for the world to know and believe the gospel message nationally and internationally, we must first treat one another with brotherly affection. Jesus said to his disciples, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for on another” (John 13:35). In order for us to be obedient to the Great Commission, we must be obedient to Christ’s commandment to love one another as he has loved us. Love, of course, has varying forms, but if we remain committed to pursuing greater unity in faith and practice, in our theology and our methodology, I have every expectation that the PCA will continue to be a city on a hill, a light in the dark place, and an effective witness for Christ in our own generation and in generations to come.

I Want Us to Be Good Shepherds

Our first responsibility is to be good shepherds. In PCA circles the word “pastoral” is often upon our lips. Typically, when I hear someone describe a fellow elder as “pastoral,” it is usually referring to the man’s demeanor or temperament. He is patient, gracious, and even when he has to offer a word of rebuke he is gentle and tactful (2 Timothy 4:2). These are all good qualities, nay, they are necessary qualities to be an officer in Christ’s church (1 Peter 5:3). Our manner in ministry does matter. That being said, we must be careful not to bifurcate the public exercises of our ministries and our interpersonal interactions with members of the flock in a way that is foreign to scripture. Biblically speaking, the most pastoral thing that I do for my people during the week is preparing for the ministry of the Word.

In the last chapter of the last letter that Paul would write to his dear son, Timothy, Paul urged him to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” Of all the things that Paul could have told Timothy to do, preaching was priority number one.

Preaching is the divinely appointed and primary means of grace. The Westminster Shorter Catechism stresses the primacy of preaching in question and answer eighty-nine:

Q. How is the Word made effectual to salvation?”

A. The Spirit of God taketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, and effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation. (emphasis mine)

If preaching is the special means whereby the lost are converted and saints are sanctified, then it stands to reason that preaching should receive the best of our energies. So, if you are a minister, give yourselves to your preaching. Though a healthy pulpit alone is not enough to make a healthy church, you cannot have a healthy church without it. Preaching is the sine qua non of pastoral ministry.

Now, many of you, I know, are like me and are more gregarious by nature. We have no trouble filling up our weekly calendars with countless coffees, lunches, and one-on-ones. And on those especially “people heavy” weeks, what tends to happen? We leave precious little time for prayerful sermon preparation. When this happens it is because our priorities have flipped—our preparation for the ministry of the Word has taken a backseat to our personal, “pastoral” ministry to the flock. We must make preaching primary. What I am realizing after five years in ministry is that what my people need most is not more of me, but more of Christ. He must increase, and I must decrease. The keys to an effective pastoral ministry are not the constancy of presence, power of my personality, or profundity of my vision, but the blessing of God’s Spirit as he ministers in and through the preached Word.

Don’t get me wrong, we mustn’t succumb to the opposite extreme where we use the pulpit as a platform for personal celebrity and neglect the people under our care. Paul, in Acts 20:20 gives us a powerful vision for pastoral ministry,“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house…” You see that Paul’s public teaching, the declaration of truth, was foundational and that truth was personally applied to the people from house to house. The two go hand in hand.

Discipleship is not, at its root, relational—it is doctrinal. Jesus said that the way to make disciples would be by “teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded.” My relationship to the discipled is merely the blessed byproduct of true, Christian discipleship, which is to deepen the disciple’s relationship with Christ himself. Our people need to “learn from Christ” (Matt. 11:29). And so let that be our aim—to lead our people to Christ that they may learn from and love him.

So my hope is that we find that happy medium between being helicopter pastors, frantically trying to put out every fire and fix every problem by our own strength, which represents a lack of faith, and a cold silver-tongued orator who leaves his flock vulnerable to wolves. The work of pastoring our flocks is our primary responsibility, so as we consider matters before our denomination and in the broader culture, do not neglect your people. Healthy pastors and healthy congregations are essential for a healthy denomination where we can labor together as brothers.

I Want Us to Be Good Brothers

Being united as brothers in our denominational distinctives (Faithful to the Scriptures, True to the Reformed Faith, and Obedient to the Scriptures) does not require that we agree on all matters. No two members of a family are exactly alike and so neither should we expect perfect agreement on all matters within the household of God.

Of the three “sides” of the PCA, the side that tends to interpret differences of opinion as dangerous and disruptive to our unity are the pietists.^[1] Their usual complaint is, “Why can’t we all just get along?” This, I think, is partially responsible for the tensions that are running high in the PCA right now—we have been conditioned to think that differences are necessarily divisive, that it is in bad taste to speak about them openly, and so the doctrinalists and transformationalists seldom speak to each other.

In a ByFaith article from 2022, at the height of the Revoice controversy, David Strain helpfully wrote:

What we need desperately are forums where our agreements can be affirmed, but not as a means to minimize our differences. Too often we want to find points of commonality in order to paper over the cracks where we disagree. But, while it may provide temporary relief by stifling dissent, it’s a strategy that is certainly doomed to eventual failure — and indeed, may only generate frustration that will cause much more serious divisions down-stream. Then, let’s engage with one another in an effort, first, to explain our own views, and then to persuade our brothers.^[2]

I agree with Strain—we should rejoice over all the areas wherein we agree and we should use those areas of agreement as a catalyst to address our differences, not to sweep them under the rug.

