The primary issue of purity before the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) at this time is how we are to be faithful Christians now and into the future. Three points: (1) The purity of the Church comes from Jesus Christ. (2) The dilemma we are in comes from a clash of epochs as well as a clash of poles, right and left. (3) PC(USA) identity, resources, and actions point us to a third way out of our dilemma.
Preparing a sermon for peers and other preachers has been a nerve-wracking experience. I couldn't help remembering the advice we gave each other in seminary: "Keep it short, make it good, and watch your pronouns." Choosing the text, however, wasn't particularly difficult. I ran across this text several years ago and it hooked me. Since then it's been a favorite and I preach it whenever I get the chance.
(PNS) "I wish I could send them home with some small thing, even a piece of soap." These were the words of a pastor in the Cameroon, West Africa. He was telling our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) delegation visiting Cameroon about the support group his congregation sponsors for people living with HIV/AIDS.
The support group is a lifeline for people who are often ostracized because of their disease. The pastor reminds them often that they are loved by God. However, it hurts his soul to have to send these people away with nothing in their hands to remind them of God's love and the church's care.
As you contemplate tomorrow, you need to keep in mind two cultural phenomena that will shape your future: time and gasoline prices.
Sunday ministries tend to be time-insensitive because people will travel an hour to church. That hour isn't available on weekdays, however. With every adult in the household working long hours, travel-to-church time tends to shrink to 30 minutes or less.
I am a veteran of all four New Wineskins Convocations. As a representative of the Office of Theology and Worship I attended the Visionary meeting in Minneapolis, the Angry meeting in Tulsa, the Legal meeting in Orlando, and the Moving On meeting in Sacramento. Dealing with New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) puts me in an awkward place. I count some of the leaders and participants in New Wineskins as friends, but I work for the General Assembly Council and have a strong personal commitment to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The past three years have taught me that the New Wineskins Association of Churches is right about many fundamental issues in the PC(USA), tragically wrong about others.
I can see that little building in my mind's eye. It had been a modest residence, but our fledgling congregation had converted it into a place of worship. We knocked out walls to make a worship space, and various remaining rooms served for classrooms. We were a small group, but things looked promising, as World War II was bringing new people into the area all the time. For a kid who had spent the first nine years of his life in a small country congregation, the bustle was exciting.
We knew that when the fighting ended the congregation was going to move to a much larger place, just a few blocks from our small suburban home. This place was our tabernacle for a time.
Worship should reflect the questions people are asking.
For example: After a national or local tragedy, it would be artificial to present worship that ignored the trauma that people are feeling. After a spate of deaths, or some high-profile bouts of illness, a healthy church will want to respond publicly, not just go about "business as usual."
A congregation with many young families will want to address issues common to young families, such as life-purpose, concern about public schools, time and money management.
Pastor Susan Quinn Bryan first encountered the Church of the Saviour fifteen years ago. She was pastor of a small, struggling Presbyterian church in Houston, Texas. She was searching.
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He came a most unlikely guest
on night when air was cool and still
and people sought to hide from dark
amidst the shelter of an inn.
At one level, faith communities are no different from other human assembly.
Opinions differ, interests collide, feelings get hurt, leaders fail, constituents renege on commitments, money has undue sway, and we store up grievances like currency for later use.
Moreover, churches tend to get as stuck as any other institution. Historic grievances are passed down from generation to generation, from old-timer to newcomer. Like a dysfunctional family that molds every new member to its self-defeating ways, we make sure that newness has the sour taste of oldness.
Text: Matthew 11:2-11
Whenever expectations meet reality, questions are sure to follow.
Years ago my wife told my son that they were going to do something very special to get ready for Christmas. She pumped up his excitement. She told him they were going to have fun. As a consequence, he couldn't wait until the day came -- to make a gingerbread house. I walked in just as the project was being completed. He was sitting there with his head in his heads, bored to tears and asking his mother if they were having fun yet.
Our expectations build a road leading us somewhere until we come to that stop along the way called reality. It happens even to the best of us!
Know some folks who like to travel? How about traveling as a group? How about traveling to the land of Israel-Palestine and Jordan? How about tracing the steps of Paul? How about visiting those places that still reverberate the voices of Athanasius and Patrick, Luther and Calvin, Zwingli and Knox?
What if you visit all those places and still hunger for more?
For Harry Horne the satisfaction of being a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) co-mission worker in Peru is watching those he ministers to achieve a deeper understanding of the Word of God -- in Hebrew and Greek. The Colorado-born former pastor teaches Hebrew and Greek language courses at a branch of the Latin American Biblical University located in Lima.
