The PCUSA website has a statement about the G.A. meeting that reminds me of the guy who shot an arrow at a barn, drew a circle around it, and then said, "Bull's eye!" Where's Vince Lombardi when you need him telling this distracted bunch to keep the main thing the main thing? Here is another symptom of a management culture, tinkering at a great distance from men and women faithfully leading congregations across the country. It is an abomination that so many activists approach our democratic structure as a scaffold for pet projects--with unsuspecting commissioners dependent upon information they are fed.
For example, the discussions about Rec. 5 of the PUP Report never addressed the elephant in the living room. Good leadership casts vision with clear, compelling statements about a preferable future. It does not merely imply the real issue or hint at direction.
Last time in this space a discussion of the need for the rebuilding of community in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — at every level of corporate existence — was begun. As pointed out, the fabric of our community has been severely frayed by a combination of external and internal developments. If we are to be faithful to God’s call in the future, we must self-consciously begin to pray in earnest that the Holy Spirit will reconnect the sinews of our body, and we must take steps to support that work.
What purposes might we anticipate from the GA forming an authoritative interpretation making such giving obligatory? Baltimore Presbytery's overture 23 would fund the larger church's service without causing undue hardship to the presbyteries in the process. They are expected to send 100% of all per capita assessments for all their member churches, and, says the overture, that obligation should be met by the churches themselves. What else might we anticipate from such a ruling? Well, just the opposite is likely to happen.
The question of ordination once again looms large on the horizon. For those of us who are Christian educators, our passionate focus rests on two overtures (12-01 and 12-02) that advocate for a fourth ordained office within the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.) In this article I will (a) give historical and present reasons for a fourth ordained office; (b) summarize the similarities and differences between the two proposals.
Grey fog hangs heavy,
hovers,
like a decision that eludes grasp.
Rays of our burning star break through,
dispersing fog,
yet, like a direction that flits finality,
reveals but familiar banalities.
Around said star,
earth orbits and rotates,
and still we speak of sunrise and sunsets ...
routines in which, unchanged, we ever move.
Kairos, not chronos,
something new,
to scatter shibboleths.
So,
we wait,
uncomfortably together,
in a room too small,
trying to contain the damage,
until descends a Time,
a gift unmanaged ...
Peace, unity, purity.
Michael Nelms is pastor of The Yellow Frame Church in Fredon, N.J.
There has been quite a bit of discussion about what the Authoritative Interpretation of the 217th General Assembly (PUP as amended) really means for the Church. Soon our stated clerk, whose job it is to "preserve and defend the Constitution" of the church will issue an advisory opinion about what the Assembly did. His advisory opinion is important, because it will likely give sessions and presbyteries their first official word about whether, in his opinion, sexually active gays and lesbians may be ordained or installed. For now, the Office of the General Assembly has set up a page of FAQs where it asks the question, "Will gays and lesbians now be ordained," but it does not answer the question.
On October 1 2003, I wrote a letter to the Candidates Committee of the church I serve as a Director of Christian Education, and of which I am a member, inviting them to join me in a journey. It contained an application for enrollment as an inquirer in the preparation for ministry process in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the usual transcripts, one from an undergraduate school in Nova Scotia, Canada, and one from the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, now Union-PSCE. I had served in educational ministry for twenty-three years, nineteen of them as a Certified Christian Educator, and it was time.
It wasn't time to stop doing what I was doing, or to change my focus from educational ministry to another kind of ministry, or to be more than I am, or to be someone I'm not, or to "sell out" as someone suggested I was doing. It was time for me to again affirm that the call to educational ministry in the church is a call from God, a call accompanied by spiritual gifts, a call to ministry "understood not in terms of power but of service, after the manner of the servant ministry of Jesus Christ" (G-14.0103). It was time to invite my church, my presbytery and my denomination to explore the question of what to do with a Certified Christian Educator with a master's degree from an accredited theological institution who sought to be considered for ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament.
Because of our successful remedial complaint (Johnston et al vs. Heartland Presbytery) I have received mail from commissioners to this month's G.A asking my view on the current overture to make per capita payments mandatory. Here is my response.
If the proposal to force all churches to pay per capita is passed:
I have a mischievous habit of asking pastors the question: "What's going on with your church on Thursday afternoon?" Their predictable answer is usually some equivalent of "nothing much."
