The Third Chattanooga PCA Assembly (2025): “We’re Back!”

The PCA was uncharacteristically quiet during the second half of 2024, but prior to the convening of this third Assembly in Chattanooga (previously hosted in that city in 2005, 2015), a few small culture wars re-appeared.

MNA drew the spotlight in the first month of the new year, with three public faux pas. Similar to the controversy over inviting David French to address the Assembly the previous year, this year it was MNA in the limelight at first. Shortly after President Trump’s 2025 inauguration, an employee of MNA signed a parachurch relief statement, calling for the welcome of immigrants (contrary to the new administration’s trajectory). That signatory was represented as a ‘Coordinator’ of MNA, bringing embarrassment to the Coordinator Irwyn Ince, who promptly refuted that as a position of the PCA and corrected the record. However, a few weeks later, an MNA web page was found to be giving advice to immigrants on how to avoid the civil laws. That drew a sincere and masterful apology from Ince, admitting that it gave erroneous advice and urged all citizens to obey the civil laws. (https://byfaithonline.com/statement-from-mission-to-north-america/) Wisely, the Coordinator stated that “MNA does not engage in providing legal advice, political campaigning or partisan positions. The information we post going forward will provide ecclesiastical resources in line with our Confession for guidance on the matter.”

However, on the heels of this, Coordinator Ince was a featured speaker at a segregated meeting at a PCA church in Oakland as part of Black History month. It was clear that, even with a masterclass retraction, some staffers felt freer than others to act outside of Assembly-approved positions.

In the months prior to the Assembly, various overtures were sent up, and the caucus groups held their meetings—the former National Partners holding a meeting in Florida in late February to re-emphasize the Great Commission, and the continuing Gospel Reformation Network in early May, emphasized the need for ruling elder involvement.

In late May, however, another top Coordinator became the subject of controversy. In a filmed interview, Stated Clerk Bryan Chapell revealed a list of “scandalizers” that he’d kept for some time. While his point was intended to warn against losing one’s ministerial focus by becoming a constant critic, nevertheless, the list of names was published, and the clerk apologized, also believing it necessary to resign from the clerk’s position. His resignation was accepted by the Administrative Committee on June 6, 2025, and former Moderator RE John Bice from Huntsville, Alabama, was tapped to serve as provisional clerk for an interim. This calmed the waters, but an unforced error brought the spotlight once again on acts of the top leaders of the PCA.

Over 50 overtures had been tendered to this Assembly. About 1/5^th of those were concerned with Presbytery boundaries and would be routed to MNA. Six overtures called for study committees, but studies on better use of the financial resources of the PCA committees, the rise of AI (artificial intelligence), and others would not be approved. The Overtures Committee of Commissioners convened the day before Assembly opened and elected RE Mel Duncan from Greenville, SC, to serve as chairman. To the credit of this committee, even without a clerk in the weeks leading up to the Assembly, the heavy business was processed smoothly.

Following the opening worship service, a sermon by retiring Moderator Steve Dowling on Revelation 3, urged the church to avoid lukewarmness. TE Kevin DeYoung was elected Moderator, without challenge, becoming the first GA Moderator born after the 1973 founding of the PCA. His calm, centrist demeanor would serve the Assembly well the entire week, as did interim clerk Bice. Bryan Chapell requested opportunity to apologize to the Assembly and did so after the opening service. A few routine matters were handled before the Assembly adjourned for the opening evening. The enrollment of 2,214 commissioners (still with a 2:1 TE to RE ratio, 1609-605) was one of the highest enrollments to date.

Most of the Wednesday morning session acted on recommendations from the Review of Presbytery Records (RPR) committee. Of RPR’s nearly 200 pages of detailed material, a few instances out of the voluminous records of 88 presbyteries drew debate from the floor. In one case that was a harbinger, Northwest Georgia Presbytery had allowed a candidate to transfer even though he viewed that women reading Scripture in a worship service was not an exception (cf. WLC #157 ff). The RPR recommendation, upholding the presbytery, was that such was, indeed, an exception of substance. That issue would continue to be debated within the presbyteries and throughout the church. With most of the morning spent on this detailed review, however, nearly all of the work of the RPR committee was ultimately upheld.

