Presbyterian seminaries are noticing a change: their entering classes are getting younger.
More students in their early 20s are coming to study theology -- some of them straight out of college, others after spending a year or two doing volunteer or mission work. Some of those students do intend to work in parish ministry -- although whether they'll want to serve the kinds of congregations that most need pastors remains to be seen.
And some Presbyterians involved with programs designed to try to interest high school and college students in considering careers in ministry say they think those programs -- along with college programs encouraging students to think of their career choices as part of a discernment process of what they want to do with their lives -- are beginning to make a difference.
"I'm wondering if it's a combination of the job market or the whole 9/11 thing, or we're a country at war," said Craig Howard, director of admissions at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. "These students are coming in knowing there are needs in the world."
LOUISVILLE -- Some students know practically from the beginning that the ministry's for them. Others hear God's call faintly at first, then growing stronger, insistent, until they can't ignore it any more.
Becky Schwandt, 23, of Springfield, Mo., is a brand-new student at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary -- one of a growing number going to seminary pretty much straight from college. She graduated last spring from Drury University, majored in religion, and took biblical Greek in college to get ready. This is what she's always wanted.
And she was influenced in part by her pastor in high school, a woman who helped fill the void after Schwandt's mother died of breast cancer. She showed Schwandt how rewarding a life in ministry could be -- teaching her by example that pastors can have fun and don't have to be perfect. "I'm here," Schwandt said with a grin, "and I'm not perfect."
Amy Robinson, from Washington state, used to lead "church" services from the trunk of her family's car when she was four years old. From the sixth grade on, "there were people from my congregation who were telling me to go to seminary and become a minister."
She moved closer and closer, "but I never thought I'd actually accept it." After college she interned for a church, became a young adult volunteer for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and worked for a year. "Even though I was exhausted and depressed at times" -- Robinson saw some of the flaws of the church up close -- "I never felt silenced." She took that continuing verification of her call -- took a deep breath, and at 25 is starting at Louisville seminary.
Presbyterian and affiliated theological institutions report a variety of faculty and staff changes, new programs and other changes to their academic life in 2005-06
SACRAMENTO -- This is what Susan Ryan hopes. The next time there's disaster, the next time people are hurting, one of the first things they'll see is someone coming to help from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.
Ryan, who leads the disaster assistance program for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), said the church's emphasis in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita will be on long-term recovery -- in helping people after the immediate-relief assistance from groups such as the Red Cross ends.
The church's disaster assistance teams are well-trained, and are helping in the Katrina recovery effort by setting up tent villages where Presbyterian volunteers can stay while helping churches and families in the affected areas rebuild. "I really encourage the churches to send as steady a stream of volunteers as possible" to show the church's constant presence in times of trouble, Ryan said.
SACRAMENTO -- Four members of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) came to tell the church more about their "remarkable spiritual journey," as co-moderator Gary Demarest put it.
And they contend that keeping the church together doesn't have to come at the price of sacrificing what one believes most deeply -- that it's possible, the words of task force member Barbara Wheeler, to "hold on to each other and our convictions about the truth at the same time."
Demarest, a retired pastor from California, made the argument that "the world is watching" as the Presbyterian church and other denominations fight out their differences in public, and that the best way to make a compelling testimony to the power of the gospel is to let the world see that what binds Christians together in Jesus Christ is much more powerful than what divides them.
The four task force members spoke Sept. 22 to a joint gathering of top Presbyterian groups meeting in Sacramento -- the General Assembly Council, the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, the Presbyterian Foundation, the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program, and the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. This is one of many places the 20 task force members will go in the coming months to try to build support for their report and recommendations before the General Assembly votes on it in Birmingham next June.
SACRAMENTO -- Jean Marie Peacock, associate pastor of Lakeview Church in New Orleans, left with her husband, Peter, at 2 a.m. on that Sunday, not long before Hurricane Katrina hit.
They drove first to Jackson, Mississippi; and when the news reports still sounded bad, on to Memphis; and when it became clear that the levees had been breached and their neighborhood flooded, on to her parents' home in Illinois.
They live not far from the breach in the 17th Street levy, and they've learned that the water rose seven or eight feet in most of the homes in the area, including theirs. Out of her congregation of 335 members, about half lost their homes.
"Our church is now dispersed all over the United States," scattered from Massachusetts to Florida to Missouri, Peacock said at the General Assembly Council meeting in California. She's also the vice-moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and she was asked to speak about her situation because so many people wanted to know what was happening with her church.
