The 19th Stated Meeting of Evangel Presbytery met Friday, October 3rd, 2025 at Clearnote Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Many thanks to all who helped host us, providing coffee and lunch. It was a blessed time!
The Power of the Tongue
We began the day with a worship service and the Lord’s Supper. Pr. Matt Shifflett (assistant pastor, Trinity Presbytery Church) preached Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Everyone knows death and life are in the power of a gun, but do we believe that about our tongues? That’s what God says, and experience tells us just as much. Words can do the same damage as bullets. But they can also do something bullets can’t do: bring life. This is true of every mouth, but is especially true of Christ’s ministers who are ministers, not of guns and swords, but of God’s life-giving Word.
Pr. Matt walked through some qualities of the tongue to show this truth in various ways. Do we guard our words? Do we speak the truth? Are our words peaceable, pure, timely, edifying? Or do our words miss the target? Do they fall flat? Are they impure, false, worthless? You can give a listen to the sermon here:
May God put His words in His ministers’ mouths and bring life to His sheep.
On to Business
Following the worship service, we turned to business. We always begin by tending to certain meeting details: adopting the docket, adopting minutes of previous meetings, appointing a parliamentarian, and hearing from our treasurer and stated clerk. This meeting was a little different in that we had to go into executive session early on in order to adopt minutes from a previous executive session meeting. So within a few minutes of the meeting, we had to dismiss everyone from the room who was not a member of presbytery. The executive session did not last long, and everyone was back in their seats for the rest of the morning.
Presbytery Growth Committee
We then heard from our newly formed Presbytery Growth Committee. Elder Tom Thistleton (Christ Church, Cincinnati), the chairman of the PGC, gave the report and walked us through a working draft of a Growth Plan. The committee’s plan focuses on church planting as the primary means for growth. This direction means we need church planters, which means we need to train up pastors to plant churches. The committee has been hard at work to give Evangel a vision for growth and to target and coordinate her resources effectively. We received the report as information and will hear back from the committee in February. Pray that God would give wisdom to our Presbytery as we seek to build Christ’s Church, and that He would send us men who want to labor in His harvest.
Ordination Exam
Speaking of men entering into His harvest: we then held an ordination exam for Daniel Coughlin. Daniel is a lawyer by trade in Sabetha, KS, but upon feeling God’s call to ministry, he pursued pastoral training at New Geneva Academy. He graduated in 2024, and was licensed to preach at our previous presbytery meeting. Pr. Stephen Baker conducted his three-part ordination exam before the presbytery, covering English Bible, Church History, and Sacraments. Following questions from the floor and discussion, the presbytery sustained Daniel’s exams. His ordination service will be held on November 2nd at Morrill Baptist Church (Morrill, KS), where he received a pastoral call. Congratulations, Daniel! May God bless you and your ministry.
After our lunch break, we moved on to unfinished business. At our June meeting, we approved changes to our bylaws, adding a Mission, Vision, and Core Commitments statement. Because this was a change to our bylaws, we had to ratify those changes at this meeting.
Church of the King to be Particularized
Next, we moved to “new business,” starting with the particularization of one of our mission churches: Church of the King (Evansville, IN). Pr. Jake Mentzel has worked hard planting Church of the King, and they are now ready to provide their own session, men ready to serve as elders from their own congregation instead of receiving care from a provisional session provided by Evangel Presbytery. Congratulations, Church of the King! May the Lord continue to bless you and provide for you.
Uniting on Baptism
We then heard from Pr. Andrew Dionne, Trinity Presbyterian Church (Spartanburg, SC), regarding recent changes to their bylaws. Trinity came into Evangel as an exclusively paedo-baptistic church, meaning the offices of pastor, elder, and deacon were open only to paedo-baptists. Certain factors led the members of the congregation to a point where they decided it was time to open the offices of elder and deacon to credo-baptists. The senior/solo pastor position will remain restricted to men holding the paedobaptist position. Trinity’s congregation approved the bylaws change, and Evangel Presbytery had to affirm the change according to BCO 16.5.
This may sound technical–maybe even boring–on paper, but what happened at Trinity is a wonderful example of putting into practice one of Evangel’s commitments: uniting on timing and mode of baptism. Christians today divide over almost anything, especially timing and mode of baptism. It is amazing that Reformed credo-baptists and Reformed paedo-baptists can agree with 99% of their doctrine, but refuse to fellowship with one another in the local church because one man baptizes his infant and the other man delays until his children profess faith. But we are convinced it ought not be this way. There can be real unity in the body of Christ. Credo- and paedo-baptists ought to work together in the same communion for the same Christ. We are committed to the diligent preservation of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3).
It is Evangel’s hope and mission to bring together those who differ regarding timing and mode of baptism, under the umbrella of one confession, The Westminster Confession of Faith. It can be done because it has been done, and we believe this brings honor to God. For more on this topic see our BCO chapter 7 and 16, as well as section 5 of our recent Recommendations for Sessions in Administering and Evaluating Baptism.
We finished up the day by electing a moderator-in-nomination, Pr. Andy Halsey (Christ Church, Columbus, IN).
Next Stated Meeting: Bloomington, IN!
Our next Stated Meeting will be at Trinity Reformed Church (Bloomington, IN), Thursday, February 5th, 2026 at 9 a.m. We encourage all who are interested in our churches and our polity to attend the meeting and get a taste of our commitments.
