STATED CLERK

SUMMARY OF WORK

“I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus”

– I Corinthians 1:4

As I look back on the first year of my second term serving you as the Stated Clerk of our beloved EPC family, I am filled with gratitude. Coming out of last year’s assembly and my re-election, I was deeply strengthened by the many cards, emails, texts, phone calls, and conversations that encouraged me. Over the course of this year, through all the challenges and the tremendous strides forward in our shared mission to live out the Great Commission, that encouragement has only grown. Thank you!

In 2016, at our 36th General Assembly, we changed the name of the Committee on Administration to the National Leadership Team. In 2018, at the 38th General Assembly, we amended The Rules of Assembly X. 10- 1A to further define and clarify the role of the NLT by adding the responsibilities of mission, vision, and strategy to the National Leadership Team.
In 2019, the Stated Clerk Search committee created a revised position description for the new Stated Clerk to align with the NLT’s responsibilities. In short, the National Leadership Team supervises the Stated Clerk to carry out the wishes of the General Assembly. My report this year reflects how I was called to serve you as your Stated Clerk.

Growing The Kingdom. Some plant, some water, but God causes the growth. In pursuing our common mission to carry out the Great Commission, we together have identified four Gospel Priorities. Elsewhere in your Commissioner’s Handbook, you will find more detailed accounts of how the Lord is working in building effective Bible leaders throughout the EPC that help lead increasingly healthier congregations that in turn, multiply by producing other reproducing churches both domestically and globally. The growth is palpable. This year marks an important milestone for our Gospel Priorities, as our Assistant Stated Clerk, Michael Davis, now oversees all four, with his gifted eyes on our ever increasingly working together (we are Presbyterian after all) as our Chief Collaborative Officer. When Jeff Kim and Johnny Long from EPC World Outreach partner with Tom Ricks and our Church Planting Leadership to lay plans to plant a church together in France, that is working together for the advance of the Great Commission. That is fulfilling our mission. That’s just one of many examples. Again, more to be found in reading the many compelling reports at this GA.

The EPC as a whole continues to grow modestly against the larger post-COVID decline evident in the American Church. Our membership largely remained flat, with 125,754 members recorded in our Annual Church Reports (ACR) and 626 congregations. In the last year, we grew by almost 16% in first-time professions of faith and by 20% in Adult Baptisms, both encouraging trends of our living our mission through the primary responsibility of all three of the EPC Church Courts – to do evangelism.

There will be more churches joining the EPC by transfer in the coming year, with an estimated 20 in the pipeline across the country as I write this, and numerous more making inquiries. But our growth as a family of churches, while extending biblical hospitality to those who knock on our doors, must continue to be through the exponential growth of church planting. That is what effective biblical leaders in healthy churches do: they share the gospel, plant churches, and as God sees fit, the Kingdom grows.

Future Focused – In the early days of our founding, you would commonly hear our leaders calling the EPC to be “inwardly strong and outwardly focused.” In short, our Presbyterian and Reformed heritage helps us to remain inwardly strong, and our Evangelical and Missional commitments help us to remain outwardly focused. We must be faithful to both our heritage and our mission.

As we look ahead to the years in front of us with hope, there are great challenges before us.
While the challenges our National Leadership Team wrestles with are many, perhaps the most pressing is the concern about a leadership pipeline. As a missional denomination, we have no camps, colleges, seminaries, or campus ministries. For many denominations, these institutions provide a “feeder system” for rising leadership. In the EPC, we have multiple partners leading these kinds of organizations, but we need to do more in working with them to address a shortage of incoming pastors, church planters, chaplains and global workers (among others). With potentially as many as 50% of our current pastors retiring in the next 3-5 years (baby boomers) we have a good temporary measure started with the training of over 300 Transitional Pastors, but we also need a longer-term solution to address pastoral vacancies, especially for our smaller churches. We earnestly desire to support the great work being done by our smaller churches, since 64% of our congregations comprise less than 100 members. As such, under the direction of the National Leadership Team, we are working to develop multiple strategies to help address the expected increasing pastoral openings in our smaller churches. Stay tuned in the next year for more updates on this vital work.

There are other forward-looking initiatives in the works as well. One exciting new work is the comprehensive task of translating all of our materials and resources into Spanish to better serve many of our existing congregations and our growing number of new Spanish-speaking church plants. Another new work is building out new and strategic Fraternal Partnerships that will help us to carry out the Great Commission in some of the hardest and most challenging places we have yet to reach with the Gospel. At this assembly, we will celebrate a long-awaited partnership with the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, build on a long-standing relationship with St. Andrews Presbytery in Argentina, and welcome new friends from the Synod of the Nile (Egypt) as we explore a fraternal partnership. By God’s grace, we are increasingly a part of a real global gospel movement.

