One of the many blessings of being a pastor or elder in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church is that you almost always know where the General Synod is going to be held, because since 1949, all but three of the ARP’s General Synods¹ have been held on the beautiful grounds of the denomination’s Bonclarken Conference Center² in Flat Rock, NC. And in keeping with that long tradition, the 222^nd ARP Synod met at Bonclarken from Monday, June 9, through Thursday, June 11 of 2026.

ARP Synods are famous within the NAPARC³ churches for a number of things, among them an almost latitudinarian approach to Robert’s Rules, and their brevity, often concluding well ahead of schedule, a fact that was actually alluded to by Rev. Peter VanDoodewaard, the Fraternal Delegate from the OPC (whose General Assemblies are famously long) in his address to the Synod. So, the fact that this particular meeting went on until Thursday at 11:45 AM was unusual and largely due to a number of issues that were debated at length and on more than one occasion heatedly, another rarity for the ARP. This was not a surprise, though, given that the issues being addressed included Kinism and Race Realism, Paedocommunion, the ownership of a hospital in Pakistan, the scandalous sale of an ARP church building in Georgia, and much discussion of how best to go about planting new ARP churches and reviving old ones.

Here then is a day-by-day summary of the actions of the ARP Synod. I have taken the liberty of skipping over some of the minutiae (mostly statistical and financial) that readers outside of the ARP are unlikely to find interesting or important.

Tuesday, June 9, 2026
The Synod itself began as they always do, with a memorial service for the ARP ministers and elders who have gone on to their eternal reward since the last meeting of Synod. It was followed by a worship service with preaching on Leviticus 24:1–9 by Rev. Myers McKinney and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, which, since the 219th General Synod, has included the use of wine, a welcome return to the historic (and more importantly Biblical) practice of the ARP church until the prohibition era. Another welcome return to historic practice was the frequent singing of Psalms at the assembly, as they had almost vanished from ARP Synods during the latter half of the twentieth century.⁴

This was the longest and most formal of the worship services in the Synod and the only one where the Lord’s Supper was served, but every day the Synod was in session, there were worship services including excellent preaching, singing of psalms and hymns, and for the first time in my experience of ARP Synods, the congregational reading of Catechism questions.

The worship service was followed by the recognition of churches, ministers, church planters, licentiates, and students studying for the ministry who had gotten their start since the last Synod. After this, the Synod was given a quick report on the outcome of memorials⁵ sent to the presbyteries for approval. The Synod was informed that a memorial designed to remove the term “self-excommunication” (since only courts of the church can excommunicate people) from the Book of Discipline had succeeded, and there was a great deal of relief when they were also told that the Committee of Revisions had been abolished. The Committee on Revisions was a fairly recent addition to the Synod. It was created with the intention of making sure that proposed amendments to the Form of Government, Book of Worship, and Book of Discipline were consistent with the rest of the church’s governing documents. In practice, however, it slowed the work of the assembly to a crawl as every proposed revision, no matter how small, made from the floor had to be approved by the committee before it could even be debated.

This was followed by the retiring moderator’s address delivered by David Walkup, in which he discussed the many wonderful experiences he had as moderator, many of which occurred in places like Rwanda, where the work of the ARP is rapidly expanding. He also encouraged the members of Synod to push back against the shoddy state of much of the evangelical church by “letting the excellence of your work be your protest.” He then turned over the moderator’s shield⁶ to Elder Beard McAulay, a farmer and a member of a family which had been in the ARP since his “fifth great grandfather, Ewan McCauley, came to the United States from Scotland by way of Ireland in the mid-1700s with two sons.” He noted that while the ARP should give thanks and praise to God for a rich history and beautiful heritage, they must not rest on that, and while he was an eighth-generation member of the ARP, he must not rest on that, but rather be forward-looking and interested in making first-generation Christians. He went on to declare that his emphasis for the coming year would be “Knowing Jesus, Growing in Grace” from 2 Peter 3:18 and challenged the ARP to “make Jesus the center of everything you do!”

Next, Gillian Brickey, president of the ARP Women’s Ministry, asked for the Synod to provide women’s ministry with more accountability as they sought to make more “Marys to sit at Jesus’s feet.” This was followed by a motion to create a committee to create more direct Synod oversight of the ARP Women’s Ministry, which passed unanimously.

Next on the agenda was the reception of Index 10, the report of the “Special Moderator’s Committee on Kinism and Race Realism,” which I expected to be the most debated and discussed issue on the docket. This was not to be, however, because as soon as the committee’s recommendations were read, a motion was made to recommit the report to the committee with instructions to:

(1) Provide clear, precise, glossary of definitions of all key terms, including “race, tribe, nation, ethnicity” and related concepts from the scripture and contra the racial realists and Kinists;

(2) identify and correct any remaining factual, citation, quotation, or other errors in the document if needed;

(3) address the issue of familial amor.

