Event at PCA church stokes tension over race-based ministries

The Presbyterian Church in America’s Mission to North America faces its second controversy within a month after Irwyn Ince, the organization’s coordinator, spoke at a fellowship event for black worshippers last weekend. The event was part of a weekend program celebrating Black History Month. Leaders at Resurrection Oakland Church, the PCA congregation in Northern California that hosted the event, described the Friday night gathering as a time for black worshippers to bond with one another and appreciate their black culture and their identity in Christ. But many outside Resurrection Oakland Church have described the event using a different word: segregation.

“Any ministry approach or method that defines and separates people based on the fleshly category of race is astoundingly contrary to the clear teaching of God’s Word,” said Zachary Groff, a PCA pastor. “Whether we’re talking about fellowship, evangelism, worship, discipleship, or mercy ministry, we need to be crystal clear: We reject partiality.” Groff is a member of the PCA’s permanent committee overseeing the Mission to North America but said his comments to WORLD were his own and not delivered on behalf of the denomination.

Controversy surrounding Ince’s appearance at last week’s event touches on the denomination’s roughly decadelong internal debate about the best way to approach race-related issues in the United States. Some argue that the church should take a much more active role in promoting social justice. Others insist the church should focus on its mission of preaching the gospel and ministering to the spiritual welfare of its congregants without factoring in race.

“What are we going to accept? How do we adapt to the culture? What does it mean to engage with the culture on issues of social justice, and these other prominent things like same-sex attraction and so on?” said Steve Dowling, a ruling elder in the PCA and the current moderator of the denomination’s General Assembly, which meets once per year to debate and decide on denominational policies. “It’s all kind of one sort of thing that we’ve been dealing with for at least the past 10 years.” Dowling also emphasized that his remarks to WORLD represented his personal position, not that of the denomination.

Made up of about 2,000 congregations, the Presbyterian Church in America is the second-largest Presbyterian denomination in the country. Local congregations work together in presbyteries and send representatives to an annual General Assembly. That assembly can authorize the creation of agencies such as the Mission to North America, which assists congregations with church planting and charity work. One MNA ministry focuses on training African American leaders in the PCA.

Resurrection Oakland did not prohibit worshippers who weren’t black from attending the event, MNA Coordinator Irwyn Ince told WORLD, and some nonblack worshipers did attend.

Groff argued that, though the organizers may not have turned away individuals of other ethnicities when they showed up at the door, Resurrection Oakland made it very clear whom it wanted to attend the event. In so doing, Groff said, the organizers were creating a division in the body of Christ in violation of the Bible’s emphasis on unity within the church.

“White people make black worshipers uncomfortable in the PCA. That’s the message that they were putting out,” Groff said. “And that is not unifying, that is a … very divisive message, by its very nature. Dividing people up based on race and ethnicity. This isn’t what we need to be about.” Groff cited 1 Timothy 5, Ephesians 2, and 1 Corinthians 12, pointing to their shared emphasis on eliminating division, avoiding partiality, and promoting unity within the body of Christ.

Ince disagreed. “Creating an occasional space for people with a shared heritage or story to express the unique challenges and joys of navigating life in a majority culture context is not wrong,” he said. “In fact, what you will find among those congregants is an even greater commitment to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace within that diverse church.” Ince said many preachers reached out to him with messages of support following his appearance at the event.

Others at MNA have expressed support for events that cater to minorities within the PCA. Kellie Brown, who works for Mission to North America, says that creating what she called “safe spaces” for minorities with the support of the majority population around them makes those minorities feel more supported and helps unify the church.

Brown and her husband, Howard, are planting a church in the Atlanta area called Kindred Hope that seeks to provide a worship space for black congregants. Leaders plan to launch the church in an area that is 90% black. The church’s website encourages individuals “who are not a cultural or logistical fit” to act as an “adjacent, active and essential part of the team as an ally of Kindred Hope.”

Groff and Dowling criticized church-planting proposals in which black churches received funding from predominantly white churches but discouraged white congregants from attending. “This is specifically what Paul rebuked Peter over, and I think it has huge theological portent as well,” Dowling explained.

MNA does not have the authority to plant churches itself, but it does provide assistance to PCA congregations seeking to do so within the denomination, Ince said.

“The expectation and prayer is that any local church would reflect its community in terms of congregational makeup,” Ince said.

The PCA’s permanent committee for overseeing the Mission to North America will be meeting March 5-6. The committee will discuss Ince’s appearance at the Resurrection Oakland event, Groff said. If Ince’s behavior is deemed to require correction, leaders will likely address it as an administrative issue and not a sin issue, Dowling said. As to what the ultimate outcome would be, he wasn’t sure.

“I’ve got to come to the conclusion that there’s no possibility that there’s any malicious intent,” Dowling said. “It’s merely something that needs to be corrected. Because this is not something in my belief that the denomination at large could possibly support.”