Creating and curating trustworthy resources for the church, the Presbyterian Outlook connects disciples of Jesus Christ through compelling and committed conversation for the proclamation of the Gospel.
STONY POINT, N.Y. — Mainline Protestant denominations have being shrinking for the past 40 years because they’ve scaled back what they did so well for decades before: birthing babies. Growth surged during the baby boom of the 1950s, but when that faded so did membership.
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Welcome to my rant! I’ve been down this road before, but here we go again. A couple of years ago someone did..
(PNS) Thomas D. Hay has been named director of operations for the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), beginning in January.
LOUISVILLE — Evan Silverstein, a veteran reporter who served the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for 10 years as senior reporter for the Presbyterian..
Marjorie Hass, provost of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., has been selected to serve as the fifteenth president of Austin College in Sherman, Texas. She will begin her duties on July 1, 2009.
Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a three-part series. Succeeding installments will appear in later issues of the Outlook The topics include: “Why Scripture divides us,” and “The priority of experience in moral debate.”
MINNEAPOLIS – When conservatives discuss sexual morality, they often focus on rules – as in, “Are you obeying the rules,” said theologian William Stacy Johnson. And liberals often start by asking, “Is this relationship sincere?”
Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 1 (Advent through Transfiguration), edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. WJKP, 2008. Hb., 463 pp. $39.99.
Of the seven factors that nurture health in a congregation, perhaps the hardest to embrace is “Listening Church.”
Mark Twain once said “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people, and those who do not.” This week we begin a three-part series of articles by Edwin Barron on two kinds of churches. They reflect great research and offer lots of insights.
OK, think it through.
Let’s say a lot of young adults switch jobs every three years or so. Pastor and blogger Carol Howard Merritt, author of Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation, cites research saying they’ll likely move every 2.7 years.
Utrecht, Netherlands — (ENI) Plans to form a new global grouping representing 80 million Reformed Christians worldwide in 2010 have taken a step forward, following discussions at a meeting in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
Bill Maher is funnier than Pat Robertson. But he is every bit as dogmatic.
I had been pondering it all summer, but it didn’t hit me full force until I saw it juxtaposed so starkly. There, lying on my nightstand, were two bookmarks. Not exactly earth shaking, I hear you say. True.
MINNEAPOLIS – It can be hard sometimes to know what progress looks like.
At the Covenant Network of Presbyterians meeting in Minneapolis Nov. 6-8, certain realities are nudging at the edges of the presentations.
MINNEAPOLIS – Barbara Lundblad – a Lutheran minister and associate professor of preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York, white-haired, humorous and direct – started her sermon Nov. 7 by saying that the Presbyterians and Lutherans are in full communion, but not always in the same place in the lectionary. For example, last August 17 both Presbyterians and Lutherans heard the New Testament story of the Canaanite woman.
After a blood-gushing fight to the end, a 389-year-old U.S. monster perished Nov. 4, 2008.
Yes, American slavery finally expired.
Of course, in 1865, when most states ratified the 13th Amendment, Congress had declared it dead. Mississippi's legislature was the holdout, managing to delay ratification until 1995!
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Recently a Catholic friend asked me about the state of the Presbyterian Church. She said that, for her, Presbyterianism has always represented..
Here’s a movie that one hesitates even to mention by title: “Zack And Miri Make A Porno.” Sounds sleazy, doesn’t it? And there’s no question that you don’t take Grandma to this one. But it’s not as hard-core as it appears. This comedy was written by Kevin Smith, of “Clerks” fame, so you know there’s going to be a slacker element — casual, irreverent, characters on the margins of propriety and the socially acceptable. No different here.
“Happy-Go-Lucky” is a British comedy that doesn’t try to conform to Hollywood standards. Therefore, we have a primary character in a sitcom who isn’t really a raving beauty, or particularly young, just kind of the working girl next door. Sally Hawkins, 30-something, plays Poppy, a north London elementary school teacher who is determined to be upbeat, even when those around her aren’t. It’s not like she isn’t capable of being serious (she finally has to end the uncomfortable relationship with her dour, angry driving instructor), it’s just that she won’t let herself be dragged down by the doldrums of uneventful living. She’s a refreshing presence, just going shopping with her gal pals, or on a first date, or dealing with a grouchy cashier in a bookstore. She’s the kind of person we’d like to know, and to be around, even if her endings aren’t always happily ever after.
MINNEAPOLIS — Just days after Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African-American president, progressive Presbyterians are considering what change looks like.
MINNEAPOLIS – The idea of living in covenant with God – listening, hearing, responding, following, being faithful, being loved – is both basic and complicated stuff.
Preachers and professors at the national gathering of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which has drawn just over 400 people to Westminster Church in Minneapolis on Nov. 6-8, have been trying to tease their own meanings out of the idea of an enduring and challenging covenant with a faithful God.
(ENI) — U.S. religious leaders and denominations have issued calls for Americans to unite in support of Barack Obama, following his election as the first mixed-race president of the United States.
In a November 5 statement that captured the enormous pride that the election of Obama, who is the son of a Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, has elicited among African Americans, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a predominately black denomination, said Obama had won "one of the most historic elections in American history".
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