Christian Heritage News

Memorial Presbyterian Church Session Calls Congregation Meeting The Memorial Session is recommending that the congregation vote to withdraw from the PCA Written by Memorial Presbyterian Church Session - Published Friday, October 21, 2022 at The Aquila Report It is with a mixture of sorrow and hope that we, the elders of Memorial Presbyterian Church, after fifteen months spent fasting, praying, waiting, consulting and listening, now write to call a meeting of the congregation for 5:30–6:30 p.m. Friday, November 18, 2022, in the Auditorium for the purpose of deciding on matters pertaining to denominational alignment. We are recommending the congregation vote to withdraw from the Presbyterian Church in America in accordance with Book of Church Order 25-11   Read more at The Aquila Report ...  UPDATE November 18, 2022: Memorial Presbyterian Church Votes to Leave PCA – byFaith (byfaithonline.com) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For additional information, please see: Memorial Presbyterian Churc

 Posted at Truth Over Tribe: My name is Rosaria Butterfield, and I choose the truth of Biblical Christianity over the tribalism of Side B/Revoice theology. What Is Truth? The Bible is Truth, both in word and in substance. When one passage of scripture may seem unclear to us, we interpret it in light of the clarity of God’s unified Biblical witness.[1] There are no problem passages in scripture. In His image, God created human beings ontologically as men or women. Our sexual difference is part of our origin and eternity. We bear the image of God in purposeful pattern. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them’. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.’” Genesis 1:26-28 This magisterial passage, known as the Creation Ordinance, reveals that God established men and women for the normative and

 By Peter Sanlon - Posted at Reformation21: I share this letter to brethren in the PCA with some trepidation. With Prov. 26:17 in mind it is arguably foolhardy to get involved in another denomination’s ecclesial debates — especially one on the other side of the Atlantic! However friends in the PCA have suggested it may be helpful to you if I share how things have played out in England over the past decade. Why would you want to read about the recent history of English evangelicalism as you ponder important votes in the PCA? In most matters, American culture leads the Western world. To be sure, any time my children get obsessed with some fad or new toy, I can bet my bottom pound (dollar?) that the toy or movement originated in the USA. However, in regard to the specific debates you today face in the PCA — Revoice, ‘Side B’ views on sexuality — England, rather than America, has led the way. Read more...

 By Andrew George - Posted at The Aquila Report: "The question, in the end, comes down to whether homosexual temptation is more powerful than Christ or whether Christ is more powerful than homosexual temptation. As Savior, Christ is mightier than our internal temptations. Therefore, if we counsel same-sex attracted people into believing that they may never be rid of homosexual temptation in this life, we have diminished the power of the Cross." With the rising influence of Christian organizations in America that exist to cater to “sexual minorities” in the church, there has been much confusion among reformed evangelicals regarding temptation and desire, specifically as it relates to same-sex attraction. Confessional Presbyterian denominations are not exempt. The Presbyterian Church in America, at present, is on a collision course with Revoice theology and is inundated with debates surrounding homosexual identity and whether men who profess to be “same-sex attracted” can be a

Posted at truthxchange: This article was first published August 3, 2018 A mixed bag of straight and gay pastors, celibate and non-celibate gays, parents and children—450 in all—have just met in a church (PCA) in St Louis. The conference attempted to integrate into the church and its ministry homosexuals who accept the biblical view of sex and marriage as limited to heterosexual people, but who see their same-sex orientation as unchangeable, even as a normative part of creation. This frees them to have a non-sexual “gay” attraction to their same-gender friends. According to the organizer, Nate Collins, this conference (one of many to come) is a time of dialogue to determine acceptable biblical and Christian practice. Can a gay man who rejects homosexual practice still be proud of his “gay identity” and his “gay” way of doing things as pleasing to God? Can he engage in deep friendship, even life-long commitment with another same-sex attracted celibate male friend—even adopt children? Can

 Posted at The Aquila Report: [ The Aquila Report Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Pastor Ray Heiple on behalf of a member of his church, who prefers to remain anonymous.] "If something like the positions espoused by Revoice were being articulated in 2005, I almost certainly would have gravitated to them. Though I was no longer interested in dating, I think that if I had been told it was okay to identify as same-sex attracted and even to pursue celibate friendships with other women who identified that way, I would have been very receptive to the arguments. The reflections below were originally written following the PCA’s 2019 General Assembly. After prayer and discussion with my pastors, I have decided to share my story ahead of the upcoming 2021 General Assembly. Although individual stories are not the basis of our theology, such testimonies have understandably formed part of the denomination’s discussions surrounding sexual identity, especially with regard to what

http://www.memorialpca.org/ Posted at CBMW.org: Should a PCA church host a “short-play festival and celebration of transgender, agender, non-binary, genderqueer, and genderfluid artists”? That may sound like an esoteric question, but this is apparently exactly what Memorial Presbyterian Church did this past week. Memorial Presbyterian Church, a PCA church in St. Louis, made news in 2018 when it hosted the controversial Revoice conference. The church’s pastor, Greg Johnson, spoke at Revoice in 2019 and is slated to speak again in 2020 . According to the event announcement accessed on Thursday, the Q Collective , which is an LGBT group “exploring the spectrum of gender, sexuality, and romantic orientation,” hosted its 2nd annual Transluminate Arts Festival at The Chapel of Memorial Presbyterian Church on consecutive nights, February 27 – March 1. Read more... See also: A PCA church is not neutral ground  (Reformation 21) Trans Memorial in an Evangelical Chapel?  (R

