Embattled pastor Scott Sauls set to resign from Nashville's Christ Presbyterian Church

Christ Presbyterian Church is expected to take up the resignation of embattled senior pastor Rev. Scott Sauls amid a drawn-out disciplinary process that’s garnered wide public interest.

The Nashville megachurch is planning a meeting Sunday in which Sauls will submit his resignation and the congregation will decide whether to approve it, according to an email Christ Presbyterian members received Friday morning. The Tennessean obtained the email and independently confirmed its authenticity.

Pending its approval, Sauls’ resignation will resolve the question about the senior pastor’s readiness to return from a disciplinary hiatus and lead a divided church in a moment of recovery.

Still, even with the resignation, the church's leadership is working to reestablish trust with members who have questions about church authority and proper oversight. The Friday morning email hinted at the work ahead.

“It’s our prayer that this meeting will promote the peace and purity of the church, even and especially through the difficult circumstances that have brought us to this moment,” Christ Presbyterian’s session, or the church’s highest level of eldership authority, wrote in an email to members on Friday.

Christ Presbyterian declined to comment. Sauls did not respond to a request for comment.

In May, the church placed Sauls on indefinite leave and the Nashville Presbytery — the regional authority for churches in Middle Tennessee affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) — indefinitely suspended him. The Nashville Presbytery’s shepherding committee led an inquiry into a toxic work culture at Christ Presbyterian, resulting in Sauls’ discipline.

Sauls acknowledged wrongdoing in a video to Christ Presbyterian members in May, though he shared a different confession with the Nashville Presbytery in an executive session. Neither the presbytery nor Christ Presbyterian elders have publicly shared the latter. Also, the former chair of the presbytery’s shepherding committee, Rev. Ian Sears, is facing his own allegations of misconduct and has since stepped down from ministry at a different local church and leadership in the presbytery.

Starting three years ago, former and current Christ Presbyterian staff have been calling for a third-party evaluation. Christ Presbyterian eldership instead sought the Nashville Presbytery’s intervention, leading to the shepherding committee inquiry and Sauls’ subsequent discipline. A group of deaconesses have led a renewed push for a third-party review in recent months.

At the upcoming meeting on Sunday, Christ Presbyterian’s session — the highest level of eldership authority in a PCA church — will present a motion to “receive and affirm” Sauls’ resignation, according to the session’s email on Friday morning. A representative of the Nashville Presbytery, who is not a Christ Presbyterian member, will moderate the meeting.

Christ Presbyterian members will then vote on whether to approve Sauls’ resignation.

“We recognize this is a significant moment in the life of our church,” the Christ Presbyterian session email stated. “We have approached this event with much prayer, discussion, debate — and, thankfully — a great deal of charity and agreement between the Christ Presbyterian session…and our senior pastor.”

Related: How cases of pastors Scott Sauls, Ian Sears highlight accountability issues within the PCA

Strides forward and one big step back

Following Sauls’ hiring in 2012, Christ Presbyterian entered a new era of growth and prominence.

The church launched three satellite campuses and the Nashville Institute for Faith and Work, a ministry that teaches a curriculum to cohorts of fellows on applying ones’ faith to their daily lives. One of the church’s satellite campuses, Koinonia, eventually became independent in 2022.

Sauls, who wrote hundreds of blog posts and six books during his tenure at Christ Presbyterian, became well-known locally and nationally in various evangelical Christian circles.

Christ Presbyterian and its K-12 school, Christ Presbyterian Academy, formed in 1985 following a schism at Nashville’s First Presbyterian Church. Christ Presbyterian was among the first churches in the area to join the PCA, a newer denomination that formed out of a push for a more conservative denomination in the Reformed tradition.

At Christ Presbyterian’s helm, Sauls sought to preserve those orthodox roots but presented it in a non-legalistic and socially conscious way. For example, Christ Presbyterian started appointing deaconesses and it launched Koinonia in Bordeaux, a majority Black neighborhood in Nashville, with the explicit intent of reaching a more diverse population.

But Sauls was a different leader behind the scenes compared to his preaching and writings. Conflict with other church staff boiled over in 2021, inciting a wave of turnover.

When the Nashville Presbytery disciplined Sauls in May, it barred him from preaching and teaching, and posting on social media or his blog.

A special presbytery committee supervised Sauls’ compliance with the terms of his discipline as a prerequisite to his potential return to the pulpit. But depending on how the congregation votes Sunday, the opposite outcome is far likelier.

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Christ Presbyterian Church: Embattled pastor Scott Sauls set to resign