In 1998, I was elected to the office of Elder at Cascade Presbyterian Church in Eugene, Oregon. In 2000, I was asked to resign from office, which I did with protest. I have not discussed these events for several years now. I intend to clear the air about what happened. I do not intend to write about my resignation again, at least not on this blog. I think the story will be of interest to most of my readers. When I was elected to the Session (body of Elders), my pastor Jack Davidson told me if I ever wanted to discuss the issue of his daughter Elizabeth, he would be available and willing to talk at anytime. Elizabeth had been sent to a Christian boarding school in St. Louis, Missouri when she was 14. She became pregnant by one of the boys at the school at 15. She returned to Eugene, had the baby and gave it up for adoption. Elizabeth stood before the congregation and expressed her repentance. She was received back (though there does not seem to be a record of any formal discipline) as a communicant wholeheartedly by Cascade. These events took place before my family and I ever moved to Oregon in 1997. I appreciated Jack's candor about such a problem that came from his own family. Such an issue can be a source of grief to anyone, especially a Pastor. Elizabeth had been counseled and corrected by the Session, and unreservedly welcomed as a sister in the Lord by the church, and...she had done the right thing about the pregnancy to have the baby. Elizabeth had repented. I reasoned to myself that the issue of Jack's daughter was resolved. I did not have anything to say about it, except praise the Lord. The reality, however, was that Elizabeth had become pregnant again at 18. This was after we moved to Eugene. I knew about the second pregnancy. It ended in a miscarriage. I chose to put the event in the back of my mind. But there was some question about the sincerity of Elizabeth's repentance now in light of this. There was also a number of reports about Elizabeth's behavior. My sons, Aaron and Gabe were veritable social creatures and were always organizing social gatherings of the college-aged kids to get together for a dinner, movie, or coffee. I heard comments from Aaron and Gabe about the shockingly profane conversations Elizabeth would attempt to engage with the group. She purposefully made inappropriate sexual comments to the dismay of everyone. My sons described Elizabeth's behavior as disgusting. When I asked them about her spiritual condition, they believed her behavior to be so severe as to indicate she was not a true believer in Christ. They said she had mocked Christ and God and Christians with regularity. I went about doing the business of an Elder, doing the work of the Church. I resolved to lead and nurture. I did not want to rock the boat, especially as a newbie. The Session met once a month to provide for the spiritual needs of the Church. In these meetings, I began to get acquainted with Jack's ministry in more depth. Jack is a very likable man, a gifted public speaker, and taught from the Scriptures. As the Pastor, Jack was the Moderator of the Session. The Pastor is one of the Elders and has a vote. He sets the agenda for the meetings. He makes requests and recommendations. There were six elders. They were Mike Langley, Marlon Fletchall, Kevin Gowen, Scott Snider, Jack Davidson and myself. Jack struggled with leading the church, however. For an example of one of many, Jack passed out a program for church growth called Vision 2000. There were some general aspects that were innocuous, but there are some aspects that were problematic. It is really a program for church management based upon a Wall Street model with some Madison Avenue mixed in. The Session resisted this program. Jack would make requests of the Session and then swing back and forth about his own recommendations. It became clear that there was an instability to his leadership. He didn't seem to be governed by principle as much and he was floundering as a result. He quibbled about insurance coverage, even after the Session voted to raise Jack's salary by a whopping 50 percent (per Scott Snider's recommendation). He would give directives and then completely reverse himself after their implementation. This instability got progressively worse. The Session meetings became a series of barnyard horse-breaking episodes. Jack as the wild bronc would be kicking the stalls, bucking and snorting, and the elders would be trying to reign him in. In the midst of all this, Scott, Jack and I would meet at lunch time once a week to plan and prepare the worship services. Scott and I learned a lot from Jack about worship. It was also a time of prayer and fellowship. At this time, I received an inquiry from someone in the church concerning Jack's qualifications as an Elder/Pastor in light of Titus 1:6 and 1 Timothy 3:4&5. (Titus 1:5-6) "I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you: {6} someone who is blameless, married only once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not rebellious." (1 Timothy 3:4-5) "He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way-- {5} for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's church?" I discussed this with Scott and