"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose —with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."
--Vice Admiral James Stockdale
🚨BREAKING: A Texas father who beat a man to death after finding him raping his 5-year-old daughter was not charged.
The father found Jesus Mora Flores sexually assaulting the little girl after a witness saw the man take her to a remote area. The father ran toward her screams, inflicted blows to the attacker’s head and neck, then called 911 saying the man was dying.
A medical exam confirmed the girl had been sexually assaulted. A grand jury declined to indict the father, finding he was legally allowed to use deadly force to protect his child. Prosecutors announced he would face no charges.
@libbyemmons As a NICU dad, after our #GooberCat almost died in that first week, I decided I don't care how many diapers she blows out, I don't care how much she cries at 3AM, I will be happy she's with us.
My wife agrees.
Dale Partridge has gone from Baptist, to Presbyterian, and now Anglican in a few short years.
But here’s the problem. As a pastor, you and your church don’t magically become Presbyterian by declaring yourself Presbyterian, and you don’t magically become Anglican by declaring yourself Anglican.
The hypocrisy is especially rich because Dale is now attacking modern evangelicalism for precisely his own problem: independent ecclesiologies, autonomous pastors, lack of ecclesiastical continuity, and the absence of meaningful ecclesiastical authority.
Excellent. Then submit yourself to the ecclesiastical authority you’re preaching about.
You cannot spend an hour explaining how independent Protestantism is fragmented because pastors and congregations answer only to themselves, then solve the problem by changing your own denomination.
Ecclesiology isn’t self-identification. It is actual church government, jurisdiction, ordination, and submission to ecclesiastical authority. Even Webbon, as holding to 1689 ought be accountable to an association, yet he too remains independent.
So before Dale tells everyone he has gone from Baptist to Presbyterian to Anglican, I’d like to know when he actually became subject to a presbytery or a bishop.
Where was the presbytery?
If Dale was a Presbyterian pastor, where was the Presbyterian process of examination, ordination, and presbytery oversight? A Baptist pastor does not become a Presbyterian minister simply by adopting Presbyterian theology. In Presbyterian polity, ministry is recognized and governed through an actual presbytery.
So if Dale never entered a Presbyterian denomination, was examined and ordained within Presbyterian polity, and placed under presbytery authority, then calling himself “Presbyterian” did not make him a Presbyterian minister. He remained an independent minister who adopted a form of Presbyterian theology while rejecting its polity.
Now he’s saying he’s Anglican.
Okay. Where’s the bishop?
Anglicanism isn’t merely Reformed theology plus the Book of Common Prayer. It has an actual episcopal polity. If Dale is becoming an Anglican priest, where is the Anglican jurisdiction? Where is the diocese? Where is the bishop? What process has he undergone for his existing ministry to be recognized? Who has canonical authority over him?
Which bishop can examine him?
Which bishop can discipline him?
Which bishop can remove him from ministry?
Who actually has jurisdiction over his church?
Because you cannot be a Baptist pastor one day, put on a clerical collar and announce that you’re Presbyterian while remaining independent of a presbytery, and then announce that you’re Anglican while remaining independent of a diocese.
If autonomous pastors and independent churches are the problem, then stop being one.
"An institution that puffs up the credentials of its president is less likely to closely examine the credentials of a celebrity hire — or to hold that celebrity sufficiently to account when discrepancies in his life story emerge that cannot be explained away." -@KSPrior
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