Over the weekend there was another meeting of the Louisiana Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and we are once again indebted to HaigLaw for his first hand information about the meeting. (And as an aside, HaigLaw has a nice new look to his blog page.)
The quick rundown of the most recent events that got us here: At a January 19 meeting of the Louisiana Presbytery they decided to plead guilt to one charge and not guilty to the second charge they faced in church court and turn the trial of Federal Vision (FV) advocate TE Steve Wilkins of Auburn Avenue Church over to the higher church court but within days the church and the minister decided to leave the denomination for an FV friendly denomination and everyone figured that would be the end of that. But wait, it can’t end that easily…
The February 9 special meeting was called because the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) of the PCA has decided to go to trial on March 6 in Atlanta on the one count that Louisiana Presbytery pleaded not guilty to. HaigLaw gives a blow-by-blow description of the meeting but a few interesting points add to the convoluted nature of this specific proceeding.
The first is that while attendance appears small from the report of the voting (5-5, 6-5, 7-7), the numbers suggest good turnout since the Louisiana Presbytery web site lists seven churches in the presbytery. (Yes Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church has been removed from the list). Figure there should be 14, or slightly more, total votes since it would be one Teaching elder and one Ruling elder from each church.
But the second point, as you can gather from my numbers above, is that the votes show the Presbytery is split on this. A motion to change their plea to guilty on the second charge failed on a 5-5 tie. The written content of their defense passed by a 6-5 vote.
The next, but related, item of business dealt with the request of Rev. Duane Garner to continue as a member of Louisiana Presbytery laboring outside its bounds. Rev. Garner is an associate pastor at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church but would prefer to stay with the PCA rather than departing to the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) with his church and his senior pastor Rev. Steve Wilkins. Permission to labor outside the bounds was denied on a 7-7 tie and a request that TE Garner show his exact adherence to the PCA constitutional standards at the next Presbytery meeting passed on a 6-5 vote. The question arises out of the fact that Rev. Garner is second author on a Federal Vision book with his boss, TE Steve Wilkins, so there is a paper trail.
Finally, I will conclude with the fact that the prosecutor for the case, Ruling Elder Sam Duncan, was a guest at the meeting. HaigLaw relates that Mr. Duncan recommended to the SJC that the remaining charge be dropped since with Rev. Wilkins’ departure it was moot, but the SJC voted to continue to trial. Mr. Duncan declined to give his opinion of what the possible punishment would be if the Presbytery was found guilty. And Mr. Duncan also said that he would be resigning as prosecutor for the case.
There was one more comment by RE Duncan that was outside the scope of HaigLaw’s post but came out in the comments and in Jeff Meyers’ blog Corrigenda Denuo. Jeff Meyers relays information from Mr. Garner that Mr. Duncan said that “No one from Louisiana Presbytery is going to get a fair trial before the SJC.” This has lit up the blogosphere including the comments on both HaigLaw and Corrigenda Denuo. Well, TE Lane Keister was a member of Sam Duncan’s prosecuting team and took the time to call him up, find out about the context, and post it on his Green Baggins blog. The comment boils down to the fact that details in Federal Vision cases are so wide spread now that you could not find a “jury” that had not been influenced by “pre-trial publicity.” It is not that the SJC members are inherently biased against the Presbytery. This has unleashed a significant discussion and the comments on the Green Baggins blog post are up to sixty at the moment. If you are interested, check it out.
Duane Garner has petitioned to leave the PCA. It looks like it will be granted.
Thanks for the updated info Rev. Keister.
Not too much of a surprise if permission was not granted and they wanted to check out his orthodoxy.
Thanks for your excellent summary of of the LaP and the SJC.
The only thing I could add is that I’m told that due to the number of TE’s in the LaP, each church gets 2 RE’s at LaP meetings, regardless of church size. That’s covered in the PCA BCO somewhere, but I don’t have it handy.
Thanks for the clarification on the number balance of TE’s and RE’s. The PC(USA) is fanatical (obsessive?) about it. As I read it in the PCA BCO the PCA still has the concept but is a bit more relaxed. Interestingly, I can not find it in the BCO right now and I am wondering if that has been changed in the most recent edition.
But I want to thank you for your contributions to this discussion. Your direct reports have been a wonderful addition to the discussion.
Thanks very much for the encouragement.
I misstated the rule on RE’s to TE’s in PCA presbyteries. BCO 13-1 says there are 2 RE’s for up to 350-member churches, and a 3rd for up to 500-members over the first 350.
This does not depend on how many TE’s there are. I don’t know where I got that notion. Perhaps the PCA history of trying to keep TE-RE parity.
I found what I was thinking of. It was not the PCA BCO but the Book of Order of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. [16-14] It struck me that it has flexibility on what is a “disproportionate ratio.”
When a disproportionate ratio of Ruling Elders to Teaching Elders occurs in a Presbytery, the Presbytery will move to correct the ratio by suggesting to member churches on a yearly alphabetical rotational basis that they have the right to appoint an additional elder to the Presbytery. The Presbytery shall on this basis invite churches to add one additional Ruling Elder until this disparity is corrected.