Unity does not require agreement on all matters, but it does require two things: one, that each man assumes the best of those with whom he disagrees, and two, that we be men of our word. The only way for trust to be built, maintained, and restored, brother to brother, is for us to adhere to the form of church government that we have all vowed to uphold.

The PCA has been a Good Faith Subscription (GFS) denomination since the early 2000s. Like it or not, GFS is here to stay and I, for my part, am not actively working to overturn it. But for Good Faith Subscription to function this requires all officers to engage in good faith polity. It is not enough to merely keep the letter of the Book of Church Order; we must be diligent to keep the spirit of the BCO and avoid clever and novel ways around its provisions. Unordained diaconates and pseudo ordinations, to take two examples, threaten our denominational unity and erode trust. For me to trust you, you must be trustworthy. I will do everything within my power to conduct myself in the same way.

And when the votes at General Assembly don’t go the way that we’d like, we cannot use social media to paint our brothers as though they are our bitter enemies. How you “lose” says a lot more about your character than it does your brother’s. Christ calls us to have a humble and charitable spirit, and that includes when we don’t get our way.

Jake Meador’s recent article “The PCA We Could Have,” offers two words of advice to the sides that disagree most in the PCA, the doctrinalists and the transformationalists:

Doctrinalists can choose to calm down, ask questions of their brothers rather than accuse them, and generally adopt a more measured presence in the church…The transformationalists can choose to be less hostile to the doctrinalists, to sacrifice some of their own ambition for the good of the church, and to generally eschew whining and victimization as public advocacy strategies.

If you really think about it, it all comes back to the Golden Rule. Treat your brothers in Christ as you would want them to treat you. If we are quick to ask questions, slow to become angry, and slow to whine online, I remain optimistic about our ministry together as brothers in the PCA.

I Want Us to Be Good Witnesses

The two books that were most instrumental in my becoming Reformed Presbyterian and R. C. Sproul’s What Is Reformed Theology? and Tim Keller’s Prodigal God. Sproul convinced me that God was sovereign over all things, and Keller convinced me that God didn’t just tolerate me, but loved me. My comments hereafter are offered with the utmost respect for all that the Lord has accomplished through Keller’s ministry.

In his seminal book, Center Church, Keller sets forth his strategy for effective church planting, the same strategy that he implemented when planting Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and that has since planted thousands of metropolitan churches throughout the world.^[3] In the introduction Keller writes that there are three component parts to a church that one must acknowledge and develop in order to be a fruitful church:

1. Theological Foundation—What to Believe (e.g. “Theological tradition, denominational affiliation, and systematic & biblical theology.”)^[4] 

2. Theological Vision—How to See (e.g. “Vision and values, ministry ‘DNA,’ emphases, stances, philosophy of ministry.”)^[5]

3. Ministry Expression—What to Do (e.g. “Local and cultural adaptation, worship style & programming, discipleship & outreach processes, church governance & management.”)^[6]

The book’s overall thesis is that theological vision is at the center of the church’s ministry. According to Keller, theological vision is so vital and powerful that it has the power to unite churches/organizations even when they have differing theological foundations. He wrote, “Once we assess prospective church planters for their gifts and theological soundness, we spend relatively little time on doctrinal foundations (though our training is highly theological) or ministry expression…Theological vision is at the center of ministry—it is central to how all ministry happens. Two churches can have different doctrinal frameworks and ministry expressions but the same theological vision—and they will feel like sister ministries. On the other hand, two churches can have similar doctrinal frameworks and ministry expressions but different theological visions—and they will feel distinct.”^[7]

Respectfully, I disagree with Dr. Keller that theological vision occupies the center of  ministry and serves as the basis for unity—our theological foundation, our doctrine ought to occupy that place. Two historical examples will explain why this must be so.

First, in the 1801 Plan of Union, Presbyterians and Congregationalists had a shared vision for the evangelization of the Western Territories. New School Presbyterians in particular were willing to stomach ecclesiological and doctrinal differences with the Congregationalists in the interest of seeing sinners come to Christ. Though their aim was indeed noble, this union paved the way for Hopkinsianism, Charles Finney, the anxious bench, and the eventual fracturing of the Old School and New School in 1837. Vision is subject to change, but the truth of God’s Word is not and so constitutes the only fitting foundation for unity.

The second, more recent example is Revoice. Those transformationalists in the PCA who were willing to partner with Revoice did so not because they agreed theologically with every speaker or every doctrine that was espoused, but because they shared the same theological vision—they wanted to present the hope of the gospel to those struggling in sexual sin. While this may have been well intentioned, the confusion that resulted from sharing a stage with men and women who deny the sinfulness of concupiscence and espouse an impoverished doctrine of sanctification put men and women’s souls in jeopardy. Only once our Westminsterian theological foundation is at the center of our shared ministry in the PCA can we move forward as a denomination, united in faith and united in our mission to a lost and dying world. Let us pursue this great end, together, in the year to come.