The mover stated he believed the report was “almost, but not yet,” a play on the famous phrase from Reformed eschatology, “already but not yet.” The motion to recommit was then amended to also send out the two-page executive summary of the report to all the churches of the ARP, and the amended motion passed, which means the committee will have another year to revise the report and present it to the 223^rd Synod. The Synod then offered up “prayer for the men who are leading the Kinism and Race Realism movements, for their repentance, and for the protection of those being led astray by their teaching.”

Skipping over a report on the Allocation of Synod funds, which I doubt will interest most people, the next order of business before the Synod was the receiving of fraternal greetings from the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church of Canada, delivered by Reverend Jeff Kingswood. This was especially notable because until 2024, the ARP churches in Canada were part of the American ARP rather than being an independent denomination with their own Synod. Several speakers noted that it was wonderful to have a new Reformed denomination that was not formed as a result of a split following theological declension. Reverend Kingswood spoke about the difficulties of ministering in Canada’s radically secular culture, which included hate crime protections being removed from religious speech, so that a pastor in Canada can legally be arrested merely for preaching what the Bible says about topics like homosexuality. He also mentioned the spread of the culture of death in Canada, with abortion being widely promoted and medical assistance in dying (assisted suicide) becoming the fourth leading cause of death in Canada. He further noted that there are actually discussions of it being used as a “solution to the problem of homelessness.” He also announced the denomination has been “handed our first theological commission issue.” The commission is dealing with the issue of affinity in marriage and was brought about when one of their pastors announced his intention to marry his late wife’s sister. Such a union would have been forbidden by the original text of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which in chapter 24.4 states, “The man may not marry any of his wife’s kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband’s kindred nearer in blood than of her own.” The ARP, however, following the example of the PCA and OPC, revised its version of the Westminster Confession to remove that clause in 2001. The Canadian ARP thus inherited the revised version and is now in the process of debating whether or not that revision was Biblical and wise.

Next on the Agenda was the report of World Witness, the ARP’s official Foreign Missions Committee. The director of World Witness noted the rapid expansion of work in the nations of Rwanda and Pakistan under the World Witness SEED Ministry. SEED (which stands for Serve by Educating, Equipping, and Discipling) is a global initiative dedicated to training, mentoring, and discipling church leaders and pastors in the Global South. Having traveled to Rwanda and taught with SEED, I can confirm the program is doing good work and may lay the foundation for a new Presbyterian and reformed denomination in that country.

The report, however, was overshadowed by a motion concerning one of World Witnesses’ main ministries in the nation of Pakistan, the Nancy Fulwood Hospital in Sahiwal (NFHS), and its related school of nursing. The issues involved are incredibly complicated, but it relates to a conflict over who actually owns the property, which was originally purchased in 1905 before the nation of Pakistan existed. At present, two legal entities in Pakistan hold the title to the property, and neither of them has a relationship to the ARP Synod or even World Witness, but attempts have been made to bring them all under the authority of World Witness, and as debate ensued, it became clear that not everyone in the Synod was enthusiastic about the way World Witness and its representatives had conducted themselves. Several amendments were made to the original proposal: “That the moderators committee be formed to study and recommend an appropriate plan to constitute the Nancy Fulwood Hospital Society as a standing committee of the Synod, assure a full transfer of property ownership to the society, and assure the assumption of all legal employment, administrative, and financial responsibilities thereof, including but not limited to fundraising, as soon as possible.”

And I believe this was the most debated and discussed issue the Synod considered. It was not resolved by the end of business on Tuesday evening.

Wednesday, June 10, 2026
The Synod resumed with a season of prayer in consideration of the contentious issues before the assembly, and I can honestly report that this had a discernible effect on the atmosphere and temper of the debates that followed.

Next up, the assembly received fraternal greetings from John Bise, the Provisional Stated Clerk of the PCA. His address to the assembly dwelt on our shared commitments. He assured us that we are prayed for, valued, and not alone in our work. He also stated how grateful they were for the Statement on Race Realism and Kinism that we had passed at our last Synod and noted that the PCA had also adopted it at their General Assembly. His address highlighted the unity of the NAPARC denominations in officially opposing Race Realism and Kinism. As of my writing, our statement has also officially been adopted by the PCA, RPCNA, OPC, URCNA, and FRCNA.

