City Church leaving PCA for moderate RCA over women in ministry

City Church, a strategic Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation in San Francisco is leaving the denomination because its leadership has embraced an egalitarian view of female elders, the North California Presbytery announced last week.

City Church, a strategic Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation in San Francisco is leaving the denomination because its leadership has embraced an egalitarian view of female elders, the North California Presbytery announced last week.

The North California granted City Church’s request to leave the PCA during a special called meeting on June 10 in San Ramon. City Church has petitioned the more moderate Reformed Church in America (RCA) for membership.

The church is leaving the conservative PCA because its elders have come to disagree with chapters 8 and 9 of the denomination’s Book of Church Order (BCO) which limit the role of deacon and elder to males only.

The congregation and its pastors told presbytery officials, “The elders of this church find themselves out of accord with BCO chapters 8 and 9, which assume the role of deacon and elder are for qualified males only. We have changed our views and believe that the ecclesiastical offices of the church are open to both men and women, and can no longer with good conscience prohibit women from these offices.”

Though it is still technically a part of the PCA until the RCA affirms its membership, City Church has wasted no time in appointing a woman to a major leadership position in the church. On June 10, pastor Fred Harrell announced on the church website the hire of Frances Nelson as Director of Congregational Care.

While no mention was made of making Nelson an elder, Harrell recounts a discussion during a recent pastoral staff lunch in which he asked fellow pastors for the name of a person who would be right to bring on the staff to “pastor our community groups and increase congregational care.” One pastor suggested Nelson as the perfect person for this pastoral position, the letter says.

The RCA was born in 1628 in a small colonial town named New Amsterdam. In 1970, it became one of the first Reformed denominations to officially sanction the ordination of women to the office of elder. In 1979, the RCA’s General Synod approved the ordination of women as “ministers of Word and Sacrament.” Today, the denomination includes 21 ordained female pastors.

Since the late-1970s, the RCA has also wrangled with the biblical propriety of homosexuality. While the RCA continues to affirm heterosexual marriage as the biblical teaching, the denomination reinitiated “an honest and intentional dialogue on homosexuality.” The RCA website admits that “deep divisions” exist within the denomination over homosexuality.