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The Presbyterian Outlook

The Presbyterian Outlook

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.

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Covenant Network discusses TF report, future options at recent annual meeting

MEMPHIS -- Where do moderate evangelicals stand?

That's a question Jon Walton, a pastor from New York and co-moderator of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, slipped into his remarks when talking about one of the biggest issues facing the General Assembly next summer in Birmingham: the long-awaited report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The Covenant Network -- a progressive group in the PC(USA) -- would love to know what moderate evangelicals think of the report, and whether they're willing to take a public stand on it. Such information would help the progressives know how solid their own footing is and what the prospects may be that the assembly will approve the task force report.

But there are other questions to ask as well -- including what Covenant Network supporters privately think of the task force report, whether there might be more support from them than seems apparent, and whether the church as a whole cares much about the positions all these special interest groups take.

Voices

Ben Sparks: Colleague in ministry and friend

Ben Sparks first introduced himself to me on the campus of Union Theological Seminary in the fall of 1968 or 1969. I was in my first or second year of seminary; Ben was a member of the Board of Trustees, one of the youngest trustees ever to serve on the board of Union, now Union-PSCE. Ben was living in Roanoke, serving as Urban Minister for Montgomery Presbytery staff. After college, I had spent a year working with an inner city Presbyterian congregation in Brooklyn, New York. Ben wanted to talk with me about that experience. As we visited that afternoon on the Union campus, a friendship based on mutual respect began. 

Quickly, I realized that Ben had read more books than I, many more books; he kept up with journals far more than I. A member of the Iona Community in Scotland, Ben treasured participation in that worldwide ecumenical group. Those attributes, along with a keen mind, quick memory, and fun spirit made me eager to let the friendship grow.

Voices

The Last Role of Twilight Paper

On prospective board members my institution desires to make a good impression.  This is not easy because the standard campus tour includes classroom time, and I seem to be the only instructor teaching at the hour guests are free to attend a lecture.  Over the years these classy people regularly show up at my classy room five minutes before the lecture begins.

Voices

Independent voice, independent Outlook

It would be easy to name the churches that Ben Sparks has served, list the baptisms, recall the weddings, remember the funerals, appreciate his faithful service to presbyteries and synods, as well as to the church as a whole. Ben is without a doubt hitting his stride.

But that would be the easy part. There is no difficulty in adding the numbers and citing the impressive facts. What is far more important is the distinctive character of the service that he has given to all of these. And there is still more. It is the special quality of life that both he and Annette contribute to all of these activities that make the essential difference.

In some respects it was a natural thing for Ben to become involved with The Presbyterian Outlook. Second Church had not only been the closest neighbor to the Outlook but also its supportive landlord for many years. And as the senior pastor there, Ben had assumed the responsibility of being a special friend and guardian of the publication.

Voices

Pronouncing Touareg

Among the obscure items I collect to amaze my students and annoy my colleagues is the by-now-long-useless fact that in 1869 Alexandrine Tinne was hacked to death by the Touaregs.  Alexine was an incredibly rich, incredibly beautiful, incredibly brave woman who, at enormous expense, attempted to explore the White Nile and its tributaries. 

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Thomas W. Currie Jr. dies Nov. 7 in Texas; Long-time pastor-executive

Thomas W. Currie Jr. died at Charlton Methodist Hospital in Dallas, Texas on November 7. A memorial service was held at North Park Church of Dallas on November 10 with the Rev. Stephen W. Plunkett officiating.

Born in Austin, Texas, he was educated in the public schools there as well as the Choate School in Wallingford, Conn. He was a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and subsequently received a B.D. from Union Theological Seminary of New York and degrees from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (M.Th.) and Union Theological Seminary of Virginia (Th.D.).

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Draft dodgers no more

Scripture lesson: Mark 1: 1-8

Without sounding as melodramatic as Daniel did about his inner life, I recently had a dream. It went like this: We came home, opened the front door of the house, and discovered to our surprise that it was as empty as a gourd.

I do not mean just somewhat empty. When you are preparing to move and you are packing everything up you can say that it is empty when it is still half full of stuff. But this time I mean spic and span--astonishingly clean. If Hemingway had been there he would have said that it was the original clean well lighted place. It was apocalyptically bare.

Dreams are big these days. There is open season on them by both novelists and psychotherapists. Nevertheless, I am not so sure that the experts would do much with this one. It could be beyond the grasp of even that newly evolved profession, life coach/mentor. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung could have met at Seattle's Best over it, flipped for paying the bill, and left shaking their heads.

