Friday, April 25, 2025

Part I

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Protestant Liberalism and the Death of Missions: The PCUSA Formally Fires Its Missionaries and Ends Its Missions Agency

The PCUSA, one of the mainline Protestant denominations, one of the Seven Sisters of Liberal Protestantism in the United States. has recently announced that it is firing its missionaries and ending its mission agency. So at first glance, this appears to be a very sad story. The closer look, it becomes a very inevitable story, but the news just broke, as Greg Garrison of the Birmingham News reported, “The Presbyterian USA, a mainline Protestant denomination that has historically been one of the most influential Christian missionary sending agencies recently fired missionaries around the world and ended its foreign mission agency.” The next paragraph, “The Office of Presbyterian World Mission closed at the end of March after the Presbyterian Mission Agency merged with the Office of General Assembly into the Interim Unified Agency.”

Well, that sounds like government bureaucracy, but it means the end of organized missions through the Presbyterian Church USA. There are some huge lessons here. This is big news. It’s bigger than you might imagine, but it’s a part of a very long story. Now, before I go further, I need to clarify one very essential issue, and that is that when I’m referring to the Presbyterian Church USA, I’m referring to a specific Presbyterian denomination. It is the main liberal Presbyterian denomination in the United States. About a generation ago, you had a merger between the northern liberal body and the southern liberal body into one national body. That’s the Presbyterian Church USA. Now, there are conservative Presbyterian denominations and the most well-known of them is for example, the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. And it was established as a continuation of confessional Presbyterianism and it still is a major denomination, a conservative denomination, and thanks be to God still a missionary-sending denomination.

So when we say Presbyterian here, we’re talking about the Liberal Presbyterian denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA. Now the story here is that the PCUSA, as it’s known, has now formally ended its missions program. So what’s the bigger story? Well, in order to understand this, we need to look at just urgently important issues, particularly in the beginning of the 20th century. During the late 19th century into the early 20th century, the encroachment of liberal theology and American denominations became profound. This came to a great battle between conservatives and liberals, and let’s just remember what is at stake, just essential Christian doctrines such as the Virgin Birth of Christ. And it wasn’t just that you had the liberals saying, “We don’t believe that’s absolutely necessary.” You had leading liberals say, “We don’t believe it anymore.” 

And thus you had the conservatives who stood on the faith once were all delivered to the saints, facing off against the liberals who were calling for modernism, a modernization of Christian doctrine in order to meet the anti-supernatural expectations of the modern scientific age. A lot of the theological controversies that still shape the world as we know it go back to this liberal, conservative battle. And in the mainline Protestant denominations, in almost every one of them, the liberals won. And in the case of the Presbyterians, the liberals won to the degree that conservatives began to pull out. And one of the earliest representations of this was the OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, associated with the great stalwart of conservative confessional Presbyterianism, J. Gresham Machen, and the institution most closely allied with that church will become Westminster Theological Seminary. And then you had other denominations doing the same thing, the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, the liberal Lutherans, there are conservative Lutherans too, but the liberal Lutherans and the Disciples of Christ as they became known, the United Methodist Church and the more liberal northern Baptists, that became the American Baptist churches, they were associated with mainline Protestantism.

And over time, all of them have succumbed to liberalism. All of them have been taken over basically by those with a liberal agenda. And this means anti-supernaturalism. It doesn’t just mean dropping the belief in the virgin birth. It means a total reformulation of Christian theology. Exactly what figures such as Gresham Machen warned back in the 1920s would happen. It has happened and it didn’t take a long time, but here’s another interesting thing. If you look at American church attendance at the midpoint of the 20th century, the mainline is mainline. It is to say, it is a source of enormous church attendance and numerical strength. And the middle of the 20th century, it’d say into the 1950s, it appeared that the future of American religion, American Christianity, was that liberal mainline structure. All that began to fall apart shortly thereafter. By the time you get to the early 1970s, every single one of those denominations is in a free fall in terms of both attendance and membership.

And it’s reached the point that you had the Wall Street Journal decades ago now, write an editorial about the future of the Episcopal Church in the United States, once the most powerful, certainly politically the most powerful and wealthy denomination in the United States, saying that the future of the Episcopal Church in the United States was that of the dodo, an extinct bird. But there’s another angle on this that I think will be really of interest and certainly of urgent knowledge for a lot of Christians, and that is that missions was a part of the controversy going back to the 1920s. And it played out in a way you might not expect, because obviously missions, if it’s going to continue in any genuine form, is based upon the commission of Christ to take the gospel to the nations, to make disciples of all peoples of all nations, and to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to teach them all that he had commanded.