That question was provoked by the chapter title in a book I read a few years ago, Where Is the Church on Thursday Afternoon? The response of most pastors is a predictable "Christendom" answer. After all, the church is about the clergy and about properly authorized services and sacraments and the custodial care of passive members. Responders think only of the "church gathered" for its meetings and assemblies, and under the supervision of the church's duly ordained leadership.
So now comes the biennial (formerly annual) convention of the deer in the headlights. If past patterns hold, then 80% of the General Assembly commissioners and 95% of advisory delegates will be serving for the very first time. They will have tried to wade through enough reading to earn a graduate degree. They will feel the weight of a highly conflicted denomination. When asked upon their Birmingham arrival, "How do you feel?" the most common responses will be "bewildered," "befuddled" and "overwhelmed."
A few weeks ago I was discussing issues coming before the General Assembly with friends from around the country. We all agreed there were more than a few "hot topics" for the commissioners to debate. Someone brought up how amazed they were by the number of overtures petitioning the Assembly to keep the Montreat Historical Society open. There was laughter as he pointed out what an important issue it was.
I have to admit I was shocked. I thought everyone knew how special the Montreat Historical Society was, how much it meant, how important it was to inspire denominational loyalty. But I realized I was only one of two southerners in the conversation. The two of us began protesting that keeping open the Montreat Historical Society was indeed important, even crucial to the Presbyterian Church(U.S.A.). A friend then kindly said, "We don't get it. Please explain why this is important to the rest of the church. We want to understand the passion and the pain this decision is arousing." So I am writing this to try and convey why keeping the Montreat Historical Society open is important to so many people and to the future of the PC(USA).
c. 2006 Religion News Service
Listen up, church leaders. This parable is for you.
Dell Computer Corp. is losing a repeat customer, because their process and data requirements overwhelmed my need to buy their product.
Last week I wanted to order a $39 USB memory key. Dell's Web site required me to locate a username and password (serving their purposes, not mine). Dell's toll-free number led me into a labyrinth of voice commands. A second toll-free number landed me with a live person who insisted on creating a "profile" for me. No, I said, I simply want to make a $39 purchase.
I persevered long enough to complete my purchase. But I will think twice before making another one. No business can afford to make purchasing its products this difficult.
Your Spirit, O Creator God,
your brooding, bright imagining Spirit,
is inviting us, cajoling us, entrancing, inducing,
yes, even seducing us, beyond life into creation,
into imagination, into all the shapes and hues,
the textures, postures, melodies of grace.
So let that flaming, flagrant Spirit
be afire now among us here.
Lift our imaginations through the laughter of the soul.
Restore to us our poetic vision,
that we may see this world anew
as your mighty work-in-progress,
that we may see ourselves as others see us,
that we may see you, the unseen God,
as the source and goal and heart of all delight.
Through these moments of welcoming,
of sustenance, of encouragement, mirth and wisdom,
move up, across, among us once again
with your Spirit of inspiration and of ecstasy.
We ask this in the name of the living Word,
that Word we seek and find and lose,
and then are found by.
Let us say . . . AMEN.
As Americans brace themselves for yet another hurricane season, they might look at one congregation and its response to the Gulf Coast disaster. Perhaps it will become a blueprint for the future.
Suspended between Orlando and Daytona Beach is a small town, DeLand, Fla., home to Stetson University. Across from the campus, along a major tree-lined boulevard, is First Presbyterian Church, a congregation of 550 (Web site: www.firstpresdeland.com .)
In 2004, when hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne hit Central Florida, residents were sensitized to the pain caused by evacuations, flooding, damaged homes, and lack of electricity. The face of suffering was personal. Then Katrina slammed into coastal Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, touching the hearts of DeLand's people like Jim and Rachael Winter, Mississippi natives.
The 2006 General Assembly will be remembered as the Assembly that debated two controversial issues. The first was raised in a petition entitled "A Voice for the Local Church." The petition gave expression to a widely shared concern of congregations that recent administrative changes had fundamentally altered the nature of the Kirk, that too much power had of late been transferred from the local church and Presbytery to a few people within the Central Administration.
Another leader taking leave? In recent weeks we have said sad farewells to church giants who have joined the church triumphant. This time we bid farewell to one who heads to a blissful retirement at 7,000 feet in New Mexico's mountains. As he comes to the end of his second four-year term as executive director of the General Assembly Council, John Detterick took a few moments to reflect on his tenure.
