There are certain things about which people disagree regarding the recent ruling of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission in the Ronald Wier case — a case alleging that the installation of a gay elder at Second church, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., violated the rules. But there seems consensus on at least this much:
CHICACO — Trying to find out what's in the hearts of people out in the church, the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) held a series of focus groups at the General Assembly this summer — asking people to speak to speak out about the task force's work and their own concerns.
The schedule for discussions that the Theological Task Force for Peace, Unity and Purity has proposed calls for each of its next four meetings to focus on a basic theological topic and a basic theme of Presbyterian polity, governance and history, as follows:
The United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), formed by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Presbyterian Church of North America in 1957, elected Edler Garnet Hawkins the first black moderator (1964) ever to so serve these denominations. Of course from the days of Samuel Cornish and Henry Highland Garnet to the organization of the Afro-American Presbyterian Council in Philadelphia (1894), through the years of "Jim Crow" institutionalized as "separate but equal" by the Supreme Court in 1897, Presbyterian blacks made their voices heard about Christian faith and life, breaking down some, not many, walls of segregation in the church.
CHICAGO — Sensing that it has a mountain of work before it and not an equivalent amount of time, the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has approved what it calls "a plan for moving ahead" — essentially, a blueprint for how it will order its work in the months to come.
LOUISVILLE — Take one student with a heart for children at a Presbyterian seminary. Add one dose of inspiration, courtesy of the Children's Defense Fund.
Gently fold in kids, dozens of them, many from the inner city, with braids and big smiles and often an arms-length relationship with reading. Throw in some books from African-American authors and some college students looking to be role models.
AUSTIN, Texas — Theodore J. "Ted" Wardlaw, 49, pastor since 1991 of Central church, Atlanta, has been called to the presidency of Austin Seminary beginning in mid-November.
Wardlaw's nomination to become the seminary's ninth president was approved by seminary trustees on July 1. He will take office on the retirement of Robert M. Shelton, who has served the seminary for 31 years, as a professor of homiletics, academic dean and, for the last five years, as president.
Peter Marshall, born just 100 years ago in Coatbridge, Scotland, shot across our American sky, a ministerial star of the 1940s and 1950s. With a technical and mining school education, Marshall docked at Ellis Island in 1927, and worked as a day laborer in the East and South until experiencing a call to minister. He enrolled in Columbia Seminary in 1928, graduated magna cum laude and was ordained in 1931. He had already made a name for himself during the Depression with a sermon, 'Singing in the Rain,' which he preached all over Georgia.
DECATUR, Ga. — PC(USA) Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick has called for a "culture of respect" for the church's Constitution and the revamping of that document to support "a missionary church in the 21st century."
He made his proposals Friday, April 26, during a one-day conference co-sponsored by the Office of the General Assembly and Columbia Seminary and attended by more than 150 persons.
It was a painful day at the Louisville headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Monday - faces strained, voices hushed, the eyes of some red-rimmed and welling with tears. The details of a proposed $4.24 million reduction in the mission budget for 2003 - including layoffs for 43 employees and the elimination of 21 vacant positions- were announced April 22, ending weeks of uncertainty about where the axe would fall.
When Katherine Amos suggested a few years ago that the Association of Theological Schools hold a seminar on distance education, the group agreed — and at first limited enrollment to 28 people, thinking that's about as much interest there would be from seminary folks for ideas such as establishing extension campuses or offering on-line courses. But the applications poured in and they finally cut off registration at 150 when they ran out of room.
It's pretty clear by now that what some are calling a "judicial season" in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has taken off faster than a toddler chasing the ice cream truck.
A flock of accusations has been made. Many of them are by Virginia lawyer Paul Rolf Jensen, who has made allegations to several presbyteries against ministers and elders he does not know, but who he sees as trying to defy openly parts of the PC(USA) Constitution.
LOUISVILLE — With relatively little discussion, and no significant questioning of the details of the plan, the executive committee of the General Assembly Council voted 10-1 on Friday, April 26, to approve a proposal for cutting $4.2 million from the 2003 budget of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — a plan that calls for eliminating 66 jobs.
The idea of conflict in churches is not something most people like to think about.
However, Christian Boyd, pastor of Jeffersontown church in Louisville, is a redevelopment pastor who tries to think of conflict not as battle, but as a new beginning.
There are moms pushing strollers, mall lap-walkers in sneakers, workers grabbing a sandwich, shoppers intent on their bargains, teens hunting down their friends. That's a typical mall in America. And a few churches have started to think: if this is the place where so much of the country goes, maybe there's room for us too.
DALLAS — While some may want answers now — fearing the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is in danger of splitting or drifting the wrong way, away from God — a theological task force is not rushing to conclusion.
At its second meeting, held Feb. 28-March 2 in Dallas, the 20-member Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity spent a lot of its time considering what are the right questions to be asking
ATLANTA — Maybe Jim Logan, a pastor from Charlotte, summed up the complexities and contradictions of the Confessing Church Movement best when he said — just after stepping up to the microphone before about 800 people at the Confessing Church Movement's national celebration — that "I feel a little bit like I'm in a political rally. [But] I've got to preach."
ATLANTA– Preaching about holy living to a crowd of evangelicals, theologian Mark Achtemeier laid the trap carefully. He cautioned against compromise, saying "there is no place for a middle way," warning that he sees a Christian community where abominations litter the landscape and there are open and clear violations, a flaunting of biblical standards.
ATLANTA — The Confessing Church Movement should try to rebuild the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) from the ground up — consider it a "Habitat for Presbyterians," as one pastor put it — and should not flinch from confronting a crumbling denomination with God's truth and pushing those who cannot follow that truth to leave.
If Amendment A goes down to defeat — and it certainly looks as though it will — what's next for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?
Here's some of the common wisdom:
• The defeat of Amendment A would mean the presbyteries will have voted three times in a row, by ever-increasing margins, to affirm the church's current ordination standards: to limit ordination to those who practice fidelity in marriage or chastity if they are single.
In proposing a $40 million campaign to raise funds for international mission work and church growth, John Detterick repeatedly has stressed that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) can’t rely on the old ways of financing itself anymore. Detterick, executive director of the church’s General Assembly Council, says the church has been too "passive" when it comes to money — just waiting to see how much comes in and hoping it will be enough.
Here's the biggest surprise of all from the recent PC(USA) General Assembly Council meeting in Louisville.
Neal Presa, a 25-year-old council member who will graduate this year from
San Francisco Seminary, asked for five minutes to make a "point of personal privilege."
LOUISVILLE -- Despite concerns that a new curriculum might be too expensive for some small churches to afford, the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted Friday to spend $750,000 to develop a new curriculum next year written "by Presbyterians, for Presbyterians."
It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock: that we live in a country in which increasing numbers of people say they aren’t Christian, or don’t consider themselves to belong to any particular religious group.
That understanding — that it can no longer be assumed that people grew up in church or that they can be expected to come back some day — is provoking some congregations to consider new approaches to evangelism.
Ernest Gordon, 85, the retired dean of the chapel and university chaplain emeritus at Princeton University, died Jan. 16 at Princeton Medical Center after a long illness.
His 1962 book, Through the Valley of the Kwai, told about the ordeal he and thousands of other prisoners of the Japanese endured during World War II in the jungles of Burma. Despite the cruelty and horrible conditions, Gordon said he began to find his religious faith there.
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