Truro Church an Object Lesson on the Importance of Church Governance

I rarely recommend any article from the Washington Post, and I am not privy to goings on at Truro Church, but there is an interesting and apparently fair article on the resignation of Tory Baucum from Truro Church and how that church is dealing with the aftermath.

The article goes into some different viewpoints behind the causes of the resignation, and I am in no position to get into that.  But it does seem clear that Baucum was tyrannical in dealing with some or most of his staff.  The Vestry was alerted.  It, through the Senior Warden, confronted Baucum.  And, whether or not the confrontation precipitated it, Baucum resigned.

Now one could argue that Baucum should have been dealt with sooner.  No form of church governance that relies on imperfect people will be perfect.  But Baucum eventually was dealt with, and Truro Church is to be commended for that.

Not all churches can say the same.  Among the reasons are that many churches lack a local church governing body with enough independence to say no to a pastor.  Other churches lack an authority above and outside the local church to say no. Many churches lack both. Therefore many churches are ruled by the pastor, which relies too much on one man and invites abuse of power. Now there are godly men that lead their churches well with that much power in their hands.  But trusting one man too much to lead a church can and does result in shipwreck for individual Christians and for local churches.  The same could be said about putting too much power into the hands of a paid staff as I’ve seen for myself.

One of the strengths of Anglicanism in an American context is local churches have both governmental checks to keep a parish and its leader in line.  At the local level, there is the Vestry.  Above the local level, there is the Bishop.  And both have the power to say no to an errant Rector.

I know what some are thinking: “That form of governance did not save The Episcopal Church.”  And that is correct.  No form of church governance can save a church if the leaven of apostasy is not confronted and cleaned out early enough.  Good church governance structures are tools, not cure-alls.

Nonetheless, the recent events at Truro Church demonstrate Anglican church governance working well. And that includes Baucum’s erstwhile “school of peace and reconciliation.”  In that case, authority above the local parish in the form of orthodox bishops stepped in and put that down.

Now I am not saying, “Look at us Anglicans.  We govern ourselves so much better than thou” . . . although I am tempted so to do.  What I am saying is that it is important to have bodies of authority able and willing to correct and if necessary dismiss errant pastors and staff.  And those bodies must be both at the local church level and above the local church.  The recent years at Truro Church have demonstrated that well.

Noll on Moral Equivalence and False Teaching in the Church of England

Stephen Noll has written a good and succinct piece on how Biblical and anti-Biblical views of sexual morality and marriage are treated as morally equivalent under the guise of “good disagreement” in the Church of England.

“Good disagreement” along with “mutual flourishing” of course means LibChurchers can teach and practice whatever apostasies they please while traditional orthodox have to put up with it and get little in return, especially little when it comes to bishoprics and deaneries.

The Archbishop of York along with the Archbishop of Canterbury is endorsing this sham.

But, as Noll points out, there are matters in which truly good disagreement means the likes of, say, Martyn Percy are called out as St. Jude did, utterly rejecting the notion that false teaching is morally equivalent, and then (although Noll does not spell this out) exercising church discipline against the false teachers.

Yes, the Church of England is too far gone for any hope of church discipline against apostate clerics.  It serves as a negative example illustrating that false teachers must not be treated as morally equivalent – which Noll considers “moral equivocation” – but must be confronted, suspended, and, when necessary, defrocked with all diligence.  Otherwise false teaching will spread like gangrene eventually maiming or killing a church if said church discipline is too long delayed and too infrequently applied.

As I’ve oft said, a church that does not care enough about truth to discipline does not care enough about truth. Treating false teaching as “good disagreement” is deadly disagreement against God’s word.

Southern Baptists Show Us How to . . . Excommunicate?

Actually, the Southern Baptists probably wouldn’t call it excommunication.  “Disfellowshipping” might be the word they would use.  But it’s about the same thing, and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) just disfellowshiped and expelled the District of Columbia Baptist Convention (DCBC).  (If only the U. S. A. could expel the District of Columbia and suburbs, but I digress.)

DCBC tolerates in its midst a particularly vile congregation, Calvary Baptist Church.  Yes, it is hard to imagine a “Calvary Baptist Church” going whole hog apostate, but it happened.  The SBC had had enough and gave DCBC 90 days to expel Calvary Baptist.  They did not, so DCBC in turn got expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention.

