Congregations angered by the 213th General Assembly's controversial recommendation to lift a ban on gay and lesbian ordination are expected to protest with their pocketbooks in the coming months, withholding contributions to the Presbyterian Church's per capita budget.
When Faith church in Medford, N.J., decided to start a new church in Romania, its members prayed hard and went to work. They didn't ask the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for money or permission. They used their own contacts to track down a South Korean missionary working in Romania, a Presbyterian who helped them find a pastor for a new church in Timisoara, Romania's second-largest city.
John Sonnenday says he hit a "turning point" in his spiritual life when he figured out that just because he had a blank spot on his calendar, he wasn't obligated to fill it.
Sonnenday, a pastor from McLean, Va., said he gradually began to realize that unless he made more time for God and for rest -- unless he said "no" to some of what other people wanted him to do -- he could not do his best at doing God's work.
The season is upon us when all our hopes are trained on the inexhaustibility of a particular event in time and space, the coming of Jesus Christ. It is a season in which we remember that the gospel is received in the mode of anticipating and awaiting a promise.
I have on my desk a map of the United States that shows how every county voted in this year's presidential election. Counties in red voted for Bush, counties in blue for Gore. The red and blue appear in different gradations of color, so that according to the intensity of the color one can tell by what margin the favored candidate won.
When seen through human eyes, truth comes divergently. On three separate days, just a couple of weeks before the presidential election, I happened to have back-to-back conversations with three friends of impeccable sincerity and insight.
Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of stories on congregations committed to “Grow Christ’s Church Deep and Wide.”
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission -- in sidestepping the question of exactly how deeply a session should be required to probe into the private life of a gay elder who has acknowledged being in a committed, life-long relationship but has declined to say whether he is sexually active -- has put the question off but has not put it to rest.
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