Category: ecclesiology

Lessons Learned for Clergy from the Massie Defeat

The Massie defeat in the Republican Primary in Kentucky’s 4th congressional district reminds me that it seems one has to make a choice between being right and principled as opposed to swallowing hard having to be wrong so one can retain “leadership” position.

Massie was as principled as they come. I did not like his Libertarianism but there is no doubt the man stuck to his principles. That resolve contributed to his defeat at the hands of a Trump lackey.

This same principle applies in the church. Clergy can be principled standing on truth, resulting in getting tossed by either their congregation or their denomination or they can be compromisers in order to retain their position with the hopes of being able to steer the congregation in the future into a better place with the added benefit of keeping their jobs.

It is fairly obvious that most politicians and clergy are not like Thomas Massie who decided his principles were more important than continuing to give into a President who has repeatedly broken his word to the American public so that Massie could retain his seat. As a result, Massie was defeated by those who wanted to control him but couldn’t. Now his ability, at least for the short term, to have any input into the National conversation is gone, though his principles remain.

Joe Kent, who is now largely forgotten, made the same kind of decision as Massie. He gave up any influence he might have continued to wield in order to stand on his principles.

The conundrum here is found in the fact that if Massie were to have been willing to bend on his principles in order to retain influence, can it really be said that Massie owned those principles he abandoned in order to stay in power?

The lion’s share of clergy are not principled people like Thomas Massie and Joe Kent. They will not stand for the truth come hell or high water. Instead, desiring to keep their position, they will compromise. Some compromise could be understood but the kind of compromise that the putative white hat clergy are involved in right now is sinking the church and sinking the broader culture.

Having said this, I appreciate that clergy are in a tight spot. They have mouths to feed and a future to think of. Taking a strong stand on issues, like Machen did long ago, is a real launching out on faith in God’s ability to provide.

There are clergy, Elders, Deacons, and laity out there who have made a stand and are paying the price for making that stand. Greg Williams, Michael Hunter, Andrew Duggan, Phil Lovelady, Ryan Louis Underwood, the Holden Brothers, Sam Ketchum, etc. I receive phone calls from all across the country inquiring “what should I do.” I don’t have a ready or easy answer. I can only tell folks who phone me, “if you decide to stand on your principles be willing to count the cost and pay the price because your enemies are vicious Marxist dogs who will delight in ripping you apart.” Naturally, I want those who contact me to take a stand because until more come out of the shadows and raise their Ebenezer the promise of Reformation will continue to wane but I understand the incredible pressure that will descend if people determine to fight like Machen did long ago or like Massie and Joe Kent did recently.

I’d like to tell folks, “if you would just plant your flag and make a stand, all will be well.” I can’t and so don’t tell them that. In this life it doesn’t always end with, “and they lived happily ever after.” It may be the case that they have to pay a steep price if they make a stand on their principles. Machen was driven from his denomination in shame. Massie lost an election. Many other have lost a great deal more.

I do admire people for even wrestling with the tension despite how they eventually choose. I imagine Joe Kent spent many sleepless nights before deciding to resign. Most clergy don’t wrestle at all. They lick their fingers and stick them in the air to see which way the wind is blowing and tack in that direction. Those clergy that are even more inept than the finger lickers don’t even understand the issue. They are just floating downstream with the current, collecting their checks week in and week out.

It is not an easy path for someone who is continuing to grow in epistemological self consciousness. Such growth promises peril, and resistance.

Being postmillennial in my eschatology, I do believe the truth will win out. I do believe that there are deep and wide Reformations ahead of us. However, that path to Reformation is going to be blazed by those who were willing to hoist the black flag and wage war against the spirit of the age according to the principle of “no quarter asked for and no quarter given.” Goodness knows, the clergy enemy is waging that kind of war against the saints.

PCA Founder John Edwards Richards on Christian Unity

“Christians should be one as God is; God is a Spirit, therefore this is a spiritual oneness for which our Savior prayed. God is a spirit, not a body of different parts, and our unity in Him is a spiritual relationship. It has NOT to do with physical proximity, nor matter, nor color, nor earthly properties. It has to do with the soul of man which God breathed into him, not the body which was made from the dust of the ground.”

