Prominent PCA Pastor Burk Parsons Suspended Indefinitely From Pulpit After ‘Guilty’ Verdict
Prominent PCA pastor Burk Parsons has been indefinitely suspended from the pulpit after being found guilty of unbecoming pastoral conduct by the PCA’s Central Florida Presbytery.
Parsons is the senior pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel, a prominent PCA congregation in Sanford, Florida, as well as the chief publishing officer for Ligonier Ministries, editor of Tabletalk magazine, and a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow. Months ago, he was brought up on charges related to his personal conduct and temperament.
Yesterday, the Judicial Commission of the Central Florida Presbytery announced that, after hearing testimony from nearly 60 witnesses and conducting more than 45 hours of trial proceedings, resulting in two full days of deliberation, they unanimously found him guilty of three charges.
- Being harsh, ungentle, and unkind to those under his care or with whom he interacts
- Not being a humble servant leader but instead “lording it over others” (i.e, autocratic) and being domineering, contentious, and quarrelsome/pugnacious in his leadership so that those in his care and in his “leadership orbit” were intimidated, bullied, and/or afraid
- Slandering and/or demeaning other servants and churches of our Lord
Some of the (more) specifics include actions towards Ruling Elders (RE’s) and congregants:
According to the report:
The Commission voted unanimously to indefinitely suspend (Teaching Elder) Parsons from office, but not from the sacraments, citing insufficient signs of repentance and a need for pastoral reflection about his calling as an elder.
During this time TE Parsons cannot participate in the duties of an elder, including preaching, teaching, administering the sacraments, and participating in the church courts.
The Commission reveals that the suspension remains in effect until “satisfactory evidence of repentance is provided.”
Notably, they also point out that this isn’t the first time Parsons has faced these type of allegations. Parsons “previously plead guilty to similar charges in 2019 and received admonition at that time.”
This, along with “subsequent reports of relational harm and unhealthy leadership environment, taking
place both before and since the 2019 event” indicate an “unresolved pattern, and thus led the
Commission to discern that indefinite suspension was the appropriate censure.”
Parsons plans to appeal to appeal the decision.
About Author
in the PCA “RE” is “Ruling Elder” not “resident.”
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This report is pretty useless since it offers no examples of what they’re claiming he said.
I went and found a sermon of his on Ligonier Ministries on youtube and started watching it. I think they need to add to this document “he talks too slow.” I had to put him on 1.5 to get him to even close to normal preacher speed. I guess he and Steve Lawson went to “how to talk super slow” school together, and probably graduated together with James White. And of course the first sermon I found of this freak is trying to equate Omnipotence to God being a lunatic puppetmaster freak from hell as Calvinism teaches. So, contrary to Anon who had a problem with the report not giving any example of what this man did wrong, of how he spiritually abused people, I FOUND ONE: He taught Calvinism. That IS spiritual abuse. Fire him, defrock him, and send him to the penitentiary for life, because he is guilty of being a vile heretic and spiritual abuser, and Satanist, because he teaches a false god who predestines all sins.
“The goal of God’s work in us is to bring our lives into harmony and agreement with His own righteousness, and so to manifest to ourselves and others our identity as His adopted children. We discover in God’s law a picture of God’s own image, to which we are being progressively conformed.”
As we read through the Scriptures and especially the New Testament books we find that this statement clearly and faithfully reflects the goal of God’s work in the lives of his children. The above quote is from “A Little Book on the Christian Life” (2017 Proclamation Trust), taken from the writings of John Calvin. If anyone’s writings and sermons are faithful to the teachings of Jesus and the Scriptures we should take them to heart and not slander them.
Papist freak.
Whose a Papist freak? Titus Romanus? He takes that name because he supports what Emperor Titus did to the Jewish temple, not because he’s a Roman Catholic. He’s Protestant. He’s just against Dispensationalism.
There are reasons to suspend a pastor — speaking harshly? Good grief.
The report undersells it. It seems it was because he made people in his congregation who came to him for counselling into sermon illustrations to shame them publicly, allegedly.
He did not do that.
Harshly is the nicest term to describe Parsons actions. A better description of how he treated people in his congregation was with disdain and disgust. He did not treat others with common respect but thought of himself as being far superior to everyone else and thus the members of his congregation were viewed as his subjects, undeserving of his courteous treatment, and far beneath his intelligence and status.
Behind closed door. Parsons went on unrestrained angry rampages to humiliate and instill fear in people.
We should pray for the man, made in the image of Christ, preached the Word of God. God bless him and help him.
Matthew 18 was not followed by whomever accused Dr. Parsons. I’ve been attending St. Andrews for about 8 years and was surprised to hear these charges. I have never heard anything being discussed that would give me reason to believe these charges are true and my interactions with Dr. Parsons have always been pretty normal. Please pray for our congregation, our elders and pastors,for the presbytery and those bringing these charges.
We have been attending for 6 years and have heard the sermons in question. Dr Parsons is a biblical expositor, this makes people angry because he serves God and the Lord’s word and does not bend to man’s pressure for the world.
Lets get to the truth of this matter. Parson had every opportunity to repent, apologize and show his regret for his actions. He had not only the personal cell phone numbers, also their private email addresses and mailing addresses of everyone he abused and offended. He knew their family members. At no time during the process did he issue any statement of apology. He also personally ran into several of his victims afterwards out and about without saying a peep. He sat across from his victims at trial. He had the elders ask the men to keep quiet, not to arrange a meeting. Some of his most seriously abused victims requested a written apology but he refused stating he would never acknowledge anything in writing. Parsons wants to keep this game he has been playing to keep going on,
Believe me when I tell you, Parsons had no intention and never intended to apologize to anyone! I find it interesting that the script has been flipped to fault the victims over Matt 18. Anyone making a statement of Matt 18 not being followed is just repeating the nonsense of someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about as if Parsons was wronged due to some mishandling of the matter. Parsons was the perpetrator, NOT the victim.
So we have more than 100 members who have spoken up about being mistreated in this last case, we have 8 men who together came forward about being severally psychological abused by Parsons in his discipleship group over a five year period ending in 2019, we have another young man who subsequently filed his own case against Parsons for making horrible statements about him to others, and you want to say all these people are just making these allegations up? For what reason? Sorry, but when you have this many people who claim they were wounded, you should use your brain and reasoning skills to recognize the common denominator in all these various stories that have come out over quite a stretch of time, is that they all point to Parsons.
I wonder what RC would have to say about all this.