MONTREAT, N.C. – She calls them joys and concerns.
Things she’s seen and heard as she travels to Presbyterian churches, things that excite her and give her hope, things that have given her some pangs.
Susan Andrews, moderator of the 215th General Assembly, talked to the General Assembly Council Sept. 24 about what she’s noticed so far, based on her first four months on the job and talking to everyone from the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to the faithful in some of the smallest churches.
MONTREAT, N.C. — Vernon Carroll, chair of the General Assembly Council, has a vision for what that group can be, for how it can lead the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) And it’s not, Carroll says, that "we’re just custodians trying to maintain the status quo."
MONTREAT, N.C. — When folks are out trying to raise money for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of the selling points they sometimes use is that all of the money given will go for a particular cause — to help hungry people in a particular part of the world, or the victims of a hurricane or drought or some other natural disaster.
The University of Dubuque Seminary, in the heartland of the country, offers programs both in rural ministry and in the church and technology, tying theology to the land and to the wireless world.
Both San Francisco and Princeton seminaries have programs focused on spirituality and young people — recognizing, perhaps, that the music and preferences and questioning of teen-agers and young adults signal both a real hunger for God and a desire for things in churches to change, not later, but now.
It is difficult, in the comfort of an America of Wal-Marts and democracy, to imagine what life is like in other parts of the world. But each year, some of the mission co-workers for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gather for a Sharing Conference, in which they talk about their work, their calling, their difficulties and joys.
LOUISVILLE — John M. Mulder, who resigned last fall - citing poor health - after serving 21 years as president of Louisville Seminary, has been temporarily excluded from the practice of ordained ministry because of sexual misconduct.
Transylvania Presbytery, of which Mulder is a member, met Tuesday, Sept. 16, and decided to suspend him for 14 months from the practice of ordained ministry. Mulder had self-accused himself of sexual misconduct to the presbytery.
In his study, Three Centuries of Presbyterians along the Potomac (1989), William E. Thompson sites 1774 remark of Nicholas Cresswell of Alexandria, Va.: "Went to a Presbyterian Meeting. They are a set of rebellious scoundrels, nothing but political discourses instead of religious lectures." Of course, those were rebellious years. The Spirit of ’76 was in the air.
George F. Barber III, a Presbyterian elder from Memphis, Tenn., has been named as the next president of Montreat Conference Center, according to a Montreat news release. Montreat's board of directors elected Barber during a called telephone conference on Sept. 5. He assumes his new role effective Sept. 22.
CHICAGO -- When some task force members read the histories of the battles of the Presbyterian church in the 1920s, they found it fascinating -- getting caught up in the stories of political maneuvering, of big personalities and the clash of theological views, of how a divided church found a way to move forward.
CHICAGO -- The idea that white people tend do things a certain way -- and that that might not be the only way or even the best way -- is something people who are used to doing things in that way can be slow to consider.
So the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) spent some time at its recent meeting listening to some of its members who are people of color talk about how things are done in their cultures, to see what they might learn. Here's some of what those people had to say.
CHICAGO -- Some folks see "peace, unity and purity" in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as a matter of doctrine or discipline -- making sure the church is doing the right thing on some controversial issue. At the most recent meeting of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity in the PC(USA), however, there were suggestions that, both theologically and historically, it's about a lot more than that. In short, it's less about what the PC(USA) decides to do to resolve one of these messes. It's a lot more about God.
CHICAGO -- When John Wilkinson, a pastor and ardent amateur church historian, looks back to those days, to the photographs of sober and well-starched Presbyterian men who fought so hard over what they believed (another pastor, Gary Demarest, joked that it looked like they never, ever took off their suits and ties), Wilkinson says it all seems to him "evocatively familiar" of what's happening in the church now.
CHICAGO -- Washing feet -- an intimate connection, one kneeling in service, the other accepting the kindness -- isn't something a lot of white, orderly, well-to-do Presbyterians are comfortable with.
But Jesus washed the feet of his disciples in the 13th chapter of John's gospel, as a way of saying goodbye before he was killed, and told them he expected them to do the same for one another. And that idea -- kneeling in service to others, accepting their hospitality in return, and being intimately connected, eye to eye and touch to touch -- can bring a new way of looking at people with whom one shares faith but may differ strongly in ideas.
