Podcast: Dr. Dean Weaver on "The Reorganization, Realignment, and Recommitment of the Church"

Open the original episode on Substack for the synchronized transcript.

0:05 Greetings and welcome to another episode of the Faithful Presence podcast. I am your host, Reverend Michael Langer, founder and president of Faithful Presence, a ministry in Washington, D.C., equipping servants and leaders working in the public square to flourish as they participate in Christ's mission of making all things new. We do that through providing spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational,

0:33 ideological, cultural, and evangelical formation, which spells out service, and by supporting the local church in equipping their members for Christ-centered engagement with the public square. In other words, we focus on whole-life discipleship in the whole of life for the whole of the public square itself. Greetings, and it is great to be back with you.

0:56 It is a wonderful, wonderful day. Not as you're hearing this, but as I'm recording this yesterday, my wife and I received the wonderful news that our youngest daughter is engaged to be married. And so we are really kind of rolling. And to make our joy even larger... Today on the podcast, our guest is Reverend Dr. Dean Weaver.

1:23 Dr. Weaver is the stated clerk of the denomination that holds my credentials, that holds me accountable. and trains me and just equips me for ministry, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In addition to being the stated clerk of the EPC, Dr. Weaver holds a D-Min and a THM from Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

1:47 And Dr. Weaver, thank you so much for being on the podcast. As I ask every single guest, how the heck are you?

1:56 Thank you, Michael. And turnabout is fair play since... you were gracious enough to come on, um, our podcast in all things. It's a delight to return that favor and join you here. And, um, I would answer your question by saying I am more blessed than bruised.

2:14 Okay.

2:15 How, how long, how long have you been in ministry? I've been in ministry 40 years. Um, Oh my word. Yeah. Kind of crazy. You start taking stock of that, um, ordained ministry about five years less than that. I was a, Started out as a youth pastor, worked in campus ministry for a few years, and served three congregations,

2:38 80-member congregation, a 300-member congregation, and then a 2,000-member congregation before becoming the stated clerk. So 40 years of combined ministry if I go all the way back to my youth ministry days. Man, okay.

2:54 And you were telling me before we came on the podcast that your demon kind of bled in to the THM just because there was so much work. Tell us a little bit about who you got to study with for 300 hours.

3:10 Well, I was actually pursuing a PhD, Michael, in New Testament, but I couldn't find a faculty advisor who would allow me to pastor while I was doing a PhD. And I really felt called to be a pastor. I didn't feel called to be a professor.

3:27 And I couldn't find a way to make that work with a young family. So I started looking at D-Mins, but I wanted something more robust. And I found a mentor program at Gordon-Conwell called The Message and The Messenger, which was pioneered by Haddon Robinson. And Haddon created kind of a European mentor model PhD.

3:52 where you didn't have a class in this and a class in that and a class in this and a class in that, and then you specialized and then picked out your thesis. It was 300 class hours of preaching with just Haddon Robinson. So Haddon lives rent-free in my head. Oh, that's great. 24-7, 365.

4:12 And then he was my dissertation advisor. I had to defend in front of him as well as a number of other faculty at Gordon-Comwell. And so it was a pretty robust practice. deem in. The best part of it was, though, it really formed and shaped what is the central part of my life as a pastor,

4:30 which was preaching. And it was a huge gift to me, as was Haddon.

4:35 Man, to be able to spend that much time with somebody like Haddon Robinson is just amazing.

4:43 He's even better when you got to know him. The person was even better than the books. He was the real deal, authentic. Wonderful. I have seven great men who have shaped my life and Haddon is one of those seven.

4:58 That's just, that's wonderful. So, you know, a lot of our listeners will know this, but for those who don't, you know, You were aware that I came into the EPC through the PCA, and I came into the PCA at like age 35, 36 through the John Piper side door that led to Covenant Seminary.

5:20 And so when I went there, there were a lot of folks who kind of were on the John Piper kind of expressway coming into like Reformed theology and trying to figure that out.

5:32 Is there an actual road in Minneapolis or St. Paul or the John Piper Expressway? I wouldn't be a bit surprised. They've got a Billy Graham Parkway in Charlotte, so. It seems like Twin Cities should have a John Piper Expressway.

5:44 They should. And the thing is, it splits off, and half of it goes Baptist, and the other half, I think, goes Reformed, which is how I ended up there. But for the sake of our listeners who maybe aren't familiar with the landscape, Talk a little bit about,

6:04 help us understand the history of the EPC and how the EPC came to be out of the Presbyterian denomination in general in the United States. And then we'll talk about the Baptists and the Anglicans and all the other stuff.

6:23 So a good church historian would probably cringe at what I'm about to say, because I'm going to do church history for dummies, which is kind of my sphere. That's where I live. You can picture the original covenanters who were huddled in the dungeon of Dunedin Castle after their kind of trail of tears being marched out of Edinburgh.

6:45 They're there in the base of the dungeon with nothing. And they there's they begin singing the songs. And that is the kind of the covenant or history that forms a group of people that will initially for reasons of religious persecution come to the United States. And there's probably about three different streams of them as they come in.

7:05 One of the streams is the existing covenanters today, very small denomination called the RPCNA. I know them well because they're one of their kind of headquarters is in Pittsburgh where I pastored for years and years. Beautiful people, deeply, deeply, deeply covenanted folks. The ARP, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church,

7:29 also comes out of a very similar strain about the same time. And those are really the two oldest denominations that are still standing in the United States. But that third stream, which is where the main line comes from, ultimately from the 1700s to today, it looks like a bowl of spaghetti.