"Nobody becomes an expert on Greek or Hebrew in a course or two, but they get enough to start using it," said Horne, who also teaches other Bible courses at the school. "It's fun watching people reach a level where they feel confident enough to use those tools. When it becomes useful it's really good to see when folks find new things in text because they have those tools."
Hunter Farrell, former missionary to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Peru began service as director of global missions for the General Assembly Council this past summer. Outlook editor, Jack Haberer, recently discussed with him his take on missions.
JH: You spent the first third of your career serving in African missions, both on site in the Congo and here in the General Assembly as an area coordinator. Peru must have been quite a change for you. Tell me that transition.
HF: I had lived as a foreign exchange student in high school in Chile and spent a year of my time at the University of Texas at Austin abroad at the Catholic University in Peru. I spoke Spanish and had a love for Latin-American culture, so I was looking to get back there when I applied to what was then the Division of International Mission in Atlanta. John Pritchard got hold of my application and said, "Come to Zaire." ... I went at age 24, did a year as a volunteer in mission in Zaire, and fell in love with Zaire, the people, and with the way Presbyterians do mission.
Paul Revere might have gotten away with one ride through "every Middlesex village and farm." But in modern church life, we aren't likely to have such impact.
Two basic rules of communications are:
1. People aren't likely to hear something the first time you tell them. To hear your message, people need to hear it multiple times -- some say as many as seven times.
2. People don't like surprises. If you want their acceptance, especially of a change, you need to "telegraph your moves."
Here's what I mean.
A single announcement, even of an important event, is unlikely to be heard. People tend to be overloaded with information. They are distracted. Rather than spend time and money on designing the perfect one-time announcement, plan a series of announcements that, eventually, will catch your audience's attention.
A sonnet by Stephen Rehrig.
Last week in Indianapolis, I spoke at Christian Theological Seminary -- "Church Outside the Box," was the title they chose -- and engaged in dialog with three panelists.
We had a grand time up front. I spoke with passion and the panelists responded in spirited debate. But then the moderator invited the audience to ask their questions. Surprise! Their questions went directions we hadn't anticipated.
Go deeper, said one person. We're already beyond denominational woes. What lies ahead?
How do we address a dangerous world situation? asked another.
What specifically should we be doing? Asked one of several people who arrived ready to move on and now wanted guidance.
My husband and I recently celebrated our 25th anniversary. At a small and packed popular restaurant in New York City, they brought out our dessert with Proseco on the house and a chocolate inscription around the plate that gave away our celebration to all the tables around us, opening the door of conversation. Because the couple right next to us was from Oklahoma, my husband felt compelled to tell them that I was from Iran, figuring they probably didn't run into many Iranians in their circle. He apologized later in the cab but I knew instantly why he did this. I have spent my 29 years in America playing the role of ambassador from Iran. And it has been a rocky three decades beginning with the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis in my college freshman year in D.C. to the present day of Iran as the face of evil.
The couple from Oklahoma nodded their heads approvingly at my story and the man declared very proudly that I am "living the American Dream." This did not sit well with me. Like most Iranians who ended up as what I like to call "accidental immigrants," I came to America from a life of privilege. I told our new friends that I grew up in boarding school in England. And I told them something that everyone is always shocked to hear: My parents still live in Iran. Really? How is it for them? Why don't they leave?
Editor's Note: This article is based on material in Shane Claiborne's book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical and information on the Web site of "The Simple Way," (www.thesimpleway.org ).
"Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived." So says Shane Claiborne at the beginning of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, his book on his ongoing quest to discover what that "living" might actually look like. Claiborne and six others are the founders of The Simple Way, a community in Kensington, one of Philadelphia's most challenging neighborhoods.
Claiborne is clear to note that The Simple Way is not a "church plant" or an attempt at creating a model of "radical Christianity" that is theirs alone. "We have never considered ourselves a church plant," says Claiborne, adding, "I'm not sure we need more churches" (pp. 144-45). It does, however, represent a way of being in the world, a way that is intentionally and self-consciously Christian.
Those in more established church traditions might want to pay attention.
I'm a fan of Sheldon Sorge, and I affirm his article on ways that congregations can support their pastors in keeping their callings vital. However, I've been forced to conclude, after too many years of study, that there is little evidence from New Testament and pre-Constantinian historical sources to justify a Gentile Sabbath ethic. Sheldon says of himself (and all us pastors) and of members, "I needed not just an equivalent of their Saturday, a day to mow the yard, change the oil, fix the bicycle, etc. -- but also of their Sunday."