John Edwards Richards (1911-1989)
One of the Founders of the PCA
Sermon on Christian Unity

Note Dr. Edwards clearly outlines that the unity of Christians that is expected among Christians is spiritual and not about color. Japanese Christians and Nigerian Christians can have this unity without marrying each other or adopting each other’s children. To transfer and insist on the Christian doctrine of unity into nonspiritual realms, as the NAPARC churches are now doing is to confuse the categories of creation and redemption and is to embrace the vision of unity articulated by Marxist philosophers since the rise of Marx.

There is more of Marx than there is of Christ in the latest ARP effort to rail against the Christianity once and forever delivered unto the saints. I pray that God will open their eyes before they are visited with pestilence for their disobedience.

Rev. Uri Brito Tries to Resurrect Bonhoffer … McAtee Keeps Shoveling the Dirt

Below is one example of what I mean when I talk about how stupid modern “conservative clergy” are. This is from CRE’s Rev. Uri Brito on Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

“But in his own setting, Bonhoeffer was not a theological liberal by the standards of the German academy or the state church. Quite the opposite. He was remarkably conservative relative to the dominant trajectory of German Protestantism in the 1920s and 30s.”

Bret responds,

Bonhoeffer was only “remarkably conservative” when compared to how ultra remarkably liberal the left was during this time. Calling Bonhoeffer “remarkably conservative” then is like saying that Doug Wilson is remarkably conservative today.

What Brito apparently doesn’t realize is that Bonhoeffer was a particular shade of Barthian. The Barthians did not believe in the historicity of redemptive history, instead opting to create a new category of history called “Geschichte.” Brito does not seem to know this. Big surprise. Geschichte (as opposed to Historie) was like the fairy dust that falls off and so emanates from the Historie. It is this Geschichte fairy dust that makes the Historie to be “true” even though it is not true. The Historie can point to the Geschichte the way that a sign on the road can point to a Gas Station (that isn’t really there). However, for Barthians like Bonhoeffer, the Geschichte is enough to convert because when the Geschichte is encountered in a personal event moment then the Gas Station becomes true for the person having the Geschichte encounter event even though the gas station is not objectively real. This is what Barth means by the Geshcichte being a pointer. The event that didn’t happen can serve as a pointer to the impact of the event as if it did happen and someone having that Geschichte encounter moment can now be considered a Christian.

There is no way that any Barthian can be considered “conservative” in the sense of belonging to the tradition of those who believe that redemptive history is true history. In that sense Bonhoeffer was a raging leftist though a leftist quite different than those belonging to Schleiermacher’s ilk.
Brito is either ignorant or stupid.

Rejoicing Over the Fall of Sam Allberry

“Statement from The Gospel Coalition’s Board of Directors

TGC was informed yesterday by Sam Allberry about “an inappropriate relationship with another man a few years ago” and that an announcement would be made today at Immanuel Church regarding his resignation as a pastor.”

Allberry, once an Anglican priest, had wormed his way to Reformed denominations being championed by other sodomite-adjacent clergy, advocating a position styled as “celibate but gay.” The whole side-b sodomy argument denied that the fact that men admitting that they were sexually attracted to other men was sin. The position that Allberry championed was that as long as a man remained celibate, he could continue in the ministry while having this un-natural lust.

That whole thing was warped from the beginning. What made it doubly warped is that so many of the Reformed clergy supported this kind of thinking as seen in the Greg Johnson case in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). In the PCA Rev. Greg Johnson took much the same position as Sam Allberry and there was found little will in the PCA to take disciplinary action against Johnson. Johnson finally left the PCA on his own accord taking the congregation he Pastored with him.

All that aside I want to briefly speak to much of the hand wringing that has gone on with the fall of Sam Allberry. In many quarters people are being tongue lashed by the same clergy who simped in support of Allberry and Greg Johson (and others like them) that we should not rejoice in the fall of Allberry. Sarcastic comments like, “Who could have ever seen this coming,” or, “I miss the good old days when clergy were drummed out of their congregations for liking women not their wives” were seen as being in “poor taste,” and “demonstrating a lack of maturity.” We are now being told that we should not rejoiced in the fall of Sam Allberry.

