Last year, the PCA General Assembly ratified a provision to their Book of Church Order (BCO) 7-3 to explicitly declare that the office of pastor and deacon were exclusive to men. This was to combat creeping feminism within the Presbyterian Church in America. Despite the actions of the General Assembly, there remain defiant churches, but how many churches in the PCA actually ordain female deacons?
Paul Biegler, a professed lawyer and Presbyterian layman, committed himself to investigate just how many churches ordain women as deacons. Through website checks, he scoured 1,752 churches across (over) 78 presbyteries. Biegler does make an exception for the Korean presbyteries due to potential linguistic barriers, so they are not accounted for in his investigation. He also revised his counts after the initial tweets, with this data being confirmed via direct message.
| Result | Church Count | Percent |
| Inactive or Dead Website | 228 | 13.01% |
| Explicitly Male Deacons | 692 | 39.50% |
| Unknown/Unlisted | 722 | 41.21% |
| Unclear | 18 | 1.03% |
| Contained Female Deacons | 92 | 5.25% |
| 1752 |
Biegler uncovered that a substantial number of PCA churches have inactive or dead website links, leading to an inability to investigate. This is always an issue with longstanding church directories, but at 13%, this is no outlier, as it should be.
The good news is that at least 39.50% of PCA churches were found to be orthodox on the issue of male deacons, with explicit listings of their deacons on their websites. He did find exceptions where there were a few who listed “Shepherdesses” or a distinct “Diaconal Ministry Team that included men and women.” He cites Wildwood Church in Tallahassee with its “Shepherdesses” as a distinct ministry from deacons. This is probably an exception, not a norm, and probably better placed in a different category. It should be noted that the word “Pastor” means shepherd, so the semantic use of the term shepherdess is irreverent and not in compliance with the BCO or any doctrine of biblical orthodoxy regarding ordination.
Unknown means that the church does not list its deacons via its website. Many of these churches are probably within compliance of the BCO. For example, Matthew Everhard of Gospel Fellowship PCA, in his reaction video to this investigation, lamented that his church, while orthodox, does not list their deacons online. It should be safe to assume that a supermajority of churches in the PCA are compliant on this issue.
Unclear denotes ambiguity in the church website, where Biegler found that “they may have had a statement indicating acknowledgment of the PCA’s position, but did not distinguish deacons from assistants to the deacons or still used the term “deaconess” contrarily to BCO 7-3.” The PCA allows women to serve as “Assistants to the Deacons,” which should not have Dwight Schrute’s delusions that they are the Assistant Deacons. These churches would require further investigation. Overall, there is ambiguity in these churches which would be about 1% of overall churches in the investigation.
Of the PCA churches that possess female deacons, Biegler found 92 in violation of the BCO. His original post stated 88, but has since been revised upward, indicating that at least 5.25% of churches are in violation of the BCO on female deacons. Again, this does not include those that are unknown, the Korean presbyteries, or those otherwise ambiguous.
One interesting note is that the Rio Grande Presbytery has three churches in violation of 7-3 of the BCO: New City Fellowship El Paso, City Presbyterian Church Albuquerque, and Christ Church Santa Fe PCA. This is the same presbytery wrongly persecuting Zachary Garris for the wrongthink of affirming the Presbyterians like Dabney who were correct on biblical issues like slavery that violate modern sensibilities.
Another important find was that of the former Tim Keller’s Redeemer, which is a multicampus church situated in New York City. Of the five campuses, East Harlem has both a “shepherdess” and a female deacon, and Downtown has two Asian women serving as deacons. Redeemer does not list many deacons, and the few that they do list are the women identified. They also rely extensively on titles of “Director,” “Coordinator,” or “Manager” in roles that might be functionally equivalent to elders or deacons in a church. Collectively, all five campuses are in violation of the BCO, not only by association but the use of alternative, managerial titles that operate a church as a business that subverts proper church polity.
Conclusion
One man’s extensive survey of over 1700 PCA churches yielded rather disastrous results wherein over 5.25% of churches are in clear violation of PCA doctrine regarding the use of female deacons. This number is the floor, and any use of the term “shepherdess” is also a blatant violation of the BCO as is evident in the etymology of the word “Pastor,” which is no mystery to those who know Spanish, Italian, or Latin. If anything, Biegler undersells how pervasive the problem is.
Truly, the fact that the PCA would rather target the likes of Garris for upholding historical Presbyterian doctrine while tolerating outright violations speaks to the state of many local presbyteries and the expansive influence of Tim Keller’s progressivism in the PCA.