Many American Presbyterians remember blue laws and other external constraints on Sunday activity. Those constraints are gone, and "their Sunday" enjoys no practical consensus. Are Sundays for naps? NFL football? Movies and museums? Golf? Shopping? Youth sports? The whole day in acts of corporate and/or personal worship? Lacking a consensus, many pastors and authors are treating Sabbath as a personal spiritual practice, loosely defining it as "rest." Such an approach requires a good bit of work to justify itself as sufficiently grounded in Scripture, confessions, and theological reflection.
Paying attention to Sheldon's situation (and every minister's) can help.
Standing on the corner of Santa Ana Blvd. and Main Street, in downtown Santa Ana, Calif., you experience the sights, sounds, and faces of a microcosm of the American urban story.
On one side of Main Street sits First Church of Santa Ana, a downtown church celebrating this year its 125th anniversary. Considering it is in California, it is actually quite old. Once overflowing with members, more recently it is struggling to adapt to the city's changing demographics. Across Main Street, not a half block away, is the building that formerly housed Trinity United Church, the first United Presbyterian Church west of the Mississippi when it was founded in 1876.
In 1958, Trinity Church, like many downtown Presbyterian churches, left the city to move out of downtown, now in the midst of a sprawling suburbia. First Church remained.
Now, some 50 years later, the two churches are coming together in a partnership that may give hope to other struggling urban churches, and inspiration to their often resource-rich suburban counterparts.
Most of our church members know that the stated clerk is not just a guy with an eyeshade reviewing reports, though that part of the job was and is important. What makes the position so important is its leadership role, and that relates to the way the Clerk embodies and implements the Church's public witness. So we must look first at a definition of public witness, and then look at what current and past stated clerks have been doing.
By definition, public witness is a larger category than social witness and includes at least four main categories:
1. Influencing public opinion by presenting persuasive, credible, ethically-grounded stances;
2. Appealing to the faith and values of individuals, particularly in their church life;
3. Effecting specific policies, involving informed constituencies;
4. Exemplifying viable alternative visions grounded in the Gospel that contrast with the models of secular society, business, and government.
The Office of the General Assembly, focused in the elective office of the stated clerk, represents the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) internally and externally through a range of official and personal roles. Thus it relates to all four of the categories above. By virtue of its "church-wide," or General Assembly-based, election, the Clerk may be legitimately considered the highest elected continuing representative of the Church, carrying administrative duties well beyond those of Moderator, whose role is almost entirely symbolic.
"The clock is running out very, very quickly. I am more pessimistic on the question of time running out than I've ever been."
-- U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt,), while on a visit to Jerusalem with Rep. Peter Welch (D.-Vt.)
I agree with the assessment of our Congressional leaders and applaud them for going to Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. Reflecting on my three-week visit to the West Bank in May, I too discerned a sense of despairing hopelessness and apathy. Regretfully the delegation could not meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in person. But we saw the visible devastation caused by the Wall as it snakes its way mostly on Palestinian lands, cutting Palestinians off from Palestinians, creating apartheid-like Bantustans. As Shulamit Aloni, former member of Israel's Knesset, said recently, "Forty years of occupation has turned every Palestinian village into a detention camp. We are exercising apartheid."
Forty years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was recently marked. In 36 of those years I have witnessed what occupation is, having conducted annual alternative pilgrimage tours, done fellowship study, and been involved in humanitarian projects in hospitals, clinics, and schools. I have seen the strangulation of Palestinian cultural, political, economic, religious and social life, and educational opportunity. Each year it gets worse. Remember, Palestinians are the occupied, not the occupiers; yet they are being punished. Their land is being confiscated for Israeli settlements and an intricate system of roads for settlers only (all contrary to Geneva Conventions).
Of all institutions, the church has both the opening and the obligation to make a personal response to people's needs. People endure anonymous and mechanical responses from other institutions. They expect more from a faith community.
With some exceptions, most church members will grant their church access to their lives. They will respond to personal visits, telephone calls, e-mail, and letters. In a need situation, they probably won't respond to a broadside invitation, such as, "If anyone needs a personal visit, call the church office."
Clergy need to develop the habit of making pastoral calls other than hospital emergencies.
The days of families meeting at church -- the husband coming from work, the wife coming from home and bearing a casserole -- shaped church hospitality for many years. Those days have ended.
One thing is ongoing -- the need for hospitality. Jesus ate with people. Table fellowship was a primary venue for his teaching and touching.
How, then, does a congregation provide hospitality?
For those few congregations that have cooking staffs and ample budgets, the answer is easy; for everyone else, not so easy. Some order food to be delivered -- portable food such as pizza or salads. Some heat up large lasagnas purchased in bulk. Some tell people to bring a sandwich with them. For an upcoming class on a Wednesday night, I plan to put out bread, peanut butter and jelly, and to say clearly, "This isn't fine dining, it's taking off the edge of hunger so we can learn together." Some shift their gatherings to restaurants.
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