Progress was made in this year’s RPR report, moreover, in discouraging misuse of the section of the BCO that had been abused in recent years and was proliferating. All four such requests were curbed, having been found by the committee “not [to be] a report of an ‘important delinquency or grossly unconstitutional proceedings.’” The misuse of BCO 40-5 was clogging the courts, duplicating many complaints (contra BCO 40-3), and costing many needless man hours. Accordingly, RPR called the church’s attention to this recent tactic and urged against such in this warning: “The General Assembly remind the brethren that the appropriate course of action for dealing with alleged unconstitutional proceedings is ordinarily through appeals (BCO 42) and complaints (BCO 43), rather than invoking the standard required under BCO 40-5. (61-0-0; Handbook, p. 1260)” Furthermore, by their GA-approved actions of not condoning such questionable tactics, the committee seemed designed to disincentivize this unhelpful trend.

Various Program Committees presented their work in person or by video, often with diminished attendance. The MNA committee reported an increase in churches, which is compared to the previous year’s report and narrative (see above pp. 408-410). MNA was seeking to meet its goals of increasing the number of PCA churches to 3,000 by 2033.^[1] That ambitious target seemed farther and farther away, though, by the year. Still, MNA was committed to its pledge to “facilitate the multiplication of PCA churches in the US and Canada from 1,932 [includes 1627 churches + 305 missions at end of 2022] to 3,000 congregations by 2033” (2024 Commissioners Handbook, p. 601; reiterated this year on p. 702 of Handbook). That calls for a successive net increase of 107 churches per year. The expansion goals, as reported for the end of 2024, according to the Commissioners Handbook (pp. 322-323) may be tracked as below:

20 Churches were added (with 13 appearing to be new church plants)

16 Churches were lost

+4 Churches for a net gain

Notwithstanding, the 5-year chart (p. 331) showed an increase of +22 churches (not including missions), from 16451677. We use the higher numbers for the chart below.

MNA Expansion Goals (June 2025)

Year

2022 2023 (+/-) 2024 (+/-) 2025 (+/-) 2026 (+/-)2027

Churches and Missions

1932 1929 (-3) 1967

Needed/year to meet Goal

+107 +3 +214 +3 +321 +3 +428 +3

Although the PCA had a gain of anywhere from 3 to 22^[2] churches, church planters were placed in double digits. Compared to the OPC and ARP, the PCA did well, although the EPC and URCNA were growing at higher percentages. From this chart, the PCA should have had, according to its goals, 2,039 churches by the end of 2024 and 2,146 churches by the end of 2025, compared to its actual (high estimate) number of 1,967 churches. Perhaps the speed of church planting would accelerate exponentially from these beginning seeds—for which all would give praise—but in the opening years of this experiment, the MNA program was now 179 churches behind of its own target with an additional 107 net churches (totaling the need for +286 new or net churches) required in the coming year. TE Ince was recommended for re-election by a 29-26-2 vote from the AC Committee of Commissioners, and he was approved by the Assembly’s vote.

The prior attempts at such ambitious growth (see above on the 2024 Assembly) at some point, along with unmet goals, either necessitated a silent admission of failure or adoption of yet another theoretical plan. Whether it was the 13% growth target of 1984, or the goal to double the number of PCA churches between 1982 and 1992, or whether it was the unmet goals or Vision 2000 (see above in this volume), or whether it was the current campaign, year-by-year tracking demanded some adjustment to historic increases lest embarrassment be multiplied.

If not having 3,000 churches by 2033, the PCA was surely on pace to reach the Vision 2000 goal of 2,000 churches at the current pace. Notwithstanding the visionary programmatic shortfall, the successes of faithful churches would last for generations.

Other Permanent Committees brought few actionable items to the Assembly. Bringing virtually no substance to the Assembly for approval, as had become fairly typical, were CDM, MTW, RUF, CC, CTS, and the AC.

The budgets of each committee or unit grew by healthy percentages. The following committees recommended the amounts (Handbook, p. 417), which were approved by the Assembly:

The Admin. Committee $3,731,961

The CDM Committee $2,829,650

Covenant College. $37,195,771

Covenant Seminary $10,933,109

Geneva Benefits $6,723,781

MNA $32,345,343

MTW $78,710,705

PCAF $2,710,893

RUF $64,331,663

Ridgehaven $4,700,000

SJC $247,292

$244, 460,168

For these various units, $48M was raised for two educational institutions, and the lion’s share of revenues (ca. $176M) went to the productive committees of MTW, RUF, and MNA. The PCA was certainly blessed with many assets and resources.

The SJC continued to receive more and more cases, with at least 45 cases filed in the intervening year, leading to nearly $250,000 in expenses (Handbook, p. 420). Many of the cases, admittedly, dealt with polity minutiae, and several parties filed multiple cases. The SJC also reversed lower courts a bit more instead of remanding cases to lower courts as was an option.

