I’ve been quiet on this blog for about four years. A lot has happened in my life in that time, and I wanted to give you all a life update. In a nutshell, I feel like I have been in a long season of waiting for a yes. And in that time, I’ve been seeing a whole lot of no. But things seem like they’re (maybe) starting to move. Read on if you’re curious.

A Bitter End

Near the end of 2019, my life looked like it had neared a kind of culmination. On the verge of completing seminary at RTS, I had a pastoral internship at my growing-up church, Chalcedon Presbyterian. And I was a candidate for gospel ministry in our RPCUS presbytery. Soon, I expected, I would become an assistant pastor at Chalcedon (one of only two particular churches in the RPCUS). My lead pastor and mentor confirmed his desire in this. It seemed, after nearly ten years of active preparation, I would soon fulfill the calling to gospel ministry to which I had first awakened as a twelve-year-old boy.

Then, by the beginning of 2020, most everything had changed. The RPCUS presbytery overseeing my gospel preparation removed me from candidacy. They pushed three out of four of our elders out of office at our church, including our teaching elder, for supporting me.

The RPCUS at that time comprised only two particular churches. This amounted to a conflict between the single teaching elder of our church, who supported and defended me and my teaching, and the two teaching elders of the other church, who partnered with two additional “churchless” teaching elders in the presbytery to oppose the session of Chalcedon. Our denomination was not large enough to have any higher court of appeal than this “presbytery.” In other words, the father-son teaching elders of a single other church and two other presbyters—whose recent mission works had failed to launch—decided, with no chance of appeal, to completely overthrow our particular church’s leadership.

To justify their actions, the opposing four presbyters wrote a nearly 200-page document against me and my teaching. They titled it, “A Biblical and Confessional Analysis and Refutation of Michael Minkoff, Jr.” They claimed that, by defending my evidently “heretical” positions, the session of our church (or at least the three out of the four who defended me) had disqualified themselves from eldership. No amount of talk was going to make any difference. They had the votes, and they did their will.

Within those first months of 2020, they had installed the two loyal “churchless” presbyters as elders at our church and taken over. They inherited a fully paid-off church building/property and nearly a million dollars in savings. They then dissolved the RPCUS denomination altogether to join the Vanguard Presbytery (a splinter from the PCA). Then, within a short time, they left even the Vanguard Presbytery to form another micro-splinter off that splinter. The two formerly churchless presbyters soon got into an unresolvable conflict with one another. The loser of this conflict was eventually forced to demit from the ministry. The winner, a man who already has a dissolved particular church and a failed church mission in his ministerial wake, now stands as solo teaching elder at Chalcedon.

Even with only the above undisputed facts, one can see that these outcomes do not evidence the fruit of the Spirit. Apparent instead are the works of the flesh, among which are “enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, [and] factions.” I could add abundant additional evidence to prove this further and more particularly. But I don’t care to do that. I don’t want to take the space here to even outline the roots, trunk, and branches of this conflict.

I am more firmly convinced than ever that the four presbyters were mistaken about me and my teaching. Through many sleepless nights of prayer and soul-searching, and even through His sweet presence with me through this test and trial, my spirit and my conscience are clean and unburdened concerning this. And, honestly, I would not for anything switch places with these men, successful in their mean aims as they seem to have been. They have their reward in full on earth, and an only temporary and uneasy suspension of a future judgment I tremble to contemplate. I do not hate them. I pray for them now, as I have prayed for them. May God have mercy on them and grant them the life-giving blessing of repentance while there is still time.

A Confusing Aftermath

All that said, I’m sure you can imagine the whole situation devastated me personally. I had known most of these men from a very young age. They had known me, I thought. And I had viewed them as colleagues and fathers for some time. I had been baptized as a baby in this church. My first three children also were baptized there as babies. After much prayer, we had decided to return to this church to serve a congregation ragged from years of pastoral domination. Yet now this once-wounded flock was torn apart and further devastated, to my horror. Though the presbyters tried to tell me none of their actions had personal motivations, the incessant and stubborn misunderstandings and ad hominem attacks that pervaded this episode made that impossible for me to believe. I felt thoroughly betrayed.

Then, a couple months after the presbyters pushed me out of my growing-up church, my family and I had to endure the local and national dark cloud of the COVID lockdowns and aftermath. I finished my seminary work through online classes, graduated in May 2020 at a masked ceremony, and tried really hard to figure out what I was supposed to do. Daily, I struggled with a sense of loss, lethargy, and heaviness. I had basically been forced to start over. And I had lost a lot of steam. I truly wondered if there were any point in continuing.

One thing you should know. For all the difficulty and bitterness of the trial I had just endured, I had also just enjoyed one of the most sustained and refreshing periods of God’s presence I had ever experienced. Even in the most bitter moments of that trial, I had cried tears of joy nearly every day, overwhelmed with happiness in the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit day and night. Then, right after I graduated from RTS, and without any warning, I suddenly felt completely desolate. I cried myself to sleep night after night, seeking after God and feeling like my prayers stuck fast in the ceiling’s darkness above me.

