We are not good enough to kill those who kill. We are too good to kill those who kill.
On November 22, 2006, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that it is not cruel and unusual punishment to execute murderers by lethal injection. "Conflicting medical testimony prevents us from stating categorically that a prisoner feels no pain," the court declared. "But the prohibition is against cruel punishment and does not require a complete absence of pain." On December 15, 2006, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida suspended the death penalty because of the troubled and lengthy execution of Angel Nieves Diaz. Bush appointed a committee to study lethal injections and their constitutionality and inhumanity. Shortly after Bush's decision, a federal judge in California ruled against the lethal injection system as a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. On September 28, 2007, in response to the United States Supreme Court's halting of an execution in Texas, officials in that state declared their intentions to proceed with impending executions. At that time, 25 Texas inmates had been executed in Huntsville in 2007 by lethal injection.
Rendition. What have we come to?
Ours is a nation long proud of its freedoms, its democratic values, its rule of law, its human rights. And now, in the post 9-11 era, we are being accused around the world of the very opposite.
Many say we have been imprisoning citizens without trial -- arresting people for conversations they may have had -- exporting such suspects to prisons run by foreign totalitarian regimes for interrogation (hence the euphemism, "rendition") -- of using torture to force confessions -- all being done in ways that diminish our most fundamental values.
Are they crazy? This is America. We would never countenance such actions. Or would we? Might we? Are we?
©2007 John A. Lindquist II. Used by permission.
Ask this New Jersey born, east coast educated minister how he feels about life in the predominantly Mormon town of Ogden, Utah, and he'll tell you he is right where he is supposed to be. The Rev. Dr. Richard Paul Minnich is pastor of First Church, a congregation of more than 400 members. The gold brick building of First Church, nestled against the western bench of the Rocky Mountains, has been his home for 15-plus years.
His theological training and earlier pastorates were in the eastern states. After graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity, he completed his Doctor of Ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1992. His first calling was assistant pastor of youth ministry at Westminster Church in Upper St. Clair, Pa. Five years later he was pastor to the Elizabeth, Pa.'s Round Hill Church.
I stayed at the home of friends the night before Brent's funeral, in the hills on the north side of Pittsburgh, above the Ohio River. Unable to sleep, I listened to the lonely wail of trains on the tracks down below. Trains heading east slow down in this section, before heading over the trestle and into the city, their cars bumping into one another as the brakes are applied. Trains heading west pick up speed and their engines strain as they cut through the night, whistling at each crossing.
In the middle of the night in a strange bed, I recalled sitting in Brent's living room late one evening. He had invited three of us over for dinner. Afterwards, we sat around the fireplace and talked late into the evening, catching up on each other's lives. Hours later, the conversation paused. Then a train came by, quieter than the others. "That's the Capitol Limited," Brent noted, "Chicago bound. You can tell by the sound, you don't have the clanging of the cars." Every time a train came through that night, I thought of Brent.
Among the "tapes" we learn in childhood and need to unlearn as adults is a belief that God expects perfection and that the goal of religious life is to attain perfection.
In teaching the classic spiritual disciplines -- prayer, worship, confession -- we need to convey another message, namely, that God wants transformation of life, not a finished state called perfection. Faith is a journey, not an arrival and then a stopping.
In teaching prayer, for example, we teach people how to talk with God, how to open themselves to the holy, and how to sit in silence before God. The aim of prayer is an awareness of God's presence, not perfect wording, posture, or attitude.
Who's pulling in the young adults? Which churches are bucking the trends by actually attracting the absent generation to church? What are their secrets of success?
On a recent visit to the Big Apple, I determined to visit a Presbyterian church widely known for bucking the trends. As a part of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), it is affiliated with a denomination that bucks us. That's unfortunate. But so many New York friends have raved incessantly about the very un-PCA Redeemer Church that I had to visit.
They did not meet my expectations.
Last Sunday morning, we studied the Lord's Prayer, and we never made it past the first word. Those simple three letters, O-u-r, in the prayer that Jesus taught us invoked a half-an-hour discussion on community and our spiritual lives. Because the nature of community is shifting radically in our culture, we had a great deal to talk about. A man in his forties seemed puzzled when he said, "I work with people who are under thirty, and they think of cyberspace as a real place. They think of chat rooms as actual rooms and people who meet on the Internet as friends."
"Yes," I smiled. "I've married couples who had a long Internet relationships before they ever met face-to-face."
Many Presbyterian churches are developing programs to serve young adults. Many are investing in young adult coordinators in order to help grow their church.