The Synod then resumed debate on the latest motion regarding the Nancy Fullwood Hospital in Pakistan two amendments later, a motion was made to erect a Moderator’s Committee to examine all aspects of the way “World Witness relates to the work of the ARP mission in Pakistan and the work of Christian Hospital, Ltd and the NFHS” and then report back and make recommendations to the 2027 meeting of the ARP Synod. The final form of the motion was important in that it removed some language that had implied that World Witness and its representatives needed to be “investigated” (which is language that usually implies some sort of impropriety that may result in charges has occurred), and the mover of the original amendment apologized for any offense that such language had caused. All in all, it seemed like God had answered the Synod’s prayers that the matter would be resolved amicably.

The Synod then took up the second most contentious issue discussed by the Synod. It concerned a motion made by a delegate on the floor that was intended to resolve a scandal that had occurred in the former Second Presbytery.⁷ The delegate had made the astonishing motion that the Synod transfer $650,000 from the money left over following the dissolution of Second Presbytery to a PCA church plant in Tucker, GA. To say this was an odd request would be an understatement, but once he and other speakers on the floor told the story behind the request, it began to make sense. Apparently, the congregation at Tucker ARP had been dwindling for many years, and certain personalities within the presbytery began to pressure them to dissolve (rather than replanting or revitalizing). One of the side effects of closure would be the sale of their property by the presbytery. Eventually, Tucker ARP gave in, and the presbytery, through a close relative of the pastor most active in shutting them down, put the church up for sale. As it happened, a year before the church was put up for sale a conservative PCA church plant had started in Tucker at a local school, and they became extremely eager to buy the church building and offered $650,000. Instead of accepting the offer and replacing one old NAPARC church with a young and vigorous one, Second Presbytery sold the property to a Muslim associated with the mosque across the street from the church building for much less than the PCA plant had offered. The church was then converted into an Islamic school.

Virtually the entire Synod was appalled when they heard about this. As more than one delegate remarked, “There is sin in the camp!” Others pointed out that the money that was received was “blood money” as it was obtained at the cost of men’s souls. After that, the decision to give the money to the building fund of the PCA church plant seemed to have widespread support. There was, however, significant resistance to the idea from the members of a committee that had been tasked with resolving how to disperse the money remaining after the dissolution of Second Presbytery (a little over $7 million). A motion was then made to simply disburse the money by giving $2 million to Outreach North America for church planting, $2 million to Erskine Seminary to endow a new chair for church planting and evangelism, $2 million to World Witness for establishing new churches abroad, and $650,000 for the PCA church plant in Tucker. Objections to the plan were raised, and the debate became quite contentious, especially since at times the speakers addressed persons rather than issues.

The debate again paused as the assembly reached an order of the day.⁸ The Board of Benefits made its report, which took only a matter of minutes, and was consequently well received by the assembly.

The Synod then heard from OPC Delegate Peter VanDoodewaard, who let us know that the OPC has forty-three church plants underway and forty vacant churches that need pastors. This was of interest to me personally since our own church planting organization, Outreach North America (ONA), has great difficulty attracting church planters, so for the OPC to have forty-three going at the same time is a strong indication that their Home Missions committee is doing something right. He also indicated that their overture to create a committee to study and report on Christian Nationalism had been adopted and that, like the PCA, they had also adopted our statement on Race Realism and Kinism.

The Synod returned to the discussion of how to handle the Tucker scandal and whether to disburse the money or use it for other purposes, such as helping the pastors who lost expected funds when the pension fund was restructured (to prevent a total collapse) from a defined-benefit pension plan to a defined-contribution 403(b) plan. This, too, was voted down. And the issue remained unresolved while several other orders of the day occurred.

The Synod heard a report about the good work being done in advancing the Christian faith in Pakistan through the Nursing College in Pakistan, and then we paused for a sweet moment when the campers from Camp Joy came in and sang for the assembly. The camp, which was founded in 1980, is a weeklong, residential Christian summer camp specifically designed for adults and individuals with physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities. It is held at Bonclarken in Aiken, South Carolina, Lake Wales, Florida, and Wirtz, Virginia, and has plans to open a new location in Tennessee. I cannot recommend this ministry enough.

We then received fraternal greetings from the Canadian Reformed Churches, who are celebrating their seventy-fifth anniversary. Their delegate echoed the earlier warnings about the aggressively secular spirit of the Canadian culture as well as their determination to continue to preach the Gospel regardless.