Well, that is the missionary impulse. But if you don’t believe that anymore, if you don’t believe that persons will go to hell if they do not hear the gospel and believe, and repent of their sins, and follow Christ, if you don’t believe the gospel is a matter of the distinction for eternity between heaven and hell, then guess what? The missionary impulse begins to fall away. It begins to be redefined as something else. 

But one of the ways conservatives in those denominations discovered they had a problem was with the question of missions. There were missionaries discovered in several of these denominations, I think most importantly in the Presbyterian denomination. Missionaries, for example, in China in the early 20th century, who faced with the complexities of the mission field, were turning pretty liberal. They were losing confidence in the exclusivity of the gospel. And some of the people concerned with that, by the way, were some of the missionaries on the ground and they began to report back home, “Look, this is a huge problem, stop sending us liberal missionaries.”

At the same time, the denominations were growing more liberal. And so, you had in almost none of these cases a long-term recovery. Instead, there was a sustained slide into theological liberalism. By the way, one of the more conservative Presbyterian missionaries on the ground there in China was Nelson Bell, a physician, and his daughter Ruth Bell was born there on the mission field. She would eventually marry Billy Graham. She would be Ruth Bell Graham. And that’s one of the reasons why the Bell family and the Graham family were adamantly against the encroachments of theological liberalism, which had been seen first really on the mission field, but later were seen here in North America as well. What begins on the mission field doesn’t stay on the mission field, but here’s the interesting pattern we need to see. Even though so many of these problems emerge when there’s a failure of courage and conviction on the mission field, pretty soon the failure of conviction and courage means a retreat from the mission field.

In the name of missions, we have to make these changes and then you make the changes, and you are no longer committed to the mission field. The retreat in missions and mainline liberal Protestantism has been a very, very long slide. And I think it’s fair to say, to be honest, that many of the people called missionaries in this news story just from recent days wouldn’t be recognized by most evangelicals as missionaries in the classic sense. But it does tell us a great deal, it is a huge tale here, a huge story, moral story, a parable when the Presbyterian church USA fires its missionaries and formally ends its mission agency.

This is exactly what conservatives said would happen, and to heartbreak, that is exactly what has happened. It’s very interesting to see people make comments. Reverend Jay Wilkins stated, “Clerk of the Presbytery of Shepherds and Lapsley, the regional body of the Presbyterian Church USA in north central Alabama.” This is as reported by Greg Garrison of the Birmingham News. He said, “That old system did work well in its time.” But he went on to say, “It’s sad. It’s not what it used to be, but this is the logical next step.”

It is really interesting that the theological issues are at least mentioned here. One person who is connected with an Alabama Presbyterian office said that this change, “A lot of the church is not going to be happy about this.” Karen Ann Knoll, a Presbyterian missionary to Costa Rica, one of those let go, but works on a seminary faculty. According to the report, she said, “We’re witnessing a slow dismantling of one of our church’s most defining ministries. At a time when the world needs solidarity, the decision sends the opposite signal.” Well, one of the things that is also sent here is the signal that there was a retreat from Conversionist missions long ago. Among theological liberals, Conversionism became an embarrassment and the expansion of Christianity became a form of imperialism, of imperialist imposition, that was itself an embarrassment. An article by Eric Liederman at the Presbyterian Outlook cited one PCUSA mission co-worker in Honduras as saying, “We have no idea if they’re letting half of us go, all of us, or reconfiguring into something else entirely. The lack of communication has eroded trust.” The article then states, “For decades, the PCUSA has prioritized a collaborative model of international mission, sending co-workers at the invitation of global partners to serve under their leadership. This approach attempted to move away from what was perceived as a paternalistic colonial style of mission work and toward more authentic partnerships.”

Well, now we know where that led. Jeffrey Walton at the Institute for Religion and Democracy cited one liberal Presbyterian as saying, “When progressive Christians, communions and mission-sending organizations leave a mission field, their absences are inevitably and invariably filled with voices, personnel and mission partners who view Jesus and his ministry differently, in less inclusive and liberating ways.”