Voices

Maxwell’s House – Good to the Last Drop

The scientists in my family have devoted considerable time and effort to educating me in the rudiments of modern physics.  For example, "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" is widely mentioned but some of us do not know exactly what to make of it.  I rather assumed that Einstein had somehow demonstrated to the satisfaction of the scientific community that everything in the physical world is in relation to everything else in the physical world, which theologians have understood for a long time.

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Atlanta Missions Conference: Global missions is a two-way street

ATLANTA -- Kwame Bediako, a pastor and theological educator from Ghana, called it "a shift in the center of gravity of Christianity," a seismic lurch from north to south.

It means this:

·         Asia, Africa and Latin America are producing many new Christians -- Christians who have their own understandings of faith and religious diversity and much to teach those who live in the north.

·         More Christians from those countries are moving to the U.S., knocking on the doors of churches here, bringing with them their own cultures and experiences of God. Some see the secularized north as the next Christian mission field.

·         And more people from other faiths are moving north as well -- meaning that even Americans who don't leave home will be much more likely to encounter Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others, and will live out their faith in contexts in which Christianity can't be assumed as the norm. 

At a global mission conference in Atlanta, Presbyterians -- most of them from North America, many struggling to figure out what the new configurations will look like -- considered some of the new realities.

Editorials

Sucking the Church Dry

Some years ago John Burgess wrote an essay for The Christian Century in which he described the drain on the ordinary life of the PC(USA) by coalitions with "reform" agendas for the denomination. To whichever coalition or covenant group you belonged, the dedication and resources with which you once strengthened the church for mission, service, and witness, now went into lobbies that were hungry for power, for theological dominance, or for political control. Burgess' article was written in the '90s. Has anyone calculated the hundreds of thousands of dollars which, since then, have been contributed to the Covenant Network, the Presbyterian Coalition, PFR, and the Confessing Church movement, and the like -- in staff salaries, speakers' fees, and travel for conferences, phone bills, office equipment, and the like? If those sums of money were prudently managed and spent, they might eliminate AIDS in a medium-sized African nation.

Voices

Seven core callings for Reformed churches

Editor's Note: This challenge to Reformed churches is included in a report to representatives in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) by its president, Clifton Kirkpatrick. It references the 2004 WARC meeting in Accra, Ghana, at which Kirkpatrick was elected president.

 

The Book of Proverbs in the King James Version has a wonderful phrase, "Where there is not vision, the people perish." The most important thing we will do at this meeting is set a vision, purpose, and priorities for the Alliance and begin to shape our life around them. What we need to recapture the hearts of our churches is a compelling vision, purpose, and program so that the message of Accra can renew our churches and through them our world.

The core callings that we are proposing for your consideration for WARC are:

·   To covenant for justice in the economy and the earth.

·   To search for spiritual renewal and renewal of Reformed worship.

·   To foster communion within the Reformed family and unity within the church ecumenical.

·   To interpret and re-interpret the Reformed tradition and theology for contemporary witness.

·   To foster mission in unity, mission renewal and mission empowerment.

·   To build churches that are truly inclusive of all the people of God.

·   To enable Reformed churches to witness for justice and peace.

... We believe these core callings are not only the basis on which we should organize the Alliance but also are the core callings that should be at the heart of every Reformed Church so that WARC becomes a corporate expression of our shared values and our common movement to transform the world to the purposes of God.

Voices

Response from the Leadership Team of the Presbyterian College Commission

Editor's Note:  In the October 31 issue of The Presbyterian Outlook, Nelle McCorkle Bordeaux, a member of the Presbyterian College Commission, wrote a guest viewpoint on her concerns about the commission final report. The leadership team of the commission now responds to her concerns.

 

As the leaders of the team that guided the work of the Presbyterian College Commission to explore what it means to be a liberal arts college in covenant with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we wish to respond to the recent "Guest viewpoint" of Rev. Nelle Bordeaux.

We are deeply disappointed that a member of the Commission has so significantly misrepresented the recommendations of the Commission and the intent of the college's Board of Trustees in regard to the criteria for faculty membership at Presbyterian College. The Commission did not recommend that the faculty of Presbyterian College 'no longer need to be Christian,' but just the opposite. In the 'Findings' regarding 'Faculty Membership' we state, 'We agree that the expectation should be that 'faculty will be members of a Christian church...'' We do then go on to say that, while we "support the initiative of the Board of Trustees to make a limited number of specific exceptions to the requirement of membership in a Christian church,' we 'encourage the Board to state more clearly and concisely its intention to have a faculty of committed Christian scholars with appropriate exceptions being made for outstanding scholars of other faith traditions who would enrich the life and mission of the college.'

