A letter to pastors

It would be presumptuous of me to think that I could speak on behalf of the millions of Presbyterian Christians in this country. Still, from the window of being a member of the Presbytery Pastoral Care Network and a pastor for almost forty years, I would like to offer a word of thanks to the ordained ministers of the Presbyterian churches across this country. For the past eight years, this network has been trying to offer support and encouragement to pastors in the exercise of their demanding profession. Both as a pastor myself and from the perspective of that board, I would like to say thank you to those of you who are hard at work in your congregations.

Voices

Time to rest: The ultimate pastor appreciation gift

Presbyterians have a history of generosity toward their pastors. Some of that generosity has worked its way into constitutional mandates. The Book of Order stipulates that all installed pastors shall receive an adequate salary, in accordance with local presbytery guidelines, plus a month of vacation and two weeks of study leave each year. Those of us who serve as the church's pastors are genuinely grateful for these bottom-line requirements. All too easily, however, minimum standards become the finish line rather than the starting point.

A similar thing happens with church member pledging. We are asked to pledge in advance our guaranteed minimum we'll give to the church, and this becomes our giving goal for the year. I have discovered in my own giving that my pledge, which should be the beginning point of my giving to the church, all too easily becomes my finishing point.

Voices

Writing our way home in teaching, preaching, and soul tending

Do you ever think, "I've got to write this"? But other times, "I get to write this!" Sometimes duty takes over: Sunday's sermon, pastor's column deadline, insistent e-mails. How can we move through got to into get to?

During a writing funk, two things occurred to me. First, if I find bits of grace in the grit of duty, then obligation morphs into invitation. Second, even if my words get rejected, what matters is whether or not I've written myself an inch closer home to my true self and God.

Writing can help us appreciate ministry. Preaching, teaching, and soul tending extend an invitation to pen our way home and out into the world's need.

Voices

A great mountain pastor

The death of the Rev. Bryan Clinton Childress of Willis, Va., on December 19, 2006, was not a surprise. He was, after all, 85 years old, and had been in poor health for some time. His pastoral life, spent entirely in Appalachia, was not remarkable in terms of great achievements, but it was a sincere witness to Christ and the meaning of a life dedicated to him.

I met Bryan nearly 50 years ago in Pendleton County, West Virginia. I was the summer student minister of a field of six preaching points in the area of Circleville and Seneca Rocks. My work was under the supervision of the Rev. Dale Jones, who gave devoted service to those churches and chapels before he returned to teaching the deaf at the school in Staunton, Va. Bryan came to conduct a revival at the Seneca Rocks Church, and I was present for several of the evenings he held forth in that beautiful stone church. I was sophisticated in those days, and wondered about this rather rough-hewn mountain man, who came with his accordion and uncultured voice to proclaim the Lord's message to the gathered folks.

Book Reviews

The Fully Alive Preacher: Recovering from Homiletical Burnout

A brief note to preachers: Read this book. And an accompanying note to elders and other church leaders: Give this book to your preacher(s), and encourage them to read it.

Mike Graves has written a dynamic book about preaching, but not the sort you might expect. This is not an introductory text for beginning students, nor an offering in the latest in homiletical theory.

Instead, it's a text that suggests that lively, faithful preaching is born out of a dynamic encounter between the biblical text and a "fully alive preacher." To renew preaching in the life of the church, Graves proposes that we need to renew the life of the preacher. What he poses is a resource for those pastors whose lives have been full to overflowing for some time with meetings to attend, phone calls to make, bulletins to produce, hospitals to visit, letters to write, unhappy parishioners to counsel -- and who suffer from what some have called the "relentless return of the Sabbath."

Voices

How to discourage lay ministers

Here are three guaranteed ways to discourage lay ministers:

1. Give them an assignment, and then take it back because they aren't doing it your way or because you are anxious.

2. Ignore their work as if it were trivial.

3. Allow leaders to become buried in "background noise" from those who natter, gossip, and complain.

The first is easy to correct. As the saying goes: Don't ask the question if you can't stand the answer. Don't give people work to do if you cannot trust them to follow through.