And for that, the SBC is to be commended.  The sad history of mainline Protestantism and of much of Anglicanism is that jurisdictions that fail to exercise church discipline against apostate leaders and congregations eventually become more and more apostate themselves.  Scripture does not warn about how leaven spreads for nothing.  Church discipline, including expulsion, is a sad necessity.

It is easy to forget that the Southern Baptists once were going down the road to apostasy themselves.  Back during my long church search in the late 80’s, I ruled out the Southern Baptists in part because they did not have adequate will power to expel apostates.  Pullen Memorial Baptist Church of Raleigh really stuck in my craw at the time.  And, yes, ruling out Baptists when moving to Texas rules out a lot of options!

Since then, they have become more willing and able to exercise tough love even to the point of expelling congregations and conventions.  Those who reformed the SBC in the last decades of the 20^th Century are reviled in “moderate” Baptist circles.  But they are to be thanked for saving the Southern Baptists from becoming another failed mainline Protestant denomination.

I wonder if my Anglican Church in North America has that much backbone.  For the time will come – it always does in this modern fallen world – when it will be necessary to cut off cancers of apostasy.  Will we have the will power so to exercise church discipline?  Or will we use our federal structure as an excuse to tolerate apostasy in our midst – even after seeing the consequences such tolerance had for The Episcopal Church?

Jeremy Pemberton is Disciplined

In April, I said that Church of England Canon Jeremy Pemberton must be disciplined for entering a gay “marriage.”  I will not repeat my reasons for being so adamant; I laid them out then.

I do want to give the Church of England and Bishop Richard Inwood credit for having the backbone to indeed discipline Pemberton:

The first clergyman to enter into a gay marriage in defiance of the Church of England has been ‘sacked’ by his bishop.

Sources said Canon Jeremy Pemberton, who married Laurence Cunnington in April, is to have his rights to operate as a priest revoked.

He will no longer be able to conduct services in the diocese, though he remains employed by the NHS as a hospital chaplain.

The decision by the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham Richard Inwood to remove the Canon’s ‘Permission to Officiate’ will also make it very difficult for him to function as a priest anywhere else in the Church of England.

Church of England bishops are thought to lack backbones, but it turned out not to be so in this case. 

Yes, I am mildly surprised.

Jeremy Pemberton Must Be Disciplined

The Telegraph headline is not overwrought.  The Church of England is now indeed facing a crisis as a CofE priest, the Rev. Canon Jeremy Pemberton has legally married his male partner.  The crisis is that the Church of England is now forced to decide whether a priest entering a gay “marriage” will be disciplined or not, with difficult consequences no matter what the church decides.

As I’ve said a year ago, a church that does not care enough about truth to discipline does not care enough about truth, period.  And, although the American church setting differs from the English, we have seen time and again in this country what happens to churches when they refuse to defend truth with church discipline.  Apostasy, once openly tolerated, gains more and more power and drags churches down into the pit.  Look at how my former denomination, the mainline Presbyterian Church, and The Episcopal Church have imploded in recent decades.  The implosions began when open moral and/or doctrinal apostasy (which are often the same) was not disciplined.

Perhaps readers think I am making too much ado about the issue of marriage.  But marriage is certainly important enough to the Lord to be a prominent part of the Creation account and to be made an icon in scripture of the relationship between Christ and his church.  Literally perverting that icon is apostasy indeed.

Not to mention that gay marriage is a key presenting issue between the orthodox and libchurchers in England and worldwide.  The Church of England may continue to try to please both sides, but Pemberton’s act hastens the day when the CofE must choose.  And at least one side will be very unhappy no matter what the Church chooses.  I assert there is a right choice; but there is no easy choice in this matter.

If the Church of England does not wish to follow the well trodden and broad path of apostate and increasingly irrelevant denominations, it must discipline the apostasy of Jeremy Pemberton.

Bishop Wabukala on Yet More “Conversation”

This may come as a shock but there are Anglican bishops out there who, instead of producing ecclesiastical fog, cut right through the same.  The Primate of Kenya, Eliud Wabukala is such a bishop.

He graciously but very clearly puts the Pilling Report’s call for yet more conversation on homosexuality in its place:

There is urgency about the gospel and it must be proclaimed in word and deed, in season and out of season and it is the same gospel, whether in strife torn nations such as South Sudan or in the affluent but morally disorientated nations of the developed world. 

