"Make them stop! Make them stop!" That's my younger daughter's advice to the people in our town who fired up their Christmas lights and decorations, even put up their trees, well before Thanksgiving.
"Don't they know they're rushing the season?" my older daughter asked.
The 214th General Assembly (2002) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved 13 amendments to the Book of Order and recommended them to the presbyteries for their affirmative or negative votes.
A majority of the 173 presbyteries must approve an amendment for it to pass. The votes are to be reported to the 215th General Assembly (2003), and all those approved will take effect at that time.
If passed by a majority of presbyteries, Amendment A will create a pathway for certified directors of Christian education (DCE) to become associate pastors (AP) of the Word and Sacrament, and in specified situations to continue to function in their present locations. The following points are lodged against the approval of this amendment.
Amendment 02-A has five components, each of which seeks to strengthen educational ministry within the PC(USA) by requiring a new competency level from those who answer calls as pastors and associate pastors serving in the role of educator. The first three amendments in this group are attempts to raise standards of educational ministry in the church for persons who feel called to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament with a specialty in education.
Even in the midst of an impassioned discussion regarding our understanding of the nature and practice of ministry, the Presbyterian Church, U.S. A. can be grateful that God is calling us to wrestle seriously with such issues. The question of how to vote on Amendment A challenges each of us to probe deeply our assumptions and expectations of roles and titles commonly used in our denomination. My own prayerful - and difficult - probing of the issues surrounding this amendment and my attitudes regarding those issues, has led me to speak in favor of the proposal set before us.
As one of the members of the Task Force on the Educational Design for the Ordination of Certified Christian Educators, I must take exception to some of the interpretations of the effect of the overtures, and to some of the arguments, offered in the front-page assessment article by Bill Lancaster (Jan. 13-20). Allow me to be specific:
Is the triune God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — truly present in the world God made and for which Christ died on the cross? That is the question being raised in this space during this season of Advent leading toward Christmas.
The point made in the previous column was that much of what we observe about the life of today's church — modern, acculturated, well-to-do, self-satisfied — would lead the impartial observer to question whether we modern Christians truly believe that God is really present.
The summaries and responses below are in rebuttal to the con positions presented in the "Assessing the Amendments To the Constitution" article from the Jan. 13-20, 2003 Presbyterian Outlook.
Together the amendments of 02-A.1-5 and 02-C.1-5 provide both theological and institutional clarity on Christian educators in our church today.
Advent/Christmas means nothing if it does not mean the real presence of the triune God with and for God’s people and the world. Incarnation, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, is real presence. The church of Jesus throughout the world, past, present, future, is the real presence of the body of Christ in God’s created order. The Holy Spirit, the awesome personal power of God in us and in all that God has made, is the real presence.
Shall we ordain practicing homosexuals? The way the question is being posed leaves only two possible answers: yes or no. The form of the question has turned the inquiry from seeking more complex resolutions and has pushed us into looking for the solution in the wrong place.
It seems to me that when we strip all extraneous issues from the discussions, the matter grounds to a single question: Is a person born with a sexual preference?
The ultimate result of the Presbyterian Church opening itself to its Lord and the work of the Holy Spirit in the matter of building community will be what a recent General Assembly paper called "Building Community Among Strangers."
The paper eventually approved by the General Assembly in 1999 had a long and conflicted history, but what was produced was finally affirmed by most.
We’ve been discussing at some length in this column the need at this time for Presbyterians and the Presbyterian Church to recover the wellsprings of faith and to experience the rebuilding of community under Jesus Christ its Head, and by means of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.
The year 2002 marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of The Presbyterian Presence: The Twentieth Century Experience. The seven volumes, plus study guide, were published by Westminster John Knox Press between 1990 and 1992.
The original initiative from the Lilly Endowment was to commission a series of case studies of mainstream Protestant denominations that were experiencing precipitate decline at the end of the 20th century.
