LOUISVILLE The boycott by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) of Taco Bell hasn’t closed any Taco Bell stores or caused any layoffs. That wasn’t the point, a denominational official who works with the campaign said Friday.
But the boycott has drawn some ecumenical support.
LOUISVILLE — They winced, but they did it.
The executive committee of the General Assembly Council has approved a two-year mission budget for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that will cut $4.6 million from its budget for next year and eliminate 37 more jobs at the denomination’s national headquarters in Louisville. Nine of those positions are currently vacant and 28 people will be laid off as of May 14.
Montreat, with its clear air and its streams making music day and night, with its clusters of cottages and stone lodges riding the mountains of North Carolina, is a place where some Presbyterians have been coming all their lives, where their parents and grandparents came before them, where the porches and pathways are full of memories.
For Southern Presbyterians, "it’s the closest thing to Mecca that we have," said Frederick J. Heuser Jr., president of the Presbyterian Historical Society and Department of History. "It’s a place that resonates with people’s souls."
LOUISVILLE — Needing to cut $4.6 million from its budget for next year, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has announced that 37 more jobs will be cut at the denomination’s national headquarters in Louisville. Nine of those positions are currently vacant, but 28 people will be laid off.
This is the third consecutive year that positions have been cut at the denomination’s national offices because of budgetary pressures, and programs and services are being cut as well as jobs.
A Presbyterian minister cannot be brought up on disciplinary charges for performing a same-sex "marriage" ceremony, because the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has not yet spoken definitively enough about whether such ceremonies are absolutely prohibited, a church court has ruled.
In order to create such a prohibition, either the denomination’s Constitution would have to be changed or a General Assembly would have to issue an authoritative interpretation to state that ministers are prohibited from performing such ceremonies, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Covenant has ruled in a closely divided decision.
The question of how the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should relate to people of other faiths — how to be Christian in a pluralistic world — will definitely be before this year’s General Assembly in Richmond.
In part, that’s fallout from the controversial new Messianic congregation in Philadelphia — Avodat Yisrael, started with $145,000 in financial support from Philadelphia Presbytery, plus $40,000 from Trinity Synod and $75,000 from a General Assembly Council committee.
LOUISVILLE – Emphasizing his new role as a "pastor-president," a minister from West Virginia — Dean K. Thompson, pastor of First church, Charleston — has been named the eighth president of Louisville Seminary.
With Dorothy Ridings, chair of the seminary’s board of trustees, saying that the seminary needs pastoral leadership at a difficult time, Thompson told a crowd gathered Thursday in the seminary’s chapel that he and his wife, Rebecca, feel led by the Holy Spirit to come to Louisville. "We’ve been nurtured by the Spirit, comforted, taught and guided towards you," Thompson told the crowd.
Princeton Seminary's board of trustees has named Iain R. Torrance as the institution’s sixth president. Torrance is moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Divinity at the University of Aberdeen, and master of Christ’s College, Aberdeen, where he is professor in patristics and Christian ethics.
In assuming the presidency on July 1, Torrance will succeed Thomas W. Gillespie, who served from 1983 to 2004.
Heartland Presbytery cannot require congregations to make per capita payments and mission pledges to be considered for loans or other financial support from the presbytery, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Mid-America Synod has ruled.
The synod judicial commission ruled April 3 that the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) provides "that the session (of a congregation) has sole responsibility to distribute the gifts of the people" and that Heartland’s policy, adopted in June 2003, had a "coercive force" that was not acceptable.
Nancy Ammerman recognizes Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church when she sees it — the congregation where the families have all been there for generations, where everybody knows everybody and there’s no question at all about which hymns will be sung or what food will show up at the potluck: tuna noodle casserole and Jell-O with fruit. Every time.
Alex Metherell, the elder and physician/engineer from Laguna Beach, Calif., who tried to get the 214th General Assembly recalled last year to address the issue of constitutional defiance, has announced that he will be a candidate for General Assembly stated clerk.
RICHMOND — The Mid-Atlantic Synod, meeting here in special session Saturday, voted 19-15 to review the policies, procedures and actions of Baltimore Presbytery with regard to admitting new minister members and the validation of ministries and oversight of ministers.
