2026 PCA General Assembly Report
PCA General Assembly (GA) 2026 has adjourned. There was a record number of overtures (our term for motions/requests from Presbyteries), but we managed to finish on time thanks to the moderation of RE Mel Duncan. Mel’s brother Ligon was one of my seminary professors and is now the chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary. (Ligon also once moderated a General Assembly, and they’re apparently the second pair of brothers to moderate the PCA General Assembly.)
I think every General Assembly is exhausting, exciting, and encouraging. While there’s too many issues to cover exhaustively, here’s a few highlights:
Fred Greco is the new Stated Clerk of the PCA - Following a thorough search, our Administrative Committee unanimously recommended TE Fred Greco to be our next Stated Clerk, which was first announced in January and officially approved this week. Fred is a former lawyer turned pastor, a gifted administrator, and an expert in church polity. He has pastored a church in Houston for the past 20 years. He said he plans to visit every Presbytery in the next few years so that he can be a servant to the denomination.
Overture 37 and clarity on church officers - Several measures came to the Assembly related to female deacons. They received very few affirmative votes. The Overtures Committee gave their grounds for their negative answer, saying, “Our constitutional documents are a sufficient expression of the biblical warrant, nature, qualifications, and duties of Deacons.”
Steve Dowling Interim MNA Coordinator for another year - RE Steve Dowling will be serving as Interim Mission to North America (MNA) Coordinator for another year. Meanwhile, a search for his permanent replacement recently started. MNA shared some details about new accounting protocols to unravel a complex financial issue they’ve uncovered.
Study Committees - Occasionally the assembly asks a small group of scholars or experts to study an issue and report on it. The 2025 Committees on Christian Nationalism and the Directory for Public Worship will continue for another year. We also asked a group (to be named soon by our moderator) to study the issue of Artificial Intelligence and its pastoral and ethical implications. For more on the study committee reports:
The Report regarding the Revision of the Directory for Worship has not yet been approved but is available in draft form for review.
RE Joshua Torrey (an engineer for Apple based in Austin, TX) has written about Artificial Intelligence and its general pastoral implications.
A Cheeseburger-loving Taiwanese-American Teaching Elder - We have many serious, tense moments at General Assembly. (We disagree without being disagreeable, in the words of TE Rick Stark, one of my pastors and mentors when I was in seminary. Great to see you this week, Rick.) But we also have some fun, sing great hymns with a thousand friends, and give thanks when the moment calls for it. Several presbyteries asked us to give thanks to God for our country’s 250th anniversary. While the Church and Kingdom are bigger than America, one brother humorously drew attention to the proper reasons to give thanks to God for a country that defends our religious freedom, even if it does so imperfectly at best. This speech occurred during one of the final hours of the Assembly, so it seems appropriate to end with this. (The first video I could find was a Twitter/X.com link.)
Matt Giesman
Matt Giesman is the senior pastor of Forestgate Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
p.s. In case those hyperlinks above didn’t work: https://byfaithonline.com/christian-nationalism-study-committee-releases-partial-report/ https://pcaga.org/dfwreport/ https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/essays/there-is-no-breath-in-them https://x.com/Protestia/status/2070268995404480688?s=20