I dissent.

If you can’t rejoice over the fall of Sam Alberry your sentimental pietism is eating up your ability to think straight. The man was leading countless numbers of people into sin. He was mainstreaming sodomy in the “Conservative” “Reformed” denominations. The fact that the nonsense of someone advocating for a “celibate gay” position has been exposed ought to be reason to pop the cork on the finest champagne. It is a good thing that Sam Allbery has fallen if only to keep others from embracing the lunatic position of “gay but celibate.”

Understand the irony that is currently occurring in the PCA churches. This denomination can’t run out on a rail fast enough anyone who embraces the historic position of the church on race-realism while at the same time they couldn’t find the ecclesiastical will to even bring up charges against a man (Rev. Greg Johnson) who had spoken glowingly on the need to accept sodomites in the Church as long as they remained celibate.

It is one thing to admit one’s besetting sin. It is quite another to expect the Church to no longer call besetting sins, “besetting sins.” Men like Allberry and Johnson and their advocacy was proof positive that the Church no longer viewed sodomy or the desire for sodomy to be particularly heinous. The fact that all of this side-b sodomy was a mainstreaming of sodomy is seen in the fact that no one (yet) would use the same logic for side-b bestiality. No one would accept in the Church people who admitted into the mic that they had a physical attraction to farm animals, but it was all ok because they were celibate. Side-b sodomy is just as repulsive as side-b bestiality and yet clergy in the PCA refused to discipline it.

Of course, we pray that Allberry’s repentance after being caught is genuine. Of course we desire his genuine restoration. Despite those realities though we also rejoice that his hypocrisy has been exposed since it means that others won’t fall into the lifestyle he had been advocating.

Yes… I’m happy that Sam Alberry fell.

And so should all Christians.

I am also taking heed of myself lest I fall into some sin.

Clergy & Sabbaticals

There is a good deal of buzz going around on the subject of Pastors expecting and being given sabbaticals.

I think I notice a class division on this subject. Generally speaking, those who are blue collar middle class are rather adamant in their opposition to Pastor’s getting sabbaticals. They seem to think, “Hey, I work just as hard as those pansies do. Why should they get a sabbatical when I work my tail off?” Meanwhile white-collar upper class seem to have less problem with the idea.

I think it might help if the blue-collar chaps realized that the purpose of a sabbatical is not “take a long vacation.” The purpose of a sabbatical is to do in depth research and study to better equip oneself to feed and bless the flock.

Since I’m a Pastor I thought I would weigh in even more.

1.) In 31 years of being in the ministry I’ve never had a sabbatical.

2.) My Father-in-law was in the ministry 40 years and never had a sabbatical.

3.) I seriously doubt the Apostles had sabbaticals.

4.) I don’t begrudge worthy clergy of having sabbaticals since the purpose of sabbaticals is for more learning/research and/or writing a book. The more research is profitable for any congregation the clergy is or will be serving. People may not like to hear this, but it is hard work for a minister to keep on knowing everything he needs to know in order to bless His flock in preaching and teaching.

5.) However, having said #4 my experience has been that the overwhelming majority of clergy don’t do any study/reading/learning of any significance. Frankly, most clergy are dumb people.

6.) I do agree that part of the problem with modern clergy is that they have never worked a non-clergy job. Such clergy thus have little ability, to sympathize with the rigors required of all men in their particular callings. I do understand other working men saying, “What is so special about the clergy that they should get sabbaticals?”

7.) However, it would be to the health of the Church to give a good man who would use the time wisely, periodic sabbaticals.

8.) I see a good deal of penis envy coming from guys not in the ministry complaining about ministers getting sabbaticals. There is a good deal to complain about ministers, but a good minister is doing every bit of work that the non-minister is doing and should not be grumbled over if he gets a sabbatical.

9.) I saw someone throw up the average pay scale for average clergy positions. I can assure you that multitudes of pastors don’t make that kind of money. Not even close.

10.) I would applaud a good minister getting sabbaticals. I would sneer at most ministers getting sabbaticals because most ministers are lousy and dumb and even if they did research and study during a sabbatical the odds are overwhelming that they would be researching and studying what they are researching and studying through the grid of a non-Christian world and life view.