he had the same question brought to him by someone else in the church. There were people in the church who were concerned about Jack's qualifications for ministry because of the behavior of Elizabeth. Since the question had been put to me, I could not get the issue out of my mind. Scott too had been bothered by this question. After a few weeks, Scott and I prayerfully decided to discuss this with Jack. I remember telling Scott, that when we raise this question, we would start the ball rolling and it would spin out of our control, taking on a life of its own. The next lunch, we talked to Jack about the question of qualifications for the office of Elder and ministry in the light of Titus 1:6, et al. We approached him with humility without accusation. Jack listened and suggested that he write a paper explaining his position on Titus 1:6 and 1 Timothy 3:5. We agreed. Jack brought his paper on the question two weeks later. Then Scott and I took the next two weeks to read, study and pray about Jack's paper. Jack's paper was confusing. The lines of reasoning were illogical, hodge-podge, and ellusive. But there was one argument that was very clear. He stated that anybody who argued that an Elder should have believing children was arguing from a baptistic theological point of view, as opposed to a covenantal, presbyterian point of view. In other words, if we expected our Pastor's children to be Christians, we were thinking like Baptists. Baptists really have no theology of children except to say that "Ya gotta get those kids saved!" Presbyterians, historically on the other hand, believe that God works through covenants. As believers in Christ, we are members of the New Covenant. Covenants always include the children of Believers. The teaching of Scripture is that we must raise our children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord. And when they are older, they will not depart from the Faith. So the expectation that faithful men will raise faithful children is the expectation of the New Testament as well and this is a special requirement for Church Officers/Elders. This expectation that we can raise our children in the faith is because of the covenantal faithfulness of God Himself. This is historic Presbyterian theology. Jack had turned the covenantal veiw upside down to argue that we were baptistic since we were requiring a Pastor's children to be Christians. The discussion of Jack's paper ended in a stalemate. Scott and I disagreed with the paper. But nothing was said about a change in the Pastorate or whether charges would be made or anything else. Later, our disagreement with Jack would become the focal point of the vocal opposition against us. But Scott and I never pressed charges against Jack to disqualify him from ministry. At that time, a new dynamic entered the Session meetings. Scott and I began to withhold our opinions if we disagreed with Jack's recommendations. But another interesting thing began to happen. Whereas, the other Elders had been supporting Jack's recommendations most of the time, now they began to oppose some of Jack's directives. This came from the other elders Marlon Fletchall, Mike Langley and Kevin Gowen. They were beginning to sense the rollercoaster ride in Jack's leadership. They wanted to move in a certain direction and to quit changing it on a regular basis. Eventually, Jack phoned me and demanded that I call an emergency meeting of the Session about the disagreement Scott and I had with Jack over his paper on Titus 1:6. In the discussion with Jack, he stated that he would tell the other elders anyway, if I didn't call the meeting. So in the interest of forthrightness, I called an emergency meeting with the Session at my house that evening. We laid it all out on the table for the other elders. We told them about Jack's paper, about others who had questioned Jack's fitness for ministerial leadership in the light of Elizabeth's covenantal infidelity, about our own questions about Jack's qualifications, and our diagreement with his paper. This came as quite a shock to the other Elders. The reactions ranged from disbelief, to numbness, to argument. We agreed to take some time to read Jack's paper, to pray and think, and to reconvene on this subject. Apparently, Jack had become very frustrated with the failure of several of his proposals to pass through the Session. Although there were no repercussions towards Jack's recommendations from our disagreement over his Titus 1:6 paper, Jack seemed to think that Scott and I were at the heart of the opposition to his ministerial leadership. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even though Scott and I had raised the question of ministerial qualifications to Jack in private, we never did anything except to show the utmost loyalty to him. We supported his leadership in worship. We met with him weekly to plan for Sunday worship. We defended Jack to dissenters in the congregation. I even talked one deacon (Mark Houston) out of quitting the deaconate. He was quite frustrated with Jack for a number of events that led him to believe he was not a valued deacon in the church. After we re-convened, there was a lively discussion in the Session. Marlon Fletchall sought to refute our view of Titus 1:6. Kevin Gowen was angry because we had sprung this bomb of an issue on the Session without warning. And Mike Langley was numb with shock. There was debate, but the meeting closed with no actions on the table. As far as Scott and I were concerned, the Session would be doing business as usual. Scott and I certainly had no agenda to take any action on Jack's paper or on his qualifications as a teaching elder. At the next meeting, Jack declared that "someone is trying to thwart my ministry." Thus, Jack submitted a threefold request. First, Jack requested the Session to render a vote of confidence on Jack's call as the Pastor of Cascade Presbyterian Church. Secondly, for the Session to hold a congregational meeting on the issue. Thirdly, for the Session to request the Presbytery to send representatives from the Commission on Churches and Ministers to meet with the Session. We voted on whether to grant Jack's request. As I recall, (and my memory of the numbers could be a bit faulty), the vote was 3 to 2 to grant Jack's request. It was during this time that Kevin Gowen began to disapprove of Jack's machinations in the Session. So Kevin's votes gradually started going the other way, but it was too late to stop the process. Then in the midst of all of this, Jack demanded that the Session examine Elizabeth. Out of the blue, Jack had an interest to discipline his daughter. He even made the statement, "I want you to excommunicate her." I thought this was very strange at this juncture. The meeting was scheduled. At the meeting, Jack announced that since this was his daughter, he was going to excuse himself from the proceedings. But he was going to instate Larry Bauer, a former OPC minister as moderator in his place. This was highly irregular and not supposed to be allowed but no one objected. Larry is a very kind hearted man but he had no heart for the discipline of unrepentant sinners. But the bigger problem is that there was no current history of discipline with Elizabeth. There should have been a series of interviews with her. Evidence should have been collected. Witnesses should have been called. A direct face-to-face call to Elizabeth to repent should have been issued by the Session. Low level discipline should have been enacted. And then, only then, if Elizabeth was still unrepentant, then should she have been excommunicated. The issue was bumbled at best. Basically, Elizabeth lambasted us for ever calling her father's qualifications into question and called us hyprocrites. At the next Session meeting which was held one week later after church, all 3 requests passed by a vote of 3-2. I voted against confidence in Jack's call. I voted against a congregational meeting. And I voted against the Presbytery sending the C on C&M representatives. I lost all three votes. I knew the congregational meeting would be a disaster. And the interviews conducted by the Presbytery's C on C&M would be a low level inquisition. After the week of meetings with members of the commission, and the congregational meeting (which was a disaster), I thought things would settle down for a while. But I received a phone call from Jack that next Sunday morning before Sunday School. He called to let me know that the head of the Commision was coming for a congregational meeting at Cascade in one week to present the findings of their interviews of the Commission on Churches and Ministers. I told Jack that I would be out of town that next weekend and asked if the meeting could be re-scheduled for two weeks. I had paid money for my family to attend a Bible Conference in the Seattle area some months previous. I had communicated this for several weeks to Jack and to the Session. Now, I would have to forfeit my conference fees, and cancel my weekend out of town, to attend this very short notice congregational meeting. Essentially, this was a small vacation for me. The church by-laws and, I believe, the Book of Church Order of the PCA state that congregational meetings such as these must be preceded by two full business weeks. This is to allow for sufficient notification and rearrangement of personal schedules to insure all insterested parties may attend. I regret that I did not think of this at the time. So Jack insisted on this meeting in 6 days. I did not attend. Kevin Gowen had also signed up for this conference months in advance for his family, so he did not attend the meeting either. The Commission representative took the opportunity to criticize Kevin and me at the meeting for not attending. He questioned our loyalties. We did not fare well in the eyes of the congregation. The essence of the issue for the Commission was that somebody needs to resign; and that someone was not Jack. Even though the ten Commission members were split down the middle on the issue of Titus 1:6, they said to get behind Jack and for the dissenting elders to resign. We returned from Seattle to reports of how we fared at the hands of the Commission during the congregational meeting. The next week after church there was another congregational meeting. I was, metaphorically speaking, hung in effigy. After that, at the next Session meeting, I handed in my resignation as