7:50 just in terms of all of the different lines and the ways in which this splits and joins and splits and joins. And I don't really have a good count today, Michael, but I think there's at least a dozen split peas in the Presbyterian. And we've come out of the mainline church in the 1980s. Now,

8:12 if you were to kind of tackle the top four, just, you know, without going into all of the other maybe even smaller denominations. Coming out of the fundamentalist modernist controversy in the late 20s, early 30s, you have the birth of the Orthodox or right-believing Presbyterian Church in the

8:28 split between Princeton and the emergence of the new Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. In the 1970s, the denomination that you started in, the PCA, is born out of a Christological controversy where a pastor was unable to say that Jesus was the Christ and was able to be ordained.

8:48 And so a really good reason for a denomination to be born is if another denomination can't say clearly that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by him. Having Christological reasons to be born, that's a pretty good reason to start.

9:04 So in the early 1970s, the PCA is born out of a particular doctrinal controversy around Christ. And then there remain a number of churches in the mainline church that are still evangelical, some in the south and some in the north. And then the rumors in the late 70s,

9:22 early 80s of a reunion of the southern and northern church caused a number of those people to get together and say, you know, when the northern church and the southern church merge, the more liberal northern church is going to kind of swallow up the more conservative southern church. And so conversations began about some different option.

9:43 But the reason for not just having those churches go to the PCA is that the PCA had chosen deliberately two particular things that would help define them. One is that they would be purely complementarian, that is to say, no women in ordained leadership. And then while there's discussion around this, largely took the side of being cessationist.

10:07 That is to say, the work of the Holy Spirit that is more phenomenal existed for the apostolic age to identify the beginning of the church, but we don't see those same phenomenal gifts today. So that sort of defined the early PCA. Now, remember, in the 70s, you had the Jesus movement happening and the charismata hitting the mainline

10:26 churches. And so there were a lot of mainline evangelical churches filled with this charismata who had women in leadership who couldn't go PCA. And so our two, if you could boil it down, and there's more than this, but the two basic founders for us are a guy named Bartlett Hess at Ward Church in the Detroit area,

10:47 and then Andrew Jumper at Central Pres in St. Louis. The two of them are buddies, and one is a complementarian, one is an egalitarian. One leans more towards cessationism. One of them definitely leans more towards the full gifting of the Holy Spirit. But they loved each other. They had great relationship together.

11:06 And, you know, Hess couldn't go into the PCA because he was egalitarian. Jumper couldn't stay in the mainline church because they were going to pretty soon require women to be ordained. That was going to become a mandate in the mainline church when the Southern and Northern churches merged. And then there's this little thing in the background,

11:28 which probably had more to do with the Exodus than people ever want to admit. the Southern church had a long tradition of owning their own property. Um, I think state's rights, if you will. And the Northern church, well, it wasn't codified at this history of the property was held in trust for the larger church.

11:46 And when the Northern church and Southern church came together, they codified that property thing. And, uh, that led to something called article 13, which allowed churches that did not have anything in their bylaws, uh, about property to leave with their property in theory. And that applied mostly to Southern churches, but quite frankly,

12:10 even the Northern churches that didn't have that in their bylaws, getting out was never that easy. So about 12 churches originally met for a meeting in St. Louis to see what they could do to organize. And they realized that the downturn of the mainline church in their lifetime, at least, could be attributable to 1967, 68,

12:32 when the mainline went from a singular confession, which was the Westminster standards, to a book of confessions. Now the problem was the book of confessions largely were in conflict with one another. What the confession of 67 said was very different than what Westminster said, particularly around soteriology, doctrine of salvation, epistemology,

12:54 the doctrine of the knowledge of God and scripture. And ultimately, this group that gathered in St. Louis in 1980, 81, they said, you know, we need this thing to unite us because theology shouldn't divide us, it should unite us. So they created a list of essentials.

13:14 So when they got together about six months later for the very first General Assembly at Ward Church in Detroit, they voted on a list of essentials. And this phrase, which sometimes is attributed wrongly to Augustine, nobody actually knows where this comes from. Most people think it's some monastic French monk in the Middle Ages.

13:35 But the phrase goes like this. In the essentials, unity. In the non-essentials, liberty. And in all things, charity. That phrase became the DNA of the EPC. And that is who formed and shaped us. we decided we weren't going to squabble over secondary issues. They may be really important, but at the end of the day, we would argue,

14:05 base our arguments on the scripture, go to the Westminster Confession, and on the secondary matters, the non-salvific matters, We would agree to disagree. And at the end of the day, go out and maybe get a beer over it. Yes. As good Presbyterians are wont to do. Our culture. Yes.

14:23 Unless you're in the South and you've got a bourbon. That's right. That was pretty much our culture and still carries through because this year we have our 45th General Assembly back at Ward Church where we started.

14:36 Yeah, it's been such a pleasure for me to be in the EPC. As you know, I came into the PCA from a non-denominational, kind of evangelical-free background. My concept of Reformed theology was really kind of John Piper Baptist theology, really kind of wrapped up in the five points of Calvinism. So in going to Covenant,

15:03 it was probably my second semester where kind of I would say the penny dropped and I understood, oh, wait a second, there's more to... reformed theology than TULIP. It means an entire way of looking at scripture, an entire way of looking at the world, an entire way of kind of seeing how redemptive history is unfolding.

15:26 And I primarily had gone to Covenant because of one of the folks that was, they had a study center there for Francis Schaeffer, And I had read Francis Schaeffer and C.S. Lewis were two of the first authors I was introduced to, along with listening to Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill and other kind of fringy Christian artists.

