What is your presbytery, session, or congregation doing to prepare for September 15? That day is not on any ecclesiastical calendar. Many congregations are in “start-up” mode after summer vacation. Christian Education and Stewardship dominate the attention of the local church.
However, as far as the PC(USA) is concerned, this is the day the Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity will release its report for consideration, discernment, and conversation. This early release date affords the church in sessions, presbyteries, and church school classes ample time for open, free discussion before the 217th General Assembly meeting in June, 2006, in Birmingham, Ala. That assembly will be asked to act on its recommendations.
As you see in the articles from Thomas Daniel, Pendleton Peery and Timothy Hoyt-Duncan, some people have already begun to prepare for this report by seeking common ground. The Outlook, in this and subsequent issues, will run guest viewpoints that debate the report as well as stories of persons who are attempting to hold tightly to each other in disagreement for the sake of larger Christian and Reformed/Presbyterian unity. It is that larger unity that the Task Force seeks on behalf of the PC(USA) and which they themselves have tenaciously modeled for the church. They have “hung tough’ even though there are those who do not wish them well, are cynical about their efforts, or have sought to discredit the work of taskforce members who are courageous and remain connected. Sadly, for some ministers and elders in the PC(USA), the only effective outcome will be defeat for their opponents. Is there a better way?
The church owes this taskforce its attention, respect, and prayers. They are doing exactly what we have asked them to do. If their report is as effective as it promises to be, then it will probably displease everyone whose minds are already made up and who are not open to new ways to reach the hearts of women and men on the divisive issues among us.
A discerning member of a Pastor Nominating Committee once asked me if in my ministry I intended to afflict the comfortable or comfort the afflicted. I said I intended to do both. All of us who belong to Jesus Christ need to be challenged to more faithful discipleship, and also comforted — when unholy stress and conflict undermine our best efforts for the sake of the gospel. I hope the report of the Task Force will afflict and comfort us all.
One of our newer hymns (“How Clear Is Our Vocation, Lord”) by Fred Pratt Green has a couple of lines that seem apt in this plea for unity and my announcement of the Outlook’s commitment for the next 12 months:
If worldly pressures fray the mind
And love itself cannot unwind
Its tangled skein of care;
Our inward life repair.In what you give us, Lord, to do …
May we not cease to look to You —
The cross you hung upon —
All You endeavored done.
And this from the Apostle: “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit … be of the same mind. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. …” (Phil. 2:1 -5 selected)
How will we prepare for September 15 and all the months to come?
