We all have memories, often treasured, of Christmas seasons past. First as children, then parents and grandparents in our older years, we remember the stories we heard first in our youth and have continued to read in our latter years.
We all remember Charles Dickens, who left us The Christmas Carol (1843) about the tightwad Ebenezer Scrooge, who was transformed by visits from the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Scrooge finally got with it and celebrated the Yuletide by raising his clerk, Bob Cratchit's wages and giving support to Bob's crippled son, Tiny Tim. Dickens was an English author who set the standard for Christmas tales.
OUTLOOK readers ought to know that Presbyterians have contributed to our understandings about Christmas with their holiday stories.
Much of the conflict involving the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and its policy involving Israel and divestment is being played out on the big stage -- at the national and even international levels.
But PC(USA) leaders are being reminded that decisions the denomination has made nationally are having repercussions too in local communities, for local churches.
"This Sunday we will have a squad car in front of the church I serve in Forest Hills," Charles Brewster, pastor of Forest Hills Presbyterian in the New York City area, said recently during the moderator's conference in Louisville -- a gathering of presbytery moderators and other regional leaders from around the country. Brewster, the moderator of New York City presbytery, was voicing concern about an anonymous letter threatening violence at Presbyterian churches in protest over the PC(USA)'s plan to consider selective, phased divestment involving some companies doing business in Israel. That letter was mailed from Queens, not far from Brewster's church, "and we take the threat very seriously and we are all frightened," he said.
Florence Henderson, an elder and the vice-moderator of Baltimore presbytery, said Presbyterians there have been "bombarded" with questions about "what has happened, why has it happened?"
Susan Wittjen, an elder and moderator of New Covenant presbytery, said Presbyterian and Jewish leaders in Texas have been discussing their discomfort with a recent trip the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy made to the Middle East -- a fact-finding tour that included a controversial meeting on Oct. 17 with Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon. Jewish leaders were unhappy about the Hezbollah meeting, and wanted more publicity for a letter that top PC(USA) leaders -- John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, Clifton Kirkpatrick, the denomination's stated clerk, and Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly -- issued calling that meeting "misguided, at best" (see OUTLOOK, Nov. 15 issue, p.7.)
A committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has announced six criteria it says the church should use in deciding whether to divest in certain multinational companies doing business in Israel.
The PC(USA)'s Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee, meeting Nov. 4-6 in New York, drafted six criteria to guide the denomination in its divestment decisions, while emphasizing that any decisions will be made in a careful, deliberate way. The PC(USA) holds more than $7.5 billion in investments through the Presbyterian Foundation and the Board of Pensions, and the earliest any stock could be sold as a deliberate divestment action would be after the next General Assembly meets in 2006.
The question of whether the PC(USA) should divest in companies active in Israel, in protest over Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people -- or whether such a proposal is anti-Semitic or a bad idea, as some have contended -- has been white-hot since the General Assembly authorized a process of phased, selective divestment by a 431-62 vote last June.
A presbytery cannot require a congregation to pay all of its per capita or to fulfill a mission pledge in order to receive financial assistance from the presbytery, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission has ruled.
The ruling helps answer the ongoing question of what presbyteries can do -- or not do -- when congregations refuse to pay all or part of their per capita assessments, often to protest positions taken by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). And it affirms a decision issued last April by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of Mid-America.
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, the PC(USA)'s highest court, had earlier ruled, in July 2003 in the Minihan v. Scioto Valley Presbytery case, that a presbytery can't force a session to pay per capita, the per-member assessment that the General Assembly sets, and it can't punish a session for failing to pay per capita. While paying per capita is not mandatory, in a connectional system it is strongly encouraged, the judicial commission ruled in that case, stating that withholding funds "as a mean of protest or dissent" is "a serious breach of the trust and love with which our Lord Jesus intends the covenant community to function."
It's the sermon pastors hate to preach, the ones congregations hate even more to hear.
It usually comes in the fall, and it's when they ask, cajole, even plead for ... money
And, theologically, it's all about God, our relationship with money, and thanksgiving.
"Gratitude is at the heart of our spirituality in the Reformed tradition," Tim Hart-Andersen, pastor of Westminster church in Minneapolis, preached last spring at a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gathering on stewardship. "There is no other human response to God more basic than gratitude, a deep thanksgiving that wells up from within . . . Our churches and those who inhabit them need such a rekindling of biblical stewardship, where we learn again what once we knew so well: `The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.' " (Psalm 24:1)
(PNS) The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has ruled that a session's failure to pay its per capita apportionment cannot be the sole factor in the presbytery's determination whether that congregation is eligible for requesting financial assistance from the presbytery.