15:56 I'm just trying to reconcile Larry Norman and John Piper. I'm just trying to put those two together in the paradox that is wrapped up in a conundrum of Yes. That is you.

16:08 As is, as, as everyone who attends the two churches that I planted, because they kind of like, it's all kind of like meshed in there. So I didn't, I didn't come into the PCA with kind of like a quote unquote, like a dog in the fight, heavily invested in Southern Presbyterianism. I didn't know anything about it.

16:27 It didn't really, I just didn't know. And, you know, planted two churches, one in Iowa city and one in In the suburbs of Chicago, and when I look back at them now, both of those churches are both still in the PCA, but both, unbeknownst to me, would also be very happy in the EPC,

16:49 just because I wasn't concentrating on the things that made... that the Southern Presbyterians were focused on. So the issues of having women being involved and doing things and things were like, I would just like, okay, these are, this is just what we do.

17:05 Well, the other, the other major denomination that I didn't mention comes after the APC, which is called eco, the evangelical covenant order of Presbyterians.

17:13 Yes.

17:14 Yes. I want to talk about that. Largely in the early two thousands, um, more probably around this human sexuality issues, but, you know, you continued to see the doctrinal decline of the mainline church. So, you know, you could interview 10 different people in ECO and get five different reasons why they left.

17:32 Some would be doctrinal, some would be... Yes.

17:35 So can I put a pin in this? Because I'm going to come here and just like, give me one minute. So when it became, you know, I don't know, maybe it was maybe three years ago, I began to realize that maybe...

17:49 maybe I wasn't a good of a fit in the PCA as maybe I had initially thought I was. And I knew a number of people who were in the EPC and so decided to move my credentials into the EPC. And upon getting there, one of the things that I realized was there were a lot of

18:11 recent PCA transfers, largely church planter friends of mine that I had known. And when I showed up, it was maybe two or three years ago, we were in Denver. And I would say repeatedly, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? And they're like, well, you know,

18:28 there's a number of us church planters that are kind of in this. And so one of the things that I want to talk about with regard to the EPC, and this really does go to how do we live in the public square, how do we engage in these kind of conversations,

18:45 was that when I was in Iowa City, Iowa, planting our first church in 2008, there was a PCUSA church there that was very large and was, I would say, fairly conservative. I mean, they seemed like a fairly conservative church. church for the PCUSA. But the concern that they had, which absolutely played itself out,

19:10 was when their pastor retired or resigned and moved on, their church was unable to to bring in a pastor to follow that person who was confessionally Orthodox. They could not get them through the Presbytery. And about that same time, you had the Obergefell ruling, which legalized gay marriage. And then it seemed like at that point,

19:35 there were a number of PCUSA churches that made their way kind of into the EPC, And then there's this other offshoot, Eco, that started. And so I'd love for you just to kind of talk about how the EPC, how you and the leadership there are navigating these almost, it seems like about every 10 years,

19:59 there's these waves of churches that are like, okay, well, where, where are we going to fit? And the EPC seems like it's getting them both. And then from one side, the PCUSA side, and then there's this side from the, from the PCA that's coming in. How do you guys, how are you navigating that?

20:18 Yeah. I mean, there's, I wish there was a, I wish there was a playbook for that because it's challenging as an organization to maintain your own distinctive DNA. while bringing in people from all these different places. And it's not just that they come in with different beliefs,

20:36 but a lot of times in their departure from one of their previous denominations, they've experienced a trauma. And so they bring that PTSD in with them as well. And that plays itself out in the body. And that's actually where the rubber hits the road and where it gets more challenging.

20:55 The interesting thing about the EPC, and I think it's mostly a blessing, But, you know, the wheat and the tares, they grow together for a total of time. And that is to say we're uniquely positioned probably to be able to engage in the public square in a way that is distinctive because of what you've just described.

21:15 That is to say we have people who've come in from a denomination that you might consider to be slightly to the right of us in the PCA. And you have people who have come in from a denomination you might consider to be slightly to the left of us in ECO. And yet at the same time,

21:30 there are a lot of churches in the EPC that could fit into the PCA or could fit into ECO. And there's churches in the PCA and ECO that could easily fit into the EPC. And we're beginning to see some realignment take place around that. Now, between 2008 and 2016,

21:45 about 400 churches from the mainline PCUSA came into the EPC in that 12-year period. How was that? Well, there's a lot of trauma. There's a lot of pain. There's a lot of, you know, and people came in for different reasons and different churches came in with different levels of health, different levels of mission vision.

22:12 Some just wanted to be in a more conservative body. Some just wanted to get out. Some had more of a vision of what they were against than what they were for. So it's been challenging to not just welcome people in and check off kind of the doctrine boxes, but to also to help these churches with, you know,

22:35 aligning to our unique mission. Our mission is EPC exists to carry out the Great Commission of Jesus as Presbyterian Reformed Evangelical and Missional Churches. Now, they probably all would say that they're Presbyterian and everybody's Presbyterian at the local level. Reformed, the mainline church's definition of reform is pretty loosey-goosey compared to what most of us have known.

23:00 It's evangelical. That has taken on different terminology these days. That's taken on more of a sociopolitical term than it does a theological term, which I grieve because our founders didn't intend that as a sociopolitical term. They intended that as a, as the euangelion, the biblical term of, of, uh,

23:19 being evangelistic and proclaiming the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

23:25 Exactly right. And then the missional piece is the piece where I think the rubber hits the road because a lot of churches, um, early on our founders would say, we want to be inwardly strong, but outwardly focused. And that balance was key to us. And a lot of churches still, uh,

23:39 who've come in focus on kind of sustaining, surviving, uh, you know, existing. getting them to turn outward to their communities as missional communities is where the challenge is. And that's also where the thriving is. It's also where the flourishing is. It's also where the vibrancy is because that's where the gospel is.

