Minister trials

By minister trials we mean trials for preaching. Not trials for stuff like stealing that happen to involve a minister. Minister trials are the easiest to find notes of on the web. The ministers being tried are frequently very public spokesmen for unpopular positions and the organization is generally very happy to have the beheading be public. They are unfortunately not representative of general disciplinary issues. Everybody involved knows there are larger issues at stake and they may be quoted a 100 years from now. The minister is willing to lose the battle to win the war.


Lee Irons:
This is the trial of a minister in the OPC (hardest right organization in NAPARC) that took a slightly liberal position on moral law. The debate is very technical but you got to love his final note:

I am not prepared to say that the OPC has fallen into irreparable apostasy, but something is terribly amiss with a denomination that is willing to indefinitely suspend me from the ministry for holding a position that is part of "a significant and vital stream of Reformed, Presbyterian, and confessional thought," and then turns right around the very next day and fails to censure a man who teaches a doctrine of justification that has never been part of any stream within the orthodox Reformed tradition, indeed, that denies the very reason for the Reformation itself. The implication is staggering: Murray's recasting of covenant theology is now an essential test of orthodoxy in the OPC, but the historic Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is not.