You probably won’t get a crowd up on their feet screaming if you shout out, "Authoritative interpretation!" On the other hand, those two words have the power to get some Presbyterians mighty riled up.
This year’s General Assembly will be asked, once again, to consider removing from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Constitution the requirement that those being ordained practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they are single — language that some contend follows centuries of Christian teaching, and that some others say unfairly excludes gays and lesbians in committed partnerships from serving in leadership in the church.
The question of what to do about Donald Stroud — the Presbyterian minister from Baltimore who has said publicly he cannot comply with the part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Constitution that limits ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they are single — is taking yet another twist.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We have been at war in Iraq for a year now. Close to 11,000 Iraqis have been killed. Nearly 600 United States servicemen and women have died in the hostilities; another 3,000 have been injured. We ask you to join us in continued prayers for those who are impacted by war, those who are serving in the military, and those in positions of authority.
Parker T. Williamson has won some time. The Permanent Judicial Commission of the Mid-Atlantic Synod has granted a stay of enforcement of a decision by Western North Carolina Presbytery involving Williamson.
What’s at dispute in the case is whether and on what terms Williamson can remain a member of Western North Carolina Presbytery.
James S. Brown Sr., 91, former publisher of The Outlook and general manager of the Outlook Book Service, died Wednesday, March 10, in Richmond, Va. A memorial service was held Saturday, March 13, at Tuckahoe Presbyterian Church in Richmond.
A Texas native, Brown came to The Outlook in 1947 to assist his brother, the late Outlook editor Aubrey Brown, by managing the business side of the operation. Prior to that, James Brown had been working with a Texas City oil refinery and narrowly escaped death in the disastrous explosion of 1947.
This is the magic of the Alpha evangelization program: a guy like John Goodwin, a management consultant from Vancouver, Canada, says, "I came to the Lord through Alpha, and had no intention of doing such a thing." Goodwin, a 65-year-old management consultant, had not gone to church for 35 years when, in 1998, he decided to give an Alpha course a try — in large part because a woman he was dating (and who is now his wife) was involved in the church and asked him to go.
Marcia Mount Shoop, an associate pastor at a big church in the Chicago suburbs, likes the idea of having an evangelistic outreach for people who are seeking to know more about God and Christianity. But when she went to an Alpha conference, "I had some theological problems with some of the curriculum — some of the content I felt was not appropriate for the Reformed tradition, it doesn’t reflect what we believe," Mount Shoop said.
John Zimmerman, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor from Washington state, saw firsthand how Alpha can transform a congregation when he served as an interim pastor about two years ago of a historic downtown church in Vancouver, B.C. That church, a Baptist congregation, had a long-term pastor who retired, and attendance dropped off by about 180 within a few months after he left. But then the Alpha programs the church had been offering took off — and Zimmerman was amazed at what happened next.
Meeting in Richmond on Feb. 10-11, the board of directors of the Presbyterian Outlook Foundation elected O. Benjamin Sparks its interim editor effective Feb. 20.
Sparks will serve in a part-time, limited capacity and without compensation while he remains pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Va. During his tenure as editor he will give overall direction to The Outlook in theological, editorial and ecclesiastical matters, setting the tone and direction of the paper.
DALLAS – Yes, they finally started talking about ordination.
No, they didn’t answer the big essay question: should the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ordain gays and lesbians (although there are no shortage of folks willing to volunteer the answer on that one.) That kind of discussion – what the PC(USA) should do about its disagreements over theology and ordination – is expected to be on the table when the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA) meets again in August. And, after more than two years of work, some of them seem eager to get to it.
DALLAS – What are the qualifications for being a church leader?
The third and fifth chapters of 1 Timothy provide what New Testament scholar Frances Taylor Gench described as "a catalog of virtues" expected of such people – written with the recognition that the world is watching, that for some, how church leaders behave is one of the standards they use to judge whether the faith is real.
DALLAS — Jesus Christ himself is the peace, unity and purity of the church.
That’s the essence of a preliminary report that the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) plans to submit this summer to the 216th General Assembly.
DALLAS — Susan Andrews finds reasons for hope almost everywhere she goes in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) But she also sees "a big cloud" hanging over the denomination, and says "there is a fear, a mistrust, an anxiety, an anger" and a complete avoidance of direct and loving discussion of the key issues dividing the church.
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