The Synod then returned to debating what to do with the Second Presbytery money, and many attempts at amendments to the $2 million/$2 million/$2 million/$650K were proposed but failed. Eventually, the main motion passed, and the money will be dispersed as suggested. Following the final decision to send the money to the Tucker plant, the Synod paused to pray a prayer of public repentance for having anything to do with such wickedness. I know that I and the vast majority of the delegates were relieved at the outcome, and I should note that the pastor most involved in the original decision to sell the church to Muslims instead of brothers in Christ is no longer part of the ARP, having fled from church discipline.

We next heard a report from the Interchurch Relations Committee, which manages the ARP’s ecumenical and fraternal relationships with other churches and Reformed bodies. The most important part of their report was the announcement that we were ending fraternal relations with the EPC (Evangelical Presbyterian Church). Although the ARP had long-standing relations with the EPC since their formation, we have been growing more and more concerned over their incompatible positions on issues such as women’s ordination and the perception that their tolerance towards Side B Christianity was increasing. This was in keeping with our decision to break off fraternal relations with the CRC in 2011 over related issues.

We then received fraternal greetings from the RPCNA delegate. He also reported that they had adopted our statement on Kinism and Race Realism and that in the Spring, their presbytery had deposed and excommunicated one of their ministers for holding to and proclaiming those heresies. We were also told that they were considering making women deacons a session-by-session issue as they are in the ARP. This would mean that a local session (as ours has) could determine that women would not be considered eligible for the office of deacon in their congregation. They are hoping we will hold another concurrent synod with them in the near future, as we did in 2019.

The report of Outreach North America, the ARP’s church planting and revitalization organization, was then brought by its director, Reverend Morrie Lawing. This was of particular interest to me as I have just finished serving as the chairman of that particular board, and our congregation is currently planting a church with the help of ONA through our presbytery. Rev. Lawing pointed out that we are currently losing more churches than we gain, with some estimates that we are in danger of closing around eighty churches in the next ten years. This makes church planting and revitalization efforts vital, but our biggest problem is finding men willing to be church planters. He was therefore highly encouraged to hear that ONA will be receiving $2 million dollars for church planting and that Erskine Seminary would also be receiving $2 million in order to specifically train future church planters and evangelists.

After receiving a report from the Dunlap board, which supports orphans and vulnerable children globally,⁹ the assembly adjourned for the evening.

Thursday, June 11, 2026
The first part of the work of the Synod was dealing with a motion from Rev. Ben Glaser that “in consideration of the one hundredth anniversary of the formation of the 1926 synod committee that led to the production of the Bible Songs book that the moderator form a special committee made up of three ministers, two elders, and two advisory members who love the Bible songs to present a report to the 2027 General Senate on the positive role of psalm singing in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.” The motion passed and is noteworthy in that it may help to encourage the readoption of “inclusive psalmody” in ARP churches that currently only sing hymns and/or contemporary praise songs.

This was followed by the report of the Executive Committee, in which it was announced that Rev. Ben Glaser would be writing a book and a booklet (suitable for distribution to visitors and church members) on the history of the ARP.

After Camp Joy gave their formal report along with recommendations, we had the election of the next moderator and vice moderator. Rev. Mark Miller was elected moderator, and Mr. Steve Maloney was elected vice moderator. Mr. Maloney provoked widespread laughter as his acceptance speech consisted only of asking us to pray for the continued good health of Rev. Mark Miller!

The Synod moved on to two final pieces of business, only the first of which was expected to be contentious.

The Memorials Committee then presented its recommendation regarding two memorials sent up by presbyteries. The first, which was received from the Mississippi Valley Presbytery, had to do with paedocommunion and, specifically, getting the Synod to declare: “Paedo-communion, also known as ‘young child communion,’ is not compatible with Holy Scripture and the Confessional Standards of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, particularly Question and Answer 177 of the Westminster Larger Catechism. Ordained officers in the ARP may not hold to, teach, or practice paedo-communion/young child communion.”

The memorials committee recommended that the motion be adopted, but that the memorial be amended by striking the portion that read “also known as young child communion” from the text. The amendment was approved by the Synod. Significant debate about the memorial then began. A representative from Mississippi Valley Presbytery pointed out that the impetus for the memorial was not theoretical; it came up because of the presence of men in the presbytery who were at least sympathetic to the practice. Two of the men considered to be leading theologians in the denomination argued against its adoption. One, because he felt terms were not adequately defined and that a man could hold to paedocommunion but not teach it, and the other because he felt that the Synod should not tell presbyteries what exceptions they could and could not take.