In it's Oct. 18 decision in Johnston, et. al. v. Heartland Presbytery, the commission also ruled that a congregation's failure to pay its per capita apportionment and mission pledge could not be the determinative factor in a presbytery's refusal to grant assistance to that congregation. At the same time, the GAPJC determined that "a congregation's effort to pay its full per capita apportionment and to fulfill a mission pledge is clearly relevant as one factor among many others that a presbytery may consider in exercising its stewardship responsibility to allocate limited resources in action upon a congregation's request for assistance."
LOUISVILLE - Two key Presbyterian Church (USA) staff members were apparently fired November 11 by General Assembly Council (GAC) Executive Director John Detterick - with no clear public explanation for their departures.
Kathy Lueckert, the deputy executive associate director of the GAC, the governing body of the church's mission program agency, and the Rev. Peter Sulyok, coordinator of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), are no longer employed by the GAC.
Leuckert has served the denomination for five years, Sulyok for nearly twelve.
Lueckert supervised Sulyok and both were members of an ACSWP fact-finding delegation to the Middle East last month that included a televised meeting with Hezbollah, an organization that is on the U.S. government's watch list of terrorist groups.
CHICAGO -- These progressive Presbyterians came to Chicago to talk about theology and sexuality -- about what it means to be a Christian and to live responsibly and faithfully as a sexual being.
And, like the wind whipping famously down Michigan Avenue, fueled by the torrents of the presidential election and the sting of John Kerry's loss, the conversation at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians' annual gathering quickly swirled into other territories too.
How can the church talk convincingly to young people -- many of them with their feet firmly planted in the secular world -- if it rarely talks about sex at all?
What should the church say about sex outside of marriage -- is it always wrong? What about committed, long-term relationships among unmarried partners, including gays and lesbians, but also church-going senior citizens and huge numbers of heterosexuals who live together or certainly sleep together before they marry?
CHICAGO -- No votes have been taken.
It's kind of like reading the tea leaves before the kettle has even come to a boil.
But a preliminary, tentative, test-the-waters discussion Oct. 13 indicated that the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) still is searching for consensus on some of the most controversial issues it faces, including homosexuality and ordination.
On the first day of its Oct. 13-15 meeting, the task force considered draft papers on two big issues -- what to say to the church about ordaining gays and lesbians who are sexually active, and whether the denomination ought to spell out what it considers to be essential tenets. Neither of those papers was being formally advanced as reflecting the task force's position nor was up for a vote.
But at its last meeting, in August, the planning team for this October meeting suggested that it might be time to put forth some "affirmations," some suggested statements about ordination standards and essential tenets, just to see how task force members would respond -- basically, to sense where there might be some areas of agreement and where there's still work to be done. Those affirmations were drafted by a working group from the task force consisting of three pastors -- John "Mike" Loudon of Florida, Sarah Sanderson-Doughty and John Wilkinson, both from New York state -- and William Stacy Johnson, who teaches systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.
CHICAGO -- Immediately after a discussion on global context, a conversation about how the preoccupations and work of Presbyterians in the United States fit into the larger concerns of the world, the members of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) went into another closed-door session.
They shut the doors on October 15 because they wanted privacy to try to figure out what to say to the PC(USA), particularly on the controversial question of ordaining sexually-active lesbians and gays.
They went from the big view, the international context, to the small: the infighting within the denomination.
Presumably, the conversation had to do in part with theology and in part with politics and power. These 20 people have theological views, convictions, but also in some cases alignments with those in the church involved in the political fight. They are weighing what they want to say in their hearts, what they can afford to say publicly, what the church can accept and what they feel would be prophetic to say. They have developed a deep affection for one another, but they also may want to convince some of their friends to move.
They want to say something that will have the ring of truth.
They want the Holy Spirit to speak.
They want to know how they will know if that has happened.
Presbyterian relations with Jews, already stressed and battered, have taken another blow after a Presbyterian delegation to the Middle East met in Lebanon with representatives of Hezbollah, an Islamic group that the U.S. State Department has placed on a list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Top leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) quickly criticized the meeting, saying they'd tried to prevent the Oct. 17 meeting, describing it as "misguided, at best," and calling the remarks of members of the Presbyterian delegation "reprehensible."
