Sabbath Day Worship or Set Up?
Father’s Day 2022 at Midway Presbyterian Church will go down in history as a totally new low for TE David Hall, Terry Johnson and the Northwest Georgia Presbytery. The day was set to be another great day to worship after spending a week in the world. Families were looking forward to meeting with God in worship, singing praises to the Father and hearing His Word to us expounded upon.
Instead, we were all blindsided by none other than TE David Hall and more of his “submit or else sermons”. Only this time it was delivered by none other than TE Terry Johnson from Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah. TE Hall chose to have TE Johnson bully the congregation at Midway to “submit” and “obey” (I thought the old hymn was Trust and Obey?). Continuing to enforce the Scriptural fact that (1 Timothy 5:17) elders that serve well are worthy of double honor, especially teaching elders. But have the teaching and ruling elders of Midway Church served well?
- We have REs that pray destruction and pronounce God’s mercy upon the souls of people that disagree with his thought or belief.
- We have REs that create illegal resolutions and the rest of the session approves them, only to later find out that it is illegal to force someone to quit an office in order to object.
- We have another RE that wrote an overture to change the rules in the BCO on how to elevate assistant pastors to associate pastors AFTER the session had already broken the rules.
- We have TEs that collect and fabricate evidence after the fact and then admit it into evidence against other elders.
- We have a whole session, that has been found to be in error in how they prejudicially convicted one of their own, only to find out 18 months later that they were wrong, and have YET to apologize or even inform the congregation that RE Dudt has been fully exonerated and reinstalled.
- We have a Senior TE that continues to abuse his pulpit duties and even brings in help when he can’t get his point across.
The session of Midway Church and the Northwest Georgia Presbytery all have blood on their hands. They have all been found guilty of mishandling not only officer nominations but also the unnecessary discipline of duly elected officers. All while decrying to the membership that there are members trying to remove them from office. The Session of Midway Church and the Northwest Georgia Presbytery have been found guilty by the SJC on multiple accounts on their handling of the RE Dudt unbiblical conviction. They should ALL be removed and replaced.
But Father’s Day 2022 takes the cake. TE Hall turned over the pulpit, with what looks like approval from the Northwest Georgia Presbytery (since they were present and did not stop what happened), to TE Johnson. TE Johnson proceed to verbally assault and chastise the members of Midway Church. “You MUST OBEY!” cried Johnson. Obey who? The Session of Midway or God? “Elders that serve well are worthy of double honor!” he continued. Well, this is true. But in order for an elder to be worthy of double honor there is a qualification, he must serve WELL. Our current session has not served this congregation well. All this was delivered from the pulpit of Midway Church under the watchful eye of TE Robbie Hembree of Grace Church in Canton GA. TE Hembree sat back and watched as TE Johnson totally abused the pulpit, and his office as pastor, in order to deliver the final blow. TE Hembree read a letter created by a shepherding commission that denounced the people that stand in opposition of TE Hall and his session. TE Hembree gave a cease-and-desist order to those that seek to remove TE Hall from office.
Through all of this, and all other communications from the Midway Session, we never have heard anyone try to correct any “false information” being brought to light. All we hear is how cowardly “these people are”. Perhaps is the session at Midway were not so closed lip and unrepentant, there would be no need for anonymous mailing or even the Midway Guardian. Perhaps if the pastors and Session of Midway Church were a little more humble there wouldn’t be a movement to remove them from office.
The abuse of the pulpit of Midway PCA on Father’s Day 2022 is a shame. Then men responsible for this should ask forgiveness and repent. These men caused much harm and caused many Christians to not be able to worship. This is NOT what Scripture calls shepherds to do.
This article was submitted by one of the Midway Guardian’s many readers.