On the Eve of a Congregational Vote

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. It is a momentous day for our congregation. This will only be the first vote taken to decide whether to withdraw from the OPC. If the first vote is sustained, then a second vote will be announced and another congregational meeting called for tomorrow to be held on December 15th. But the fact that we are here is significant enough, no matter the outcome of the vote.

This congregation used to be known as Community Christian Church. It was a barely evangelical church, planted in the 1980s by Central Christian Church, and independent (non-denominational) from her founding until we voted to join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 2016. Kirstie and I first visited the church, at their invitation, to candidate, in the summer of 2012. We stayed at the Best Western on Apache Trail (it was not a Best Western at the time). I remember going for a run early on Saturday morning. As I ran down the Trail, I was struck by how hot it already was so early in the day. I tried to imagine living here, and I wondered what it would be like if God called us to move.

We flew home on Monday and decided to decline the church’s call. Eight or nine months later, in early 2013, I got an email from one of the elders at that time asking if I would be willing to come out and candidate again. We thought and prayed about it, and I returned alone, this time for a longer stay during the week. I met separately with the elders, deacons, and staff, and then did a Q&A with the entire church on Wednesday evening. I flew back to Atlanta and had not reached my house when my cell phone rang. It was one of the elders with an offer to relocate. We thought and prayed, sought counsel from a couple of other ministers in our area, and declined a second time. The morning after, my phone rang again. “We really want you to come here,” the elder said.

We finally agreed to move to Arizona, even though doing so cost us a lot, and not just financially. I was already becoming persona non grata in the Churches of Christ, and we sensed that our ability to use my place there to advance the gospel was coming to an end. The Lord seemed to be calling us to Arizona, and we wondered what lay in store for us there. I have recounted in other places (HERE and HERE) some of what transpired in the next several years. CCC was the largest church in Apache Junction when I arrived. During the Q&A in 2013, someone asked me whether I was able to lead a church of 900+ people. I told them I didn’t know—I had never done it. One might conclude from the exodus that occurred during our reformation that the answer to that question is no.

When we came to Arizona, we had no plans to join a Presbyterian denomination. I was firmly committed to the five solas of the Reformation and the doctrines of grace. I began teaching on covenant theology within a year of my arrival, but I did not know that in a couple of years I would begin baptizing babies! The Lord was merciful and gracious, but at times his grace and mercy felt a bit more like a bath with a Brillo pad. It was the kind of tough love that one must show when a child scrapes his skin and embeds it with dirt and gravel. Cleaning out the wound is painful, but it is an act of love nonetheless.

We have been, for almost ten years now, a confessionally Reformed church, and no matter what happens tomorrow, that theological identity will not change. Earlier this year I used the analogy of buying a house. A denomination is not a marriage; it is the place where married people go to live. When Kirstie and I got married, we lived in a very tiny apartment, and it served the needs of our family for a few years. As our family grew, we moved into a three bedroom parsonage, then bought that house from the church and lived there comfortably as more children were born. We have lived in several different houses in the last 25 years. None of them were perfect, but we have pleasant memories (and a few unpleasant ones) from each of them.

The question before us tomorrow is what denomination best fits the needs of our family. The OPC is a good church, a faithful church, and it has been a blessing to be part of her for a little over 8 years. If we choose to remain, then I trust the Lord will bless us there. If we depart, then I trust our church family will continue to grow, mature, and enjoy life together in Christ. Every time Kirstie and I have moved to a new house, there have been things that we liked and things that we didn’t. We want to live in a house that is well-suited to our family, but the house is not the family. It is the people in our household that make the house a home.

We have important things to do tomorrow, but voting in a congregational meeting is not the most important thing on our agenda. Before we gather to vote, the Lord will call us to worship, and we will enter the heavenly court and lift our hearts, hands, and voices in praising the Triune God with our brethren both in heaven and around the world. We will confess our sins and be assured of God’s forgiveness. We will be sanctified by Word and Spirit, commune at the Lord’s Table, and be strengthened in the promises of God and the power of our risen Savior and King.

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day, and I pray our focus will be first and foremost on the significance of that holy celebration. The Church assembles in festal gathering, to celebrate the God of covenant and of grace. We are brothers and sisters in the Father’s family, and in the eternal state, there will be no thought of the OPC, PCA, URC, or CREC. Our identity is, first, foremost, and fundamentally in Christ, and that identity abides no matter the denominational affiliation we may have for a time in this world. Who we are is determined by Christ’s work, God’s covenant, and the Spirit’s presence in our lives. We are called to life and faith in Jesus, and I pray this will always be the determining and driving factor in each of our lives. May the Lord so work to unite our hearts in love and truth, humility and courage, obedience and perseverance.

