PCA Conversations

We are Christians committed to the Presbyterian Church in America and its future. We hope to foster healthy and charitable conversation of topics that matter to the life of our denomination. C.S. Lewis once likened the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church to a long, broad hallway in a house, with the Church’s various denominations composing the rooms off the hall. As Christians living in the 21st-century ecclesiastical milieu, we invariably find ourselves denizens of a particular room, in which we inherit certain denominational cultures, pass on particular traditions, revel in unique gifts and successes, engage in ongoing and sometimes provincial conversations and debates, weep over shared losses, repent over personal sins, and share in unique strategies of mission. In short, our current worldwide ecclesiastical structure necessitates that it is in our denominations where we first and primarily attempt to live out the blessings and challenges of the Christian life as a community of God’s people called the Church.

And yet, the Christian church is in fact a very large home in which God takes up his residence: the household and family of God is larger and richer than any one denomination. It is of this one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church that the Apostle Paul says “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” One of the wonderful phraseologies peculiar to conversation in the Reformed room-off-the-hall is “the Already and the Not-Yet.” In this statement from Paul we see that Christ has already cleansed and constituted to himself a people whom he loves and gave himself up for, but in whom he is still at work by his Spirit because he has not yet presented her to himself holy, mature, and spot- and wrinkle-free. We believe that if we, like Paul, are to toil with all the energy that God powerfully works within us toward the gathering and perfecting of the entire universal church family, we must of necessity start with ourselves and our roommates: our denominations.

With that goal we offer these meager thoughts, challenges, celebrations, and reflections. We will seek to converse in the Spirit of Christ, loving the broader church and our denomination as they are, and loving them enough to spur them on toward their appointed end. We believe that the PCA has unique spiritual gifts that she might contribute to the larger family of God, and we want to encourage her to guard, stimulate, and share these gifts for the sake of others rather than for herself, for there are many spiritual gifts, but they are worthless with out love: “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” It is in a Christian spirit of faith, hope, and love that we offer these musings: faith in God as the author and perfecter of our faith and of his church; love for God, roommate, and neighbor; and hope for the continuing sanctification of our denomination and Christ’s church.