Let's pretend we jump ahead a year.
Let's pretend the 2006 General Assembly has already met, and it has done exactly what the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has asked it to do. So how will things in the church be different?
That's a question many in the church are trying to figure out -- they're trying to parse the report and figure out how the landscape of the PC(USA) would change if the task force recommendations were to prevail. That's difficult, because the task force report is not simple -- it's full of complicated, interlocking parts.
And, not surprisingly, different folks come up with different answers.
Some contend that the task force is basically recommending local option in practice if not in technical fact -- that if the recommendations are approved, some sessions and presbyteries will routinely ordain and install sexually-active gays and lesbians even though the PC(USA)'s ordination standards, which limit ordination to those who practice chastity if they're single or fidelity if they're married, would not themselves change.
Others disagree. They say it's close to miraculous that such a diverse 20-member task force could, after several years of difficult work, reach a unanimous recommendation with no minority report -- and they commend the task force for asking the PC(USA) to set aside some if its divisive ways and to return to a sense of balance, based on historic Presbyterian principles.
(ENI) Christian leaders representing both conservative and liberal constituencies have lambasted Christian minister/broadcaster Pat Robertson for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Robertson's call "is appalling to the point of disbelief," National Council of Churches general secretary Robert Edgar said on Aug. 23 following Robertson's statement, delivered on the Christian Broadcast Network.
"We have the ability to take him [Chavez] out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,'" Robertson, a former Republican Party presidential candidate, said on his Aug. 22 television show, The 700 Club, of the Venezuelan president, who has often been at loggerheads with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. "We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong arm dictator," Robertson said. "'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."'
(RNS) Israel's Supreme Court ruled Aug. 23 that all synagogues in the now-vacated Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank should be destroyed, but that everything portable be relocated to Israel.
The court was responding to a petition by Jewish settlers who objected to the government's plan to destroy all Jewish religious institutions -- 30 synagogues as well as eight yeshivas and seminaries -- in Gaza. The destruction would be part of the government's withdrawal of residents and troops from 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank.
The Task Force recommendations reference a part of the Book of Order, specifically a portion of chapter six, "The Church and its Officers." The complete text is available at www.pcusa.org/oga/constitution.htm.
CHICAGO -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should enter a "season of discernment," in which its ordination standards should not change, but local governing bodies should determine whether candidates for ordination have departed from those ordination standards -- and whether a departure in a particular case "constitutes a failure to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity."
The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA) approved that recommendation unanimously on August 25, after three and a half years of intensive work and with several of its members expressing joy in the outcome and a certainty, as Sarah Grace Sanderson-Doughty put it, that "we are being incredibly faithful to Christ and to one another."
The task force says the most important of its seven recommendations, the one from which all the others flow, is that Presbyterians learn to live in harmony with one another and "to avoid division into separate denominations."
The task force contends that it's not advocating "local option" regarding ordaining gays and lesbians, because the denomination's national ordination standards -- limiting ordination to those who practice chastity if they're single or fidelity if they're married -- would remain in effect. To adopt local option would be a distinct change, "and it would be un-Presbyterian," the report states.
Instead, the task force says it's returning to historic traditions of Presbyterian life and trying to restore a balance that hasn't always existed in the denomination's recent conflicted days.
Iain R. Torrance, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, was the honored speaker at the Baccalaureate Service marking the 50th anniversary of Haigazian University in Beirut, Lebanon June 26. Both the University of Aberdeen and St. Andrews University in Scotland also awarded him the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree at their summer graduation ceremonies.
Torrance preached at Haigazian's Baccalaureate Service, held in the First Armenian Church in Beirut, for the university's class of 2005. In his sermon, titled "Hope in the New World," he called Haigazian, an Armenian institution, "a beacon for hope and reconstruction in Lebanon as it stands at the threshold of a new stage in its history." The university was founded as a creative response to the genocide of Armenians in Turkey by those who had escaped, "carrying their vision and faith with them," Torrance said.
It has been, in a terrible way, a remarkable summer.
The heat in the states along the U.S.-Mexico border has been uncaring, unceasing, record-breaking. The summer monsoons, which typically arrive in early July and bring some water and some relief, came late to Arizona this year, prolonging the difficulty.
Still, the people streamed north from Mexico and Central America, crossing the sand in the baking heat, some with their children, some traveling with no family, some just teenagers, trying to walk their way, against the law, towards a better way of life.
