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2020 Vision Team makes plans for Presbyterians to engage the guiding statement

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The 2020 Vision Team is moving ahead with plans to get Presbyterians involved with the guiding statement it has produced – using everything from a social media blitz to a hymn-writing competition to a plan to pass out bracelets at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium at Purdue University July 16-20 and at Big Tent in Baltimore August 1-3. The team also hopes it can provide tools for Presbyterians to engage with the statement in their local contexts – for example, a session or a Bible study group might do a lectio divina exercise using Scriptural passages on which the team has leaned, or a pastor might build a sermon series around on ideas in the statement. The Vision Team’s guiding statement says that“God calls the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to be Prayerful, Courageous, United, Serving, Alive” – with first letters of those words spelling out the PC(USA) acronym. For each of those words, the team has also fleshed out more of what it means – for example, that in being courageous … [Read more...]

Tagged With: 2020 Vision Team

Structure and money: Presbyterian special committee thinks big about denomination’s future

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Is it time to reconfigure the national structure of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)? What do Presbyterians at the mid council level have to say about per capita? The work of the PC(USA)’s Special Committee on Per-Capita Based Funding and National Church Financial Sustainability is beginning to take shape, some four months after its members were appointed, although exact recommendations to the 2020 General Assembly won’t emerge until the end of 2019 (on financial sustainability) and February 2020 (on per capita). But it’s becoming clear in the discussions of the committee’s two work teams that its members are thinking big – including considering whether the current structure of the PC(USA), more or less established when the northern and southern branches of Presbyterians reunited in 1983, still works given the current financial realities. Laura Cheifetz, a minster from Georgia who is co-moderator of the special committee and who leads the financial sustainability team, sat … [Read more...]

Tagged With: per capita

Commission clarifies oversight authority in Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) legal cases

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The Moving Forward Implementation Commission – meeting in an unannounced closed session on a Sunday night – has acted to make it clear that the board of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation has the authority to manage secular litigation involving the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Although the action the commission took doesn’t say so, this meeting came on the heels of an action in May by John Sheller, an outside counsel in the case, to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a defamation case involving Eric Hoey, who was the PC(USA)’s former director of evangelism and church growth and one of four men who lost their jobs with the denomination following an ethics investigation involving the 1001 New Worshipping Communities program. And it comes just before a called meeting June 27 of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board – another closed meeting, according to the public notice of it. The U.S. Supreme Court considered Sheller’s petition for a stay on May 30 from a 2018 … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Moving Forward Implementation Commission • PMA board

Moving Forward Implementation Commission takes action on financial sustainability

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In August, the Moving Forward Implementation Commission wants to make a progress report of sorts to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) at Big Tent. And the work the commission is doing – including at a June 17-18 meeting in Texas – shows how leaders involved at the national levels of the denomination are trying to sort through complex issues that are hard to squish into a headline, but are the types of things that rise up over and over as concerns in the PC(USA). For example: How well is the PC(USA) doing with issues of inclusion and diversity – and who’s responsible for assessing that? How well is the denomination doing financially? What’s being done to make sure that Presbyterians for whom English is not their first language have access to resources and consequently to having a voice and power in the PC(USA)? Here’s some of what the commission did and discussed this week. Financial sustainability The commission took action at this meeting to try to clarify some of the … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Moving Forward Implementation Commission

Diane Moffett casts the Matthew 25 vision to the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board

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Diane Moffett, president and executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, wants all Presbyterians to hear of the Matthew 25 vision in the next two years – “to make sure it gets down to every level” of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). And she told members of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board during a June 17 conference call meeting that “I’d like you to be an advocate and a cheerleader on every level” for the Matthew 25 vision, which the agency unrolled April 1. So far, “people are very open to this,” she said. “We have not gotten a lot of push back at all,” but Presbyterians seem eager for something that unites and connects the denomination. Moffett is careful to describe Matthew 25 as a “vision” and not an initiative – with board member Marci Glass of Idaho saying she’s heard people asking questions about what’s the difference, for example, between Matthew 25 and other PC(USA) endeavors, such as Hands and Feetor 1001 New Worshipping Communities. (The short … [Read more...]

Tagged With: PMA board

National Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) staff march to end cash bail

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  LOUISVILLE (Outlook) – Marching through downtown Louisville shouting “End cash bail!” and toting “Freedom should be free” signs, a group of employees from the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) led a rally June 12 calling for the end of a system they say is unjust and exacts a too-harsh price from low-income people arrested for minor offenses. “This is not a flash in the pan work,” said J. Herbert Nelson, the PC(IUSA)’s stated clerk, who marched at the front of a line of more than 100 people – many of them PC(USA) employees. “We are planning to stay together and stand together” until the system of cash bail ends across the nation. Jimmie Hawkins, director of the PC(USA)’s Office of Public Witness, prayed after the march led to a rally in Jefferson Square – across the street from the county jail – “that the prison doors and jail doors may be thrown open.” “No justice! No peace! Hallelujah!” shouted Diane Moffett, president and executive director … [Read more...]

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