I never imagined what lay in store when I came to Arizona, but I thank God he brought all of us here and joined us in covenant, life, and love as members of Christ’s Body and of this congregation. Soli Deo Gloria --JME

Emails, Leverage, and the Error of Being "Moscow-friendly"

Readers of this blog may be familiar with the drama created by an email that was sent out to selected members of my Presbytery in January identifying me as “An FV Problem in the OPC.” You can read more about that 1-HERE, 2-HERE, and 3-HERE. This week, the original sender of that email contacted me to apologize, sort of. I have replied to him directly and personally, but since the narrative about this controversy has been manipulated by critics in unfortunate ways, I thought it best to publish an edited version of my reply. Names and information that would allow my correspondent to be identified have been removed. –JME

[Brother]:

Thanks for your note. I am happy to forgive you for handling things in the way you did. I do wish you had simply picked up the phone and called me first or even responded to the email I sent you when our Session was finally forwarded the packet a couple of weeks after you sent it out. The other brother who contributed to that analysis of my teaching replied when we sent it to him, but we never heard from you.

It is interesting to me that you sent your apology to the church’s email account. Maybe you forgot that you have my personal one from corresponding before, or you might have used my alias account that other OPC ministers use when they want to contact me. Or you might have called me since we know each other, or you might have mentioned these concerns to me directly when we chatted at GA six months before. I did think we had the kind of relationship that would allow you to share concerns with me. You might remember us chatting several years ago when I needed advice about a difficult pastoral issue, or going together to meet with a widow after [her husband’s] suicide. I understood that we had different views on some things, but it was disappointing that you would send a warning about me to men in my Presbytery without even bringing those concerns to my attention.

You said:

“When we first met, I had no idea that you were at all ‘Moscow-friendly’ as averred, though I’ve come to be concerned from things you’ve written (and also said at GA) that you have tendencies in this direction. This does concern me, as you would know from things I’ve published.”

I’m not exactly sure what “Moscow-friendly” means. I try to be friendly with brothers and sisters wherever I find them. For what it’s worth, almost no one in Moscow knows who I am. I’ve never been there, and while I appreciate the culture and a lot of the content that comes from there, I generally like my beer a bit darker than what is on tap at Christ Kirk. When your email was finally forwarded to me, it was interesting to read that, in the analysis of my preaching, nothing was identified as outside the standards or in contradiction to my ministerial vows. Yet I am a “Federal Vision problem in the OPC.” It seems the primary concern is that I am not willing to call Doug Wilson, Rich Lusk, Peter Leithart, et. al. heretics. If I am teaching something contrary to our Confession of Faith, I expect someone would have filed charges rather than simply circulating emails that amount to slander and gossip.

While I do not have many friends in Moscow, I used to have a lot of friends in NAPARC, and I can tell you that has changed since your email at the beginning of this year. You may have meant it for good, but others have used it as leverage for evil. Men that once were personal friends no longer answer my emails. I have been contacted by men in the OPC (from Florida to northern California), PCA, URC, RPCNA, and the Canadian Reformed Churches that have been warned I am a Federal Visionist. Members of my church have been told I am a false teacher and teach heresy. People have been pressured to leave or not to come to ROPC. We even had a ruling elder in our Presbytery visit a Reformed Baptist Church where he was warned about Joel Ellis. I never desired to be widely known, much less infamous, but the email you sent has been used to propagate a narrative that has damaged our congregation and its reputation far and wide.

Despite that, God has continued to pour out blessings on our church. Our congregation continues to grow and is remarkably unified. Recently a presbyter prayed publicly about the divisions at ROPC and the doctrinal problems that exist. That was news to me and to the ruling elder that attended Presbytery with me. We are not aware of any division or disunity. If anything, this year’s drama has brought our congregation closer and made us more united. The Lord works all things together for good.

An OPC minister in another Presbytery contacted me several months ago to defend the email you sent out. He encouraged me to leave the OPC. “We don’t believe the things you do, and you would be happier in the CREC,” he said. In two weeks, our congregation will have the first of two votes deciding whether to leave the OPC. Such a decision might have eventually happened anyway—our elders talked about the possibility before we were labeled “a Federal Vision problem”—but it would not have happened this year without the email you sent out. We would not have lost an intern and a ruling elder over the summer if the pressure campaign arising from your email had not brought the conversation to a head in our congregation. I love the OPC, and I would be happy and content to remain and continue serving as an OPC minister until I die. That is unlikely to happen now. We have spent a lot of time talking to members and trying to convince them that the pressure we have received to leave does not represent the OPC as a whole. No one man, or group of men, can speak for the denomination. But they can make it difficult for one man, or one congregation, to remain in the denomination, and I don’t have to tell you that this is not the first time something like this has happened in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Brother, I have no malice toward you. I love you. I respect the concerns you have for me grounded in what you perceive are important theological differences. But I would be glad to know what they are. If there are real theological differences, I would have been glad to have been asked about them, confronted about them, even brought up on charges so I could identify them. Being “Moscow-friendly” is not a chargeable offense, so far as I know, but evidently it is sufficiently egregious to warrant sending a warning to a brother’s Presbytery. You apologized for not handling things in a better way. “It would have been better to send it to the clerk if I just wanted the presbytery to look at it or, even better, to have contacted you and talked with you about it.” For what it’s worth, I would encourage you to reflect on whether your concerns are valid at all. We’ve known each other for quite a few years, but so far as I know, you’ve never visited ROPC. At the very least, when someone contacts you with concerns in the future, maybe you should seek the other side first before getting involved. 

Proverbs 18:13: He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him.

Proverbs 18:17: The first one to plead his cause seems right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him.

Your fellow-servant,

Joel Ellis