Ministerial Confession of Sin
Until ministers take the lead in repentance, we cannot expect the church to follow in it.
Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests:
Howl, ye ministers of the altar:
Come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God.
—Joel 1:13
Introduction
In God’s kindness, Rev. Samuel Ketcham and I, together with my local ruling elder, intend to establish the new Southern Presbytery, for which we will hold an inaugural worship service on May 30, 2026. This is a solemn and weighty undertaking, and for it we agreed to devote May 29 to humiliation, fasting, and prayer.
The following confession of sin was written to prepare us for this. We offer it here as a help to other ministers, that they might humble themselves with us. God’s wrath lies heavy on our nation, and chief among the sins provoking him to anger are those of the ministers of our nation’s churches. Until we take the lead in repentance, we cannot expect the church to follow in it, nor can we hope for God to forgive our sin and heal our land.
We have divided the sins into those committed, first in preparing for the ministry, then in entering the ministry, then in exercising the ministry.
Sins in Preparing for the Ministry
In Piety
1. Sins not repented of, indeed excused in ourselves because they were common among others, though we were called to be an example of holiness.
2. Not cultivating and even despising close communion with the Lord, in diligent daily meditation on his word, and earnest prayer, both by ourselves and with our families.
3. Not ruling our households well, keeping our wives and children in subjection with all gravity, that they might be a model to all Christian families.
In Doctrine
1. Exceeding unfamiliarity with Scripture, not having even read all of the Bible before undertaking study for the ministry, pursuing study of doctrine without adequate knowledge of its only sufficient rule.
2. Not holding fast the form of sound words in the historic creeds, confessions, and catechisms of the church, despising the doctrinal standards of our churches, prematurely consuming the strong meat of higher theological study before being adequately nourished upon the milk of the first principles.
3. Delight in doctrinal innovation, having itching ears, carried about with every wind of doctrine, refusing to walk in the old paths, and endeavoring to remove the ancient landmarks which our fathers have set.
In Education
1. Exceeding indolence in early education, not applying our minds to solid learning, pursuing education for idle curiosity, for filthy lucre, or for the applause of men.
2. Disdain for those liberal studies most useful to the ministry, being woefully unprepared for the rigors of theological education and the mental labor of the ministry, such that the gospel and the church suffer reproach by our intellectual weakness.
3. Gross errors imbibed unthinkingly from unbelieving teachers, not sufficiently repented of.
4. Pursuing education, even in theology, at the expense of personal piety, or of good order in our households, neglecting our own or our family’s spiritual needs upon the pretense of preparing to meet those needs in others, sending our wives into the working world of men to earn our bread.
In Vocation
1. Not being sufficiently diligent in our earthly callings prior to the ministry, not doing with our might whatsoever our hands find to do, not being faithful in that which is least, thus bringing upon ourselves and other ministers the reproach of idleness.
2. Not adequately inquiring into whether we were truly called into the ministry, nor using the appointed ecclesiastical means for this inquiry, whereby many have run unsent, and proven heavy burdens upon the church, and upon those ministers who are truly called of God.
Sins in Entering the Ministry
In Piety
1. Not maintaining close communion with the Lord, nor more diligently seeking holiness the closer we approached unto our holy calling.
2. Still refusing to repent of sins that would bring disqualification and reproach, thinking ourselves qualified to deal with sinners by our sinfulness itself, rather than by repentance and resistance of temptation.
In Presbytery
1. Dishonest dealing under examinations of our piety and doctrine, not adequately confessing sin when called upon, hiding relevant failures and weaknesses, falsely representing our own godliness and qualification, and thus laying a cracked foundation, and from the start tempting God to ruin our entire ministry.
2. Agreement tacit or explicit, as a condition for entering the ministry, not to expose the sins and errors of fellow presbyters, of our own churches, their constitutions, or their public declarations, or of our civil magistrates and nation, willing to be pleasers of men, and not servants of Christ.
3. Hastily taking solemn vows without duly considering their weight, or our ability to keep them, thus taking the name of the Lord in vain, and calling down his wrath upon ourselves and our churches.
In Undertaking the Ministry
1. Hasty agreement to a ministerial call in which we ought not have had hope of God’s blessing or the people’s reception of our labors, yet still undertaken for the sake of pleasing men, or obtaining a living, without patient seeking of the Lord’s good pleasure.
2. Beginning the ministry with softness toward great evils in the church, persuading ourselves that we might thereby win a hearing for the truth, yet flattering ourselves and our people in their sins, hardening them against any faithful future dealing from ourselves or others.
Sins in Exercising the Ministry
In Piety
1. Not continuing to maintain close communion with the Lord, even administering the means of grace without partaking of the grace communicated by them, feeding others while starving ourselves.
2. Despising the people for their godliness, not lowering ourselves to learn from their example, or to take their due correction, but rather punishing them by neglect or harshness when they expose our failures, preaching against their virtues under plausible pretexts, and abusing our authority to silence their just complaints.
3. Being bereft of sobriety and gravity, conversing with much lightness and effeminacy, behaving with imprudence and carelessness, not sensing or communicating the solemnity of our charge and the urgency of the eternal matters it concerns.
4. Being filled with pride, refusing the humility so necessary for a Christian and minister, and doing even our best works from self-exalting and self-serving motives.
In Preaching
1. Preaching with such infrequency, or with such little length and earnestness, that our people suffer a famine of the words of God by our own fault, while we falsely clear our conscience that we preach at least as much as most other ministers today.
2. Not preaching Christ and him crucified, as well as all the counsel of God, not giving the most weight to the most weighty matters, or abusing their weightiness not to give other matters due attention.