We cannot therefore allow our time and energy to be sapped by debating that which God has already clearly revealed in the Scriptures. Earlier this week, the English College of Bishops met to reflect upon the ‘Pilling Report’, commissioned to reflect on how the Church of England should respond to the question of same sex relationships. Its key recommendations were that informal blessings of such unions should be allowed in parish churches and that a two year process of ‘facilitated conversation’ should be set up to address strongly held differences within the Church on this issue.

While we should be thankful that the College of Bishops did not adopt the idea of services for blessing that which God calls sin, it did unanimously approve the conversation process and this is deeply troubling.  There has been intensive debate within the Anglican Communion on the subject of homosexuality since at least the 1998 Lambeth Conference and it is difficult to believe that the bishop’s indecision at this stage is due to lack of information or biblical reflection. The underlying problem is whether or not there is a willingness to accept the bible for what it really is, the Word of God. 

Absolutely right.  With few exceptions, calls for the church to have yet more conversation about homosexuality and “homophobia” come from those who either do not hold to the authority of scripture or who are timid about doing so in the face of a decadent and hostile society.  The Lord Himself could tell these people that homosexual conduct is wrong and the church is not to condone it – and he has – and they would not submit or would dither and delay about doing so.

The church has far better things to do than be hectored about the sin of “homophobia” from those who wallow in the sin of rejecting the authority of scripture while pretending to be Christians*.  Such churchly apostates should not be continually listened to; they should be rebuked.  And if they stiffen their necks and refuse to repent, they should be rejected.

You want some “conversation”?  Let’s have some conversation about church discipline and the cowardice and/or apostasy of bishops in exercising it.

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* IMPORTANT NOTE: Please note that I am talking about those who claim to be Christians, especially leaders in the organized church.  The church should virtually always be in conversation (without compromising or watering down the Faith) with honest non-Christians as Bishop Wabukala himself wrote.  My problem here is not with them at all.

A Lesson of St. Matthias Day and of Lent: No Phonies!

Today is both St. Matthias Day and Shrove Tuesday, the eve of Lent.

During private Morning Prayer, even I could not miss a big message of St. Matthias Day – No Phonies!

The first lesson (REC BCP) was 1 Samuel 2:27-35, in which the Lord condemns corrupt priests, namely the sons of Eli. The second lesson was Matthew 7:15-27 in which Jesus warns against false prophets and false professions of faith.

Then the Collect:
O ALMIGHTY God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles; Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is indeed hard to miss this message of St. Matthias Day – No Phonies!

It so happens that is a message of Lent as well. I’ve been discussing evangelism with my youth Sunday School class. And in reviewing some of the history of the origins of Lent, I noted a stark contrast with the easy conversion policies of most churches today.

As many of my erudite readers know, Lent came out of the early church’s preparation of candidates for baptism. By the Third and Fourth Centuries, it is clear that the church took pains to ensure that adults to be baptized were the real deal. Practices varied at different places and different times. But catechumenates lasted as long as three years! In Jerusalem, Egeria reported that one had to be closely examined by the bishop simply to become a candidate for baptism at the beginning of Lent. Those who didn’t measure up were “told to go away” and get their act together before coming to the font.

Those accepted as candidates were then expected to attend frequent, even daily and lengthy, instruction during Lent and to fast. In at least some places, the fast included abstaining from the pleasure of the marriage bed and of bathing! And there were further frequent examinations as well.

I went through such history with my class to bring home the following -- in evangelism, we are not to manipulate people or to make conversion easy in order to add to our soul-winning tally list or membership rolls. And, yes, that goes against the grain of many modern church practices. The ancient church made more than a little effort to avoid phony conversions -- for the spiritual health of both the church and candidates.

One of my younger students, without prompting (I swear!), noted that such efforts to be sure converts are the real deal help avoid false priests and bishops.

Bright kid! It’s sad modern churches have not been that wise. Doing little to nothing to weed out phonies in initiation and in ordination has resulted in such absurdities as a Buddhist bishop and clergy not only lacking in faith but hostile to it.

One need only glance at modern church history to see it is not for nothing that the lessons of St. Matthias Day and of Lent include “No Phonies!”

Real Excommunications!

Excommunications are back!

Yes, there is such a thing as church discipline.

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the faith has pronounced excommunications against those attempting to ordain womynpriests.

(And again, my issue is more with trashing church order for liberal pet causes than with women’s ordination, although I look askance at that as well.)

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Hat tip to The Good Professor