In 2000, I had never heard of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) Church. Approximately one year later, I was a member of an ARP church and attending the ARP’s seminary (Erskine Theological Seminary). In 2004, I was ordained as a minister in the ARP.
The ARP has much to offer. When people ask how similar the ARP is to the PCA (the largest Presbyterian body in the U.S. that is both Reformed and conservative), I have to admit they are very similar, and the main difference is their history. The ARP is practically as old as the U.S. (founded in 1782, the result of a merger between two bodies out of the Church of Scotland, the Covenanters and the Seceders ), while the PCA has existed since 1973 (formed by a conservative group that left the southern branch of the mainline Presbyterian church).
Ah, but what a difference history makes. I have been ARP less than a decade, so I am not particularly qualified to speak as clearly and as knowledgeably on such matters as a life-long ARP might be. But I do have the privilege of knowing such a person. When I pastored in Mississippi (Ebenezer ARP Church), one of our members was an English professor named Kate Stewart. Kate grew up ARP (her grandfather was also a pastor of Ebenezer and her brother was Clerk of Session for a number of years). In a recent article printed in the online version of The Christian Observer, she comments on the unique history and characteristics of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. You are strongly encouraged to read this here.
Kate would be the first to admit that we don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything, but we both respect each other’s opinions, even when we have minor disagreements. I am honored that she even still considers me to be her pastor (Ebenezer does not currently have a full-time minister). Her message is that ARPs should not suffer from an inferiority complex.
Gairney Bridge 
Tim, I read Kate’s article….. I understand her point, but not sure that we are trying to become like some other denomination. I just don’t see that. Maybe some do want to us to be like the PCUSA (i.e. Erskine admin), but others, like myself, want to reform the ARP according to Scripture. I’m not a lifelong ARP, and I’ve never been PCA. I don’t pay much attention to what the PCA is doing or not doing. But I do love the ARP enough to want it to become reformed according to Scripture and the Confession of Faith we hold to. I praise God for our heritage and traditions, but I pray for the revival of the ARP, not the maintenance of her traditions.
Neither do I believe in maintaining tradition for tradition’s sake, but what I took from the article is that ARP’s should be thankful enough for their unique heritage that they wish to preserve it. We are not the PCA (and I have been PCA myself), and neither are we the PC(USA) (which I have also been). Various churches try to be like one or the other to various degrees, imho (e.g., following a liturgical calendar is more like mainline Presbyterianism; conservative saber-rattling is more like the former). I don’t either of those to sound disparaging, only that the ARP has its own unique history and should not run away from that in order to be more like the PCA or more like the PC(USA). As a former member of your church once said, we’ve been kicking it since 1782!
Historically, the ARP has had a little brother complex. We tried to follow the PCUS in the 1800s. It would seem natural to look to the PCA today. But we need to recover some of our own unique features and not be ashamed of those things — e.g., psalm singing. These need to be recovered and not apologized for.
And because of its size, there are certain things that can be enjoyed in the ARP that would not be the case in the PCA with its larger numbers. Many churches (many of them of the very conservative stripe) in the PCA cannot afford to send pastor and elder to their GA. They are simply too large to hold it as we do at Bonclarken, and the cost factor (such as renting out a facility at Disney) reflects that. So I am glad to be ARP! And I want to keep fighting the good fight in the ARP!
Amen to all that Tempe noted. When I was leaving the PC(USA) and searching for where I was going to go next I came to the ARP (and did not go PCA) for many of the reasons Tempe has noted above. I am exited about the future of the ARP and especially what I saw at Synod this summer. We have a bright future being who we are, hopefully we will continue to be who we are and not try and be someone else. The last time we did hat it nearly destroyed the denomination theologically (1946-1978).
May I offer a somewhat belated comment? Like Tim, I am a newbie in the ARP, having previously been PCA, BPC, PC(USA), and PCUS. Along the way there, I was even for a time an Independent Baptist.
Dr. Stewart and I have exchanged emails during my relatively brief ARP tenure. I have appreciated her insights. However, while I am sympathetic to her case, in my opinion it is flawed. The ARP gave up its distinctives more than two generations ago because, in my opinion, it began to lose its unique culture in the decade approaching World War II. It had become an ecumencial Presbyterian church by the middle of the 1940s.
She has appealed to the existence of Bible Songs as an extension of exclusive Psalmody. In my opinion, Bible Songs, excepting those portions that are faithful to the text of the Psalms, are an adulteration, a flirtation with the brush-arbor musicology of Arminian evangelicalism.
While the ARP does reflect its history in its name, its origins are not really that different from the origins of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and its descendant bodies. We all came from the Church of Scotland for the most part.
For that matter, only the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and a few of the new micro-Presbyterian bodies still maintain what one time were the distinctives of the ARP.
I do not want the ARP to lose the force of its history or to become like the PCA or the OPC just to be like the PCA or the OPC. But, both those denominations have preserved some of the things that the ARP lost while it flirted with the PCUS and the PCUSA.
I serve a small struggling ARP congregation in a economically depressed community, a former milltown, about thirty miles west of Charlotte. Until very recently, it was my practice to use at least one standard Psalm in every church service. I have not been faithful to that of late because I have also had to become the accompanist since our organist has become ill. However, several of the older members have resisted even that miniscual example of their former history because they are not from the old United Presbyterian hymnal that the congregation adopted more than fifty years ago.
Last Lord’s Day, my sermon was based on Mark 15:33-28. As I expounded on verse 38, which refers to the rending of the veil of the Temple, I alluded to the cultus of our version of Reformed worship and its circumstances. I asked the congregation if it knew why the communion table was on the same level with the congregation and not elevated or located at the back of the chancel. I also asked if the congregation knew why there was only one desk on the pulpit and not two like in Lutheran, Episcopalian, and even some ARP churches. I invited an oral response to both questions. Those are also as distinctive of truly Reformed Presbyterian worship as was the exclusive Psalmody and non-instrumental singing of the pre-1945 ARP. I am embarassed that no one answered because I know that I had told them before. Weren’t they listening? Didn’t they care?
I do not hold to exclusive Psalmody. I have taken exception to that portion of the Westminster Confession of Faith ever since my ordination examination in the Bible Presbyterian Church. However, I believe that we should sing more of the Psalms than we do.
There was a time that I would not have opposed a union with the PCA. I would be much more reticent about such now because I believe that the PCA has slipped from its moorings and has allowed the old accretions of non-Reformed worship to creep back into the church.
I would recommend the reading of “How the Gold Has Become Dim” by Morton H. Smith to see what the PCUS had become and what the PCA hoped to reform. I think the PCA has lost the intensity of the intention that was expressed so ably in 1973 in its address to all churches.
Yes, the ARP has a distinctive history that needs to be retained. But, I hope, too, that it still has the basic principle of reformation at its core — Reformed and always Reforming. The church needs to advance; it does not need to stand only on its laurels.