I motored my way from my home in Annandale, Va. out to the congregation I’d soon be serving part-time in Poolesville, Md. I had an 11 a.m. meeting scheduled with the clerk of session of the wee kirk there, to sign my first contract and talk about how things at Poolesville Presbyterian work.
Normally mature Christians do not wonder much in the new year if they kept the faith minimally enough in the past 12 months to get by. More likely, they feel guilty that they have failed to serve Christ with consistent commitment and worry more about the things left undone than what they did that offended God.
As a teaching elder, long in tooth and at the risk of being branded a heretic, I feel compelled to comment on what I perceive in reading, listening and generally observing the actions and rhetoric surrounding present activities within the PC(USA).
NOVEMBER 2008, GREEN ZONE,
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Every day when my chaplain assistant and I drove around the Green Zone, we went by the 215 towers.
Where should announcements about church and community be placed in a Presbyterian (Reformed) service of worship? This question needs to be asked since, although they provide essential information about the mission of the church, they may also seriously disrupt the flow of the worship of God by injecting the trivial into contemplation of the eternal.
There we were, Mark, Barbara and I, our arms stuck out a second-story window, trying to tie knots in ropes to secure a newly printed AIDS awareness banner to our church building so people passing by could see it.
A pastor whom I admire recently scoffed at technology. A not-for-profit agency director did the same, saying especially that she was determined to avoid Facebook.
In 1991, Loren Mead wrote “The Once and Future Church,” a book about the future of ministry.
A Presbyterian pastor seeking to work alone on sermons outside the office she kept in the church building was parked in a corner of an outdoor Starbucks courtyard in the Washington, D.C., area.
On Dec. 6, 2011, Jack Haberer presented a Webinar titled, “What’s to Become of Our Church? …Trajectories of Hope.” In it he..
In October, the public watched the debacle of poor police reaction to the “Occupy Oakland” protests.
The Presbyterian Fellowship recently released “Draft Theology Proposals” prepared by a “Theology Task Force” in which I participated together with two friends and colleagues. My participation in the task force has led a number of people to infer that I am affiliated with the Fellowship and that I support the formation of a “New Reformed Body.”
Sometimes we make church too complicated. And in the process of impressing ourselves and others with our erudition, we lose focus.
It’s time to recover the word my mother taught me never to say: “Stupid.”
The term “theonomy” (divine law as the basis for civil law) is an intriguing concept. While theo-cracy (which is not the same..
Rev. John Stott died at 3:15 p.m. at his apartment near All Souls Church on the West End of London on July 27, 2011.
Sometimes in the Christian life it’s crucial (a word, aptly enough, rooted in the cross) to take a few steps back and ask again the foundational question of our faith:
Sometimes in the Christian life it’s crucial (a word, aptly enough, rooted in the cross) to take a few steps back and ask again the foundational question of our faith:
What is the ideal relationship between pastors and the elders, deacons, and trustees and other lay leaders of their congregations?
Leader: Ten years we were brought to our knees as a nation in shock,
fear, anger, grief. For perhaps the first time, we woke up to God’s truth that
we are as vulnerable as the rest of humanity.
It requires a certain amount of chutzpah — and certainly faith — for my congregation to begin a strategic planning process to figure out who and what it wants to be and do in three to five years.
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