Cheeseburgers and Freedom
You may have seen a couple of things making the rounds online following our denomination’s recent General Assembly in Louisville, KY: #clickergate (where our voting devices weren’t working, much to the chagrin of Presbyterians who love everything to be done decently and in order), and a floor speech from a Taiwanese immigrant pastor who listed cheeseburgers and freedom among the reasons we should give thanks to God for America on its 250th Anniversary.
For those of you interested in those moments or any of the worship services, floor speeches, agency updates, or anything else from last week’s General Assembly, Lynna Sutherland has put together a very helpful page of highlights with time-stamped links here. You can also read the daily updates from byFaith here, here, and here.
On a personal level, it was a great week! I had the privilege of serving as a commissioner, along with Ruling Elder Jerry Stutzman, Teaching Elders Kyle Culbertson, Bruce Baugus, and Andrew VanderMaas (plus Lisa came along to keep us all in line). I was able to sneak in a tour of the Louisville Slugger Museum and pick up a mini bat for Shepherd, while also connecting with many old and new friends. And by God’s grace, I was elected as a voting member of our Interchurch Relations Committee, getting to connect with representatives from other faithful denominations in the US and around the world.
Bruce Baugus served on our Overtures Committee, helping us work through a record 90+ overtures while still keeping the assembly on time. While it can be easy to get bogged down in all the procedure of GA, here are a few things that left me very encouraged about the state of our denomination:
We elected a new state clerk, TE Fred Greco, a former member of Great Lakes Presbytery, who I believe will do an excellent job serving our denomination behind the scenes, Lord willing, for years to come.
By God’s grace, we are one of the few denominations in the US whose membership has grown in the last year, and we paused to thank God for the 5656 adult professions of faith recorded over the previous year. Additionally, we heard reports that many of our agencies (Covenant College, Covenant Theological Seminary, Reformed University Fellowship, etc.) are thriving.
We received a preliminary report from a committee working on a Revised Directory for Worship, which you can read now, and will be presented next year for us to consider making it a binding part of our Book of Church Order. We also established a study committee on Artificial Intelligence, which I pray will offer help guidance to the church in the coming years.
While passing the overture to give thanks to God for our country that the cheeseburger speech supported, we also received a Partial Report on Christian Nationalism (which our own RE Jerry Stutzman wrote the overture which requested this). This will take another year to complete, but I believe that the two things (giving thanks to God for our country and this partial report outlining the dangers of Christian Nationalism) help place the PCA right where it should be, as faithful citizens of the Kingdom of God who aim to humbly love and seek the welfare of the nation in which God has providentially placed us.
As we prepare to worship God this Sunday and hear Pastor Andrew preach through Acts 12, I invite you to join me in giving glory to God for his Word, his church (in the PCA and beyond), this cheeseburger and freedom loving nation (with its faults and failures), and the eternal Kingdom he is building across the globe, which no king or ruler can destroy.