MONTREAT, N.C. — Moving quickly and with great waving of orange and blue cards, the General Assembly Council polished up its lists of "key areas of focus" on which it wants the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to concentrate its work over the next two years.
"So what is the answer, Lucy?" is the response I receive when folks learn I spent a three-month sabbatical (Winter 2003) at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville exploring this topic with Marcia Clark Myers of Churchwide Personnel Services and Jack Marcum of Research Services. The answer: "Both!"
Before addressing the issues surrounding the availability of clergy, one must first look at the number of congregations and members to be served. The statistics are somewhat startling.
MONTREAT, N.C. — Near the close of its meeting here Saturday, the General Assembly Council received a presentation regarding the PC(USA)’s response to the recommendations of the Independent Committee of Inquiry, which investigated allegations of physical and sexual abuse involving the children of missionaries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and determined there is "overwhelming" evidence that one charismatic, well-respected Presbyterian missionary, who is now dead, sexually abused at least 22 girls and women over nearly a 40-year period, both in Africa and in the United States, from 1946 through 1985.
MONTREAT, N.C. — The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) needs to do a better selling job to convince congregations to give money to the denomination with no strings attached — and to make the case that it causes problems when 70 percent of the money comes in with restrictions on how it can be spent.
MONTREAT, N.C. — The hope is that by the time they leave this weekend, the General Assembly Council will have set some priorities around which the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) budget for 2005 and 2006 will be built.
The details of the budget won’t come until next year — including decisions, if it comes to that, of what jobs and programs might need to be cut.
MONTREAT, N.C. — One of the jobs the General Assembly Council has at its September meeting is to start working on priorities for the two-year budget, the budget for 2005 and 2006, which must be approved by the General Assembly in Richmond next summer. As part of that process, council members spent some time talking in small groups about their dreams for what the denomination might look like in 10 years.
MONTREAT, N.C. — Faced with a blast of criticism and the possibility that angry Presbyterians might stop giving money to the denomination altogether, John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, said he wants the council to delay acting on a proposal to start assessing a 5 percent administrative fee for restricted donations given to the denomination.
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."
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.
Editor's Note — This report was prepared by the Office of Theological Education of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Recent economic events have had a major impact on Presbyterian theological institutions. Many seminaries have been affected by falling markets, because they are heavily dependent on endowment and other invested assets. As President Thomas Gillespie of Princeton Seminary explains, "Endowment plays a more critical role in theological education than it does in the funding of colleges and universities, which are largely tuition driven."
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