LOUISVILLE — John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, on Feb. 14 called it a "new day," a "new chapter in the life of the General Assembly Council," because of the work the council has done to create a Mission Work Plan to shape the budget for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for 2005 and 2006.
LOUISVILLE — It’s hard being forced to choose.
In the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is evangelism more important than social justice?
Does spirituality matter more than leadership?
And how do you get from that kind of big-picture talk to cutting $8 million from the budget by early May? Who exactly will lose their jobs? And what programs will be shoved aside?
LOUISVILLE – Here’s the game plan: put together a new, two-year budget for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that’s built on a big vision and big hopes for a new way of doing things.
Whether the will exists to say that some of what the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) traditionally has done won’t be done anymore, in order to make way for more important and even new things, still has not been determined.
LOUISVILLE — The final draft of a new paper on the doctrine of the Trinity will be available for review and comment on the Web site of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) by late February — a report that both affirms the historic use of the language "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" and suggests other language that can be used too.
LOUISVILLE — People yipped so loudly when the idea was presented last September that it was pulled from consideration. The response was clear: some people thought it was a terrible idea, unwise and unfair, for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to impose an administrative fee of up to 5 percent on restricted gifts to the denomination — money that individuals and congregations give with strings attached, requiring that the money be spent to fund specific things.
LOUISVILLE – What per capita rate will the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) set for 2005 and 2006? Well, that all depends.
The proposal on the table is to offer the General Assembly two options for a per capita rate, and to let the Assembly decide.
The first option would set a rate of $5.46 per active member for 2005 – five cents less than the rate for this year – then to raise it to $5.56, a boost of 10 cents per member from the current rate, for 2006.
LOUISVLLE — The big tiger, another round of budget cuts for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), stayed mostly out of sight as the General Assembly Council opened its winter meeting here Tuesday, Feb. 10. The cat hasn’t disappeared, but the denomination’s leadership is hoping to talk later this week more about the big picture — a "mission work plan" that lays out the vision for what kind of things should get money and what should not — and less about the hard dollars involved.
The disputes in Cincinnati presbytery regarding Mount Auburn church — a congregation whose session has said it cannot comply with the policy of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) regarding the ordination of gays and lesbians — are far from over.
Last summer, Mount Auburn’s pastor, Stephen Van Kuiken, lost his ordination after he refused to stop performing same-sex union ceremonies.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — After a long, contentious, messy meeting — the kind where people roared down disapproval from the balcony when they didn’t like what they’d just heard — Western North Carolina Presbytery voted 150-106 Saturday night to declare that Parker Williamson, chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor-in-chief of the Layman, does not have a ministry that is validated by the presbytery.
LOUISVILLE — Conservative support may start to erode away again from the controversial "Transforming Families" report — as the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy recently voted to take out of a draft language that spoke of some families being established "contrary to God’s will."
So how did a church from Trussville, Alabama — a pretty typical Presbyterian congregation, fairly small, more one-tone than ethnically diverse — end up dedicated heart-and-soul to an impoverished village in Cambodia?
John Buckingham, a retired physician and elder from the church, calls it a miracle. Sovanna Thach, a Cambodian refugee who survived the killing fields and never intended to go back, said, "I don’t know how to describe it. It amazes me, amazes me ... The Lord, He never abandoned me."
When Ray Bakke describes the world, it’s unvarnished: here-and-now, not something from the past, not what’s comfortable and easy. And the gospel he presents strives to comfort the poor in urban ghettos around the world, not just affluent American whites.
Bakke, a world traveler and former inner-city pastor, paints pictures with statistics such as these:
If Joseph and Mary were to knock on the door tonight — ragged, weary, hungry strangers knocking on your door, asking for a place to sleep — what would you say? Would you open the door to people you did not know? Turn them away? Or would you be out shopping or racking up more time at work, so you wouldn’t even hear the knock?
Sometimes, the idea of evangelism — going out and talking to people about Jesus — is more than some Presbyterians can bear.
But Rob Eyman pastor of Whitworth Community church in Spokane, Wash., preached recently three sermons on the Great Commission, giving some simple ideas of what Christians who want to share their faith can do.
When it hit the news that Philadelphia presbytery was starting a new messianic congregation, some people were surprised that Presbyterians would do such a thing. Southern Baptists, maybe. But Presbyterians?
Some argued that Congregation Avodat Yisrael is using "deceptive tactics," as the Jewish Week newspaper put it, and may be trying to unfairly target Jews for conversion to Christianity.
WASHINGTON, D. C. — The plan is this. In 2006, the Covenant Network of Presbyterians will push again for another vote on the ordination standards of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — hoping to open the door fully to ordaining gays and lesbians.
That will be shortly after the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA) will have made its report, whatever that might turn out to be.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — They both walked to the microphone with some apprehension, needing to say uncomfortable things but also wanting to make a compelling case about the future — to say that Presbyterians who hammer each other over homosexuality would be doing themselves and even the world a favor by sticking it out together.
No longer facing the prospect of a hearing on charges of heresy and violating his ordination vows, W. Robert "Rob" Martin III was installed last month as pastor of First church in Palo Alto, Calif.
An investigating committee of Western North Carolina Presbytery declined to bring charges against Martin, whose move to California was put on hold over the summer while the charges — made by attorney Paul Rolf Jensen — were investigated. In the middle of the process, Martin asked the presbytery for vindication.
DALLAS — In 1869, after an excruciating 30 years of separation and spiritual division, the reconciled Presbyterians marched into the church in Pittsburgh two by two, arms locked, the Old School faithful holding onto their former opponents in the New School, with "welcomes, thanksgiving and tears."
It was the formal reunion after the bitter division in 1837.
DALLAS — Gary Demarest calls it an Abrahamic journey. God told Abraham and Sarah to leave their home; they didn’t know where they were going, but they had faith that God would go with them. Demarest is not too comfortable with that — he is a tall, deep-voiced, take-charge kind of guy. When he tells people he’s not sure where the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is going or what it will accomplish, "I hear people muttering, ‘What the hell kind of leader is that,’ " Demarest said.
DALLAS — It was a first draft, very preliminary, a piece of paper put on the table for discussion — but not for a vote. And the paper had to do, in part, with whether to vote or not to vote.
When there’s a big fight over something, when people feel strongly, but they’re also willing to listen to one another — really listen, not just to say they will — what’s the best way to make decisions?
RICHMOND — Baltimore Presbytery's investigation into heresy charges against an openly gay minister, Donald Stroud, was procedurally correct, according to an administrative review committee which reported to the Mid-Atlantic Synod Council here Friday afternoon (Oct. 17).
DALLAS — They waded into the water, but not up to their necks.
For the first time, after meeting for nearly two years, the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) began to talk directly about theology and homosexuality — not by offering their own views, but by analyzing pieces from six authors whose work they critiqued by examining the tools those writers used to reach the conclusions they did.
Kirk Johnston’s congregation decided years ago that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gets it wrong way too often, and that it couldn’t trust the denomination to make good choices about what it funds. So the congregation, First church of Paola, Kan., stopped sending money. Since the controversy over the Reimagining Conference a decade ago, it has withheld the part of its per capita payment that goes to the PC(USA) offices in Louisville, and has used that money instead to fund mission programs that the Paola church selects.
PORTLAND — It sounds like a success story now: a young, growing, multicultural congregation in Los Angeles that’s reaching all kinds of people for Jesus.
But there was a time in that Mosaic ministry when people were so upset, when there was so much change and conflict, that Erwin McManus couldn’t sleep and he gained 30 pounds and his right eye twitched uncontrollably for a year from the stress.
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