He’s referring there to conservative, evangelical, conversionist, evangelism and missions. Well, does that make what’s at stake clear. The inevitable thing we have to see here and we need to see it in bold relief. We need to see clearly that if we do not understand missions as a matter of the distinction between heaven and hell, we’re not going to spend the money to do this. If we’re going to redefine missions as social work, because we’ve lost confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ, then eventually that social work’s going to get too expensive to carry out. And if you’re going to accept theological death within your denomination, guess what? The numbers begin to dwindle and the money dries up, and pretty soon it’s just one cut after another. And I say that not with a sense of theological chauvinism, but as a word of warning to all evangelical Christians and Christian denominations.

If you don’t believe in missions anymore, guess what? It’s because of a loss of confidence in the gospel. And guess what? Everything else is going to dry up and wither pretty soon inevitably.

Part II

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How Do You Maintain Close Familial Relationships with Your Children as an Empty Nester? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, now let’s turn to questions. And again, I’m glad to receive your question. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. I was very interested to hear from a mom. She says she and her husband have four children. “All of our kids,” she says, “have made professions of faith and are active members at their churches, and we’re so thankful. This fall we will officially become empty nesters as our youngest goes to college. How have you and your wife navigated the season of life and kept your family close?”

Well, this is not easy, especially since in the modern age our children can be flown quite distantly away from us. And we can even see the hand of God in that. We know exactly why the Lord has them where they are. And we were talking about missions a few moments ago, and I look at the history of missions, look at the archives we have here at our own seminary and college, and I see letters to missionaries and recognize in many cases missionaries back then were having to write letters that would take months before they would arrive.

And so, I am reminded of the fact that we are able to communicate with our own family members, our own children–and grandchildren gloriously–in a way that previous generations never had the opportunity. And so, I am humbled by that realization. I think intentionality, I want to say this, mom, I think it’s the biggest thing, is intentionality and time. I sense from the way you’re asking the question that you’re already answering it in faithfulness. You stay involved in the lives of your children, you stay involved in the lives of your children when they marry, you stay involved in the lives of your children. It changes, but you stay involved in their lives and they become parents. And the joy of grandchildren is just beyond anything I could describe. And you just want to be as involved and engaged as you possibly can. 

I want to say, I think you and your husband, and the Christians around you in your local church as you pray for each other. It is a change of heart. It is a change of parenting, because they’re no longer in our home, but to the glory of God, they’re starting homes of their own, families of their own. And this is actually, I think something that it’s good for older Christians. I’m speaking to Christians my age and to this mom, I must say you’re a little older, but I can just say from a little bit further beyond this is a situation in which we need to see things in something of an Abrahamic promise.

Just to understand that it is such a gift to be given children. It is then such a gift to see them thrive. And it’s such a gift to see them well married and it is such a gift for them to bring you grandchildren. And yes, I wish, I wish they could be much closer, but at the same time, I am just absolutely thrilled that we are given opportunities that previous generations of Christians weren’t given to help to close that gap. So God bless you and your husband as you are traversing this terrain. And I can say that in one sense things do get sweeter. That’s a part of God’s promise.

Part III

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Why Should I Accept the Responsibility of Leading a Family When I’m Busy Helping Those Around Me Instead? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, next is a question from a young man. And I don’t know this young man, I’m not going to say his name. I’m simply going to say I can’t thank you enough for sending this question, and it is because this is something we desperately need to address.

This young man says, “I’m a young man who is unmarried and not pursuing marriage. I’m unsure whether I have an obligation to pursue marriage. I recognize the general creation mandate to reproduce, but I do not feel personally convicted by this in the same way I am convicted to serve those in great need.” And he talks about his career in law enforcement, and he talks about taking risks he’d been unable to take if he had the responsibility of a family. And then in conclusion, he says, “In other words, how can I adopt what I see as the voluntary responsibility of a family when there’s an immediate pressing responsibility all around me?”

Okay, I take this at face value. I appreciate this young man sending me the question. And I just want you to know I’m responding as respectfully and kindly as I can. General biblical mandates don’t have to be perceived as a matter of personal calling. Genesis one doesn’t have to be received by Christians as a matter of anticipated personal calling. It is a part of the structure of creation. It is the structure of creation that we should expect a young man and a young woman to get married and to reproduce, and to bring forth children, to multiply and to fill the earth.

