TULSA — What does it mean to have unity in Christ?
For some supporters of the New Wineskins movement, unity is getting new interpretations — focusing in part on finding unity with Christians in the Southern hemisphere, or among evangelicals in other settings, but not necessarily within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
“If we’re going to talk about unity in the church, we have to talk about the church — not the American church, but the body of Christ,” crossing every race and place, Dean Weaver, a Pennsylvania pastor and the co-moderator of New Wineskins, told that network’s national convocation July 20.
“What we are about here today is not about how we realign a small group of American Western Presbyterians,” but how Presbyterians fall into line with what God is doing around the globe, Weaver said.
As the New Wineskins supporters consider what they want to do — stay in the PC(USA), pull out, or figure out some other way — they’re clearly pointing at possibilities for connecting with like-minded people outside of this denomination. Letters of support have been read from church leaders in Kenya, in Egypt, in Brazil, and a representative of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church spoke to the convocation in Tulsa July 20.
“What God wants us to hear today is He is doing a new thing in his world church,” said Carmen Fowler, the former executive director of the Presbyterian Coalition and now associate pastor of Providence Church in Hilton Head, S. C. She preached during morning worship July 20 — and was not shy in either her criticisms of the PC(USA) or her vision of what could be if evangelical Presbyterians build alliances outside of the denomination.
“The church is one, it is holy, it is catholic,” Fowler said. “The church is one. She has one head. His name is Jesus. He does not go by nicknames” — a line that got whoops of laughter as it alluded to the recent controversy over a paper on the nature of the Trinity.
That paper considered alternate ways of speaking of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, using language taken from the Bible. The General Assembly voted in June to receive the Trinity paper rather than approve it — meaning congregations can decide for themselves what to do with it.
But the Trinity paper has become another example among conservatives of how the PC(USA) has gone astray — for suggesting terminology other than Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The popular joke has become that next name chosen will be “rock, paper, scissors,” and Fowler said: “God revealed a name to us. It is not for us to choose Him a nickname.”
There is only one church universal, Fowler said — and that does not mean “some false ecumenism” or the World Council of Churches. “It ultimately doesn’t matter what happens to the denomination of which we are a part,” she said — what matters is not the particular expression of the church, but whether the universal church follows Jesus’ command to go out and make disciples in all lands.
She also painted a picture of how the PC(USA) has lost its influence — and has been slow to grasp how the world is changing.
For a century, she said, from about 1850 to 1950, no other denomination did more to reach the world for Jesus than did the Presbyterian church — and comparing that to the present, “your jaw ought to be dropping.”
But “1950 was a long-ass time ago,” Fowler said. “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile, this is not your grandmother’s Presbyterian church. In case no one has told you yet, things have changed,” and the world is now experiencing “a global realignment” of Christianity.
“I don’t have any interest in ceasing to be Presbyterian,” Fowler said. “I have every interest in being Presbyterian with the folks in East Africa” and in India and Brazil and China. “This is not about leaving. This is about getting on board with what God is doing in the world.”
She described this as “the season of our humiliation,” in a positive sense, for Presbyterians, because “we were privileged for 100 years to be on the very forefront of the evangelical mission effort in the world. That was a privileged position. We forsook our privilege; we became distracted by lesser gods. We became enamored with ourselves. … When we began to fail, God began to lift up others.”
The question to be asked in mission today is not “where God hasn’t shown up yet,” Fowler said, but where God is already at work in “the ever-morphing map” and “how we might participate in that.”
But while that may be the vision of some New Wineskins folks, there are still many questions of how that might play out. For one: while concentrating on mission work both in the U.S. and abroad, what will be the shape of the structure that guides that work?
When the Presbyterian Global Fellowship meets in Atlanta in August, those who attend will be asked to consider designating all of their donations for mission work, Fowler said — meaning no money would go to support the PC(USA)’s denominational structures. She urged those who withhold funding from the PC(USA) to “hound-dog” their presbyteries, to make sure that the presbytery doesn’t take money from elsewhere to make up the missing per-capita funding.
Those at the New Wineskins convocation spent time on their knees praying for the global church.
But they also talked about the advantages of setting up regional ministry networks of evangelical churches in the U.S., gathering in lunch groups by geographic area to try to do that.
They listened to a lawyer explain church property law — considering, in other words, how congregations which do decide to split from the PC(USA) could best prepare for the legal fight to try to take their property with them.
And Weaver, during one session, beseeched congregations to keep one foot in New Wineskins, no matter in which direction they’re leaning — to stay in the PC(USA) or to leave.
“Whatever we do, we ought to try to do that together,” he said. What he didn’t say directly — but what has been said in the past — is that if a group of congregations does decide to leave the PC(USA), their position in negotiating with the denomination to take their property may be stronger if they come as a group rather than leave one-by-one.
Weaver described New Wineskins as “wet cement” — still forming and shaping, a blueprint of what a Reformed church centered on mission could be.
To join the New Wineskins association is not to renounce the jurisdiction of the PC(USA), Weaver said — at least not at this point — but is more like being both Presbyterian and part of the Willow Creek Association.
Firm registration figures weren’t available July 20, but the crowd appeared to be around 400. So far, folks have mostly been listening. But starting July 21, the delegates from “endorsing” congregations — those willing to formally associate with New Wineskins — will start voting on specific proposals.
That may be when the wet cement starts to harden a bit.