23:58 So that is part of our challenge. But if we can navigate that space, I think we can be uniquely positioned because you've dealt with things on the left and things on the right and found a way to move forward with the gospel as centers. not as a political thing as left or right as being center.

24:20 And I think that's the difference, Michael, is that 10, 15 years ago, the realignment that was occurring that people were describing was you had a type A Christianity and a type B Christianity, and you would have a type A Episcopalian who had more in common with a type A

24:38 Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist than they did with a type B Episcopalian, right? And so one was the mainline, and the other was what was coming out of the mainline, more evangelical bodies. So, for example, the ACNA comes out of the Episcopal Church, much like the EPC comes out of the mainline Presbyterian Church.

25:01 And the EPC has more in common with the ACNA than it does with the PCUSA, right? So the shift we saw 10, 15, 20 years ago was more around doctrine. It was more around kind of the traditional Orthodox expression of historic Christianity versus the mainline, more progressive expressions. That was where the realignment was occurring.

25:25 It seems like today the realignment is much more cultural, social, and even political, where people are aligning around important social issues more than they are necessarily around doctrinal issues. Because you can have two people I know this is going to be really shocking for some, but you can have two people who are Presbyterian, Reformed, Evangelical and Missional,

25:53 and one could be a Democrat and one could be a Republican. And the Democrat looks at the Republican and says, how could you possibly? And the Republican looks at the Democrat and said, oh, my goodness, how is that even possible? Right. That's exactly right. Unfortunately, here's the problem. The shift that's occurred is this. Today's Western society. Christians,

26:12 particularly true in the United States, is understanding their faith through their political lens instead of understanding their politics through their faith lens. And I think that shift is causing a new alignment. And there are, you know, the last number of churches that have come in to the EPC in the last year and the

26:34 ones that are talking right now and in the pipeline, there are still some coming from the mainline church. But more and more are coming from churches like the PCA, where people are looking at, you know, do we want to be in an environment that's a little different than the one that we're involved in?

26:54 And a lot of that has to do with social, cultural and even political things. So I think there is a new shift occurring. If we can navigate that space of saying this is what's essential, this is what's not essential, and we're not going to major on the secondary things and let them become divisive,

27:13 then we could have a unique space going forward in the public square to really bring the gospel.

27:19 So when I was in seminary, well, maybe I was in the middle of planting our first church plant in Iowa City. A very progressive, very progressive university town. And I came back at one point and I was on the seminary campus and I had an opportunity to talk to my favorite professor, Dr. Dan Doriani,

27:41 who served for a number of years as the pastor of Central Presbyterian Church while I was there, in addition to his teaching responsibilities. And I was kind of like poke around and kind of Feel them out about the EPC. And he goes, let me just tell you, my good friend, grass is always greener.

28:03 Depending on where you're standing. He goes, we got our own things going on over here. Just so you know, everything, nothing is perfect anywhere until Christ returns. And so you've hit on the next thing that I really want to talk about is For me, one of the attractions of joining the EPC,

28:25 and I've definitely sensed this and experienced this in my two years in the denomination, and that is in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity, I have absolutely experienced that. And I'm seeing that that is the primary that maybe for folks like myself who are more recently moving in,

28:53 it's probably the thing that motivated us is probably the in all things charity aspect. Whereas the folks that maybe came in and one of these more, you know, 10, 15 years ago waves, it was, you know, in essentials, unity. Um, I didn't, when I came in and I handed them my, um, you know,

29:15 my ordination exemptions or whatever you have, they, they looked at those and go, these aren't exceptions. We're, we're, we're fine. We thought you had something that actually was important, you know, and I've got like three pages and they're like, oh, this is, we go through this with everybody who comes in from, from your denomination.

29:32 They got these written out with like all these different citations. Yeah, we're good. However, the ministry that I lead here in Washington, Faithful Presence, we deal a lot with folks on both sides of the aisle in Washington, but we also minister to churches and try to help them understand the importance of whole life discipleship,

29:53 informing disciples who can interact in the public square. And a number of the folks that we were ministering to at the time said, oh, my gosh, you've got to read this book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory by Tim Alberta. And so I picked it up. I thought, OK, here's another one of the many political reads,

30:15 the many takes on the polarization that's happening in the church. And I get to like page three. And I realized, oh, this is about the EPC. This is about churches in this denomination that I've just joined. And the fact that they're not immune to the polarization that is happening. That the polarization that's happening is splitting churches,

30:45 even churches that say in all things charity. The political aspect of this is overruling that. And I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about how this moment that we seem to be having right now culturally is playing itself out in a denomination that has these three tenets.

31:14 Yeah, I mean, first, I'd say there are some who think that our podcast, In All Things, is a playoff on the all things charity. And I think maybe those who might have wanted to be dismissive would have said, oh, he's playing up the charity part of our threefolds phrase.

31:32 They should listen to the podcast because that's not the take. Well, there's a worry on the part of some that for the sake of missional effectiveness, that we would compromise theological integrity. And the EPC, I think in 45 years, has successfully navigated that space and not sacrificed anything to theological integrity.

31:54 There is no degradation of the EPC's views. They continue to be grounded on not only the scripture, but the Westminster Confession. So it's actually, the all things comes from more, before that phrase even existed, Paul's letter to the church at Colossae, chapter 1, 15 and 16. That is that in him, all things hold together. Right.

