(RNS) Leith Anderson, the Minnesota megachurch pastor who has twice served as interim president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was formally named president on Oct. 11.
In a unanimous vote, the association board approved Anderson's selection during a meeting in Arlington, Va.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- The World Alliance of Reformed Churches has agreed to unite with the Reformed Ecumenical Council to create a new "global entity" that will group 80 million Reformed Christians.
"This is a truly, truly important moment," said WARC President Clifton Kirkpatrick -- who is also General Assembly stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) -- after the alliance's executive committee voted unanimously at its meeting here on Oct. 22 to unite with the REC, whose executive committee had agreed to the proposal in March.
Nairobi, 9 November (ENI)--Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders attending a world Christian forum in Kenya that has brought together many of Christianity's diverse strands, say it offers new opportunities, but they also warn of possible difficulties ahead.
'When you share your journey and discover how others people have travelled and find similarities in the journey, that helps you to travel together,' commented the Rev. Richard Howell of the Evangelical Fellowship of India.
About 240 leaders from Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Pentecostal and other churches and international organizations attended the forum in Limuru near Nairobi.
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Nairobi, 6 November (ENI)--A global gathering aimed at bringing together representatives of all the world's main Christian traditions has opened in Kenya with leaders saying they want to find new ways of working together.
'I don't think it is going to be easy, but I hope we will find a meeting space,' the Rev. Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches told Ecumenical News International on the opening day of the 6-9 November meeting, called the Global Christian Forum, at Limuru, near Nairobi.
In February, the Presbyterian Publishing Corp. plans to roll out a new series of studies from The Thoughtful Christian -- with these intended for use with teens (www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/main/home1.asp ).
The launch of this new line, at the annual meeting of the Association of Presbyterian Christian Educators in San Diego Feb. 13-16, signals the hunger among Presbyterians for study materials on contemporary issues, according to David Maxwell, editor for The Thoughtful Christian.
In focus groups conducted last summer with leaders at the Youth Triennium, the publishers were encouraged to prepare materials for juniors and seniors in high school who are getting ready to leave home and will have to decide, once they're on their own, what role faith will play in their lives. So the new lessons will hit on subjects such as consumerism or cheating, and "the pressure on kids now with all these pre-college classes," Maxwell said.
Based on a report by Sharon K. Youngs, OGA communications coordinator, and Jerry L. Van Marter, coordinator of Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE -- The Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) was directed -- and planners and moderators of other governing bodies were urged -- by the 217th General Assembly (2006) to "explore the use of alternate forms of discernment."
At its recent meeting, members of COGA not only discussed the assembly's directive and its implications for future assemblies, they sought to live it out in their own decision-making. They learned that the discernment model is a prayerful approach to decision-making that takes focus, good listening skills, and time.
Geneva -- More than 130 Muslim scholars have said in a letter to Christian leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI and the head of the World Council of Churches, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, that world peace depends on cooperation between Christianity and Islam.
"Our common future is at stake. The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake," the 138 signatories state in the letter made public on October 11.
The letter is also addressed to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I and other Orthodox church leaders, as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the leaders of world groupings of Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, and Reformed Christians.
A vote to depart the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is leading to a split in a "quintessential New England white church on the town common," Londonderry (N.H.) Church, acknowledged clerk of Session, Lee Carvill.
The majority has chosen to affiliate with the New Wineskins Presbytery of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (NWP-EPC). A group wishing to remain loyal to the PC(USA) claims that they have been locked out of their church facilities.
The congregation, the second largest church in the Synod of the Northeast, voted to leave the PC(USA) on Sept. 30. The recommendation to disaffiliate was supported by 208 voters with 86 voting against, a margin of 71% to 29%. Given a total membership of 446, the plans to leave have been officially supported by 47% of the members.
According to the constitutional policy of the PC(USA), the proposal to leave now is to be taken up by the Presbytery of Northern New England (PNNE) for action at their next meeting.
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Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (popularly remembered as "Reine") remains one of America's leading theologians and ethicists. He deserves a note on this anniversary of his first notable volume, Moral Man and Immoral Society, just re-published by Westminster John Knox Press.
His book deserves another look.
Niebuhr (1892-1971) was born in Wright City, Mo., to Gustav and Lydia Hosto Niebuhr. Gustav was a minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, highly intelligent and pious. Their daughter Hulda taught at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Ill., and their son Richard became a professor at Yale University Divinity School.
LOUISVILLE -- Hunter Farrell, the new director of World Mission for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), calls this a crossroads time for Presbyterians -- with the health and vitality of the denomination at stake.
"I believe we in the Presbyterian church are at a crossroads, a kairos moment, a time when we're going to have to choose which direction to go," Farrell told more than 600 people who gathered in Louisville Oct. 2-5 for the World Mission '07 "Celebration of Grace" convocation -- an effort by the denomination to jump-start enthusiasm for international mission and to build closer connections between the national staff and Presbyterians involved in world mission at the local level.
LOUISVILLE -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Stated Clerk Nomination Committee (SCNC), elected at the 217th General Assembly in 2006 in Birmingham, Ala., is now accepting applications for the position of General Assembly stated clerk, the top ecclesiastical post in the 2.3-million-member denomination.