Promoting the EPC Ethos – Coming out of last year’s General Assembly, I was determined to listen widely and carefully and to work with the National Leadership Team to promote our long-standing ethos of kindness and grace-filled orthodoxy. Some conversations have been with leaders who serve on various GA committees (we have 24 committees or subcommittees of various types currently doing the work of the General Assembly between meetings, which constitutes over 250 commissioners from our local congregations (see BOG 20-1) both RE’s and TE’s from all around the country and all our 16 presbyteries). Other conversations have been at presbytery meetings with individuals and groups, and some with presbytery leadership teams. Each conversation was good, with some more challenging than others, but each filled with grace and listening. The ethos of the EPC was ever present, and I hope and trust that we are leaning into the EPC’s historic DNA of relational accountability and building trust. It’s hard, and ongoing work, but so important if we are to move forward together to carry out the Great Commission.

Under the authority and accountability of the National Leadership Team, the Stated Clerk also is called to assure that the EPC is financially healthy so that it is able to carry out its mission. As you will see in our financial reports this year, God continues to bless our family of churches financially and we continue to be good stewards of those resources in carrying out our mission. Our annual financial audit (in the finance report) continues to demonstrate sound accounting and financial practices and our revenue from POI (Percentage of Income) continues to grow faster than the pace of inflation, something PMA (Per Member Asking) was increasingly unable to do. Whereas in the past the NLT authorized appropriate designated or unrestricted funds to support and supplement Church Health and Church Planting, those positions are now fully supported in our proposed operational budget. We invested in our Gospel Priorities and that work is being sustained by God’s grace through the generosity of our churches.

Developing Young Leaders – We continue to make significant strides in gathering, encouraging, and equipping the rising generation of leaders in the EPC. Our Next Gen Summit continues to grow, attracting and empowering young leaders (see their report at this assembly) from across the country, and we continue to see more and more presbyteries creating their own Next Gen Councils and promoting Next Gen retreats and ministries. One of the great resources and opportunities for us in the next few years will be pairing rising leaders with established leaders. With the EPC now celebrating our 45th GA, it is imperative that we “pass the baton” well, from one generation to the next. This will be a key focus in the next few years.

The Larger Church – It has long been important that the EPC Stated Clerk be connected to the larger church. I continue the tradition of the Stated Clerk serving on the Board of the National Association of Evangelicals. I have found the annual meeting of denominational leaders to be helpful. I am also privileged to serve on the board of The World Reformed Fellowship. This year EPC TE Cameron Schaffer, led an important theological consultation on the Church hosted by EPC Congregation Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, MD. Senior Pastor Todd Smedely of 4th Pres and Pastor Emeritus Rob Norris are also both on the board of WRF, with Rob serving so well as the National Director.
In December, I attended the State of the Church conference hosted by the Barna Institute and the good people at Gloo. The EPC has contributed to and is benefiting from the depth of data being produced on the State of the Church, specifically in the area of Discipleship.
This focus on discipleship will be another important point of emphasis as we continue to endeavor to live out our mission of carrying out the Great Commission (make disciples).

Office of the General Assembly Operations – Living in central Florida and working out of the Office of the General Assembly has enabled me to be fully engaged in the day-to-day operations of our Office of the General Assembly. If the EPC’s mission is to carry out the Great Commission, then the mission of the OGA is to “serve those who carry out the Great Commission.” To be on mission, the 28 FTE’s (full-time equivalent staff) in Orlando, which include our two subsidiary corporations (ESG or World Outreach and BRI – Benefits Resources Inc) do not do the work of the General Assembly but serve those who do. While assembling an effective team amid the reality of work post-covid has been a challenge at times, we now have a fully staffed, highly motivated and dynamic team that exists to serve our 24 committees and subcommittees, our presbyteries, local congregations as well as our global workers, chaplains and fraternal partners around the world. It is an honor and privilege to serve alongside them as we serve those who carry out the Great Commission. Whether it is preparing to implement another General Assembly (an all year task) or provide funds in disaster relief; answer polity questions or get the right forms into the hands of the right persons; social media communications or setting up online giving for some of our under-resourced congregations, the OGA exists to serve you!

Each of the areas I have highlighted in this report follows the framework of my position description as approved by the National Leadership Team. While this is far from everything I do as your Stated Clerk, I do hope it will give you a sense of how I have been called to serve you and our beloved EPC family. It is the most challenging, and yet the greatest honor and privilege of my life. The summary of my position description says this, “The EPC Stated Clerk is a servant leader and a visionary. The primary qualification is to be passionate about the Gospel of Christ. The Stated Clerk will be passionate about the EPC and want to see it thrive. The Stated Clerk will model and communicate the ethos and values of the EPC.” It is my deepest prayer, that by the grace of God, that I might fulfill this high calling to the best of my life and ability. Your love and support have meant the world to me and to Beth. Thank you!

Together on the Firm Foundation that is Jesus Christ,

Coram Deo!

Respectfully submitted,

D. Dean Weaver
June 2025

2024 Annual Church Report
Churches Received, Dissolved, Dismissed (May 2024-April 2025)

Back to Top