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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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Presbytery to consider controversial recommendation for dissenting church

The disputes in Cincinnati presbytery regarding Mount Auburn church — a congregation whose session has said it cannot comply with the policy of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) regarding the ordination of gays and lesbians — are far from over.

Last summer, Mount Auburn’s pastor, Stephen Van Kuiken, lost his ordination after he refused to stop performing same-sex union ceremonies.

Voices

Beyond Liberal or Conservative

As a Presbyterian who claims but also hopes to transcend the label "liberal," I was heartened by The Outlook's reports (Nov. 3) of two addresses offered at the recent Presbyterian Coalition Gathering in Oregon. Jin Kim, newly-elected board president of Presbyterian's for Renewal, challenged his audience to look forward to a more racially/ethnically inclusive church, not backward to the supposed glory days of our 1950s segregated congregations.

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Contentious meeting of presbytery does not validate Williamson’s ministry

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — After a long, contentious, messy meeting — the kind where people roared down disapproval from the balcony when they didn’t like what they’d just heard — Western North Carolina Presbytery voted 150-106 Saturday night to declare that Parker Williamson, chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor-in-chief of the Layman, does not have a ministry that is validated by the presbytery.

Voices

Machen and the Presbyterian Predicament

As Western North Carolina Presbytery prepares to vote Jan. 31 on a recommendation not to revalidate the ministry of Parker Williamson with the Presbyerian Lay Committee, the present struggle for the soul of the Presbyterian Church is looking like a replay of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s. If the editor of The Layman eventually loses his ordination because of his encouragement to sessions to withhold per capita contributions, the decision would mirror the 1935 defrocking of J. Gresham Machen by New Brunswick Presbytery over his leadership of an independent mission board that appeared, like the Layman, to threaten the purse of mother church.

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Conservative language removed from ‘Families’ paper

LOUISVILLE — Conservative support may start to erode away again from the controversial "Transforming Families" report — as the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy recently voted to take out of a draft language that spoke of some families being established "contrary to God’s will."

Editorials

Ministry of Fear

Across the denomination there is much interest concerning Western North Carolina Presbytery's Jan. 31 meeting, when the peers of Presbyterian Layman editor-in-chief and CEO Parker Williamson will consider a recommendation that his ministry with the Lay Committee not be revalidated.

Voices

Comments on Amendment 03-G

With other news and controversial issues taking up much space in Presbyterian publications, I would like to call our attention to one of the amendments that is being sent down for vote by presbyteries. Amendment 03-G will require a minister or church employee to be placed on immediate administrative leave as soon as a sexual misconduct complaint is filed with the clerk of the governing body when the issue involves someone under 18 years or who is mentally unable to make decisions for him/herself.

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Mission search brings Alabama church into contact with Cambodian willage

So how did a church from Trussville, Alabama — a pretty typical Presbyterian congregation, fairly small, more one-tone than ethnically diverse — end up dedicated heart-and-soul to an impoverished village in Cambodia?

John Buckingham, a retired physician and elder from the church, calls it a miracle. Sovanna Thach, a Cambodian refugee who survived the killing fields and never intended to go back, said, "I don’t know how to describe it. It amazes me, amazes me ... The Lord, He never abandoned me."

Voices

Response to ‘De-Triumphalizing the Gospel’

I read with interest William H. Harter’s guest viewpoint entitled, De-Triumphalizing the Gospel. I commend him for his efforts both to be a Christian friend to Jewish persons and to humbly recognize that Gentile Christians have been grafted into Israel. However, I find myself disagreeing with him in his assertions that Christians should not seek to evangelize Jews and that trust in Jesus as Messiah, for a Jew, is apparently not a completion of what God always intended for Jews.

Editorials

Equitable

While attending a preaching conference in Atlanta last year, I had the opportunity to visit the Ebeneezer Baptist Church and the National Park Service grounds that are dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memory. Yet as I strolled through the streets there and gazed at the adjacent neighborhood, I was forced to wonder: Had Dr. King’s dream truly come to fruition?

Voices

De-Triumphalizing the Gospel

The serious problem posed by denominational funding of the Avodat Israel congregation in Philadelphia Presbytery has significance far beyond what Harold Kurtz describes as a "splash" (in "De-Westernizing the Gospel").