32:17 And so now all things love connects to that. But having said all of that, you know, Tim is grew up in the EPC. His father is a kind of one of our heroes and legacy pastors at a church up in Michigan for many years. But the interesting thing is in that same year,

32:39 I'd get phone calls from some people saying, have you read Tim Alberta's new book? And I'd say, well, I've got it. I'm familiar with it. And then I'd get a phone call from someone saying, have you read Megan Basham's book? Right. We've talked about that on the podcast as well. And I get both.

32:54 I get both phone calls. And there are some people in the EPC who think Megan Basham is this prophet and others who think that Tim is a prophet. Yes.

33:04 And therein lies the problem, right?

33:06 Yeah. The reality is I won't weigh in on which book has more reliable scholarships. or is better written. I have my opinions on that, which I'm going to keep to myself. But I will say it's interesting that people have found those two books and gravitated to them in such a way as to say, oh,

33:28 the church is on a slippery slope. I attended a meeting, Michael, of 30 denominational executives last year, and the opening line of the leader of the arguably maybe one of the largest, if not the largest evangelical denomination in the United States, opened by saying, if I hear the word slippery slope one more time,

33:48 I'm going to blow a gasket. Everybody in the room laughed because we've all heard it. We all are experiencing people who are afraid of it. But the interesting thing is because everybody, especially in social media, cocoons themselves and they create these echo chambers where they only hear from other people who think like themselves.

34:08 And they only ever hear from the other side as part of a straw man of sorts. Nobody thinks that that's what they're doing, but that's in essence what they're doing in many respects. Um, and I think the interesting thing is there are people who have said, uh, they look at Tim's book and they say, boy,

34:25 the evangelicals are in bed with the progressives and it's a slippery slope going hard left. And then Basham's book says all the evangelicals are in bed with the, um, the liberals, and it's going with the conservatives. Basham says we're in with the liberals.

34:43 It's hard to keep it straight.

34:45 Basham says we're in with the liberals and we're sliding hard left. Tim says we're in with the conservatives and going hard right. And so both can't be true, but the truth probably is somewhere in between those things. And both books probably should be read with an eye toward the fact that the church probably needs to be more

35:06 more constructive, more ironically critical. And I think it's important that the peacefulness that goes with that constructive criticism is important. And I think the thing missing across the board, whether you're left or right, that is so necessary right now is humility.

35:26 And if the church with some humility would read both of those books and say, hmm, I wonder if there is, it's not necessarily an either or in this scenario. I wonder if there is a different way forward. And when you go back and read some of the early church fathers,

35:47 particularly when you go back and read around the Nicene Council, you realize that rather than it being just one way or the other, there was a intentional push to take what was historic orthodoxy and continue to develop it, without compromising left or right, but to continue to develop. Now those, as it gets developed,

36:11 there are people on the left who are afraid it's being developed too much on the right, people on the right afraid the development is too much on the left. And that's what kind of keeps you on track. But, you know, for those of us who are Reformed Christians, we have a plumb line there that is the scripture.

36:25 It's not anything else. And that is we are anchored in the scripture. And so if it gets too far to the left, We measure it against the scripture. If it gets too far to the right, we measure it against the scripture. And if we're not clear on that and we need a little further in terms of doctrine,

36:42 then we go to the Westminster Confession to understand, has it gone too much this way or too much that way? And so I think navigating that space in between those two books is exhausting. It is agonizing because the people on either extreme are very zealous and in their views. It takes great energy, great patience, and above all,

37:07 great humility to navigate that space where you say, you know, we're going to listen to each of these critiques and we're going to evaluate them against the gospel. And let's be honest, the Western, in particular, the American church has been syncretized way too much to the culture in which we live.

37:27 And we aren't as distinctive as we should be. And we look more like the world and act more like the world than I think we were ever intended to. And a little bit of kind of owning that and coming to Jesus about that is probably a healthy thing.

37:44 And I'm hopeful that when we get on the other side of this moment, the EPC having been tried and having been tested, because we are like everybody else being tried and tested, we come out on the other side in a position to be faithful to the gospel.

37:58 Yeah, that's so spot on, your analysis of what's happening. You know, we've talked in the podcast before about books like, I think Bill Bishop wrote a book called The Big Sort, where he talks about one of the challenges that pastors today are up against is that people are self-sorting by zip code

38:24 where they want to live, because they want to live with people who agree with them politically. That political motivation to relocate is what's making there be more and more, or I should say, less and less contested congressional districts. So if you have a church in a red congressional district,

38:46 you're going to have probably only mostly red folks showing up. And if you're in a blue congressional district, you're going to have mostly blue folks showing up, which then, of course, makes pastoring ideologically from a gospel, biblical standpoint. And I really love the fact that folks thought in all things was more tied to the

39:09 three distinctives than Colossians. Because one of the things that we talk about is the fact that, you know, in the public square, you can pick from make America great again, build back better, or making all things new. And one of them, the last one, is Christ does the work. He doesn't need you to do it.

39:34 You don't need to panic if it's not happening because there's nothing in the New Testament that's written to anybody who's a member of a political party that can vote. So there's no instruction in the New Testament about how to vote in the next election. It's just not a concept that they have.

39:56 And so this idea of how pastors then navigate this becomes the real challenge for, I think, for denominational leadership, for seminaries, for presbyteries or whatever kind of your church organizations are. but of equipping pastors to be able to navigate this, to manage this. I mean, the stories, the thing that I really appreciated about him, Alberta's book,

40:27 was he spends a fair amount of time talking about the personal, emotional, and relational trauma that comes as a result of these types of splits. for the pastors themselves. And so I'd love for you to talk a little bit because I've been to General Assembly and I've experienced this real ethos of care and training.