However, there is another reason for churches to focus on young adults -- the critical needs of the early young adult population in our nation.
The violence at Virginia Tech last April perpetrated by a disturbed young adult is a tragedy beyond belief. It calls attention to the challenges faced by an often overlooked age group.
While American society has appropriately focused on the needs of teenagers in recent years, we should not lose sight of the needs of young adults as well.
Whether you are a new or a veteran youth fellowship advisor, you might benefit from considering a fresh perspective on ministry with teenagers ages 11 through 18.
Pray for the youth and their leaders
Several years ago when the church I served needed youth fellowship advisors, I asked renowned youth ministry expert and Columbia Theological Seminary associate professor Rodger Nishioka, "How do you recruit youth advisors?" I expected him to give a complex formula for training and nurturing advisors. Instead, he answered simply, "You pray for them."
Do teenagers pray? Absolutely. But will they talk about prayer? Will they pray together in public? If not, what can youth workers do to encourage meaningful group prayers?
Trying to do effective events with prayer is one of the great challenges of youth ministry. We have had some success breaking down the Lord's Prayer and having the youths re-write it, segment by segment, in their own words. Some young people have shared, years later, how meaningful an activity this was. But this was, more or less, an intellectual exercise. What about the spiritual side of prayer?
Within our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) there are two different conversations happening simultaneously. But these conversations are not talking with each other. The reality of these two different conversations popped up in my mind as I read through the March 5, 2007 issue of The Presbyterian Outlook.
One may be called the orthodox conversation. This has a lot to do with the institutional disease of our Church. In the Outlook this conversation was highlighted in the article A time to act: NW vote begins movement toward EPC. The New Wineskins is a consortium of about 150 congregations working together for the renewal of the Church with a specific ideal of theological orthodoxy in view. Several of the New Wineskins congregations are negotiating with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The EPC is a small Presbyterian denomination -- about 200 congregations and 70,000 members -- formed in 1981 when a number of our congregations broke with the northern stream of our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The New Wineskins folks are so disgruntled with our PC(USA) that they are either (1) advocating comprehensive reform within our church or (2) expecting to leave our denomination and possibly join the EPC.
If you want to reach, welcome and serve young adults, you will need to do some things quite differently. Being friendly and sincere won't be enough.
Five specific areas need addressing:
1. On-line tools to engage and to build community:
· Web site -- have a good one, comparable to the best sites that young adults use and consider normal. Ask young adults which sites they are visiting -- the list changes constantly -- and see how your current site measures up.
· Be prepared to communicate electronically -- e-mail, instant messaging, blogs -- not by postal mail or meetings.
By action of the General Assembly, we Presbyterians have been promised a new hymnbook by the year 2014. This announcement has produced a groundswell of popular indifference to the project, setting the stage for a publishing blunder of semi-epic proportions, if what is produced turns out to be yet another paper-and-ink creation in the venerable tradition of Johannes Gutenberg. Even the prospect of a companion e-hymnal, suitable for projection on a screen or on the wall of your sanctuary, will not prevent a classic case of the wrong product at the wrong time.
Consider how far we have come since the introduction of our present blue hymnbook in 1990. Think of how many people are now getting their daily news not from a printed page but from a screen. Given the current pace of technology, it is more probable than possible that the church in 2014 will have neither books nor paper bulletins in the pews.
October is Pastor Appreciation Month: time to tip our hats to the pastors who shepherd us. Time also to tip our hats to the pastor who has shepherded the denomination these past nearly 12 years. Thank you, Clifton Kirkpatrick, for your service as Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Cliff Kirkpatrick is an authentic Christian churchman. The bureaucratic experience has dissipated the faith of many a godly person, but not so for Cliff. He believes, he preaches, he passionately promotes the Gospel. And when he shakes your hand, whether you be a world leader or a child in church school, you feel the embrace of a person of sincerity, tenderness, and godliness.
It would be presumptuous of me to think that I could speak on behalf of the millions of Presbyterian Christians in this country. Still, from the window of being a member of the Presbytery Pastoral Care Network and a pastor for almost forty years, I would like to offer a word of thanks to the ordained ministers of the Presbyterian churches across this country. For the past eight years, this network has been trying to offer support and encouragement to pastors in the exercise of their demanding profession. Both as a pastor myself and from the perspective of that board, I would like to say thank you to those of you who are hard at work in your congregations.
Presbyterians have a history of generosity toward their pastors. Some of that generosity has worked its way into constitutional mandates. The Book of Order stipulates that all installed pastors shall receive an adequate salary, in accordance with local presbytery guidelines, plus a month of vacation and two weeks of study leave each year. Those of us who serve as the church's pastors are genuinely grateful for these bottom-line requirements. All too easily, however, minimum standards become the finish line rather than the starting point.