This season of desolation continued for about a year. In this season, I saw quite clearly the end of myself, the very limits of myself on my own terms. That image, raw and incontrovertible, I will never forget. I can never again consider myself anything much in light of what I saw then. On my own terms, I am truly destitute. I clung to God with everything I could, finding new light and comfort in the Psalms of Lament. I told my languishing soul so many times to hope in God. Jesus, my Lord and God, was and is truly all I had, all my delight and comfort and strength. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else in this season but barely hold on.

A New Beginning

Shortly after my family left Chalcedon (under veiled threats of church discipline for my continued “arrogance and unteachableness”), we found Old Peachtree Presbyterian Church, a PCA congregation in Duluth, Georgia. We felt there immediately a sense of relief. This church has been a haven for us, a refuge of reasonableness and humaneness. Within the first week of coming to this new church, just to let the lead pastor make his own conclusions concerning my recent pastoral history, I sent him a nearly exhaustive record of all communications between me and the RPCUS presbyters. He told me, “It’s pretty clear this disagreement was not over theology, but over power.”

After a much-needed season of respite from ministerial work, I began to pursue the gospel ministry again. Two years after arriving at OPPC, the session endorsed me for gospel candidacy with the PCA. I became an intern and ministerial candidate in the Georgia Foothills Presbytery, and I began work as Pastoral Intern at OPPC. That whole process has not been without its frustrations and setbacks. I won’t burden you with all the details. But two years after that, we get to the present day. I have now completed my internship requirements and am licensed to preach in the PCA. I have done everything I can leading up to ordination. All I’m waiting for is an opportunity—a call from a local church.

And waiting is what I’ve been doing. I have come through the worst season of my desolation, and my communication with God has resumed some normalcy. God has not chosen to grant me that same sense of immediate presence that I felt during my trial. But I no longer feel like God is ignoring my calls either. More like He’s listening to my voicemails and answering later in holy texts. But God still stays curiously silent concerning one thing: “What next?”

What Next?

So I have come to the conclusion my Great Shepherd has decided to let me try a few toddling steps ahead without feeling his staff on my fur. He’s letting me sort it out for myself for a time, for reasons I don’t yet know. This scares me. I will never forget how frail and limited I am on my own terms. But, over the past few days and weeks, I have begun to take some steps.

Without any change in my circumstances, I have gone from complete decision paralysis to a renewed sense of purpose and activity. I know this refreshment has come from God, and I broke down in grateful tears yesterday considering it. It may not seem like much, because I know it isn’t, but when you have been stuck for as long as I have been stuck—seemingly up to your neck in sand and told to walk anyway—any dislodgment, any movement, seems enormous.

And I wanted to tell you about these little movements, my little toddler steps, so you can pray along with me in my journey as I follow the light at my feet shed by His promises and Word.

I have some options.

Among them, I’m applying to PhD programs in Hebrew Bible. We can’t afford to relocate. And we can hardly afford to stay where we are. And I certainly can’t afford graduate school. So the outcome of this is in God’s hands. But maybe it’s something that would please Him. So I am currently in the application process at Emory University. I’m open also to apply other places, but Emory seems the best fit among schools close enough to our home. So that’s the main one for now.

I have also finished the first complete draft of my new book on truth and falsehood, clocking in around 70,000 words. It’s tentatively titled Truth is Not an Empty Word. I have been working on it since 2019. In that year, an elder at Chalcedon (who was later removed along with me) asked me to write this book, since I had taught briefly on the topic of truth and lies in an adult Sunday School class he was attending, and he thought it deserved a fuller treatment. This elder died of Parkinson’s in January of 2022, and he only got to read portions of my drafts before then. I am dedicating the book to him. He is an extraordinary saint.

I am currently submitting the book to pre-readers and publishers. If you want to commit to reading a draft of it and giving feedback, feel free to let me know. But I will also share its contents with you here in article form over the next few months. And I plan to do a podcast version of the book as well.

Speaking of podcasts, I finally launched my own personal podcast project, called The Nothing Human Podcast. I already host the Renew the Arts podcast, but I have been meaning to do a personal podcast for a lot of years. I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to pursue it until now. My first series is on the three powers of the human spirit (intellect, affections, and will). I already have two episodes published (available here on my website and on Apple and Spotify). I plan on continuing with a weekly episode until the first series is complete. After that, I’ll work on a series based on my book. And at some point, with your help, I hope to monetize that labor so I can support my family a little more consistently.

Lastly, I am still waiting on a call to gospel ministry at a local PCA church. I have done all I can to prepare for that call. It’s in God’s hands.

If you would please pray for me and for my family, we have struggled so much in this season of no. We have been so greatly blessed in those years as well, but the uncertainty of my call, the hardships of the economy, the pain of lost and broken relationships, the stresses of life and growing up, and countless other things have definitely done their best to weigh us down. By God’s grace, we are well. And though I do not have any firm idea of what will come, I am confident in the watchful, sleepless care of our Good Shepherd.

Thank you all for your patience over the years. And for your support and encouragement.

Until next time,

Michael Minkoff, Jr.