Sebastian Bjernegård

A Fence, Not a Cage: Why the PCA needs a Directory for Worship that guides the church we have, not the church we imagine. A constitutional Directory for Worship will not, by itself, make the PCA worship well. That may sound like a strange argument in favor of constitutionalizing a Directory for Worship, but it is an important point to make. Sometimes (always?) we speak as though putting words into our constitutional documents automatically produces the corresponding practice in the life of the church. But in reality, the Form of Government does not automatically make every session wise. The Rules of Discipline do not automatically make every church court patient, courageous, consistent, or just. Our doctrinal standards do not automatically make every elder a careful theologian. Constitutional ink matters greatly, but our beloved documents are not magical. They do not replace pastoral wisdom, patient instruction, local shepherding, or the slow work of forming congregations in the truth. The same is true of a [constitutional] Directory for Worship. If the PCA adopts a revised Directory, we should not imagine that every elder, session, and congregation will suddenly become uniform in practice. Nor should we want the Directory to function that way. A faithful Directory is not meant to press every congregation into one narrow mold. It is meant to give biblical direction to the church as she worships the living God. I’ve been told and now I tell elders: Shepherd the people you have, not the people you wish you had. This applies to preaching, teaching, praying, visiting—all aspects of pastoral ministry. Do you know the people in your church? Then seek to love them, not an imagined “better” version of them. Similarly, now that the PCA is squarely centered in middle-age, we should be trying to shepherd the Church we have, not the one we wish we had. And that applies to both “sides” of any argument to the contrary. Do you really know the denomination you are in? Then seek to love her, not an idealistic or imagined version of her. The PCA is not a single congregation with many satellite campuses. It is a denomination of churches in different contexts, with different histories, different sizes, different capacities, different musical resources, different pastors and elders, and different pastoral challenges. Some congregations worship in historic sanctuaries. Others meet in schools, storefronts, community centers, or temporary spaces. Some have long-established patterns of worship. Others are young congregations still learning how to order the service of God with reverence, simplicity, and joy. Some are governed by elders with different philosophies of ministry than yours or mine. A good Directory must be strong enough to guide all of us and broad enough to serve all of us. That does not mean it should be vague. A Directory that merely says, “Do what seems worshipful to you,” would not be a Directory at all. The church needs more than suggestions. Worship is too central and formative to be left to instinct, taste, habit, or the personality of the minister. The church needs shared principles, shared vocabulary, and shared constitutional guidance. The genius of a Directory for Worship, at its best, is that it gives real direction without pretending to write the whole service in advance. It identifies the ordinary elements of worship. It teaches the church what worship is. It gives elders and ministers categories by which to plan, evaluate, and lead the congregation. It provides guardrails. It reminds us that worship is governed by the Word of God, not by the preferences of the moment. But it does not need to settle every prudential question in every place. It does not need to make a small rural congregation look like a large urban one. It does not need to make every service sound identical. It does not need to flatten the legitimate variety that exists within the bounds of biblical and confessional worship. A Directory should be a fence, not a cage. A fence is a real boundary. It says, “Here is the field in which we may safely play.” It protects. It clarifies. It marks off what belongs from what does not. But a fence is not a cage. It does not exist to eliminate movement, wisdom, judgment, or freedom. It creates a bounded space in which the church may act faithfully. That is what the PCA needs in worship: not liturgical anarchy, and not liturgical captivity, but ordered freedom under the Word of God. This is also why constitutionalizing a Directory should not be treated as though it will accomplish everything at once. It will not. Some elders will need to read it slowly. Some sessions will need to discuss what it means for their congregation. Some churches will discover that certain inherited patterns need to be strengthened, clarified, or reconsidered. Others may find that the Directory gives language and confidence to practices they have long embraced. But in all of this, pastors and elders cannot outsource their calling to the constitution. If the Directory says that worship is a holy meeting between God and His people, ministers must teach that. If it says that the ordinary