Next summer's 218th General Assembly in San Jose, Calif., will elect the successor to Clifton Kirkpatrick, who announced last month that he will not seek a fourth three-year term. Kirkpatrick was first elected stated clerk in 1996 and is only the second General Assembly stated clerk elected since Presbyterian reunion in 1983.
NEW YORK -- Michael Kinnamon, an educator and seminary professor with long-standing ties to a variety of ecumenical bodies, has been nominated to become the ninth general secretary of the U.S. National Council of Churches.
In making the announcement on Oct. 3 the NCC tapped someone with very different credentials than Bob Edgar, the organization's former general secretary and one-time Pennsylvania congressman who left the council earlier this year and is now head of the Washington-based advocacy organization Common Cause.
The World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) has taken a number of important steps along the road to its merger with the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC).
WARC's Executive Committee agreed earlier this week to the merger at its meeting in Trinidad and Tobago. Friday the group agreed to recommend to REC that the new global entity be called the World Communion of Reformed Churches.
When I was a college student in Holland, Mich., there were about 35 congregations affiliated with the Reformed Church but there was only one Presbyterian church and it was so small that it met in a house (it now has more than 500 members.) At that time it was actively interested in students and reached out with energy and concern, offering us Sunday morning rides and inviting us into homes on a regular basis.
How does your church minister to college and university students?
Nairobi, 25 October (ENI)--Sudanese church leaders seeking a peaceful settlement of tensions between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and the country's governing National Congress Party, fear another war could erupt in the south of Africa's biggest country.
'We hope they will find a peaceful solution to the problem. Another war is hard to imagine. The region is tired of war. The people don't want war,' the Rev. Anthony Bagoye, the general secretary of the Sudan Catholic Bishops' Regional Conference told Ecumenical News International in Nairobi on 24 October.
LOUISVILLE -- The domain name for all email addresses of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national staff members has changed from @ctr.pcusa.org to @pcusa.org.
Also, the individual inbox protocol has been changed from first initial-last name (e.g., jvanmart) to first name.last name (e.g., jerry.vanmarter).
General Assembly Council Executive Director Linda Valentine said, "We want to make it easier for constituents to contact us, so we are moving to a simpler firstname/lastname address, and the simpler pcusa.org format."
LOS ANGELES -- The Rev. Greg Hughes, pastor of Malibu Presbyterian Church in Pacific Presbytery, which burned to the ground Sunday -- has been in the news, testifying to our faith.
He can be seen and heard in a video interview on the Fox News Web site. In the interview he responds: "Well, you know, we're an Easter Faith people, so you know on Friday, it looked like things were bleak for Jesus, but we saw that Jesus rose again. And our church is a resurrection church. We'll gather again. We're going to regroup again."
Picking a candidate has been hard enough, evangelical political activists say. But it's gotten harder because their big unifying issues -- abortion and gay marriage -- are competing with bread-and-butter issues like the economy, education and immigration.
"When evangelicals get up in the morning, they have the same concerns that everybody else has," said Randy Brinson, 50, chairman of Redeem the Vote, an Alabama-based organization that aims to motivate young evangelical voters.
PORT OF SPAIN -- Leaders of the world's biggest grouping of Reformed churches have compared the effects of economic globalization to the transatlantic slave trade, and said that Christians need to combat this modern form of "enslavement."
"As a matter of the integrity of our faith, we must say 'No' to slavery in all of its forms," said the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick. He was speaking at an Oct. 18-28 meeting in Trinidad of Reformed leaders from around the world.
"While we acknowledge this year the 200th anniversary of the passing of the transatlantic slave trade act by the British Parliament, we are painfully aware that slavery is still with us," said Kirkpatrick -- who is also General Assembly stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) -- in his Oct. 20 presidential report to WARC's main governing body, its executive committee.
LOUISVILLE -- The Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis has awarded $1,470,555 to the Research Services office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s General Assembly Council (GAC) to expand the U.S. Congregational Life Survey.
The original survey conducted in April 2001, was also funded by Lilly, as well as the Louisville Institute and the PC(USA). It's the largest study in history of American congregations and their worshipers.
It generated new information and resources for increasing congregational effectiveness, by compiling responses from more than 300,000 worshipers in 2,234 congregations of all sizes, representing all 50 states and more than 50 denominations and faith groups.
(RNS) As many as six Episcopal bishops and more than 200 Episcopal congregations have taken a first step toward forming a new alternative to the Episcopal Church that will unite conservatives irked by the church's liberal drift.
Meeting in Pittsburgh Sept. 25-28, the Common Cause Council of Bishops brought together nine North American splinter groups to lay the groundwork for a conservative counterpart to the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
NEW YORK -- Three Presbyterians were among a delegation of more than 100 religious leaders who met President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran Sept. 26 during his visit to the United States.
The two-hour dialogue, held at the Church Center for the United Nations here, was the second in a series of conversations focused on establishing a dialogue between people of faith in the United States and the people and government of Iran.
Rose Niles-McCrary has been called as the associate for theological education and seminary relations for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly Council (GAC) in the Theology, Worship, and Education program area. She was pastor of First Church of Mount Vernon, New York, and doctor of ministry faculty for New York Theological Seminary of Manhattan, N.Y.
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