Book Reviews

The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Revelation to John

by Barbara R. Rossing. Basic Books, 2004. ISBN 0-8133-4314-3. Pb, 222 pp. $15.00

When the Left Behind series (by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins) began to come out in 1995, many of us wondered "Who would read such stuff?" Now after twelve volumes and a thirteenth, The Rising, which serves as a prequel, we know the answer. A lot more people read them than we would have guessed--enough to keep the books on the best-seller list year after year. They include a sizable percentage of every congregation I know of. The disturbing thing is that while those reading the books know they are fiction, many are nevertheless convinced that what they present is indeed the "biblical view" of God's plan and purpose for the world. We who read Scripture quite differently cannot allow such an assumption to go unchallenged. The use of the Bible and the underlying theology found in the Left Behind series is in many ways antithetical to what many of us are convinced is a more faithful reading of Scripture.

In The Rapture Exposed, Barbara Rossing offers a clear, engaging, and theologically insightful critique of the use of Scripture in the Left Behind series and the dispensationalist theology that lies behind the story line. Rossing, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, has written extensively on the Revelation to John and Christian eschatology. She skillfully exposes the theological fiction on which the whole concept of the Rapture is based, the ethic of despair and escapism it fosters, and the extreme political agenda espoused by its main proponents.

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ACSWP reviews draft policy documents being readied for ’06 GA

(PNS) The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) got updates on several proposed policy documents, including four to be presented to next year's General Assembly, during a recent meeting here.

ACSWP, which develops social witness polices for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), heard presentations on three papers, on energy, economic security for older Americans and lending laws. The documents and recommendations are subject to ACSWP review and revision before they go to next summer's 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala.

During the Oct. 20-22 meeting, the committee discussed a proposed policy statement on ministry to people with disabilities and a referral concerning a study paper on the value of human life.   

ACSWP also welcomed its new coordinator, Christian "Chris" Iosso, and honored Gwen Crawley for her work as interim coordinator of ACSWP

Voices

Cowpersons and Indians

When I was a little boy we played cowboys and Indians happily unaware of the political incorrectness of our behavior.  By today's standards we were not properly trained in inclusiveness.  Instead, we learned that aggressively incompatible lifestyles could not go on at the same time and place.  For example, Indians hunted over the territory and cowboys grazed on it.

Editorials

Minister Shortage II

I stirred up a controversy with an editorial on Commissioned Lay Pastors and Interim Ministers. I haven't tallied the "Amens" and the "No ways," but I am grateful that discussion has opened on these topics, as well as on the hand-wringing assertion that we have (or are about to have) a minister shortage.

One respondent found my editorial confusing; some of you were "hurt" by what I said. I am not against Interims or CLPs, but there is serious weakness in the church's use of both positions that has led to loss of membership, the demoralization of Ministers of the Word, and confusion about the role of pastors. 

CLPs are particularly useful when such persons emerge from indigenous congregations or communities, receive theological and ecclesiastical training, and then serve in those communities to build up a congregation until it calls a Minister of the Word. On the other hand, I think it is bad policy (and bad faith) to take good elders from strong churches and train them to be lay pastors in churches that cannot afford a "real pastor." Why don't the rich churches in a presbytery give enough so that every congregation (or linked congregations) has (have) a Minister of Word and Sacrament? Are rural churches any less deserving of a Minister of the Word than those large churches that can afford three or four? What is the presbytery's role here; do they continue to be market driven? It takes no imagination to follow a McDonalds strategy of New Church Development. It takes faith and reason for a presbytery to "cover" a region or urban area with the good news of the gospel lived out in Presbyterian congregations. Those who defend the presbyteries for the wrong reasons ought to ask churches of 2,000 members to hire CLPs to lead them.

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21st century mission: Shifting center, growing diversity

ATLANTA -- With the center of Christianity shifting south in the 21st century, what can North American Christians learn from what's happening in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

What are the implications of the new alignments -- with pluralism and secularism increasing in Europe and the United States, while evangelical Christianity is booming in many places in the southern hemisphere?

There are many ways to answer those questions, but one common denominator is this: North American Christians need to be ready for change. Things are shifting all around them, whether they're prepared or not, and some of these realignments amount to dramatic reconfigurations. And with every change comes both some pain and new opportunities.

Presbyterians gathered in Atlanta Oct. 20-22 for a global mission conference called "From Everywhere to Everyone," sponsored by The Outreach Foundation, Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship and the Worldwide Ministries Division of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

"From now on Christianity is primarily a non-western religion," said Andrew Walls, a professor from the University of Edinburgh, who traced how shifts in migration patterns have affected missionary activity around the world. "Increasingly it will be shaped by the languages, the cultures, the music, the rhythms, the ways of thinking and choosing and doing things, the structures and networks of relationships of Africa and Asia and Latin America. ...They must increase and we must decrease."