elements of worship are grounded in Scripture, sessions must plan accordingly. If it commends reverence, joy, intelligibility, order, and pastoral care, elders must model those things. If it gives direction about sacraments, prayer, singing, offerings, vows, and the public reading and preaching of Scripture, ministers must do more than know where the chapter is. They must help the congregation see the beauty and wisdom of it. A constitutional Directory can give us a common standard. It cannot give us pastoral courage. It can give us biblical categories. It cannot give us love for the flock. It can give us guardrails. It cannot make us patient drivers. It can give us clarity. It cannot make us holy. And this reality is a feature, not a bug. Our constitution serves the life of the church; it does not replace it. For that reason, we should not demand that a revised Directory be either everything or nothing. It does not need to answer every future question in order to be useful. It does not need to satisfy every preference in order to be faithful. It does not need to produce instant uniformity in order to be worth adopting. The better question is this: Will it give the PCA a clearer, more biblical, more useful framework for the worship of God? If so, then we should receive it gladly and use it patiently. The work of reforming and strengthening worship is never finished by adopting a document. But it can be helped by one. A good Directory will not do the work of pastors and elders for them. But it can help pastors and elders do their work better. pulpitmatters.com/p/a-fence-…

A Directory with a Smile: Why the PCA Should Welcome the Revised Directory for Worship For more than fifty years, the Presbyterian Church in America has lived with a curious arrangement. We have a Book of Church Order made up of three parts: the Form of Government, the Rules of Discipline, and the Directory for Worship. Yet the Directory for Worship has largely remained in a secondary constitutional status. It has been “an approved guide” and “the mind of the Church agreeable to the Standards,” but not binding in all its parts. Several chapters have been granted full constitutional authority, but the whole Directory has not. That means that the central activity of the Church has not had the same constitutional clarity as our doctrine, order, and discipline. The Ad Interim Committee on Revisions to the Directory for Worship is bringing forward a proposal that seeks to address that long-standing gap. Their report describes the revised Directory as “a carefully framed proposal,” shaped through “study, discovery, discussion and principled compromise,” and unanimously submitted with the hope that it “will honor our Triune God and edify this church.” I want to convince you that we should match their spirit and approve their revisions as our new Directory for Worship. On a recent episode of @PolityMatters, we had the opportunity to interview three members of the committee: Nate Shurden @nateshurden, Joel St. Clair @joel_stclair, and Chad Van Dixhoorn. (Subscribe, so you don’t miss it.) What came through in the conversation was not merely that the committee had produced a constitutional proposal, but that they had labored to give the PCA something warm, biblical, useful, and pastoral. Committee Chairman Nate Shurden explained that a directory, in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, is not a prayer book. It does not give fixed liturgical forms or prescribe every word of a service. But neither is it a vague appeal to spontaneity. “A directory traditionally within the Reformed and Presbyterian world,” he said, “seeks to lay out biblical principles and foundations… identifying ordinary elements for worship, giving pastoral directions for how worship should be practiced and conducted so that worship is governed by the Word of God.” He went on to say that a directory “literally gives direction” and “helps to give wisdom, theologically and biblically and practically, so that our worship will be ordered and edifying.” That is a helpful way to think about this proposal. The revised Directory is not an attempt to make every PCA congregation look identical. It is not an effort to flatten the breadth of our denomination. The committee explicitly says that the chapters were written to be “readable” and to “reflect the breadth of our denomination’s practice.” It aims to provide constitutional guidance without unnecessary over-prescription. Chad Van Dixhoorn used a memorable image in the interview. A prayer book, he suggested, can be like walking into a furniture store and saying, “I’ll take one of those living rooms.” Everything is already arranged. A directory, by contrast, is more like “Home Depot” or “IKEA”—the pieces are there, but they must be assembled wisely. His point was not to make worship casual or improvised, but to emphasize the genius of the Presbyterian directory tradition: it gives real direction without binding consciences to fixed forms. That balance is one of the great strengths of the proposed revision. The report itself says the committee sought to avoid both “an overbearing prescription of particular