40:59 What steps is the EPC taking and how are you leading that into helping equip pastors for this kind of uniquely American cultural moment right now?

41:13 I saw a meme the other day, Michael, which I don't know if it's factually true, but it struck me as being anecdotally true. And it said this, the average human being loses five to seven significant relationships in a lifetime. The average pastor loses loses five to seven significant relationships in a year.

41:35 Yeah. Amen to that. That's not anecdotal.

41:39 Well, and I think those are at least my experience. Well, it was my experience too. And those are the ones that are so painful, deeply painful. So I think, first of all, I'd back up and say, I came into this position of stated clerk of the EPC coming out of COVID. And COVID,

41:59 which was horrible in so many ways, and I lost some very dear friends to that disease. Also, the other side of it was it gave the church a gift if it would see it, which was while it did not create anything new, it threw into relief some things that were already there that, for example,

42:22 the deep sense of isolation that many people felt. the deep sense of anxiety that rising generations were comprehending and deal with. Um, a lot of that was, was, um, hidden prior to COVID COVID exposed it, put the light on it. And in some ways, um, turned up the heat. And early on,

42:42 we doubled down Michael in using what's called our medical benevolence fund to provide, um, emotional support and care for our pastors. Um, in the first three years we offered about, um, one, two, three, we offered four pastoral retreats sponsored by the office of the general assembly,

43:04 as did a number of our presbyteries doing their own retreats where we brought in professionals to help people to process what they were dealing with coming out of COVID. And, um, from that, um, we have had a large number of not only online seminars, um, What does it mean to be healthy?

43:26 We have a couple of online support groups for pastors' spouses. And we've really dug down deeply on providing resources in terms of pastoral care for pastors, including counseling and including residential facilities if needed. And we've used a number of our different funds to support that. But partnerships with organizations like PIR, Pastor Serve, House of Gladness,

43:55 all three of those, for example, will be at our General Assembly. And every session that they offer in those three days is filled and they're free. We cover the cost of that. It's such a blessing. And we highly encourage our pastors to dig in deeply into providing self-care. Here's another real practical example. Unbelievable.

44:17 The Katrina of the Mountains, when Hurricane Helene went through the Western Carolinas, And we've been there multiple times. And we've got a dozen churches that were deeply affected by this. And we have invested significant resources, not just money, which we have from our disaster relief fund, not just in rebuilding and restoring, but caring for our pastors.

44:41 We've given out of our disaster relief fund about $10,000 to each of those churches to say, would you use this to care for your pastor well?

44:52 Yeah, good for you.

44:52 That's so critical. And so we've had pastors who've gone on vacation. We've had pastors who've gotten counseling. We've gotten pastors who've done both. And they've taken us up on that offer. And the presbytery, we did a great presbytery of coastal Carolinas. They've come alongside of them as well. I'm sorry, central Carolinas.

45:13 They came alongside of them as well and provided support. So between the presbytery, the general assembly committee, We just had Dr. Paul Gibson from First Pres Orlando go up there with another team and did an entire one-day seminar on dealing with trauma. And all of those pastors came and the response rate has been high.

45:34 So it's dealing with hurricane and natural disaster trauma relief. It's dealing with the post-COVID realities. And we're trying to build out a much more robust process by which someone receives kind of healthy care from the moment they begin exploring ministry, not just waiting for them to get into ministry and to have a crisis.

46:02 So we're trying to go back and build that into the process. And we have a committee that's coming this summer to our General Assembly called the Ad Interim Committee on Ordination Standards. This year, they're just looking at process. And so one of the things they've done, and this might get lost for most people,

46:17 but they've added a third category to the ordination process called an applicant. And what that requires is the person seeking a call to come into the care of a local session and have an elder come alongside of that person. And a lot of the things they're recommending are part of building in from the ground floor,

46:37 healthy practices that will help that person go long-term rather than just check the doctrinal boxes, which we still are doing that too. We must continue to do that, but it can't be an either or. It has to be a both and, because you want people who are not just intellectually sound, theologically sound, but also emotionally sound.

47:01 We want high IQs and EQs for those who are serving our churches. But you don't get that just by wishing for it. You have to build into the process things that will happen. So We're looking at those issues systemically. That's going to be a multiple year project. That's not something you're going to address overnight.

47:21 Anytime you try to bring change like that to an organization as complex as a denomination of stubborn Scottish Presbyterian American types, it takes a while. But we think that kind of emphasis on the health of our pastoral global worker, chaplain, church planning leadership is absolutely essential for the future.

47:45 That's great. Hey, so kind of the parting question I want to ask for you, this podcast will be heard after our General Assembly at Ward Church in two weeks, oddly enough. But like, so the... It's not like the EPC is not going to have conversations about race, gender, sexuality, immigration, all of these things.

48:13 All of these things are issues that local pastors are facing, and they play themselves out in discussions kind of even at the General Assembly level. How have you... how would you say that the, the EPC has been able to put these kinds of issues before their churches and then

48:38 talk through them in a way that doesn't lead to half the churches saying, we're just going to have to leave then because this is just unacceptable. What's happening. How, how are you doing that?

48:54 Well, um, When Presbyterianism works, there's a glorious slow messiness to it. And I'll point to, I think, two examples of how we're doing it well, but it is slow and messy. And some people don't have the tolerance of the patience for the slow, and others don't have the tolerance for the messy.

49:16 And so you will have churches that just even having those discussions causes them to realign somewhere, as we talked earlier, largely because of cultural and political issues. But the vast majority in last year, we we gained six churches. We dismissed five. So it's a relative flat on that. You know, there's no great exodus or anything like that.

