Saying that Presbyterians should turn their attention away from denominational struggles and back out towards the world, a group of more than a dozen congregations are announcing the creation of the Presbyterian Global Fellowship (https://www.presbyterianglobalfellowship.org) .
While the exact shape of the endeavor is still being formulated, the new fellowship is intended to connect Presbyterian congregations in pursuing mission work and to encourage them to support the work they consider vital through designated, targeted giving.
Its organizers — who have been praying and talking about this for the last several months — include Michael Walker, executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal; D. Scott Weimer, senior pastor of North Avenue Presbyterian church in Atlanta; and Vic Pentz, senior pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian church, also in Atlanta.
The website also states that the fellowship “will seek wisdom, support and other resources” from groups already involved in mission, such as Presbyterians for Renewal https://www.pfrenewal.org/ , the Outreach Foundation https://www.theoutreachfoundation.org/ and Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship https://www.pff.net/ .
The fellowship will holds its first meeting at Peachtree church in Atlanta August 17-19.
The congregations initiating the network say, in an e-mail sent May 12 inviting congregations to join the fellowship, that “we choose to remain within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we encourage congregations to relate to their own presbyteries in the manner that they deem best. This is not an effort to start a new denomination or to write a new constitution. We are convinced the church cannot restructure its way to health.”
But it also makes it clear that the new fellowship will work inside or outside the PC(USA), as needed.
“The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is in a deep crisis,” the e-mail to congregations states. “We have turned our eyes inward, and we are an aging, dying, visionless denomination. We have lost the central focus of the New Testament church: its missional calling. While our own culture has become a mission field, we continue to devote all our efforts to maintaining the institution that we once were.”
In an interview, Walker said the fellowship will not, at least initially, be an organization that will send its own missionaries.
“We will explore every option,” he said. “But at the present moment we are not becoming a mission-sending agency. But we will explore those ideas.”
The fellowship also would not ask congregations to send money to be used for mission work internationally or in the United States directly to it, Walker said. Instead, congregations would be asked to direct the money where they think it would be best spent, he said — inside or outside the PC(USA).
The fellowship would help link congregations with others interested in the same work — so they could share information, resources and “best practices” for effective ministry.
The e-mail also brings the PC(USA)’s long, messy debate over ordaining sexually-active gays and lesbians into the picture.
It states that it seeks to unite Presbyterian congregations that want “to identify themselves publicly as being part of a fellowship of churches that confesses the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all of life and is mission-driven. This includes an uncompromising commitment to allowing the Bible to shape our life together, especially with regard to wealth, human sexuality, power, and the congregation’s public witness. As a fellowship we recognize the need in the midst of our current North American culture to be particularly vigilant to maintain our witness to heterosexual marriage as God’s design for human sexual expression.”
In an interview, Stephen Hayner, who is Peachtree professor of evangelism and church growth at Columbia Theological Seminary and an organizer of the new fellowship, said the intent of the group is to “keep first things first.” In other words, the idea is to keep as a central focus of Presbyterian congregations mission, evangelism and outreach, “basically keeping our eyes towards the world,” Hayner said.
What about congregations or individual Presbyterians who have a strong commitment to mission work internationally and in this country — but who think the PC(USA) should change its ordination standards and should allow gays and lesbians in committed partnerships to be ordained. Would they feel welcome, or be welcome, in the new fellowship?
And why bring in the debate over homosexuality — one of the most divisive issues in the PC(USA) — into the mix if the goal is to unite Presbyterians in working for mission?
“I don’t know if they’ll feel welcome or not,” Hayner said of the Presbyterians who disagree with the current ordination standards — a group that some contend is a sizeable minority.
But “the ordination issues are really at the top of the list of a lot of churches,” he said. “I haven’t heard this much anxiety in congregations in a very long time,” and some Presbyterians say if the General Assembly approves the recommendations of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA), they will seek to leave the denomination.
“Basically, we’re saying all of that . . . is not what the denomination ought to be about,” Hayner said. “It’s not those battles we want to fight.”
Hayner said he spoke recently with an Atlanta pastor who was lamenting that “there are people every day who drive past my church because the word `Presbyterian’ is in front of it.”
The pastor said that if the theological task force report passes, “then my congregation is going to start hemorrhaging again.”
But Hayner said he urged the pastor to “identify yourself with a movement of missional churches within the denomination,” rather than with the wars over ordaining gays and lesbians, and “let those things sort themselves out.”
Hayner also said he thinks the new fellowship could help the PC(USA) — which just cut $9.1 million from its budget and is eliminating the positions of 55 missionaries — by making it more accountable. It probably will result in less funding for the PC(USA) itself, Hayner acknowledged.
But he said it also might mean that Presbyterian congregations — energized by a new way of doing things — will work together to do more, and will give even more money to mission.
A list of “frequently asked questions” about the new network is posted on the Presbyterian Global Fellowship website (link).