an elder from Cascade PC. The proceedings were beginning to take their toll on my wife and daughter. I was not going to subject them to any more abuse. Three of the elders resigned at that time; Scott Snider, Kevin Gowen and me. Eventually, Mike Langley left the Session too. All that was left was Marlon Fletchall and Jack Davidson. Lessons Learned: The events of those days revealed to me the sorry state of theological understanding in our so-called Reformed churches. During those months of turmoil, Jack began to turn to people who never were fully reformed or Presbyterian in their commitments. Some 18 months before this, I was on the committee for renaming the church. Since we were moving into a new building we had acquired, some thought we ought to change our name. Jack asked me to get on that committee. I will never forget Ron Hunt driving the committee to drop Presbyterian from our name. He detested the name Presbyterian. Now I don't have any great attachment to the name "Presbyterian" either, but I insisted on keeping Presbyterian and stuck to my guns. I could see that Ron wanted to go with the "Evangelical" Kool-Aid rather than stay in the Reformed tradition. Because of that, Cascade Presbyterian Church is still the name today. Ron Hunt was one of the most vociferous critics of me in the congregational meetings. He was not only not Presbyterian in name, but in his theology as well. Jack's support came from the non-reformed element in the church. Controversy and turmoil in the church become opportunities for mal-contents to gain power in the church. Many folks who were ready to leave the church, joined in the fray at the congregational meetings and took opportunity to gain a following. One disenfranchised soul, who before had gradually pulled away from the church, jumped in the congregational meetings with vocal dramatics from the floor reminiscent of the French Revolution and lead organizing parties for a new Church Education program. Her husband was the deacon I had encouraged to stay on the deaconate. Scott and I never pressed charges in the Session. Nor were we going to press charges at the presbytery level. In retrospect, I sometimes think I should have responded at the first Session meeting with, "Oh, everything is okay, really. Oh, that old paper Jack wrote? I don' t quite know what to think of it." If the subject would have been treated like that, it may have been that the whole affair would have been avoided. Should I have dropped the debate like a stone? Some would say the whole of Jack's ministry would have crumbled to the ground anyway. I don't know, but be that as it may, I don't think politics has any place in church government. I think godly men are called upon to nurture the church in truth. There is no nurture without truth. Presbytery dealt the Session a very serious blow and that in a very underhanded way. In my view, this was no better than a protestant papacy. Presbytery should have said that this is not the way to deal with problems. The Session of the local church needs to adjudicate this issue. The congregation needs to trust its Session to do the work God called it to do. If the minority party in the Session wants to appeal the decision of the Session, then they can make their appeal to Presbytery. Then Presbytery can adjudicate it. If the minority party wants to appeal, then they can bring their case to the General Assembly. But there is no place for a Commission from Presbytery to interfere in the local church. Essentially, this Commission merely salvaged the pastorate of one of its own "ordained" Teaching Elders, and that at the expense of the Church and its Session. How is Cascade Presbyterian Church doing today? Jack eventually left the church in summer of 2006. He is now in South Carolina. I don't know what he is doing. His daughter Elizabeth is married and living in St. Louis. I don't know how she is doing spiritually. Cascade has been losing a considerable number of people. They have a new pastor. He is very youth oriented. Cascade is now on the Evangelical map in Eugene. Christ the King Church is the only covenantal and reformed church in the Eugene/Springfield area. This also points out how moth-eaten the fabric of the Presbyterian Church of America is. Their cloth is rotten. You can see their flag flapping in the wind, but don't try to break your fall by grabbing on to it. It will just tear off in your hand. The PCA is a very young denomination, beginning in 1973. Folks got very excited when it formed. But it was formed by a number of southern Presbyterian ministers and churches that had hobbled through years of creeping liberalism. Only when the ordination of women became an issue did these guys decide it was time to act. It was almost entirely arminian, dispensational and baptistic. A sudden inrush of newly reformed seminary graduates gave it a shot in the arm, but that has now been quelled through compromise with quasi-evangelicalism, southern Thornwellianism, and arid rationalism. The PCA has long been known to be a denomination of baptists who sprinkle babies. This is evidenced by the way they handled the ruling on the Federal Vision theology at last months GA. But that is another blog entry. | 
