If you have not been following this story…

A few months back Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, called a pastor to fill their vacant senior pastor position.  There were some concerns about how the vote of the congregation was presented and conducted so a couple of weeks ago the congregation voted again on the new pastor.  The call was reaffirmed by a 69-31% vote.  At the same time there have been some dissidents in the congregation who have been calling for the removal of the new pastor and disciplinary proceedings were begun against some of them.  That may be moot based on current developments.

Well the dissident group has now left and is starting their own worshiping fellowship at a local auditorium, having held one worship service on their own so far.

Something like this does not usually make the national news but in this case it helps that Coral Ridge was founded by the late TE D. James Kennedy, the new pastor is a grandson of Billy Graham, and some of the leaders of the splinter group are the children of Rev. Kennedy.  It is, as we sometimes say, “As The Pulpit Turns.”

That is the background information.  Now a few comments related to church polity, confessional standards, and church reorganizations.

Beginning at reorganizations:  As I have been working on the nature of church reorganizations I commented that the recent reaffirmation vote is close to the 2:1 ratio I have seen in multiple circumstances elsewhere.  Being only one church vote I am not inclined to put a lot of weight on it by itself.  A recent article on the dissident group says that attendance at the first worship service was about 400 people.  While it would be better to consider the number at some point in the future after the attendance stabilizes, or we at least have more than one data point, that number does fall very close to the 422 “no” votes in the recent vote.  Now, it could be a stretch to say that only congregation members that voted are now attending worship with the new group, but the number is still in the region of the 2:1 split.  It will be interesting to see what the ratios are in about a month.

Regarding polity — the article twice mentions a meeting of an organizational committee and that the meeting was “closed.”  I am going to make a jump here, but from the article this is sounding like the leadership of the new church, a proto-session if you will.  I would be curious to know the make-up of this body:  Are they ordained elders of the PCA?  Do they follow PCA leadership standards and so all the members of this organizational committee are male?  And while session meetings need not be open, are these leaders willing to discuss issues with the members of this developing congregation or is all the business being kept under wraps?

This brings me to a couple of lines in the news story that really drew my attention:

Denominational outlines of the embryonic congregation haven’t been
determined yet. However, one of the leaders, Jim Filosa, said they plan
to pattern it on the Westminster Confession of Faith, the backbone of
Presbyterian belief.

“We’ll do everything we did at Coral Ridge,” Filosa said. “What happens down the road depends on what denomination contacts us.”

This opens up all sorts of questions.  First, if they are patterning it on the Westminster Confessional Standards and doing what they did at Coral Ridge I would expect the leadership group to be exclusively male and conform to the PCA Book of Church Order.  And when they say “pattern” it on the WCF what does that mean?  Is it truly a confessional standard, or just a pattern or template that will provide guidance but not a subscription standard?

But, the line that sent a chill down my spine, as a confessional Presbyterian, was the comment that “What happens down the road depends on what denomination contacts us.”

Is this to say that their confessional standards are flexible or fluid enough to accommodate a range of interested suiters?  Would it not be more doctrinally sound to decide what exactly their standards are and then find the denomination that fits them best?  And I may be completely off the mark, but the way this quote comes across in the article it sounds like what they are saying is “Look, we are the true Coral Ridge.  You make us an offer.”

Anyway, I am curious to see how this develops in the coming weeks.