forms” and “an unhelpful abandonment of Reformed principles.” In other words, the Directory aims to give the guidance ministers, elders, and members need while also recognizing “the large measure of liberty granted by Christ to His church.” This may be one of the most pastorally important features of the whole proposal. The PCA is not a small, culturally uniform denomination. We have church plants, historic congregations, urban churches, rural churches, campus churches, large churches, small churches, churches with very simple services, and churches with more developed liturgical patterns. A good directory must be able to speak faithfully to all of them. It must be clear enough to guide us and broad enough to serve us. Joel St. Clair made another important point in the interview. We should not imagine that the Directory is a dusty document for rare use. The Form of Government may come into view most obviously at session meetings, congregational meetings, or presbytery. The Rules of Discipline, though essential, are used in particular circumstances. But worship is every week. Joel said, “When you think about the elements that are in the directory, that’s every week. That’s also during the week in family worship. There are things that cover the whole of life.” His hope was that the Directory would help every member of the church say, “This is Reformed worship. This is what this looks like.” That is exactly right. A good Directory for Worship should not merely settle debates; it should teach the church how to delight in the worship of God. And this is where the revised Directory is especially encouraging. The committee did not simply revise for technical precision. They sought to make the Directory devotional and explicitly theological. The report says that the current Directory sometimes gives instruction “with a frown” where the revised Directory seeks to communicate “with a smile.” It seeks to set biblical indicatives beneath biblical imperatives, highlighting the truths about God and His gospel that inform our worship. That positive tone appears immediately in the proposed Chapter 47: “Worship of the divine Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the highest privilege of a Christian.” Corporate worship is described as the triune God summoning His church to meet with Him and be blessed by Him. Worship is not treated first as a burden, a performance, or a battleground, but as the great privilege of the redeemed. This is not softening Reformed worship. It is strengthening it. The regulative principle is not less beautiful because it is stated with warmth. Biblical order is not less biblical because it is presented as gift. Constitutional clarity is not less useful because it is devotional. Nate Shurden acknowledged that the proposed Directory is not perfect and that some may wish particular sections were tighter. But he offered a helpful image: the committee is trying “to build a fence around… a playground that hasn’t had one before.” The fence may not answer every future question. It may be refined over time. But, he said, “having a fence is better than the one that we don’t have right now.” That is a wise way to think about this moment. The question before the PCA is not whether every commissioner would have written every sentence exactly this way. The question is whether this proposal represents a faithful, useful, constitutional step forward for the church. The committee’s answer is yes. Nate said the members of the committee believe this Directory will have “a formatively positive impact upon the life and health and peace and purity of the PCA.” He described the committee’s work as marked by prayer, joy, disagreement, and brotherly unity, and expressed the hope that “the Spirit of the Living God would take that same spirit and spread it amongst us in the PCA.” Joel St. Clair closed with a similar hope. He said that some may be anxious that the Directory is either too open or too restrictive. But his encouragement was simple: read it. “Open up and read not only the introductory remarks but read through the actual Directory for Worship. I hope you’re ministered to. That was the result for all of us on the committee.” He then expressed the hope that the Assembly would “take a step forward and complete what’s been 50 years in the making.” A constitutional Directory for Worship will not solve every worship question in our denomination. It will not remove the need for wisdom, charity, or pastoral judgment. It will not make every congregation identical. But it can give us a common, biblical, confessional, and pastoral framework for the worship of the Triune God. The revised Directory gives the PCA an opportunity to say that the worship of our Triune God is not an afterthought. It is not merely local custom. It is not merely inherited habit. Worship is the highest privilege of the Christian and the church’s glad response to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. For that reason, we should receive this proposal with gratitude, read it carefully, discuss it charitably, and pray that the Lord will use it to honor His name and edify His church. pulpitmatters.com/p/a-direct…