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Present at this year's General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was Roy Sanderson, our oldest surviving General Assembly moderator. When I asked this sprightly 93-year-old what he was doing these days, he told me he was taking a computer class at a college in East Lothian. I was full of admiration.
Christology -- the church's doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ -- underlies many, if not most, of the controversies facing the church today. That was the claim made last week in this column.
How is this so?
"The spectacle presented by the indecent squabbles of priests of most denominations, and the unfairness and rancor with which they conduct their differences utterly repel me . . . . The Church's hand is at its own throat . . . . The Master of the New Testament is put out of sight."
As the church continues to focus on the shadow of the circling "membership" vulture, I would make a radical but potent proposal dealing with growth:
1. Focus on average attendance, rather than membership, for appraisal of growth or decline.
In 1993 the General Assembly adopted an insightful, prophetic document presented by Worldwide Ministries, "Mission in the 1990s." It offered five crucial challenges, all of which have as much urgency and relevance now for the PC(USA) as at the beginning of the decade.
I fear for the soul of our church. I fear because I believe I am seeing a fundamental premise of our polity thwarted, with a resulting fragmentation and conflict that may tear us asunder.
The fundamental premise to which I refer is that a person will always vote his or her conscience.
Actions by recent General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are beginning to force many of our members to consider a choice between God and our denomination. We are not alone. Other denominations are doing the same. If denominations continue to force their members to choose between their deeply committed personal religious beliefs and their denominational affiliation, the denominations will lose.
Over my ministry I've been called a conservative, a Communist, a secularist, an evangelical, a liberal, a Congregationalist and now lately a centrist. I'm getting calls from people saying, "You represent the center. Do something." A person cozies up to me at a meeting and asks, "What are those of us in the center going to do when the denomination splits?" I am hearing a plea that the ill-defined, nebulous center will miraculously rise up to hold our denomination together.
I am writing in response to the recent article, "Women's Ministries program area review to go beyond survey responses." Having served as Associate Director of Women's Ministries Program Area [WMPA] for the past three years, and having until May 15, 2000, before my term is officially ended, it is time for me to speak out and resist the continuing abusive words and violent actions directed toward my colleagues in women's ministries, and ultimately, directed toward all women.
Today there are a number of conflicting accounts as to the status of Christianity in China. One persistent version begins with the assumption that an atheistic Communist government will not tolerate the presence of a true Christian church. Consequently, Christianity in China must be sharply divided between an "apostate church" -- represented by the China Christian Council which is supported by the atheistic government -- and the "true underground church," which is subject to continuous persecution and harassment.
The 212th General Assembly affirmed the fragile unity of our denomination by rejecting one of the Beaver-Butler overtures and by delaying for one more year consideration of the overtures dealing with sexuality and ordination. One can infer from their decisions the belief that Presbyterians are neither ready to divide the denomination nor to continue debating the issues surrounding sexuality and ordination.
No, I'm not talking about declining membership figures or any kind of financial or staffing questions, budgets or bureaucracies.
The 212th General Assembly, which met in Long Beach, Calif., gave graphic and depressing evidence of the shocking way in which our Presbyterian Church has "shrunk."
Two years ago I spent a semester teaching Christian ethics at Gujranwala Theological Seminary in Pakistan. Participating in the life of the Christian community in a Muslim country -- faculty discussion with Pakistani professors and others sent by the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand or the United States, or one of the Korean churches; getting to know students, many of them women -- was a rich experience.
Long time pal Phil is retiring. I write, inviting him to join me in forming a senior step ball team. We were champs in seminary -- in the game where the batter throws a tennis ball against the Alexander Hall steps at Princeton and the fielders have to catch it before it bounces.
John Haberlin's "A Response to the Continued Membership Decline" has opened the door for a serious discussion of the continued membership decline in the denomination.
He suggests that we focus on attendance rather than membership for appraisal of church growth or decline.
A professor friend at Union-PSCE some time ago sent me a tape recording of one of his classes. The visitor for the day was a Methodist bishop whose assignment was director of worldwide evangelism for the United Methodist Church. He described in detail his experience in his first parish in a small church in a poor neighborhood in Sydney, Australia:
In baptism every parent promises to bring up a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The Greek term for nurture is paideia, which was really a dynamite word for the Hellenes, especially those who were kept in the Attic. One needs only to mention the magisterial three volumes of Werner Jaeger's study of that topic. Paideia was the unlocking key to the glory that was Greece. It means the intentional transmission of values and may be translated as civilization, culture, education, nurture and tradition.
Soon, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will begin as new round of conversations with the Episcopal Church, focusing on the recognition of their office of bishop and our office of elder. We should make this an opportunity to clarify and strengthen our understanding of the eldership, for the sake of life within the Presbyterian Church.
There are some questions which need to be asked:
* Are denominations any longer viable? Or are they archaic? Or are they "The moral failure of Christianity?" (Richard Niebuhr)
While a gay legislator addressed a recent political convention, a delegate held up a sign which read, "There is a way out." The intended reference was that gays and lesbians can simply change by becoming heterosexuals. Regardless of how one feels about that advice, the phrase itself provides wise counsel for Presbyterians. Although caught in a seeming interminable struggle over the ordination of gays and lesbians, there is a way out for the Presbyterian Church (USA).
There is an increasingly urgent voice in the church, calling for our governance to be more enabling and less regulatory. Chapter 14 of the Form of Government, which deals with ordination, certification and commissioning, is the most severe focal point for this frustration, and is a major source of the disconnect between congregations and the denomination.
Mission is not something done "to" or "for" others, but "with" others. We participate in God's mission in loving communion with: (1) the Triune God who empowers, sends and directs us; (2) one another in the local- global church; and (3) those to whom we are sent and those whom we receive.
Editors' note: Andrew Stehlik of the Czech Republic recently served a year as a mission-partner-in-residence with the PC(USA) Worldwide Ministries Division in Louisville. He wrote about his impressions of the PC(USA) in the Czech Working Group newsletter for July 2000. The working group, created by the General Assembly Council in 1995, works closely with the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren to improve and expand the relationships between the two churches.
In many ways the response to the General Assembly's call for Unity in the Midst of Diversity conferences is like Jonah's response to God's call to go to Nineveh. He did not want to go, neither do many of us. From what little evidence is available, it seems safe to say only a small portion of our presbyteries are planning Unity in the Midst of Diversity conferences.
I resonate with William Saum's reminiscence of General Assemblies focused on "great issues confronting the church and the world." I lament with Saum that little at this year's Assembly reflected the enthusiasm of last year's cutting-edge report from the Church Growth Task Force, "Hey, I am doing a new thing . . . . Do you get it?"
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