LOUISVILLE -- It wasn't wild fun -- it took hours of talking and sometimes wading waist-deep through parliamentary muck. But this was a chance for young people from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to say what they think about issues in the world and in the church. They prayed before the most controversial votes, sometimes listening in silence for the voice of God. And unlike when the grownups do it, some of the teenagers stood on top of the tables waving their paddles when they were ready to vote.
After they moved to California in 1997, Pat and Gil Field shopped around for a church for three years, not caring what denomination it was but wanting, in Pat’s words, a church "where people weren’t dead in their seats."
But week after week, "we were just coming out of churches really empty, and not feeling fulfilled," she said. For a while, they held Sunday school in their backyard, "which we jokingly called First Church of the Gazebo."
From an OGA news release
The Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issued a decision July 15 in Minihan v. the Presbytery of Scioto Valley that reaffirms the right of a session to determine the distribution of a congregation's benevolences, including the payment of per capita to presbyteries.
LOUISVILLE — The mandate from the Bible is clear — love God, love one another — but the path is not. What is God’s vision for the world today? What does it mean to be faithful to that vision? How are we called to live?
Those questions, in all their complexities, are what about 4,000 followers of Jesus from around the globe were trying to wrap their minds and their hearts around July 9-13, as Presbyterian Women convened its Gathering, held every third year.
ATLANTA— An investigative committee of Greater Atlanta Presbytery has concluded that former moderator Fahed Abu-Akel, a minister member of the presbytery, did not slander Virginia attorney Paul Rolf Jensen in public remarks Abu-Akel made in April.
LYNCHBURG, Va. — Peaks Presbytery has voted to dismiss the almost 900-member Rivermont congregation to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The action came Tuesday, July 1, during a special meeting at First church, Roanoke, in response to an administrative commission recommendation of terms for the dismissal.
Robert H. Bullock Jr., editor and CEO of The Presbyterian Outlook for 15 years, has announced his retirement effective Oct. 31.
Noting that his decision to retire followed more than a year of prayerful consideration and consultation with board officers, Bullock said, "At the heart of it is the firm conviction that the work that I was called to do has now been completed."
CINCINNATI — Some people say A. Stephen Van Kuiken got exactly what he asked for when this pastor of 18 years refused, out of conscience, to follow the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
On June 16, by a vote of 119 to 45, Cincinnati Presbytery voted to declare that Van Kuiken, pastor of Mount Auburn church, had renounced the jurisdiction of the PC(USA)
When an elder from a suburban Chicago congregation read in the local newspaper that the Ku Klux Klan was planning a rally in a park nearby, the elder said: "If this is true, I think we should volunteer our church to have a prayer service."
So the congregation set to work, organizing ecumenical support. And at 1 p.m. on May 31, as the Klan was outside trying to light the fires of racism, about 200 people gathered inside the Presbyterian Church of Berywn to pray for unity.
In his study, Three Centuries of Presbyterians along the Potomac (1989), William E. Thompson sites 1774 remark of Nicholas Cresswell of Alexandria, Va.: 'Went to a Presbyterian Meeting. They are a set of rebellious scoundrels, nothing but political discourses instead of religious lectures.' Of course, those were rebellious years. The Spirit of '76 was in the air.
Now, more than 225 years later, the New York Avenue church in the nation's capitol is celebrating its 200th birthday. This provides an occasion to recall the importance of this congregation and its pastors to the Presbyterian church and nation.
Late in the 18th century a group of Scottish stonemasons who labored in the area, worshiped in a shed they built for their tools and used for a church on Sundays. But New York Avenuers identify themselves with the history of the F Street and the Second Presbyterian churches, organized around 1803. The F Street congregation grew under the long-term leadership of James Laurie (pastor 1803-1853), a Scottish emigrant who was not only an eloquent preacher but a supporter of the Bible, Tract, Mission and Reform Societies organized at the time to Christianize the new nation and the world. At tunes associate pastor Septimus Tustin served as chaplain in the House of Representative and Senate.
Stephen Van Kuiken, the Ohio pastor who was rebuked in April by the Permanent Judicial Commission of Cincinnati Presbytery for performing same-sex unions and who has said, as a matter of conscience, that he will not stop, has been charged with blasphemy and heresy.
Paul Rolf Jensen, the lawyer who has filed more than 20 disciplinary cases in the courts of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), now has filed a civil lawsuit in California against a top Presbyterian leader — suing Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the PC(USA)'s 214th General Assembly, for slander.
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