Editorials

Pastor Cliff

October is Pastor Appreciation Month: time to tip our hats to the pastors who shepherd us. Time also to tip our hats to the pastor who has shepherded the denomination these past nearly 12 years. Thank you, Clifton Kirkpatrick, for your service as Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Cliff Kirkpatrick is an authentic Christian churchman. The bureaucratic experience has dissipated the faith of many a godly person, but not so for Cliff. He believes, he preaches, he passionately promotes the Gospel. And when he shakes your hand, whether you be a world leader or a child in church school, you feel the embrace of a person of sincerity, tenderness, and godliness.

Uncategorized

Kirkpatrick will not seek fourth term; Committee seeking nominee

Clifton Kirkpatrick -- tall, ecumenically-minded, a nimble public speaker, and sometime lightening rod for controversy -- has decided not to seek a fourth term as stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Kirkpatrick's term of service will be completed at the close of the General Assembly meeting in San Jose in June 2008. His departure leaves the field open for a new leader of the Office of the General Assembly -- the chief constitutional officer of the denomination and its representative in meeting with religious leaders from around the world.

Uncategorized

Search begins for Stated Clerk nominee

LOUISVILLE -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Stated Clerk Nomination Committee (SCNC), elected at the 217th General Assembly in 2006 in Birmingham, AL, is now accepting applications for the position of General Assembly stated clerk, the top ecclesiastical post in the 2.3-million-member denomination.

Next summer's 218th General Assembly in San Jose, CA, will elect the successor to the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, who announced last month that he will not seek a fourth three-year term.

Uncategorized

Mission leader: New directions needed for mission work

LOUISVILLE -- Hunter Farrell, the new director of World Mission for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), calls this a crossroads time for Presbyterians -- with the health and vitality of the denomination at stake.

"I believe we in the Presbyterian church are at a crossroads, a kairos moment, a time when we're going to have to choose which direction in which to go," said Hunter Farrell, director of World Mission for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Farrell was speaking to more than 600 people who gathered in Louisville Oct. 2-5 for the World Mission '07 "Celebration of Grace" convocation -- an effort by the denomination to jump-start enthusiasm for international mission and to build closer connections between the national staff and Presbyterians involved in world mission at the local level.

Uncategorized

Conference commissions 48 itinerating missionaries to “light a fire”

LOUISVILLE -- It was a moment of pure celebration: the commissioning, during an evening worship service, of 48 missionaries as they embark on a month of itinerating, telling Presbyterians in churches around the country of the impact that Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) international mission efforts are making.

These missionaries -- who serve from Asia to Africa to South America -- teach in seminaries and heal the sick and work with church partners around the world to provide jobs and education and justice to the suffering.

They were sent off for what's being called Mission Challenge '07, a month of "telling the story," sent off with blessing from a national gathering of Presbyterians who are dedicated to supporting mission around the world -- and to doing it right, in an atmosphere of partnership and mutual respect.

Movie Reviews

Trade

This one will break your heart. Over and over. Cesar Ramos is Jorge, a thug-in-training in Juarez, Mexico. He's learned just enough English to be able to approach American tourists. He's looking for the men who are by themselves, so he can show them pictures of naked young girls, and promises that one of them is available just around the corner. If his 'mark' falls for it, he follows Jorge into a back alley, where he is threatened, robbed, ridiculed, and, if necessary for cooperation, beaten. The victims won't dare tell the police, because then they'd have to admit why they were in that back alley. And besides, chances are, they couldn't identify anybody, anyway, and don't even speak the language. Stupid gringos.

Uncategorized

Opponents of US Episcopal Church’s direction, eye alternative

New York, 1 October (ENI)--A group of North American Episcopal (Anglican) bishops has joined in a partnership to usher in an 'Anglican union' they hope will serve as a formal ecclesiastical alternative to the US Episcopal Church.