Ten years ago, our nation’s President was George H. W. Bush.
Ten years later, the family is the same, but the middle initials have changed. Ten years ago, we were making demands of Saddam Hussein. Ten years later, we are making demands of Saddam Hussein. Ten years ago, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was struggling over biblical hermeneutics and human sexuality. Ten years later . . . well, you get the idea by now.
How often do you recall final exam questions — or your answers? A decade has passed since I first sat in a classroom furiously composing a response to this question for "Presbyterian Heritage," a course taken in my middler year at Louisville Seminary.Describe the current trajectory of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as you see it and evaluate that trajectory based on what you consider the distinctive marks of the Presbyterian tradition.
The current directed study on Reformed Theology for certification of Christian educators in our church refers readers to "‘The Presbyterian Predicament’ [by] Coalter, Mulder, Weeks (A six-volume set of the history . . . )." The actual title of the seven-volume set — they wrote another book later — was "The Presbyterian Presence in the 20th Century," but the mistake in thinking of our study as the "Presbyterian Predicament" is both a common one and a telling one.
If the primary task of the Presbyterian Church today is the task of rebuilding community under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit — as has been suggested in recent weeks — then the primary locus of that building effort must be in the congregation. For the congregation is where the people of God have their spiritual home.
A religious and spiritual revival is underway on the campuses of American colleges and universities. It is propelled by students searching for meaning in their lives, by the growing religious pluralism in American society and, perhaps surprisingly, by the post-modern movement itself. No campus is free from its influence, but only a few have recognized its power. To the extent that we Presbyterians understand our higher educational mission as a mission to promote Presbyterianism we may achieve a sectarian goal, but miss being a part of this extraordinary movement.
The older I get the more content I become with my own preferences. I try very hard to participate with the modern world but I find it difficult and often annoying. For example, a recent Presbyterian book of worship recommended the use of dance in the church service.
Forty years ago, the Presbyterian Church — in both its principal branches, the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church, U.S. — was busy marshaling its accumulated spiritual and material resources in addressing major structural issues of justice in American society which had been long neglected.
Note — Since this story was posted on Oct. 21, we have received an e-mail from Alex Metherell, whom we attempted to reach last week but did not receive a reply. His response is as follows:
"Your report gives the impression that we have the 50 signatures needed to call the special meeting of the 214th General Assembly. In fact, we have 25 signatures (13 elders and 12 ministers) representing 19 presbyteries and 11 synods. All of these came from the e-mailing I made to about 70 commissioners. We still need to get another 12 elder commissioners and 13 minister commissioners. I have now sent out via regular mail a call to all 554 commissioners," wrote Metherell.
It is time for Presbyterians to remember and to recover the wellsprings of their faith, the fountainhead of God’s grace which suffuses the life of each Christian, of the church and even the world, though the world knows it not.
Those wellsprings are a constant source of faith, hope and love, and they are always there, but it is easy to forget that they are there; easy to ignore them; easy to turn from them in the struggles of everyday life.
You may have missed it, but here in the Empire State a woman in Brooklyn has started a mini-revolution. On Sunday, June 2, a front-page story in the New York Times headlined: "The Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts." Jeanne Heifetz, who is the mother of a high school senior, had inspected 10 high school statewide Regents English exams from the past three years and found that a large number of passages from well-known authors had been sanitized of any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol and even the mildest profanity.
"Constitutional crisis." Those two words roll off the tongue as easily as "Just do it" or "the real thing." These days, "constitutional crisis" seems to be rolling off more Presbyterian tongues than the other expressions. Have we fallen into a constitutional crisis? Is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on the verge of exploding for a lack of constitutional cohesion?
The Board of Directors of Presbyterians for Renewal, meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, Sept. 28, 2002, issued the following statement:
We believe in and intend to follow faithfully Jesus Christ as Lord of all, and the will of God as revealed in the Holy Scripture.
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