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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
The GAC's formal recognition that the divestment issue has created deep divisions among us is welcome. Their suggestion to establish a small work group on the issue is wise and pastoral. In effect, the GAC recommends setting up a process that should have been employed prior to any vote on divestment in 2004.
Editor's Note: This article is based on the text of a roundtable presentation at a meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia on April 23, 2006. Used by permission.
"As a means of pursuing peace and the common good of Israelis and Palestinians, the 2004 General Assembly adopted a seven-part resolution that affirmed its longstanding opposition to the Israeli occupation and took action to demonstrate the depth of its conviction, instructing Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) to start a process of 'phased selective divestment' consistent with General Assembly policy on responsible investing."
--PC(USA) Web site
Four basic issues arise when deciding the moral appropriateness of an action like divestment.
As Presbyterians, the General Assembly is our continuing symbol of unity as church and the embodiment of the practice of representative government. Our denominational name alone indicates the seriousness with which we take shared leadership and public decision-making. Respect for the General Assembly loosely translates into respect for the whole church as well as a trust that God's Spirit is known not only locally and personally but also globally and in the public arena. Thus it is good to get overtures that put significant issues before the Church through its most encompassing governing body.
As a still-new staff person in Louisville, with work that relates to the social witness of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I am pleased by the number of overtures coming to this summer's assembly. A quick review of these overtures shows that they fall into several categories, somewhat reflective of the concerns of organized groups within the denomination. Thus we have a number of overtures for and against certain standards for ordination, plus several on marriage and abortion that oppose previous General Assembly stands. Conscience is a major theme of the Peace, Unity, and Purity report, as it has been in relation to problem pregnancies and several other issues both personal and social. One of the strengths of that Task Force's work is its not limiting conscience to an un-Reformed image of purity; another strength is simply in its taking enough length to lay out its arguments fully before the commissioners.
Editor's Note: This year the General Assembly of the PC(USA) will meet concurrently with the GA's of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America. This is the second of a two-part series of articles on those sister denominations.
It was May 1869, the War Between the States had concluded, and everything in Murfreesboro, Tenn., was different than it had been just a few years before. When the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (CPC) gathered for its annual General Assembly, they knew things had changed, but one big change sprang upon them before they could barely call the meeting to order. Two folks refused to sit in their assigned balcony seats.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for more years than we care to recall, has been fretting about the loss of church members.
Ecclesiastical shrinkage is a complex problem, but I have discovered and hereby propose a simple solution. We should stop counting members and do away with membership rolls.
Such a proposal will doubtless elicit a collective gasp from the bureaucracy, so let me quickly point to the biblical justification for such a move.
With all the orientation and reading we did before we came to Pakistani as Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-workers, we were simply not prepared for some aspects of life in Pakistan. One of the most difficult things for us has been the matter of employing household staff. I've been raised in the strong Dutch Calvinist tradition of hard work and self-reliance; my parents have always told me that my first sentence was 'I do it myself!' And while our flat with 12-15 ex-pat teachers in Cairo where I taught as a young adult mission volunteer was carefully tended by Abdel Zaher, he was employed by the school rather than us personally.
You barely have a chance to say farewell to Jim Andrews, and you have to say farewell to Bill Thompson, too. As the final stated clerks of the southern and northern streams, Jim and Bill together helped engineer the reunion--at the cost of one's continued ecclesiastical employment. Two decades later, their entry into the church triumphant just a few weeks apart assures that the former counterparts are both employed again, partnering in the promotion of God's reign through the cosmos.
Their legacies of leadership challenge their successors of today and tomorrow to excel
Acts 15: 1Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." 2And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. ... 4When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, "It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses."
Let's shift the issue before that body, ever so slightly. Let's focus, not on circumcision, but on another important issue for the Jews.
As the General Assembly receives the report of the PUP Task Force and starts to discuss it, one simple question ought to be on our minds: What are our alternatives?
One, the GA can approve the report. This could lead to pressure for schism and anger breaking out because now Presbyterians will essentially permit an action that by vote of presbyteries three times in the last twenty years we have refused to approve.
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