'We declare clearly that we are taking this as a first step in the formation of the separate ecclesiastical structure in North America,'the bishops declared in a statement following four days of meetings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Uncategorized

General Assembly committee begins its search for a Stated Clerk Nominee

The Stated Clerk Nomination Committee (SCNC), elected at the 217^th General Assembly in Birmingham, AL, is now accepting applications for the position of Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Movie Reviews

Harry Potter and the Christian faith

Who would have guessed that a children's book that's fundamentally about death would have one of the largest publishing runs of any book in history -- garnering 3.7 million pre-orders (that's pre-orders, before the actual sales began) from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com? I am talking, of course, about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Those sorts of sales would be amazing enough in a single volume, but this is number seven -- of seven -- Harry Potter books. Each one of the previous volumes has been a blockbuster best-seller, as well.

Voices

Three poems from the land of Katrina

...America is at war.

Its volunteer army is easily recognizable here in southern Mississippi.

It is revealed in tapping sounds from inside a house

that most outsiders wouldn't see

as worth the effort to rebuild (but it has a family and stories!).

It gives itself away in ragged formations of matching T-shirts and

unmatched ages,

seen everywhere along the coast....

Uncategorized

Belated (35 years) letter to the editor happily corrects Outlook’s dire prediction for Big Bay Church

In the December 31, 1972 issue you wrote about "St. George of Big Bay" -- the story of an elderly man in Upper Michigan and his faithful service to a small town and its Presbyterian Church. The article ended: "He is a tiny man, giving life to a dying church, in a forgotten town. This is St. George of Big Bay." The church cut out the article and framed it, placing it on the wall of pictures of their history. I found it when I candidated to be their first installed pastor in their 75 years of existence.

Uncategorized

Columbia Seminary Offers Pastors Expense-Paid Holy Land Pilgrimage

Decatur, GA--October 22 is the application deadline for a unique spiritual renewal experience offered for mid-career pastors by Columbia Theological Seminary's Center for Lifelong Learning. Journey of Faith: A Pilgrimage of Discernment for Ministry includes a two-week pilgrimage to the Holy Land and two short retreats--one before and one after the pilgrimage. Participant costs for travel, accommodations, meals, and materials for the pilgrimage will be paid through a grant from the CF Foundation, through its Holy Land Pastoral Renewal Program. The only cost for those selected to participate will be a registration fee of $250.

Book Reviews

Talking About Evangelism: A Congregational Resource

by D. Mark Davis. Holy Conversations. The Pilgrim Press, 2007. ISBN 0829817395. Pb., 111 pp. $12.

Mark Davis in his book, Talking about Evangelism, addresses a vital issue in a creative way. As Presbyterians, we have never been very good at evangelism, especially in recent years. Mark uses personal experience and theological insight to offer concrete suggestions that speak well to our day.

Mark and I have followed similar paths in our faith journeys. Both of us came out of very fundamentalistic traditions that carried with them a clear cut way to do evangelism. He used it in talking to his favorite high school teacher: Mark had taken Evangelism 101 at the Christian college he attended and wanted to be sure Sam, his teacher, was saved. Sam responded, "Take your prayers, and your holier-than-thou attitude and get the hell out of my office. And don't bother coming back until you leave that crap at home."

Editorials

Triple-E, as in the shoe size

Three major Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) news reports fill the pages of this week's Outlook: the first ever national elders conference, the first ever national evangelism conference, and the resignation of Elenora Giddings Ivory.

Of course, we held an elders' conference! "Presbyter" means "elder" in biblical Greek, so it only stands to reason that elders would come together to learn how to "eld" better. It's just that we haven't gotten around to organizing such a conference for the past couple hundred years. In the meantime we have presented hundreds and hundreds of conferences for the ministers of Word and Sacrament. And we believe in parity?

We claim that those two offices have equal status. Don't kid yourself.

Uncategorized

Evangelism: Loving God and saying it out loud

NASHVILLE -- In mainline congregations doing a good job with evangelism, what's happening -- what's the secret to success?