This congregation understands itself as part of the self-described "Messianic Jewish" movement. This nomenclature is distressing and demeaning to Jews because messianism has always been and continues to be central to Jewish self-understanding as well as to Christian.

Voices

Easter at Christmas

Christmas is both "the best of times" and "the worst of times." It is best when its spirit kindles the light of Christ’s compassion and love in the hearts of believers. It is worst when it brings to mind the loneliness, melancholy and sorrow that is felt by all who grieve their losses, unable to touch the hands and faces of those whom they once loved. It is worst, too, for those whose life at the margins, in deprivation, impoverishment and disenfranchisement, casts a long shadow upon the future.

Voices

Fudging Christmas

Being now among their number, I am nevertheless not especially fond of old people. That is, I object mightily to church activities that separate the old from the young, the married from the single, the male from the female. Naturally, if the church camp has only one shower, segregation delivers the U.S. Male from strain to eye and whiplash to the neck. However, in general segregation is a bad idea because families, including the family of God, are by nature, and by nature's God, multigenerational.

Book Reviews

The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God’s Family

By Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner
WJKP. 2003. 134 pp. Pb. $14.95.

— Review by Stephen R. Montgomery, Memphis, Tenn.
It has become a cliché in book reviews to state that "this is a book that should be on every pastor’s bookshelf and every church library." In the case of Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner’s The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God’s Family, the cliché rings true.

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If Joseph and Mary knocked on your door, what would you do?

If Joseph and Mary were to knock on the door tonight — ragged, weary, hungry strangers knocking on your door, asking for a place to sleep — what would you say? Would you open the door to people you did not know? Turn them away? Or would you be out shopping or racking up more time at work, so you wouldn’t even hear the knock?

Editorials

What must we do?

In perhaps the most famous story in the New Testament, a lawyer stands up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" We all know the answer he gets: Love God with everything you’ve got, and love your neighbor as yourself. "Do this, and you will live," replies our great Christ.

Voices

A Prescription for Action

The opinion piece entitled, "Whose Church Is It Anyway?" is one of the most significant articles written recently for all Presbyterians to consider. In this brief article the author, whose name was withheld, outlines the pattern of a "whisper campaign" that undermines many new pastorates and forces new pastors to leave before real ministry can ever begin. This occurs at great spiritual and financial cost to minister, congregation and presbytery alike.

Voices

Freedom to Worship

In recent days, I have heard affirmed, with great seriousness and fervor by a rather discouraging number of Christians in this country, that the freedom we Americans have to worship God is due to the efforts of men and women prevailing over their enemies on the battlefield. This assumption reflects at minimum a very simplistic concept of freedom; at worst, a misplaced, and therefore, sinful, attitude toward the relation of human effort and God’s gracious work on our behalf in Jesus Christ.

Voices

Ten Christmas Gifts Deacons could give

According to our Constitution, the office of deacon is primarily involved with giving since it is defined as one of "sympathy, witness and service after the example of Jesus Christ." "It is the duty of deacons, first of all, to minister to those who are in need, to the sick, to the friendless, and to any who may be in distress both within and without the community of faith" (G-6.0401-0402).

Editorials

Don’t follow their lead

In late October the Presbyterian Lay Committee issued what it called "A Declaration of Conscience." It takes that group’s traditional "you can’t trust Louisville" stand a bit further. I understand they say it's not a call to withhold funds altogether, but when they say that GA mission and per capita budgets are not "worthy of support," and ask sessions to prayerfully consider redirecting contributions elsewhere, it sure sounds like "Don’t give your money to the PC(USA)."

Voices

Analysis of the Amendments

The 215th General Assembly (2003) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) sent 12 proposed amendments to the presbyteries for their affirmative or negative votes. Presbyteries must vote on each proposed amendment, though they may place some or all in a consent agenda or omnibus motion that identifies each amendment separately. A vote must be reported for each one, even if taken in omnibus fashion.

Voices

De-Westernizing the Gospel

A splash has occurred on the pages of religious publications about a new Presbyterian church being established near Philadelphia called Avodat Yisrael. It is a new-church development supported by the presbytery, synod and new church development funds of the denomination. A Jewish Presbyterian, Andrew Sparks, is pastor. and is designed to appeal to the Jewish people in the area who have become Christian and who, Sparks feels, need their own culturally sensitive forms and symbols of worship.

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