Voices

Disestablished: The challenge of congregational life today

Editor's Note: This sermon was preached at the 66th meeting of New Hope Presbytery of Rocky Mount, N.C., on October 15, 2005.

 

Scripture texts: John 15:12-17; 1 Peter 2:9-17

Though our U.S. Constitution was produced by a congress consisting mostly of Christians, the first clause of the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of an official religion. The apparent irony goes deeper when we acknowledge the contributions of Christians in the formation of our government, beginning with the revolutionary war itself. This was something particularly true of Presbyterians. Historian Lefferts Loetscher1 said that the fires of the American Revolution were fanned from Presbyterian pulpits sufficient for the British to describe it as "the Presbyterian Rebellion." When King George III asked what the trouble was in the American colonies a member of Parliament replied our "colonial cousins had run off with a Presbyterian parson."  

The organizing pastor of First Presbyterian Church New Bern, John Knox Witherspoon, was the grandson and namesake of the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. (I'm required to say that!)

Whatever you may think of the disestablishment clause, the biblical wisdom and Reformed theological stamp that shaped our Constitution is unmistakable. Its principal author, James Madison, was educated at Presbyterian Princeton where he was a student of John Witherspoon. Remembered as "The Father of the United States Constitution," Madison helped produce what Lutheran historian Martin Marty has called "a thoroughly Calvinist document." Marty claims that the Constitution supplies the checks and balances any Presbyterian would love, for the unspoken implication found throughout, "is the conviction that while humans have a great capability, self-interest would always turn them against the common good if left to themselves."2

Book Reviews

Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith

by George McGovern, Bob Dole, and Donald Messer, with a forward by Bill Clinton. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8006-3782-8.  Pb.,114 pp. $12.00

 

These are the facts: More than enough food is produced to feed every man, woman and child on the planet. We have technology sufficient to deliver that food to all those people. Given some tweaking of priorities, there is global capital available to pay for this food and its delivery. Alleviating hunger will contribute toward inhibiting the spread of AIDS, reducing poverty, and diminishing the discontent that creates an environment conducive to war and terrorism. Every major world religion places a significant emphasis on feeding the hungry. More than 850 million people worldwide are malnourished, among them approximately 300 million school-aged children, another 100 million young mothers, infants, and pre-school children, and 7 million citizens in the United States of America; 210,000 persons die each week of starvation and malnutrition. 

These empirically verifiable pieces of data lead to a set of profoundly disturbing questions: How can we allow this to be? Why are there so many hungry people today? How can there be so much apathy in the lives of the well fed? Why aren't people of faith obsessed with ending hunger? 

These questions, once asked, demand our attention and a response. This book is a response.

Outlook Features

Former senators take on needs of hungry: Outlook Q & A with George McGovern

This Thanksgiving, as Americans sit to break bread and count their blessings, Bob Dole and George McGovern want them to think about the men, women and children all over the world who do not have enough to eat.

These men -- one a Republican, one a Democrat, both former U.S. Senators and presidential hopefuls -- have written a new book called "Ending Hunger Now."

Their basic argument is this: There is enough food being produced in the world. Millions do not need to go hungry, while others gather around tables piled with food, if governments and individuals have the political will to spend enough money to make it stop.

Dole was traveling out of the country and could not be reached for comment. But McGovern, now 83 and living in South Dakota, took time for an interview. "I'm trying to live to 100," he said. "There are so many things I still want to do."

Outlook national reporter Leslie Scanlon interviewed McGovern and Donald E. Messer, a professor of practical theology and president emeritus at The Iliff School of Theology in Denver, where he directs the Center for the Church and Global AIDS.

Here are excerpts from those conversations.

Editorials

Disestablishing Distortions

The paragraphs below begin a sermon by William L. Hawkins on Christian disestablishment, preached at a meeting of New Hope Presbytery on October 15. In a time of increasing, irreversible religious pluralism, Hawkins exalts the value of congregational life.  He argues that because we have long been unable to rely on the institutions of government or education to under gird a Protestant or Christian culture, the congregation has become the place where everything we do matters as it never has before. You will read this engaging, inspiring sermon next week in the Thanksgiving issue of the Outlook. But it is the origin of our nation and Constitution, described here, which illumines the present religious divide that troubles our nation's soul. 

Though our U.S. Constitution was produced by a congress consisting mostly of Christians, the first clause of the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of an official religion. The apparent irony goes deeper when we acknowledge the contributions of Christians in the formation of our government, beginning with the revolutionary war itself. This was something particularly true of Presbyterians. Historian Lefferts Loetscher said that the fires of the American Revolution were fanned from Presbyterian pulpits sufficient for the British to describe it as "the Presbyterian Rebellion." 

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