Martha Grace Reese, a lawyer and Disciples of Christ minister, asked that question and set out to answer it in a four-year study funded by the Lilly Endowment. Through that project, she and her team conducted a statistical analysis of 150 mainline congregations that do well in reaching people with no church background.

And they interviewed more than 1,400 people and visited 50 congregations from seven mainline denominations, trying to discover what congregations successful at evangelism were doing and what was motivating them.

The results have just been published in a new book, Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism. And Reese shared some of what she learned at the National Presbyterian Evangelism Conference, a gathering of about 500 in Nashville Aug. 31-Sept. 3.

Uncategorized

Wallis challenges Presbyterians to call for “justice conversion”

NASHVILLE -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has taken the right positions on social justice issues for years, Jim Wallis contends.

But that doesn't accomplish much, he says, if no one is listening.

Wallis is the editor-in-chief of Sojourners Magazine and an organizer of Call to Renewal, an interfaith advocacy group trying to bring people of faith together to work on issues such as poverty and the environment. Wallis travels the world speaking widely and provocatively, trying to change the political winds.

He wants to convince the politicians and the people with power that the grassroots is shifting -- that enough people care about things such as global warming or about children dying by the thousands each day because they don't have food or medicine that the politicians need to pay attention.

Wallis was the kick-off speaker at the National Presbyterian Evangelism Conference Aug. 31-Sept. 3 in Nashville -- part of a renewed emphasis the PC(USA) is trying to place on the importance of spreading the gospel. And he challenged Presbyterians, whose long suit historically has not been evangelism, to call for a "justice conversion," to overtly link religious faith and work on behalf of justice.

Uncategorized

‘Claim ministry for your own,’ first-ever national conferees told

NASHVILLE -- Gradye Parsons, director of operations for the Office of the General Assembly, laid down the challenge from the very start of the first-ever National Elders Conference of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) August 29-31 with the theme "Elder as Spiritual Leader: Reclaiming the Call."

"We want to create a bunch of dangerous elders," Parsons said, elders "who know what the ministry of being an elder is about and want to claim that ministry for their own."

The 330 elders attending the conference faced a number of encouraging and challenging speakers on the facets of their ministry.

Elders should be worship leaders, according to co-presenters Melva Costen and Rhashell Hunter. They thanked the elders in attendance for "saying yes" when pastors call on them to lead out in church ministries.

Voices

A developing issue

A few years back, I visited a prominent, moderate-to-progressive downtown church in Atlanta that shall go nameless. Now, at the time I was the pastor of a New Church Development, and the friend I was with introduced me as such to one of their elders.

"Well, welcome to our church. Is it different worshipping with us?" he wanted to know.

"Pardon me?" I said, with a confused look on my face.

"Is it different worshipping with Presbyterians?"

Uncategorized

New ways to communicate with members

One of the major problems in modern congregations is discovering how to communicate effectively with members. If the pastor gives a sermon on Mother's Day, for example, about family life and ways for parents and children to grow together spiritually, chances are that many young parents will never hear it. They may be visiting their own families, attending the regional Junior High track meet or band festival, be at a picnic at the lake, or squeezing in time to get groceries and purchasing a new prom dress at the mall. On any given Sunday, it is unlikely that most churches will have more than 25 percent of the congregation in one place at one time.

One of the challenges for the modern church, therefore, is finding innovative ways to communicate outside of the Sunday service. In the case of Mother's Day a targeted mailing might be the answer. Instead of expecting parents to attend the service why not send the service to them? Acknowledging how busy they are, why not mail (or e-mail) a copy of the pastor's sermon on family life along with a reading list of recommended family devotional guides. Offer to give parents a free copy of the book they would like to use to foster discussion, prayer, and Scripture reading around their dinner table. Better yet, why not send them a DVD of the whole service or make a podcast available for downloading?

The Presbyterian Outlook

More Stories from this Author