Online PCA Presbytery Maps
I’ve compiled a map with all the geographic boundaries of the different presbyteries of the PCA. While I have seen, and heard of maps of the presbyteries, I do not know of any map that existed online. So I decided to create one, based off the information available on the PCA Administrative Committee’s website. At the bottom you will find the links to all the source files. Some of you might have a few questions?
Why do this?
I began this project by simply putting up the information for my presbytery, but I soon began filling out the northeast, and once i can to a certain point, I thought that I should just make one for the whole denomination.
How much time did this take you?
My wife might just reply by saying “too much time!”. It took me probably around 15 hours to complete, most of that was spent while my wife was sleeping.
What can this be used for?
- I hope Churches and Presbyteries will use these maps to for the purpose of planning church plants, and other cooperative projects. (This is the primary reason I started this project.)
- Ministers and Members could use it to learn more about the PCA.
Since most of the boundaries are marked at county lines, its very difficult to understand the size and shape of a presbytery without knowing alot more local geography than most people. Even in my state (Pennsylvania) I did not understand how all the presbyteries connected. I hope this project allows people in the PCA to learn a bit more about the shape and movement of the PCA.
Do you have any other plans for this project?
I have plans to make a separate file with the Korean PCA Presbyteries. I was unsure of exactly how to display the overlapping files.
If I can gain access to a spreadsheet file with the locations of the churches in each presbytery, I would love to do that as well. (If you want see the Pittsburgh Presbytery I happen to have that one.)
I tried to be as accurate as possible, but I understand that there might be some mistakes. Please email me samthedesocios.dotcom
In a few cases I marked certain areas as being connected to a certain presbytery because of the existing churches they have. (Ie. Pac NW including Idaho and Oregon)
These files are free to use, or alter. I would ask that if you link to any of these files that reference where you got them with a link to this website, TheDeSocios.com. I used the state by state files provided by Juice Analtyics.
You can open these files by entering the link location into google maps (like this)
A better way is to open them with Google Earth.
The preview image takes a long time to load. The All Presbyteries files is much larger than the individual files.
If you have a slow computer I would recommend opening only a few presbyteries at a time.
All PCA Presbyteries
Ascension Presbytery
Blue Ridge Presbytery
Calvary Presbytery
Central Carolina Presbytery
Central Florida Presbytery
Central Georgia Presbytery
Chesapeake Presbytery
Chicago Metro Presbytery
Covenant Presbytery
Eastern Canada Presbytery*
Eastern Carolina Presbytery
Eastern Pennsylvania Presbytery
Evangel Presbytery
Fellowship Presbytery
Georgia Foothills
Grace Presbytery
Great Lakes Presbytery
Gulf Coast Presbytery
Gulf Stream Presbytery*
Heartland Presbytery
Heritage Presbytery
Houston Metro Presbytery
Illiana Presbytery
Iowa Presbytery
James River Presbytery
Louisiana Presbytery
Metro Atlanta Presbytery
Metro New York Presbytery
Mississippi Valley Presbytery
Missouri Presbytery
Nashville Presbytery
New Jersey Presbytery
New River Presbytery
New York Presbytery
North Florida Presbytery
North Illinois Presbytery
North Texas Presbytery
Northern California Presbytery
Northern New England Presbytery
Northwest Georgia Presbytery
Ohio Presbytery
Ohio Valley Presbytery
Pacific Northwest Presbytery*
Pacific Northwest Presbytery Proper*
Pacific Presbytery*
Pacific Presbytery Proper*
Palmetto Presbytery
Philadelphia Metro West
Philadelphia Presbytery
Piedmont Triad Presbytery
Pittsburgh Presbytery
Platte Valley Presbytery
Potomac Presbytery
Rocky Mountain Presbytery
Savanah River Presbytery
Siouxlands Presbytery
South Coast Presbytery
South Florida Presbytery
South Texas Presbytery
Southeast Alabama Presbytery
Southeast Louisiana Presbytery
Southern New England Presbytery
Southwest Florida Presbytery
Southwest Presbytery
Susquehanna Valley Presbytery
Suncoast Florida Presbytery*
Tennessee Valley Presbytery
Warrior Presbytery
West Carolina Presbytery
Western Canada Presbytery
Westminster Presbytery
Wisconsin Presbytery
Looks pretty good. I love how West Virginia sneaks in and splits the OH and PA parts of our presbytery.
