Although giving has been declining for a decade for the special offerings of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a task force – saying there is “tremendous untapped potential” – is recommending that the church set a goal of raising $20 million from those offerings by 2020.
DALLAS – The General Assembly Mid-Councils Commission is calling for reviews of the denomination's top-level agencies and its racial ethnic ministry.
DALLAS – The General Assembly Mid-Councils Commission has voted 15-5 to permit non-geographic, “provisional presbyteries” as part of a “designated season of reflective experimentation” in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
DALLAS – The General Assembly Mid-Councils Commission made a key decision last fall: it would recommend to the 2012 General Assembly that synods would no longer exist in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as councils with ecclesiastical responsibility.
Feeling out of alignment with the direction being taken by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a large Florida congregation has voted to leave the PC(USA) to join the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas
January 8, 2012
Ron Salfen: What was surprising to you about this film?
Evangelical Tod Bolsinger, chair of the Mid-Councils Commission shared his heart in anticipation of the Fellowship of Presbyterians conference, held recently in Orlando, Fla.
“Like many who will gather in Orlando, I share many concerns about the state of our denomination. But,
Ronald Salfen for The Presbyterian Outlook
Interview with Glenn Close, star of "Albert Nobbs":
Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Jan. 8
Ronald Salfen: I just have one question. In order to play a man, did you have to take a stupid pill?
Louisville
Twenty-four leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ― many of whom met in Orlando during a gathering which launched a new Reformed body ― have written a letter urging reconciliation between the denomination and the dissident group.
ORLANDO, Fla. – While the Fellowship of Presbyterians has launched a new denomination, called the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians (or ECO for short), some folks still have questions about exactly how things will work.
The Presbyterian Foundation Group (which includes the Presbyterian Foundation, New Covenant Trust Company, NA and New Covenant Funds), which provides financial support to church-related institutions and causes, plans to retain two outside investment firms to help manage its assets and will cut positions on its staff to effectuate the changes.
New York (ENInews) Clare J. Chapman, deputy general secretary
and general counsel of the National Council of Churches (NCC), on 20 January was named interim general secretary by the council's governing board.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Two members of a writing team that produced a theology document that's part of the constitution of the new denomination created by the Fellowship of Presbyterians said Jan. 19 that they expect changes to be made in their handiwork in the years to come.
ORLANDO, Fla. – All through the day on Jan. 19, John Ortberg and others at the Fellowship of Presbyterians Covenanting Conference cast a vision.
It was of a bold church unafraid to take risks; one that makes disciples; one that takes the best of Presbyterian history and tradition and points it in new directions.
ORLANDO – Instead of just requiring congregations to submit annual statistical reports, the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians would ask for annual narrative reports, as Presbyterian congregations routinely did in the years before 1925.
ORLANDO – The Fellowship of Presbyterians has given a name to its new Reformed body. The new denomination will be known as the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.
John Ortberg, a well-known author and the pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California, kicked off the second day of the Fellowship’s Covenanting Conference Jan. 19 by preaching at morning worship. As that ended, the Fellowship distributed revised copies of its theology and polity documents – the cornerstones of the new denomination’s constitution.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Most of the young evangelical church leaders attending a Fellowship of Presbyterians event this week are from congregations that either plan to stay in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or are still deciding whether to leave.
At the Fellowship of Presbyterians gathering this this week in Orlando, Fla., it's unlikely that participants will vote on the spot to create a new denomination, or that a huge number of congregations will decide to leave the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) en masse.
Eight Presbyterians, including Cynthia Bolbach and Landon Whitsitt, the moderator and vice-moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have issued a letter and video expressing their hope in the future of the denomination.
The quaint expression, “essential tenets,” comes from the 18th century-bred subscription vow for Presbyterian officers: “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?”
For mainline Protestant denominations, it is not good news.
Louisville, KY.
Doing ministry in a time of “shifting sands” has become the reality of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).
WASHINGTON (Ekklesia)
The number of organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., has increased fivefold in the past four decades, from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today.
This is an update written by the Special Committee on the Nature of the Church for the 21st Century, after its meeting in late November, and provided by the committee's moderator, Carol Howard Merritt. The committee will meet again in Louisville Feb. 1-3 and will report to the General Assembly in July.
LOUISVILLE, KY.
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (LPTS) is hoping to make student indebtedness for theological education a thing of the past.
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