Nominations indicated a regained strength of the progressive caucus. With a larger than normal set of competing floor nominations, several seats were contested. Of the 30 typical, contested (and counted votes) seats, the Nominating committee nominees—largely supported by the leading spokesmen for the progressive caucus—prevailed in 22 of those 30 votes by an aggregate 73.36% to 26.34% ratio.^[3]

As typical, many of the Overtures were not recommended for approval to the Assembly. An omnibus motion approved most of the overtures that had been supported by large margins. Among those that were answered in the negative (in one form or another), the more important were:

· calls to have a coordinated review of all PCA agencies and expenses;

· a proposal to add advisors for cases of process against a TE;

· an attempt to set an age limit for voting at congregational meetings (defeated 71-29% in committee);

· to refer back to the presbytery (and thus not approve this year) the overture that would use a formula to phase out Assistant pastors.

Among those with significant change recommended positively for approval and forwarded to the presbyteries for concurrence were:

· to require a recording of each judicial trial;

· to require a vote of the entire court (not merely a commission) to suspend an officer;

· to allow a RE to moderate a judicial case if elected by his Session;

· to clarify how the GA may hear a minority report from the SJC;

· to record exceptions to the standards by Ruling elders and deacons as already provided for ministers.

Other overtures referred to and recommended by other committees included:

· AC referred to the permanent AC committee to review the editorial policies and standards for the denominational magazine;

· OC recommended that the clerk not gather racial demographic data as part of his job—however, this failed narrowly to garner the 2/3 needed (supported by 62%) to amend the RAO;

· Two study committees were recommended to the Assembly by the OC: (1) one to revise the Directory for Worship, most of which had been left in an unconstitutional limbo for 50 years; an (2) the other to study Christian Nationalism. The proposal to erect the first study committee to revise the Directory drew substantial discussion and was approved by a 1039-582 vote, or approximately a 2-1 ratio. The second study committee was also approved quickly by a strong majority of nearly 3-1. The Moderator would later appoint personnel for the two study committees.

On Thursday afternoon, two minority reports were presented; the first of those, Overture #9 to return the AC membership to its earlier status to prohibit permanent committees from having voting membership, was defeated. After full discussion and a minority presentation, that Minority Report was defeated and the OC motion became the main motion by a 2-1 ratio; and, thus the idea to alter the AC makeup would not change.

The second minority report sought to limit the distribution of communion elements to officers alone. The OC recommended by a 2-1 majority to so restrict. After another full period of consideration, the Minority Report (which asserted that instead of officers alone serving the sacrament there were other equally valid ways to distribute the sacrament) was approved as a substitute by a vote of 1020-963. The final vote to answer in the negative prevailed by a slightly larger margin, thus Overture 12 failed to explicitly restrict the serving of elements to officers alone.

As the GA adjourned, similar to other denominations, the power struggle between high-level leaders and many other presbyters would continue. Both of those stake-holders felt significant ownership, and the clashes were not always pretty, much less resolved well. However, some leadership changes were in the offing, and various caucus groups were renewed in their desire to steer the church. For example, with dueling pro-and-con letters about the Stated Clerk’s resignation prior to the Assembly, it was hard to overlook that support of a leader was often more tied to keeping or preventing certain people from office (same for nominations) than it was to a strict impartiality. The struggle for operational control would likely continue, unless some agreement occurred to accommodate the various factions.

By the end of this third Chattanooga Assembly, many of the PCA founding cultural interests and efforts to avoid centralization were distant memories. With strong efforts, the conservatives who sought to bring the high-level officers more in line with certain notions had some success. Moreover, the progressive wing seemed more determined and efficient than ever to control the seats at the table. The next decade’s actions, leaders, and strategies would be decisive for the matters on which this Assembly was clearly divided.

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^[1] With 1929 churches on record at the end of 2023, that would mean that a net 107 churches per year on average must be added to succeed. The first year was slightly behind schedule (despite the noble aspirations); each year the required average would have to increase, lest the PCA bureaucracy eventually retire this difficult to attain goal.

^[2] Handbook (701) had MNA claiming that 40 new churches were planted in 2024. That should, of course, be conveyed to the Stated Clerk’s office (cf. pp 331, 322).

^[3] Of the average of 1,790 votes cast (ca 81% of the peak registration), the GA Nominating committee nominees won by 53.4% to 46.6% in the 30 contested races. The raw vote average in these 30 elections was 956-834.