But the incident won't be just wiped away. Jewish groups, already unhappy with the PC(USA), spoke out hotly and quickly. And some Presbyterians say they're also confused about what message their denomination is trying to send -- and concerned that whatever moral authority the church is trying to bring to bear on the Israel-Palestine crisis may have been weakened.
LOUISVILLE - Three top officials of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have issued a statement disavowing comments made by members of a Presbyterian delegation during an Oct. 17 visit to a former Israeli prison that is now a Hezbollah-run museum and memorial in southern Lebanon.
News that the delegation - comprised mostly of members of the denomination's Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) - had met with a group on the U.S. government's watch list of terrorist organizations has further eroded relations between Jewish groups and the PC(USA).
One ACSWP delegation member - Ronald Stone, a recently retired professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary - was quoted as saying: 'As an elder of our church, I'd like to say that according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders.'
The Presbytery of Western North Carolina made mistakes in its handling of a case involving the ministry of Parker T. Williamson, chief executive officer of The Lay Committee and editor of The Layman, and failed to provide "adequate due process and fundamental fairness," a church court has ruled.
The Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Mid-Atlantic ruled Sept. 29 that the presbytery had made procedural errors significant enough that its controversial decision last January to make Williamson a "member-at-large" of the presbytery, rather than to validate his call for his work with the Layman, should be set aside.
The judicial commission also ordered Western North Carolina presbytery not to take any action involving the validation of Williamson's ministry for a year from the date of the ruling, and ordered the presbytery and Williamson -- who has been a member of the presbytery for 32 years -- "to jointly formulate a presbytery-wide process of reconciliation concerning this issue."
It is unlikely that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had any idea, when it voted this summer to start the process of considering divestiture in some companies doing business in Israel, that it would set off a fireworks of protest and provoke international denunciations of Presbyterians as anti-Semitic.
But that's exactly what has happened. In recent weeks, stories or opinion pieces about the Presbyterian action have been written in prominent publications from Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal to the Israeli Insider (that article was headlined, "With Friends Like These . . . ").
Relations between Presbyterians and Jews, already battered by a controversy some months ago over the denomination's funding of a Messianic congregation in Philadelphia, are much worse now -- a situation made more painful by the recognition that, until now, the Presbyterian church was considered by many Jews to be among the most understanding and reasoned of the Christian denominations.
LOUISVILLE -- It wasn't a big-fireworks meeting -- but the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), meeting in Kentucky Sept. 22-25, kept the concerns of the world close at hand.
It approved a resolution calling for support of members of the U.S. military.
It learned that Forman Christian College in Pakistan has received a major $5 million grant from U.S. AID. "We cannot tell you what a big deal this is," said Will Browne of the Worldwide Ministries Division.
And it is trying to find ways for Presbyterians from the U.S. to help protect the life and the human-rights work of Presbyterians in Colombia, who have watched their colleagues in human rights work being assassinated and imprisoned one-by-one.
LOUISVILLE -- It wasn't a big-fireworks meeting -- but the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), meeting in Kentucky Sept. 22-25, kept the concerns of the world close at hand.
LOUISVILLE -- The first wave has hit hard -- intense criticism of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for considering selective divestment in some companies doing business in Israel, as a way to protest Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people.
But now the PC(USA) is trying to figure out where to go from here, deciding not just when and whether to divest, but also searching for ways to deal with the ripples of reaction.
Church leaders are trying first to explain what the assembly has done so that people really understand -- there has been a boatload of misunderstanding ("So many people are operating on the basis of what they think we did, not what we did," said Manley Olson, a General Assembly Council member from Minnesota.)
But they also want to cultivate support from the ecumenical community in the divestment effort -- there are signs that may be starting to happen -- and to renew discussions with Jewish leaders in a way that acknowledges the deep pain and sense of betrayal the divestment issue has caused the Jewish community, but which also doesn't dilute the Presbyterian commitment to justice for the Palestinians or duck the hard issues embedded in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
LOUISVILLE -- Here's the bad news. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has lost about 24 percent of its membership in the last 20 years.
Here's some news that's a little better. Some Presbyterian congregations are growing, are taking risks, are taking evangelism seriously. And there's research available on what growing congregations are doing -- research which often shows a gap between what many Presbyterians expect will make a church grow, and what really does.
