Thinking out loud about a new Canadian PCA
I just got back from another PCA General Assembly that was once again held south of the Mason Dixon line and east of the Mississippi. There is some charm to these small[er] southern cities — great food, lots of bricks, plenty of history, TopGolf.
But the Assembly and the city feels profoundly disconnected from my day to day life as a reformed pastor in Ottawa. There were more presbyters at GA than all the attendance of PCA churches in Ontario. The Korean choir on Thursday night worship (which was awesome) was larger than my church and our daughter church combined. The scale, the size, the sheer weight of American reformed evangelicalism feels a bit overwhelming even if also strangely encouraging.
I left Richmond wondering about my place in the PCA and more broadly, about Canada’s place. Our BCO recommends the establishment of national reformed and presbyterian churches whenever possible (BCO 15–6). I had the chance to ask our current stated clerk Bryan Chappell why this hasn’t happened in Canada and he told me he didn’t know.
But in recent months, both the RPCNA and the ARP voted to let their Canadian churches leave to form a separate denomination. I didn’t follow the arguments or reasons too closely, but that news combined with my Canadian dislocation at PCA General Assembly makes me want to give it more thought.
I’ve made a pro and con list, reasons to stay, reasons to leave that I am going to unpack over the next few weeks on this here site. Honestly, I don’t know what we should do. There are very good reasons to stay united with our American brothers and sisters but I also see a number of reasons why we might be better on our own.
Obviously I don’t get to make the decision, there are no bishops in Presbyterian land, but by thinking out loud with anyone who wants to join in, I hope we can have a helpful conversation. As any preacher knows, the very act of writing your thoughts down makes your thinking sharper and more refined.
As a good presbyterian and devotee of Robert’s Rules, I’ll alternate reasons for and against until I run out of one side or the other.