Editor's Note: Outlook editors recently interviewed two young Presbyterian members of "Pro-Seed", named after the biblical mustard seed and aimed at spreading the Kingdom of God and creating a new culture within the church. Each represents a different perspective on the issue of abortion. Fairlight Collins Jones is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament and co-pastor, with her husband, Scott, of Woodland Church in West Philadelphia, Pa. She graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 2002. Nancy Neal is an elder ordained at Lafayette Avenue Church in Brooklyn, N. Y. She has an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in New York and is a candidate for ministry. She works at The Crossroad Publishing Company in New York. The questions and answers have been edited for length.
Among the theological questions before the 217th General Assembly will be those in the draft Pastoral letter and list of five sacramental practices recommended by the Sacraments Study Group for a two-year period of discernment in congregations.
This group was convened by the General Assembly Office of Theology and Worship to address several referrals from previous assemblies having to do with the formula of invitation to the Lord's Supper. Most of these overtures suggested ways of altering the language used in the invitation so that explicit mention of baptism as a requirement for admission to the table would be removed. Apparently, in many congregations, such references to the requirement of prior baptism were seen as barriers to outreach and the welcoming of newcomers to the church.
This coming June, the 217th General Assembly will be considering the long-awaited report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church (PUP). Some left-of-center and right-of-center groups in the church view the report as inadequate in addressing the hot issues before the church, particularly the question of ordination. To be sure, the PUP report affirms some key themes in the Reformed understanding of ordination and vocation, such as mutual self-giving and service, as well as the communal and covenantal nature of God's call upon the Church and those called to serve in ordained leadership (pp. 19-20, Final Report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church). Even so, the PUP Task Force expresses a great disappointment:
... Scripture does not provide a thoroughly developed theology of ordination, and a theology of ordination has not been clearly and consistently articulated in the development of Reformed and Presbyterian doctrine. (lines 565-567, Final Report)
When I attended a gathering in Pasadena five years ago to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Charles Wiley and others from the Office of Theology and Worship were holding a series of forums around the country in response to an action of the 2000 General Assembly that a group be constituted to study the doctrine of the Trinity in the theology, life and worship of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I was intrigued by the idea that the Assembly had called for a theological discussion. Before the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity and before "Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ," the Trinity Task Force (now a "Work Group") was the first time a theological committee had been formed at the GA level since reunion in 1983.
The task force on the Trinity rightly comments (line 71) that the doctrine of the Trinity is "widely neglected or poorly understood in many of our congregations." This central doctrine of the Christian faith seems optional to some Presbyterians, peripheral to others, and irrelevant to the faith and life of many others. For some ministerial candidates, the doctrine of the Trinity does not appear on their carefully crafted statements of faith presented to their presbyteries. The task force rightly concludes, after observing this reality in our church, that "the doctrine of the Trinity is crucial to our faith, worship and service" and it prays that "Presbyterians will once again find that the doctrine of the Trinity is good and joyful news!" (lines 72-74).
I am recovering from a devastating downsizing of our national offices in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) We have just gone through a drastic restructuring familiar to many people who live in the corporate world. And this downsizing was done with all the corporate tools available to this mindset. The exception was the worship services we held as a community of faith, but even those services were tainted with corporate residue.
(A Prayer For G. A.) They lost mine on the wayto Birmingham - I think it was -left me with a stack..
Login for a printable General Assembly scorecard from the Presbyterian Outlook. This grid contains a brief summary of the hot-button topics facing our denomination and room to track the results.
Let's get clear what's at stake. What's at stake is not clear.
We love our Jewish neighbors. Any lack of love any of us harbors toward any of them is sin. Our faith is rooted in Hebrew soil. Given the long history of Christian mistreatment of Jews, we bear the primary responsibility to rebuild trust between our communities.
We support the right of the nation of Israel to live in freedom with safe borders.
We love our Palestinian neighbors. Any lack of love any of us harbors toward any of them is sin. We feel a special affection for our ecumenical partners, the Palestinian Christians. Given that an international concern for justice led the United Nations to grant a homeland to the Israeli people, we bear a corresponding responsibility to promote justice for the Palestinians displaced from much of that land.
We support the rights of the Palestinians to live in freedom with safe borders.
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