A similar thing happens with church member pledging. We are asked to pledge in advance our guaranteed minimum we'll give to the church, and this becomes our giving goal for the year. I have discovered in my own giving that my pledge, which should be the beginning point of my giving to the church, all too easily becomes my finishing point.
Do you ever think, "I've got to write this"? But other times, "I get to write this!" Sometimes duty takes over: Sunday's sermon, pastor's column deadline, insistent e-mails. How can we move through got to into get to?
During a writing funk, two things occurred to me. First, if I find bits of grace in the grit of duty, then obligation morphs into invitation. Second, even if my words get rejected, what matters is whether or not I've written myself an inch closer home to my true self and God.
Writing can help us appreciate ministry. Preaching, teaching, and soul tending extend an invitation to pen our way home and out into the world's need.
The death of the Rev. Bryan Clinton Childress of Willis, Va., on December 19, 2006, was not a surprise. He was, after all, 85 years old, and had been in poor health for some time. His pastoral life, spent entirely in Appalachia, was not remarkable in terms of great achievements, but it was a sincere witness to Christ and the meaning of a life dedicated to him.
I met Bryan nearly 50 years ago in Pendleton County, West Virginia. I was the summer student minister of a field of six preaching points in the area of Circleville and Seneca Rocks. My work was under the supervision of the Rev. Dale Jones, who gave devoted service to those churches and chapels before he returned to teaching the deaf at the school in Staunton, Va. Bryan came to conduct a revival at the Seneca Rocks Church, and I was present for several of the evenings he held forth in that beautiful stone church. I was sophisticated in those days, and wondered about this rather rough-hewn mountain man, who came with his accordion and uncultured voice to proclaim the Lord's message to the gathered folks.
Here are three guaranteed ways to discourage lay ministers:
1. Give them an assignment, and then take it back because they aren't doing it your way or because you are anxious.
2. Ignore their work as if it were trivial.
3. Allow leaders to become buried in "background noise" from those who natter, gossip, and complain.
The first is easy to correct. As the saying goes: Don't ask the question if you can't stand the answer. Don't give people work to do if you cannot trust them to follow through.
...America is at war.
Its volunteer army is easily recognizable here in southern Mississippi.
It is revealed in tapping sounds from inside a house
that most outsiders wouldn't see
as worth the effort to rebuild (but it has a family and stories!).
It gives itself away in ragged formations of matching T-shirts and
unmatched ages,
seen everywhere along the coast....
Three major Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) news reports fill the pages of this week's Outlook: the first ever national elders conference, the first ever national evangelism conference, and the resignation of Elenora Giddings Ivory.
Of course, we held an elders' conference! "Presbyter" means "elder" in biblical Greek, so it only stands to reason that elders would come together to learn how to "eld" better. It's just that we haven't gotten around to organizing such a conference for the past couple hundred years. In the meantime we have presented hundreds and hundreds of conferences for the ministers of Word and Sacrament. And we believe in parity?
We claim that those two offices have equal status. Don't kid yourself.
A few years back, I visited a prominent, moderate-to-progressive downtown church in Atlanta that shall go nameless. Now, at the time I was the pastor of a New Church Development, and the friend I was with introduced me as such to one of their elders.
"Well, welcome to our church. Is it different worshipping with us?" he wanted to know.
"Pardon me?" I said, with a confused look on my face.
"Is it different worshipping with Presbyterians?"
Which do you want first: the good news, the better news, or the bad news about e-mail newsletters?
Okay, the good news. An e-mail newsletter will save you a lot of money. No paper, no printing costs, no folding and stuffing, no postage, no competition in the mailbox with vendors who are sending mailers far more compelling than yours.
If that isn't enough inducement to drop the familiar printed-and-mailed newsletter, here's even better news: e-mail gets read. Most postal mail gets discarded before being read, including the church newsletter. Even though people are furious about spam, they do comb their e-mail for personal items. A well-designed e-mail newsletter can fit into that must-open niche.
Editor's note: A regular feature of the Outlook's annual theological education issue is a report on seminary life from the president of one of the seminaries associated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). This year we bring you insights from the president of San Francisco Theological Seminary.
Leadership is receiving renewed attention these days in vigorous and creative discussions taking place across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Influential voices throughout the denomination are increasingly pointing out the urgent need for seminaries to help the church to develop more resourceful, radical, and responsive patterns of ministry formation.
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