By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at Abounding Grace Radio: More than 50 years ago Philip Rieff alerted us to what has been called the “therapeutic revolution.” The West did not pay attention and now our broader culture is awash in therapeutic categories and rhetoric. Anyone, on most any university campus, who dares to proclaim the existence of objective truth or reality would be immediately denounced as “hurtful,” and possibly attacked physically by masked, black-clad fascist thugs (the so-called Antifa movement). When Rieff published his seminal work, The Triumph of the Therapeutic Billy Graham, for good or ill, was the nation’s de facto pastor. Today the nation’s pastor is Oprah, who rose to famous by popularizing the therapeutic revolution. The Triumph Of The Therapeutic Consider the way people think and speak about civil government in our time. Remember that the civil government is empowered to use physical violence to enforce its laws. It is a blunt instrument fit to accomp

By Pastor Jeffrey A. Stivason - Posted at A Place for Truth : As a pastor, more often than not I sit with people who tell me that the gospel of grace is not enough. It’s not enough to restrain their anger, subdue their addiction and comfort their loneliness to name just a few of the things that the gospel is apparently impotent to cure. Some might even take umbrage with my using the word cure at the end of the last sentence. Think about it, this is in part how the church has gotten itself embroiled in the whole attempt to revoice the gospel in our present culture. Late last year, Wesley Hill wrote in First Things, after last year’s Revoice Conference, “[I] knew the character of my same-sex desire…I was skeptical of the effectiveness of any therapeutic interventions.” [1] But the article isn’t just about the failure of therapeutic treatments aimed at homosexuality. Hill also seems to implicate the means of grace as useless instruments in the wreckage of failed attempts.

By Todd Pruitt - Posted at Mortification of Spin : If you are a regular reader of this blog then you have probably read my previous piece on the Revoice conference. Revoice has been the source of great division in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the denomination in which I serve. That is because although Nate Collins, the conference organizer is a Southern Baptist, the church which hosted the conference belongs to the PCA and several of the speakers are office holders in the PCA. As I have written previously, I am thankful that those connected to Revoice have repeatedly affirmed their belief in the biblical ethic that sexual intimacy is to be shared between a man and woman in the bonds of marriage. There are no special congratulations for affirming what the Bible teaches. However, lest anyone mistakenly conclude that the speakers and organizers of Revoice advocate the normalizing of homosexual acts, I want to be clear that is not the case. Unfortunately, the position

By Dr. Carl Trueman - Posted at MOS - Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals : With moving job and house in the last two months, I was only vaguely aware of the Revoice Conference until a few weeks ago. The suddenly my phone started to light up as friends forwarded me tweets and blog posts and interviews, pro and con. Finally, at the weekend a whole pile of very disturbing soundbites landed in my inbox from various sources. I have yet to listen to the talks so cannot offer any criticism of them but I have noticed that, in all the critiques I have seen, a couple of key dots have not been connected: those between Revoice and the general culture of Big Eva. (For new readers, if any such exist, Big Eva is not a large German who works in border control for the Bundesrepublik but my term for the network of large evangelical organizations and conferences that seeks to shape the thinking and strategy of the American evangelical churches. She used to be a regular in this column but has

By Michael Gryboski - Posted at the  Christian Post: Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has expressed concern about an upcoming conference centered on LGBT Christians. Called the Revoice Conference, the multiday event is scheduled for July 26–28 at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri, with hundreds expected to attend. In an episode of "The Briefing" podcast released Friday, Mohler said his "biggest concern" about the conference is the event's apparent acceptance of the idea that sexual identity "becomes a defining issue that isn't changed by the Gospel and isn't transformed by sanctification." "I did not say that coming to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ results in any kind of immediate transformation of sexual desire," explained Mohler. Continue reading... HT: Sermon Audio

Screenshot: REVOICE.US By Colin Smothers - Posted at ANCHOR⚓D: Much controversy has swirled around the upcoming Revoice conference being held at a PCA church in St. Louis on July 26–28. Here is its stated purpose: “Supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same-sex-attracted, and other LGBT Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic, Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.” A number of writers have signaled significant disagreements with the personalities involved with the Revoice conference: Steven Wedgeworth, A Critical Review of Spiritual Friendship , Mere Orthodoxy Kevin DeYoung, Words, Labels, and ‘Sexual Minorities’ , The Gospel Coalition Tim Challies, The Controversy Behind the Revoice Conference , Challies.com Denny Burk, What about the Revoice Conference? , DennyBurk.com Richard Phillips, Can the “Welcoming Church” Speak the Truth? , Reformation21 Todd Pruitt, For the Love of Those Fighting Against Homosexuality , Mortificati