The General Assembly Council, meeting this week in Louisville, has been talking about how to implement its Mission Work Plan for 2005-2006, and spent part of that time thinking about what the PC(USA) does well, and not so well, in evangelism. Deborah Bruce, of the denomination's Office of Research Services, shared some of the findings that she and colleague Cynthia Woolever have mined from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey -- a study of more than 300,000 people in the U.S. who attended worship one weekend in April 2001, involving more than 2,200 congregations from more than 50 faith groups.
LOUISVILLE -- Not wanting to say too much, but maybe not comfortable with keeping silent either, members of the General Assembly Council are struggling with what to do about the most incendiary issue the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) faces: the intensely controversial vote of the General Assembly a few months ago to begin a process of selective, phased divestment in some companies doing business in Israel.
Church officials now say that no divestiture can take place before 2006, when the next General Assembly meets. There have been questions raised about whether the Presbyterian Foundation or the Board of Pensions are willing to consider divestiture or will feel compelled to act to protect the financial interests of those whose money is invested in their portfolios.
Trying to calm the waters, key PC(USA) leaders have scheduled two meetings with top-level Jewish leaders, one in New York on Sept. 28 and one in October.
But the council, meeting this week in Louisville, is trying to determine whether to have denominational leaders issue some kind of "clarifying statement" about the divestiture action, perhaps one that would be sent to all Presbyterian congregations, acknowledging the anger this action has provoked among many Jews, aware that e-mails and letters and phone calls have been pouring in by the hundreds, and that some Presbyterian congregations are feeling the heat close to home.
Over and over, Rick Ufford-Chase talks about the value of international connections, about things the church in the United States can learn from the church around the world.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is just starting its second round of the Interfaith Listening Project, in which teams from 10 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia -- usually made up of one Christian and one Muslim who already know and work with each other at home -- have come to the United States to visit churches and communities, to have conversations with people at the grassroots.
Ufford-Chase, who's moderator of the church's 216th General Assembly, said that in the three months since he was elected he's had the chance to meet with international representatives at the Youth Triennium in Indiana, at the Peacemaking Conference in Seattle, and now at the General Assembly Council meeting this week in Louisville, where the interfaith listening teams made a presentation and participated in opening worship. Ufford-Chase said he's come away from each of these encounters more convinced about the "opportunity they offer our church for transformation."
LOUISVILLE - Nagy Tawfik, the long-time corporate controller for the Presbyterian Church (USA) was fired September 2 for "errors in judgment" surrounding the open bidding process for the external auditing of the church's financial books."
There is no evidence that PC(USA) funds have been misused," said General Assembly Council executive director John Detterick September 2 in announcing Tawfik's termination
The World Alliance of Reformed Churches has issued a potent denunciation of economic disparities in the world and the capitalist systems that foster them – saying in a confession on economic injustice that “we reject the current world economic order of global neo-liberal capitalism” and that “global economic justice is essential to the integrity of our faith in God and our discipleship as Christians.”
Martha Skelton, a veteran church journalist, has been named associate editor
of THE OUTLOOK effective Aug. 2.
A freelance journalist with extensive experience in religious publishing,
she has spent most of the last 20 years employed by the Southern Baptist
Church, and was director of the European Baptist Press Service for four
years.
American Clifton Kirkpatrick admits there is "more than irony" in his election as president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) August 9 at their meeting in Accra, Ghana. He will serve the next seven years.
Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA, was elected president in a unanimous vote Monday to spontaneous applause from 400 delegates from around the world. "I had real questions about this (coming from the US)," he said following the election.
DALLAS – Well, it was 97 degrees in Dallas, but the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) didn’t bare much skin.
For those who had hoped the task force would unbutton its defenses and begin to discuss publicly what the PC(USA) should do about ordaining gays and lesbians, that didn’t happen. The task force did talk about homosexuality – that was front-and-center on its agenda during the Aug. 3-6 meeting – but the most substantive parts of that conversation came during two long, closed-door sessions in which task force members cleared the room of all observers and spoke from their hearts, explaining their own views and sharing stories from their lives that have shaped those views, in an exchange that task force member Joan Kelley Merritt described during a worship service as powerful and courageous.
DALLAS – Think of this like an episode of your favorite TV show. You’re going to have to tune in later to find out what happens.
The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) did talk about homosexuality during its Aug. 3-6 meeting, although nearly all behind closed doors, in more than seven hours of private discussions.
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