49:39 Although in the coming years, as we face more things, who knows what that's going to look like? I think the two ways we do that, I always say Presbyterians churn better than at the lower courts than they do at the higher courts. That is to say, we believe we have three courts of the church, a session, presbytery,

49:59 and the General Assembly. You can have more honest discussion at the session and the presbytery than you can at the General Assembly. Not that the General Assembly's conversation isn't honest, but good conversation around hard subject matter is built on a understanding of a mutually beneficial relationship. And at the session level, at the press rate level,

50:20 there's a much greater opportunity to have that relationship. And the EPC had that years ago when we were only 12 churches or 80 churches or 180 churches, but we're 630 now. And 630 churches from around the country in the Caribbean, people don't have the same relational affinity. And so having those conversations is in some ways more challenging.

50:40 And our general assembly last summer, the conversation was really challenging. It was really difficult. We tried our best. to navigate that in terms of using Robert's rules and our rules of the assembly to do that. And for some, that was really frustrating. And for others, other things were frustrating. But you do your best.

50:58 That's some of the messiness to work its way through. But here's the two things we're trying to do around the important issues, churning at those lower judicatories to try to have that kind of conversation. Last year, the kind of one of the hot button issues was our pastoral letter of racial lament and hope. And what we did,

51:18 which was unprecedented, we released the pastoral letter in the spring so presbyteries could discuss it before they got to General Assembly. Not to vote on it. It wasn't something that was descending where they would have an actionable item. But we didn't want them to think about it or talk about it for the first time when

51:38 they showed up for a three-day meeting. We wanted them to chew on it. We wanted sessions and presbyteries to discuss it. And so we sent out people from the Ad Interim Committee on the Pastoral Letter of Racial Moment and Hope to meet with churches and with presbyteries to engage in conversation, to create understanding,

51:56 to try to help create a common language, a common understanding. And not everybody agreed with everything that was in it, but a pastoral letter isn't binding on the conscience the way a constitutional document is, but it does shape how we think we would apply the scripture to a particular subject in our time.

52:17 And for those who choose to use it, it becomes an effective tool to navigate the times in which we live around the question of race and gender. Now, gender is the next big one, which is coming up. And next year, another ad interim committee will report back on ordination as it relates to people

52:34 who are same sex attracted. So realizing that this might even be a bigger issue than the other, right. Um, The work of that committee, which is pretty much already done, is going to come to this assembly for people to see for the first time, not to vote on. Right. Just just to they're going to unveil it.

52:53 They're going to explain what they've done, why they've done it. And then it's going to go to every session in every presbytery, not just for the spring, but for the whole year for them to discuss.

53:04 Yes.

53:05 And we think that will be the place where it can be discussed safely, where it can be discussed, hopefully charitably. And when we come to our General Assembly next year, people will have discussed it at the two lower courts of the church and come ready for more of a discernment than a churn.

53:23 It's hard to churn with a thousand people. It's easier to churn with 150 or with 10. So the lower courts can churn that better, but bring the results of that to discern at the General Assembly what we're going to do. And hopefully by getting this important stuff out early for more people to wrestle

53:46 with it in places where the conversation can be built on trustworthy relationships, that helps us when it comes back up to the highest court, which is the General Assembly. And that's our pattern. We started that last year. We're going to do that again this year. And we're hopeful that that will help us have the conversation,

54:05 as Presbyterians like to say, decently and in order.

54:08 Yeah. And for our listeners who heard, you know, we're going to be discussing, you know, how we navigate same-sex attraction among pastors, what we do not mean, of course, is that we're not discussing, having a discussion about whether or not practicing people practicing homosexual relationships should be eligible for ordination. That's not the topic that we're discussing.

54:42 The topic we are discussing. And there's nobody advocating that, Michael, either.

54:46 It's important to note that. It's extremely important to note that because the way that things get spun on basically small little segments is, oh, they're having this discussion. No, we're not having that discussion at all.

55:01 The chairs of that ad interim committee in their opening remarks at this assembly will say something like this. We were not commissioned to change the EPC's theology. That's right. They were commissioned to develop the existing theology by filling in the gaps where, hey, 20 years ago, we didn't even know what the word concupiscence was.

55:26 And we're better for it. Or the question of identity, which is a relatively new idea. That's the key. We had gaps. And so it's not about going back and softening our view. Nobody is interested in changing our longstanding historic biblical view of sexuality. We've got the Westminster Confession position papers all lining up in the same way

55:49 from biblical standards. It's about developing those ideas to be able to answer some questions that are being raised today that were not being raised 10 and 20 years ago. and to do them consistently with our historic theology.

56:04 And this is where it becomes difficult when what I would say theological, pastoral, ecclesiastical relating to the church conversations end up in the public square without the context that's necessary, right? So we are debating something that really, I would say, is kind of an in-house issue, which is, can an individual who is ordained to gospel ministry—

56:34 and is confessionally orthodox in every way, what language could that person use to describe themselves if they are also single, and celibate and a virgin and say, I have never experienced an attraction for somebody of the opposite sex. And so I am taking every thought captive and picking up my cross daily in obedience to Christ.

57:02 The discussion that we're having is what language is should we use, can we use, and how can we use it, and how can we be pastoral while we're doing it? That's the conversation we're having, not about whether or not something does or doesn't violate God's call for the way that we live our lives out sexually. And that's,

57:25 I think, one of the disappointing things that other denominations have experienced is when you begin to try to have this conversation with around theology and ecclesiology, and then it gets out into the public, it's, oh no, that denomination is becoming liberal. And we're just trying to make sure that we understand what we're all talking about.