And so, I want to say I think it’s just a good category reset. And again, I think this young man for his candor in asking the question, I think the category reset is the creation order applies. It is the exception to creation order that needs some explanation. And so, in the New Testament, you do have the Apostle Paul talk about the gift of celibacy, the gift of celibacy for special service. I’m not going to say that it’s imaginable to me that a general life in law enforcement comes under that category, because as you look at creation or you recognize that after Genesis three, it’s all a very dangerous world. But it’s an honest question, and I hope my voice is coming across kindly in answering this question. I just want to say to young men, in particular young men, young women too, but particularly to young men, you don’t need to perceive a particular specific call to obey the creation order mandate. That is the norm, not the exception. I also want to say to this young man, I think he says here 20, I want to say God bless you. 

Again, I really thank you for this question. I just want to also say that God, in giving the gift to celibacy, gives a gift to celibacy. And there aren’t too many 20-year-old young men I know who honestly have the gift to celibacy. And so, that’s also telling you something, and that also comes from creation order. So that’s speaking to you too.

Part IV

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Could Jesus Have Broken a Bone Since He Was the Perfect Lamb Who Was to Be Given as a Sacrifice? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Again, I love questions sent in by kids, and that means in this case, I love a question sent by a grandmother, and she’s asking on behalf of a nine-year-old grandson who attends a private Catholic school, and who called her in order to ask if Jesus could have broken a bone since he was to become the perfect lamb given as a sacrifice. She said, “I gave his question a shot,” but she’s passing the question to me.

Well, I think this is a brilliant question. It requires a knowledge of Scripture. Isn’t that sweet? It requires a knowledge of Scripture and the question about Jesus. And that is because in the Old Testament, it was clear that the animal brought for a sacrifice had to be without spot or blemish. There had to be no impairment or injury to the animal. And then, in the New Testament, we are told that Jesus is the absolutely perfect sacrifice, our substitute who accomplished full atonement for our sins. And even as he is presented as that perfect sacrifice, then that means he’s infinitely more perfect than the sacrifice in the Old Testament that had to be perfect in the sense of no spot or blemish. Jesus was perfect not only in that way, but in every way as our substitute on the cross, dying in our place for our sin.

And so, what a sweet question from a nine-year-old boy and very sweet of his grandmother to send it along as well.

Part V

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As a Pastor, What is Your Opinion on Using Paper Books Versus Digital Books? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, then a question coming in from a young man who says he’s pursuing pastoral ministry. God bless you, Ethan, and he’s forming a library. He said, “I’m curious about your thoughts on paper editions of books versus eBooks.”

Okay, he goes on and kind of fleshes out that question. But I will tell you, I am just a huge proponent of the printed book. I guess you’re not surprised by that. I’m surrounded by printed books. I love to be in the company of printed books. I basically, wherever I am, have almost always got with me a printed book. And I want to argue for the superiority of print for two reasons. Number one, because you can have an engagement with it that is physical. And I think in our brains, just given the way that we are wired, I think this can come with some real gain in terms of comprehension and meaning.

I have a conversation with the book. I have a red pen in my hand at all times. I am making marks in the book and having a conversation with the book. I am raising questions. I use symbols for different things having to do with follow this out, check that source. This is a particular importance, this ties to that. And this, when I’ve read a book like that and it is on my shelf, I can go back to it decades later and find it incredibly useful, because of the physicality of the book. And besides that, I think like the Apostle Paul asking for the books and the parchments to be brought to him, there’s just something very special, especially for Christians about the printed book. 

But I have not said, don’t use eBooks, because digital editions of books are also something for which we should be thankful. And I want to mention three reasons why. Number one, because you can have instantaneous delivery–practically–of any number of books that you might not be able to obtain otherwise. You can also use PDFs, especially of books that are out of date, maybe not available. You can find them on the internet. You can sometimes even just put that in your library with your electronic reading system. And so, I use one, and let me tell you the second reason is because they’re searchable. And so, in a way that is not true of a physical book, even with an index, the searchability in some books makes it really, really important. So if I’m doing research on a specific topic, sometimes the searchability is really, really helpful. And of course you have online sources. I’ll include eBooks on that as well. The great virtue of online is that you can have all of it with you all the time, accessible and searchable.