What U.S.-Mexico border policy should be is a matter of much passionate debate -- it won't be resolved in one long hot summer. But while the discussions over immigration policy continue, the flow of immigrants continues too, despite the best efforts of the U.S. Border Patrol. Humanitarian groups with deep involvement from some border- state Presbyterians are determined to show the face of God in the midst of all of this.
It is fall again. Storytellers from short-term mission trips are making their way around the Santa Barbara Presbytery. They "come and tell" at congregations around the presbytery perhaps because they were simply willing to go on one of the five IMPACT trips this year; and because their stories are full of fresh truth about their transformational experiences.
IMPACT, International Mission Project and Cross Cultural Training, is a mission-sending ministry of the Santa Barbara Presbytery. Since 1993, more than 300 people from the presbytery have been sent to serve in 12 countries. One of the reasons, perhaps, for the continued success of the ministry is that participants (from age 15 to 79) have returned to tell, teach, share their stories within their churches and from church to church. They are living letters to the people who sent them out--their children, parents, brothers, sisters and friends. They speak to good listeners!
IMPACT is relational, cross-cultural, built for individual and corporate learning. Twenty-four of the 32 churches in the Santa Barbara Presbytery have sent people on IMPACT journeys. These churches not only support the ministry and the participants but provide council members, pastors and presbytery staff for support, guidance and teaching. Participants leaving for summer trips are commissioned each summer at a presbytery worship. Congregations experience not only the fresh testimonies, but also the benefit of the renewed connections to other churches in the Presbytery. And of course, the new stories are an added invitation each year to people thinking about taking the next step, to go on an international, cross-cultural mission.
Sometimes a dream is not a nightmare; it is a message from God that is received waking or sleeping and you cannot mistake it. Paul had a dream when he was asleep that he should go to Macedonia. It was so vivid and the voice of the man so urgent asking him to come over and help the Greeks that he got passage on a boat next morning (Acts 16:6-10). Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream when he was wide awake. God showed him that his children could be free and that people should not be judged by the color of their skin. It changed his whole life.
Do you have a dream for your church or presbytery? Is there a strong sense that God wants something done and that it cannot wait?
I have a dream for the church that is absolutely compelling. How it can be accomplished I do not know. My simple efforts to begin its realization have met with failure but I cannot give it up. *
It is a plain vision of Presbyterians and peacemaking.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has named five companies in which it's considering divesting because of those firms' involvements in Israel -- involvement that a church committee contends contributes to the "ongoing violence that plagues Israel and Palestine."
During its meeting in Seattle on Aug. 5, the PC(USA)'s Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee (MRTI) named five companies -- Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries, United Technologies and Citigroup -- it alleges have direct links to the violence, after considering a range of companies in which the church has investments and looking in detail at the business practices of each involving the Middle East.
The question of how American Presbyterians do mission work in an era of globalization -- and what those in declining mainline denominations in the U.S. can learn from the faithful in the rest of the world -- is very much on the minds of some in the church these days.
Among the questions being asked:
What changes should American churches be making in the way they approach international mission?
What lessons can be learned from the tremendous growth of the Christian church in parts of the southern hemisphere, and from the mission efforts initiated by churches from other countries?
What are the implications of the trend for congregations and individual Presbyterians to be involved directly in mission work?
What do young adults bring to the mix -- what excites them and what aren't they willing to tolerate?
Presbyterians are likely to be deep in conversation about this throughout the fall, in part through two upcoming conferences focused on global mission challenges.
The trustees of Presbyterian-related Knoxville College in Tennessee have fired President Barbara R. Hatton, alleging that she has managed the school "by creating fear and intimidation." The decision, effective immediately, was reached on August 8, during a special board meeting in Knoxville.
"It was a very sad day for Knoxville College and a very sad day for Dr. Hatton," said Beneva Bibbs, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s associate for racial-ethnic schools and colleges.
Hatton's firing didn't please everyone. Four trustees, none of whom attended the meeting, resigned. They had informed the other trustees by fax that they planned to quit if Hatton was fired.
As pastor of Black Mountain (N.C.) Church, John McCall loved his ministry. Thirty retired missionaries heard his sermons on Sundays. He saw theirs. "(They) were the first to volunteer, always willing to cross cultural boundaries; they had servant hearts," he observed.
