PCA? I thought they were liberal too. Reformed Presby maybe. Or reformed baptist. There are also Lutheran Brethren churches here and there. Small though. And there’s the AFLC which is also still small.
I will warn people that you cannot assume anything by a denominational name anymore though. This social gospel works driven purpose driven nuttiness is in every denomination. Only a very few are speaking out against it.
Paul Proctor spoke of it as a sifting of the saints, and I think he is right. The Lord is calling his people out of the apostate churches. And sometimes they’re getting kicked out for being too biblical.
The local WELS church, although it calls itself "conservative," features pop music and purpose-driven sermons. Yawn.
The LCMS church around here has a "traditional" service. They also have two contemporary services -- the difference is that one contemporary service features sappy Christian pop music and the other contemporary service offers loud Christian rock music. To each his own. I guess I shouldn't complain but I am increasingly alienated from American pop culture and I am tired of how it takes over everything -- everything is supposed to be chaos and noise and "positive thinking" or whatever the fad is.
Ahem.
The PCA is an interesting denomination. Some churches are liturgical. Some have a bit of modern flair.
But: the PCA is firmly anti-abortion, no women in the pulpit, Scripture is the inerrant inspired word of God. In every PCA church I have attended (>20) and everyone of the countless PCA ministers I have ever met are firmly committed to faithfully preached Christ died for sinners.
There was an issue with the New Perspective On Paul in one Presbytery and the denomination didn't blink and declared that heresy outside of the bounds of Scriptural teaching. Several churches teaching the heresy left the denomination and the Presbytery was disciplined for not providing spiritual oversight.
The interesting thing about the PCA is that the "home office" has very little power. The local bodies are very suspicious of the home office for a good reason: when we left the PC(USA) we lost buildings and had very little to call our own. The home office don't own the churches, they must appeal to the local churches for money, etc. All power flows from the churches up, via the General Assembly, not from the top down.
Are there some liberal churches in the PCA? I'm sure there are. But that hardly makes us a liberal denomination any more than a conservative UMC/ELCA/ECUS church makes that denomination conservative.
< /rant>
The PCA churches I’ve been to (three) have been quite conservative, solidly grounded in Biblical teaching and free of purpose-driven balderdash. Then again, it’s a fairly de-centralized denomination from what I understand, so your local church may vary. My wife and I have gone to the local PCUSA church a couple of times since we landed here in North Carolina, and I’m not impressed. Female associate pastor, too much “social responsibility” preaching, just a general squishiness about the entire place. My first PCA pastor in South Carolina, the man who married me and my wife, was a brilliant, no-BS Michigander who brought me into the fold and taught me so, so much.
}:-)4
From the PCA: RC Sproul, D. James Kennedy, M. Horton, Peter Leithart, Tim Keller, the list goes on...
Not liberal at all (although some have been found to sing something other than the Trinity Hymnal :>)
The PCA is conservative, at least for now, but there are elements within the PCA that are trying to liberalize it. The OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian Church) is still very conservative. The Christian Reformed Church went the way of the liberals.
Right now, my husand and I stay home on Sundays and listen to sermons online, because there are no conservative Reformed churches in our area. We had considered going to a LCMS church, even though we’re plain Presbyterians and don’t go for all their high church falderal, because there was one LCMS church in our area that still had a traditional service and pretty good, serious biblical preaching (even though not Reformed), but they are starting to get a little loosey-goosey now, too.
We live in a suburb of a medium-sized city, and we can’t find one good, conservative church that preaches from the Bible and has a traditional service that is within reasonable driving distance (I’m talking less than an hour) from where we live. We are quite discouraged.