Yeah thats the official boundaries of New River.
So there was a method to your madness!! Good work.
Wow, I’m impressed. That’s a lot of work. What are the gaps, such as in northern PA and parts of GA? Is that just missing data?
My map is based off of the official minutes of the General Assemblies so gaps are counties that are no claimed presently by any presbytery. My bet is that as Presbyteries divided areas that were officially part of one Presbytery were misplaced, because there were no churches in those areas.
Great work! This will help explain to many why the New England Presbytery had to split into North and South. If you look at the area it all makes sense, especially if the density of PCA churches can be shown. Hopefully you’ll find the information you need so you can add it.
@Chris Dattilo I know the info exists – http://www.pca-mna.org/churchplanting/PDFs/ChurchDistribution.pdf but I’m not sure who has it. Zoomed out the MNA map can be pretty deceiving.
Good job! (And good descision on not getting me involved – it took me over an hour to just be able to see it haha). I think it’s interesting how presbyteries seem to be the densest in Appalachia where the Scots-Irish settled. It seems Presbyterianism is still strongest in those regions.
Sam: Thanks for your hard work on this. I found out about these files from Joe Holland, PCA church planter in Culpeper, VA via Don Clements, Stated Clerk of the Blue Ridge Presbytery. With an iframe and a little bit of elbow grease, I was able to embed the Blue Ridge Presbytery map on our presbytery homepage — blueridgepresbytery.org
No problem. I hope you guys can make good use of the project.
I had no idea Montgomery County was split partially into the Philadelphia Metro West and the Philadelphia Presbytery. The map indicates my church (Conshohocken) would fall into the Philadelphia Presbytery but we call ourselves Metro West.
@kass you might want to check out http://www.pcaac.org/presbyteries.htm
There are towns in east PA that fall into different presbyteries.
Sam, thanks that was helpful. Turns out my church is right on the border of the Philly/Metro West Presbytery.
You guys have the craziest presbytery lines. It took me a long time to figure out exactly how all those presbyteries interact.
Sam, you are not kidding. Kudos on somehow figuring that out. Even I was confused for a while.
Well I know a few of the guys who helped come up with the plan for the reorganization that happened a few years ago, and so I had a working knowledge of what happened.
Couple of changes… the Nebraska Panhandle is actually with Rocky Mountain Presbytery, and Pottawattamie County, IA (right across the river from Omaha, NE) is with Platte Valley Presbytery.
I just found this site. I wish we could have collaborated on this. At the time when I started it (a personal effort to help me with my job at MTW), the only thing online was the text descriptions on the AC site and then Central Carolina had a list of all the presbytery websites (which AC didn’t have linked up at the time). I really think AC needs to provide this kind of material, which, if tied into their db could be dynamically updated when new churches were planted and new presbyteries formed.
I had the need to create both a visual map of all the presbyteries and individual maps in Google, for each one. I began this three or four years ago so the overall map (the individual graphic) is out of date. The presbytery maps on Google are pretty reliable, although they need regular updating as well. I benefit from them being actual Google maps (as opposed to KMZ files) because I travel extensively through the PCA and use the Google Maps feature on my phone. I’m not sure if I could use these without downloading/saving them first??? You can see both at http://www.mtwcr.org/?page_id=73.
Also, I should note that I’m personally more driven to keep up with the states in my region (for my job). So my knowledge of changes outside that region is often lacking. I’m open to any suggestions you have.
Yeah It didn’t actually take me that long to do all the maps. A few were more difficult because their descriptions were very local (ie creek beds and local roads). I made the map county by county so the files are pretty big, they can easily be accessed thru google maps by pasting their url location in the map search bar.
Sam: I saw your a link to your blog over on Johannes Weslianus. Wonderful work! I had done something similar for my own denomination, The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, a while ago, but never put it up anywhere. I’ve now done so on my site after seeing your work (although, I have not converted the files to KMZ/KMLs, yet): http://www.therulingelder.com/2010/06/arpdom.html.
A fellow Presbyterian map-junkie,
Seth Stark