On the DeYoung/Brindle Incident
Decorum is not a good end in itself
This was originally posted as a thread on X on July 2, 2025
I’m noticing over the last few days a lot of attempts from within the PCA to justify DeYoung’s actions in the name of “decorum” and adherence to Robert’s Rules. I’m not buying it.
The thing with assembly decorum and Robert’s, they are not good ends in themselves. This might sound semi-blasphemous from a Presbyterian, but hear me out...
RRO and the decorum it and other rules require of ecclesiastical assemblies are tools. Like any tools, their value and goodness depends on what they are used for. They are not, for instance, morally binding in themselves. They are “good servants , but terrible masters.”
If Brindle said anything so egregious, it should be fairly easy to address it in categories of sin. RRO provides for smooth operation of meetings. State legislatures use them with utmost decorum, for instance, to pass evil laws furthering abortion, LGBT, etc.
The actions of MNA in the past year have scandalized the PCA and the church as a whole. I’m disappointed (yet sadly not particularly surprised, given the state of institutionalism in the church) that major changes in leadership and personnel (which is policy) have not come.
There’s a bit of a consistency problem when the harshest of terms and actions are being employed in the same assembly to condemn racialized nationalism while the denomination’s domestic mission agency seems to be run by someone captive to a form of racialized nationalism and the rules and decorum don’t have anything to say about the former but come down hard when someone notices the latter and says something. If the meeting of the whole church where Ince’s employment is the issue is not the time and place to address this, what is?
If RRO and standards of decorum (as tools) are being used as obstacles to dealing with real problems in the church, what good are they? In the tool analogy, if you have a chainsaw, you could build a beautiful log home, but you could also do Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
As an OPC guy, I know well (and many in the PCA also know well) what happened to J. Gresham Machen in the PCUSA. Polite moderate men with proper rules and decorum destroyed the man of truth and courage and condemned their church to slow death. Learn from this, or repeat it.
The PCA (as w/most denominations) has been infiltrated at various points by worldly ideologies. There’s a slowness to address these problems by the people who see them and a quickness to retaliate and punish by those furthering the problems and their moderate sympathizers.
Rules and decorum cannot accomplish what only courage, virtue, and sacrifice can. Good men must say hard things (and they must have place and time to say them) or else the problems will only continue to spread and destroy.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Either leaven must be purged or it will continue its work. And leaven can leaven with utmost procedure and decorum.
ADDENDUM: I saw Ryan Biese’s (@RFBWCF) article as well as Matthew Everhard’s @matt_everhard’s interview with Brindle. Brindle reported boos and hisses when he spoke and Biese reported raucous cheers and whistles when Ince was re-elected.
Is that decorum suitable for the assembly?
ADDENDUM II: Brindle has published a statement explaining his actions. https://www.timothybrindleministries.com/posts/unpacking-our-concerns-about-affinity-groups