57:48 And in the cases where those denominations may have advocates who are pressing for a change in orthodox beliefs, then that concern is well warranted. There are no people in the EPC doing that. There's no advocates... for the progressive theology on this. So that's not even on the table for us.

58:09 And so, you know, we can have a common discussion. It's a fruitful discussion, right? It's a rich discussion to say, how do we take John Owens, the mortification of sin and apply it to our lives? And how does that come out in an exam of someone who maybe has an orientation

58:28 that's different than mine?

58:30 That's a fruitful conversation. The more complex and nuanced conversations, though, are around what I would call the peace and unity of the church, which is what happens when a person advocates things that strike us as being contrary to a lifestyle that honors Christ. And that's a much more nuanced conversation,

58:53 because what someone believes is a lifestyle that honors Christ, people may not all hold the same view on that. But if you have someone coming in who advocates for certain expressions of life that seem that are going to bring disruption to the church, you know, kind of a meat sacrifice to idols sort of thing.

59:22 You know, then the question is, you know, are we admitting folks into our fellowships? who are going to purposefully seemingly bring disruption. We seem to have enough disruption without introducing more. And that enters into the equation, too. So it's a those kind of exams are not just check the box exams,

59:44 but there are some boxes that need to be that needed to be explained consistent with our historic biblical traditions so that as we go through the process of any examination in the future, that those things are held to a high biblical standard. And I think we're going to do that. I think we're going to do that well.

1:00:06 But those are such emotionally charged issues. And you have to understand, those 400 churches that came out of the mainline church, many of them, even just discussing this, is a trigger for them.

1:00:19 Yes, that's right.

1:00:20 That's 100% correct. It reminds them of what they came out of, and they desperately don't want to go back to that again. So we have to find a way to do this in a way that reassures and gives people confidence that there is no lessening of our theological views or beliefs,

1:00:37 but yet has a level of engagement that, in all things, honors Christ.

1:00:44 Thank you. Thanks for doing that, and for affirming and confirming my belief that this is exactly why whole life discipleship matters, because we are dealing with congregants and pastors who need spiritual formation, emotional formation, relational formation, vocational, ideological, cultural, and evangelical formation. And that formation matters when you get 600 and some pastors together.

1:01:19 who all are coming from different places with different kind of family systems and backgrounds and say, look, we all love Jesus. We all love the gospel. We all have agreed on the same confession. Let's come here not to dominate each other, but to serve, but to serve each other and to serve Christ.

1:01:40 Well, and that might be part two, Michael, digging down into why the Reformed faith in particular, especially those of us who lean a little bit more toward the Dutch school, we have a capacity to understand this whole life discipleship in a way that I think the rising generation is hungry for.

1:01:59 Yes, 100%.

1:01:59 That I think is biblically rich and faithful. And if there's one question that came out of, and Barna and Glue's data and the state of the church points to this, Coming out of COVID, if there is one diagnostic that we know is that the church has a discipleship crisis. That is correct. I think the kind of superficial,

1:02:20 moralistic, consumeristic Christianity is not holding up against the gospel, but a more robust whole life discipleship of the whole person. which is what you're all about. We're ideally positioned to offer that to people in replacement of some of this cheaper Christianity, in my view. And so that might be a follow-up conversation one day,

1:02:46 but I do think— I'm going to hold you to that. I think the EPC is uniquely positioned to offer that kind of robust discipleship, too.

1:02:53 Yes. Thank you, Dr. Weaver. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. What will the next two weeks—very quickly, what's the next two weeks look like for you getting ready for General Assembly?

1:03:05 Yeah, I mean, the next two weeks is our commissioner's handbook goes live. It's fielding all of the questions that come around that as that comes online and people come out of what I call a GA slumber and they begin to engage with all the stuff that's going on.

1:03:19 But we do have a whole bunch of online meetings that happen before the assembly. And those are new commissioner trainings. Those are trainings of standing committee chairs and recording clerks. Those are sessions where we walk through each of the business sessions with the

1:03:33 participants and kind of help them get their marks on where to be and how to do what they need to do. Preparing all the minutes from the permanent committees that have to be approved to come to the standing committees. There's a thousand little details behind the scenes under the radar that the

1:03:52 average person that shows up to an assembly has no idea let alone all the changes that come with people who at the last minute register or can't come for other reasons. And what that means in terms of everything, committee assignments to food prep, all of that is taking place. And by the time this episode drops,

1:04:11 we'll kind of know where we landed at the end of- We'll have everything fixed. And hopefully all of that was done, hopefully in the essentials, we remained unified in the non-essentials. There was a liberty expressed toward one another. And how we did that was loving in all ways without compromising anything.

1:04:33 Okay. Well, thank you very much. I will see you in a couple of weeks. And as people are listening to this, I will have seen you a couple of weeks ago. With that being said, thanks again to Dr. Weaver for joining us. Dr. Weaver is the stated clerk of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

1:04:53 Thank you so much for tuning into this podcast. Do all the things that you're supposed to do on YouTube and Spotify and an Apple podcast to kind of promote this podcast. We certainly appreciate that. Thank you so much to Andrew, who makes these podcasts sound way better than they do in my ears as they're recorded.

1:05:10 Thank you to Josie for all of her chief of staff work. We're really excited about a couple of big announcements that we believe we're going to have coming soon. So stay tuned to that. But until then, receive this blessing. May our father in heaven make you one as he and his son are one so that the world

1:05:31 will know that he loves them and sent his son for them. Go in peace into the public square. Bye now.