Personally, I felt that the spirit of the overture was correct; paedocommunion is a heresy specifically condemned in our standards and never practiced in any Presbyterian churches until the late twentieth century. Also, the practice has to be uniform throughout the ARP. If a session admits an infant to the Lord’s Supper and the parents travel with that child to another ARP church that does not practice paedocommunion, that church may be placed in the very difficult position of telling those parents their “communing child” should not be given the Lord’s Supper. I addressed the assembly on this point, noting that it was only an in thesi deliverance¹⁰ that only expressed the mind of this particular Synod and said that it would be better if the original movers crafted another memorial or move that it be included in our Form of Government.

In the end, a motion to form another Moderator’s Committee to study the issue passed, and a decision on the matter was postponed. I was disappointed by this, as it should have been something the Synod could adopt without needing direction from a committee. The second memorial, from Catawba Presbytery, which passed without significant debate, was to reword the ARP Form of Government so that it follows the pattern of the Westminster Standards by beginning with “Jesus Christ, upon whose shoulders the government is . . . ”

Finally, I would have liked to have been able to report that the Synod finished without contention, and normally that would have been the case, as the final report was from the Nominations Committee, which is usually a matter of simply approving their candidates. In this case, however, an objection was made to one of the candidates for the Board of Trustees of Erskine College and Seminary. The grounds being that the nominee, who is a female lawyer, also held the position of Senior Church Warden in the vestry of her Episcopal church, and that she is in favor of women’s ordination. Significant debate erupted over whether that position was the equivalent of a Presbyterian elder, as the speaker had stated, and whether the church she attends was misidentified. As it turned out, the church she attends is a member of the Anglican Church in North America, a theologically conservative alternative to the Episcopal Church, and all of the clergy in that church are male. What was most baffling, though, was that the individual making the motion was also on the Board of Trustees and that the board’s secretary reported that the board’s vote to advance her nomination had been unanimous and without much discussion. Ultimately, her nomination was upheld, with a smattering of no votes.

In keeping with tradition, the oldest minister present in the assembly then moved to adjourn, a motion that passed, and the Synod closed with prayer and the singing of Psalm 133.

Notes

1. The ARP holds a General Synod (from the Greek synodos—meeting) rather than a General Assembly like the PCA or the OPC because of the belief, inherited from their Scottish Seceder and Covenanter forefathers, that the fracturing of the church into various denominations forbids us to think of ourselves as the General Assembly of the visible church, but to remember that we are only a small part of the Body of Christ (Col. 1:24).
2. If you have ever wondered about the origins of the name “Bonclarken” you’re probably not alone. In 1921 after the ARP bought the former Heidelberg estate they held a naming contest for the new facility, and the winning entry submitted by Mrs. Sallie Miller Brice of Chester, South Carolina was “Bonclarken.” A made she made up by combining the Latin for good (bonus) with the Latin for clear (clarus) and the Scottish verb to know or to see (ken). Thus, Bonclarken is supposed to mean “good clear vision.”
3. North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council, a fraternal body that includes most of the theologically conservative Presbyterian and Reformed denominations in the United States and Canada.
4. The ARP practiced exclusive psalmody from its founding until 1946 when the singing of hymns was allowed by the General Synod. Hymns quickly became dominant in ARP worship, but psalmody never entirely disappeared (for instance, each General Synod is closed with the singing of Psalm 133) and now appears to be making a comeback.
5. Most other presbyterian bodies call them “overtures.”
6. The moderator’s shield is literally a shield-like medallion bearing the ARP logo and motto, which is passed from the retiring to the incoming moderator and worn around the neck. I am told it is actually quite heavy, and many moderators choose not to wear it for the duration of the Synod.
7. In 2024 the ARP Synod declared Second Presbytery to be “irrevocably broken” and subsequently dissolved it.
8. In the ARP, orders of the day are matters such as committee reports, greetings from fraternal delegates, meals, or worship services placed at a certain point in the schedule that supersede any business currently on the floor.
9. It may be of interest to ARP members to know about the Dunlap Adoption Assistance Fund (AAF), which is a grant program established to help ARP pastors, elders, and members in good standing manage the high financial costs of domestic and foreign adoption.
10. An in thesi deliverance is a non-judicial statement or resolution issued by a church court (Session, Presbytery, Synod) on a doctrinal, ethical, or practical issue. It does not carry the force of a binding judicial decision or enforceable law.

©Andrew Webb. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• Andrew Webb

  

  Andrew Webb is pastor of Providence Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he has served since 2001. Born in England but raised in the United States, he holds an MA in History from the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) and an MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia.) In addition to pastoral ministry, he enjoys teaching theology, Bible, and church history at Trinity Bible Institute in Uganda. He and his wife, Joy, have four children.

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