"They were part of the way God turned my attention towards missions." After years at Black Mountain, he was a commissioner to the GA in Cincinnati when his life changed. As new mission co-workers were commissioned, he watched from "the nosebleed section." But shouldn't I be down there? he thought. He began working with the Worldwide Ministries Division office to fulfill that conviction.
He and retired mission co-workers Don and Jessie McCall (no relation) had been praying for more than a year about Taiwan. For his own assignment, he was leaning towards Latin America. But praying about Taiwan for so long kept those needs before him. He accepted an assignment to serve in Taiwan, beginning in 1996
It would be easy to mythologize Sue Makin. She works in an exotic place-- Africa--in a rural hospital, with a life-affirming task--trying to save the lives of mothers and newborn babies.
But she is a very articulate, practical, no-nonsense person without pretense.
Sue grew up in Florida without a clear life direction. After college and vocational school, she settled into work as a hospital lab technician. Her work in the hospital challenged her to go to medical school. While studying, she began to pray about the possibility of mission service. While still a lab tech, she volunteered in a health clinic where she saw the toll on young women from drug use, STDs and other complications. Her interest grew in the OBGYN specialty, where doctors address the problems she saw. It has been a satisfying choice. "A birth is a happy event, I sometimes get to do a little surgery and internal medicine. There are elements of the beginning and end of things," she says.
Missions as an integral part of Presbyterian church life and biblical mandate is both Tom Hastings' practical work and his urgent interest. The church devalues its past and waters down its present and future missions mandate at its peril, he says.
Appointed a PC(USA) mission worker in 1988, Hastings teaches practical theology and Christian education at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary. He also lectures and preaches, and works in a prison chaplaincy ministry.
As with many who live and serve in two countries and contexts, Hastings' appreciation and concern for both his American home church and Christian work in Japan are evident.
The years Presbyterians have worked with local believers in Japan span years of change, turmoil and reconfiguration in missions efforts by American churches, he says. Presbyterians came to Japan and often did excellent work in education, health, and church work. By the 1970s, Christians in America were backing away from the stereotypes of bad mission work, but lost touch also with what was important, he says.
While American Presbyterians are indifferent or ignorant of their history, Japanese Presbyterians take it very seriously, he says. "The Presbyterian legacy in Japan is taken very seriously in Japan," he says. Over the past century, hundreds of American Presbyterians have served in Japan. "Who will be the stewards of this history?" he asks.
CHICAGO -- Tweak here, clarify there, make the sentences crisp and clear.
On Aug. 25, the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will announce its long-awaited recommendations. But today -- the day before the big day -- the task force spent about an hour editing and improving draft sections of the report it had made public in July. The task force went back into closed session after that for more private discussions.
That leaves about a three-hour block of time scheduled for Aug. 25 to make the recommendations, discuss them and vote on the final report.
Many of the editing changes suggested were minor, meant to sharpen a point or clear up cluttered language -- there were certainly no roaring discussions. The task force members have seen these drafts before; any major differences of views, if they existed, apparently have been worked out in private.
So they concentrated today on the fine points.
The organization of the Hanover Presbytery, now Presbytery of the James in Virginia, is a fascinating tale of pious migrants settling the Mid-Atlantic region, of emerging church leaders challenging them to grow and cooperatively come together during the turbulent years before the American Revolution broke out.
Francis Makemie, the father of American Presbyterianism, wrote A Plain and Persuasive to the Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland (1750). He advised migrants to the New World to move south into Virginia and to build houses, churches, and school, to grow tobacco. Makemie then moved north, won a right to preach and build churches in New York and vicinity. He helped form America's first Presbytery. The body grew, disagreed over matters such as the First Great Awakening, split into Old Side -- New Side, but carried on. Pious people, but without clergy, streamed into Virginia. Some began to form "reading houses," as they were called, because Williamsburg's Anglican establishment would not allow other Protestants to build "churches." A William Morris, for example, joined with his neighbors to meet and study books they had, including Luther's Galatians commentary, John Knox's Scot's Confession, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and George Whitefield's sermons. The movement spread. When asked by authorities to which denomination they belonged, they identified themselves as Presbyterians, aided by New Side clergyman from New Castle, William Robinson.
DALLAS – What will the world be like in the 21st century – and what will the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) need to be like in order to reach that world?
In other words, what will the future church be like?
They marched together for civil rights in the 1960s, sang the 1980s hit “We Are the World” for famine relief in Africa and held interfaith discussions following the release of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
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