3. In preaching, interpreting passages, but never teaching doctrine, or teaching doctrine without order and clarity, or without conviction and persuasion, or never applying Scripture to men’s consciences and conversation, or in our application, being so weak and general as to harden men in sin, rather than instruct them in the way of righteousness.
4. Preaching with unwarranted presumption of the conversion and holiness of those that hear us, failing to call them to examine, judge, and test themselves, saying to them, Peace, peace, when they have no peace with God, or tempting those truly saved to ground assurance of salvation on something other than firm knowledge of the work of God in their own souls, whereby the ungodly are hardened, and the godly hindered in assurance and in holiness.
5. Preaching duties in which we are known to be deficient, as a physician who will not heal himself, with the scribes and Pharisees requiring men to do after our words, but not our works, being unable to exhort them to be followers of us, even as we are of Christ.
6. Preaching with respect of persons, sparing the rich and powerful, or others whose displeasure we fear may bring harm to us or to our livelihood, openly or subtly avoiding preaching against the sins of classes favored by our present evil age, with excessive harshness toward those whom the world loves to hate.
In Pastoring
1. Flattering ourselves that we have done our duty by mere preaching, not teaching from house to house, not visiting the people, either at all, or with insufficient frequency, as a spiritual physician neglecting our patients, and suffering their spiritual illness to increase without remedy, so that by our own fault it breaks out into scandal.
2. Failing to give more attention to those more needy in our midst, to catechize the young and ignorant, to improve the afflictions of the weary by a word in season, ignoring our people when they are sick or bereaved, complaining of the burden of their care, tempting them not to seek help when needed, and to think ill of Christ, as if he lacked compassion for the weak.
3. Ignoring the mature and godly in our churches, excusing ourselves from labor for their souls because others have more pressing needs, and thus discouraging precious saints, and suffering them to be harassed by Satan and the godless world without the help a minister could offer them.
4. Refusing to govern and discipline the church, neglecting to use the keys of the kingdom, content with ministerial rebuke in cases where scandal demands ecclesiastical censure, avoiding or delaying trials and censures out of laziness or fear of reproach, neglecting lesser censures that could have healed or prevented scandals before greater censures were required, applying censure with excessive lightness or undue severity, or according to the demands of the ungodly in the world or church, and not according to the Word of God.
In Praying
1. Praying only in public, but not in secret, not praying with sufficient length or frequency, giving exhortations to prayer but not giving an example in it, refusing or not cultivating prayer with others, especially our people and our fellow elders, praying for our people and not ourselves, or for ourselves and not our people.
2. Neglecting prayer for public matters, especially in public, not praying for all men, for kings and for all that are in authority, letting the broader church and nation go on in a multitude of sins without one cry, one tear, one intercession, thus failing to give voice to them that mourn in Zion, and confirming the lukewarm in their indifference toward the public cause of Christ.
In Presbytery
1. Failing to labor in Christ’s courts with fellow presbyters, against our calling and our vows, counting our local labors as sufficient while neglecting Christ’s cause in our region or our nation, being content for broader courts to be corrupted, and falsely secure that such corruption is no present danger to our local church.
2. Not praying for laborers to be sent into the harvest, or praying but not using other means whereby they should be sent, not cultivating young men’s interest in the ministry, being indifferent toward their education, and negligent in the examination of candidates, and thus being at fault for our day’s woeful lack of faithful men of God.
3. Refusing hard and thankless labors for church unity, that Christ’s people throughout our nation and the world may be one in love and doctrine, but rather content with present schisms in the church, happily indifferent, even ignorant, of Christ’s cause outside our own communion, and not willing to cultivate relationships with ministers, or even other Christians, not belonging to it.
4. Abusing church courts to punish enemies, driving from the church those who refuse to conform to the ungodly spirit of the age, showing ourselves most zealous to use censures against those who are most zealous for the truth and righteousness, and who expose our slothfulness.
In Public Witness
1. Refusal to use the means at hand for publicly speaking the truth in love, shirking preaching to those outside the local church, not condescending to the labor of writing and using social media, and otherwise abandoning the public square to vocal enemies of Christ, motivated chiefly by love of self, of comfort, and of praise from men.
2. Ignorance and negligence of those controversies most pressing upon the church and nation today, flattering ourselves that we thereby maintain a focus on first principles, while souls, churches, and nations are ruined for want of faithful instruction in these matters.
3. Embarrassment at other men who excel us in boldness for the cause of truth, not refuting public slanders of them when we have opportunity and knowledge, uncharitably asserting evil motives for their zeal, refusing to imitate their graces in our place and calling.
4. Godless love for the worst of men, shamefully tolerating and even celebrating their wickedness in public, attacking Christians who resist their evils, calling evil good, and good evil, loving them that hate the Lord, not hating them with perfect hatred, abusing mercy, love, and patience as a cloak for cowardice and faithlessness, professing zeal for men’s repentance, while refusing to rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.
5. Heartless silence in an evil day, being watchmen who will not sound the trumpet, dumb dogs who will not bark, ambassadors for Christ refusing to beseech men to be reconciled to God, while church and nation suffer under God’s heavy hand of judgment, and sinners rush headlong toward utter destruction.
6. Countenancing the widespread lack of natural affection in our own nation and race, ourselves being bereft of love for our own kinsmen according to the flesh, not mourning their unbelief, failing in zeal for their conversion and sanctification, passing them by and seeking first the good of strangers, being disordered in our love, not providing for our own, especially in spiritual things, proving worse than infidels, so that through us God’s word and name are blasphemed.
This confession was prepared upon the model of the 1651 Humble Acknowledgement of the Sins of the Ministry of Scotland, which we also commend for use by ministers today.