And I’ll just tell you, the searchable is really powerful. The third thing is that you can have these books with you accessible, searchable, all the time, and they do not have to rival a print book, which is to say, if it’s really important, don’t apologize for having a digital copy and a physical copy. Don’t apologize for using them for different purposes. And quite honestly, being able to say, write things, write on and between the lines of and in the margins of a printed book. But the availability and searchability of eBooks are just really important. And by the way, you can copy text out of them, put them in notes, oftentimes add your own notes to it. I’ll tell you one quick anecdote. I was on a plane and I landed at LaGuardia Airport in New York and had a major newspaper reach out to me, and say, “Could you please respond to the death…” And in that case, it was a very famous liberal theologian who had died, and they said, “Can you respond?”

And I thought, “I could respond if I were home, because I have all those books in my library. I’ve marked them up, I can do that.” Then as we were still sitting on the taxiway there at LaGuardia Airport in New York, I thought, “You know, I could just pull down those books in terms of electronic editions.”

And I found that to be very, very helpful. I could all of a sudden before I got to the gate, have three or four of those books, I could find the sections I was looking for and make reference in terms of my response to that liberal theologian. And I thought the Apostle Paul had books and parchments that were available to him in that day. And again, the physicality of the book, I do not want to surrender, but boy am I glad that right here, right now, sitting in a seat on an airplane waiting to get to a gate, I can have the availability of these books.

I can actually do some search within the books, and by the time I’m ready to be picked up at the airport, I’ve got some of the things I need to be able to respond to an opportunity. So I’m saying best use of both, that is a stewardship in the modern age that previous generations did not have. But in the end of all these things, I would simply say, if I have to choose one or the other, it’s not even close. The physical book will win. But thankfully, we don’t always have to make that choice these days.

Part VI

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Should You Ask Forgiveness for Spilling Water? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

But as a final question, I am going to turn to a question from a dad of a four-year-old son. It’s a really sweet question. He says that at dinner, his wife accidentally spilled her full glass of water across the kitchen table, and it splashed. The little four-year-old boy caused some immediate excitement, exasperation from all parties, and even as the father was helping to clean up, and the little boy looked at his mom and said, “Oh, mom, I’m sorry that you spilled your water.” And then in a moment of spiritual insight, the four-year-old turned to mom and said, “I forgive you, mom.”

And so, the dad’s trying to explain that it was an accident and forgiveness isn’t the right category. And then he says, “Well, I was thinking about it, wondering if that was right.” I got to summarize all this, but I’ll just tell you, this is where the Christian biblical worldview identifies sin as Multiplex. It’s complex. And so, to pick a simple distinction, there are sins of omission and there are sins of commission. And by that, it means there’s some sins that we just commit by doing something that is prohibited by Scripture. There are other times we sin by not doing what is commanded by Scripture, that you might say, “Well, what has either one of those got to do with a spilled glass of water?”

There’s another sense in which we ask pardon or forgiveness for things that were not at all intentional, but had an unintentional negative effect. And so, that’s why even just in etiquette, we sometimes say, “Pardon me.”

And it is not because we need pardon as in forgiveness for the commission of sin, but because there was an ill effect that was inflicted upon someone, and we’re just recognizing that, whether we cut them off on the sidewalk or spill water on them at the dinner table. So sometimes theological questions are just big and massive, and the entire Christian faith hangs on them. This is not one of those, but Christian fatherhood in this situation, I just love this Christian dad. I can just picture this little four-year-old boy saying, “I forgive you, mom.”

I would take that from a four-year-old boy as just an incredible theological achievement and a sweet expression from a preschooler. No doubt he meant he forgave his mom. But my guess is just in even reading this, that was not said as if she had committed a grave moral error, but something a four-year-old might understand as more of a boo-boo. But you as a dad, you’re right. There’s a difference between asking a pardon as in etiquette and asking God’s forgiveness as in sin. Well, God bless you and God bless your family, and try to keep the water in the glass. That’s probably a greater challenge for the four-year-old than his mom.

All right, sometimes the questions seem small, sometimes they seem big. I especially love the questions having to do with the realities of life, coming out in the life of Christians and Christian families. Now, who knows what we’ll be talking about next week, but I want to thank you all for sending in such good questions.