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Brian Blount: New President of Union-PSCE

Brian Blount.jpgRichmond, Va.- March 30, 2007 - The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Blount, a New Testament professor from Princeton Theological Seminary, has been called by the Board of Trustees of Union Theological Seminary & Presbyterian School of Christian Education to serve as its next president.

Blount, 50, will succeed Louis B. Weeks who retires June 30, 2007. Blount will assume the presidency July 1.

A native of Smithfield, Va., Blount served as pastor of Carver Memorial Presbyterian Church in Newport News, Va., from 1982 to 1988. For the past 15 years, he has taught New Testament to students preparing for ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary.

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Donald A. Hostetter died April 8 in Ireland

Donald A. Hostetter, executive director emeritus of the Presbyterian Conference Association in Holmes, N.Y., died early on Easter Sunday morning in a hospital in Ireland.  He had been unconscious for a week following a collapse on an airplane returning from leading a tour to the Greek Islands.

Editorials

Making a statement

They didn't set out to make a statement. They simply were looking for a new president. 

Their schools, er, uh, school -- Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education -- shares a storied history and a legacy for academic excellence in educator training and minister formation. 

A year ago President Louis Weeks announced his retirement plans. Board Chair Art Ross commissioned the search committee, led by John Kuykendall, to find a gifted leader to succeed him. 

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20 minutes with Cliff Kirkpatrick – the complete interview

Outlook Editor Jack Haberer recently sat down with PC(USA) Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick to discuss some of the pressing issues in the church. This was originally published in three parts, but the entire article is presented online here with combined reader feedback.

 

JH: Some churches are talking about leaving the denomination. Why do you think they want to leave?

CK: In so many ways this season of church-leaving feels like where I came in to this some 40 to 45 years ago when my own church went to the PCA. The reasons are different but they are somewhat the same. They are obviously Christians--Presbyterians--who feel deeply, who have a passionate sense of dedication to the life of Jesus Christ and the inerrancy of the Word of God. 

What has upset them is not simply the report that was adopted at the Assembly, but that it was confirmation in their minds of what they long had perceived: that the larger church is not valuing their deeply-held Christian convictions. I also sense that they feel that they've been left out. One of the issues in the PUP report that you can critique is, I sense, that it did not deal as much with power as with the other subjects. Some people felt left out by that ... There's in some sense a loss of hope. Beyond that, there are organized groups that are trying to lead people out, and at times I think they share what's not always correct information. So it's the combination of those factors that are weighing on people's hearts that has them losing hope in the PC(USA) that I love and you love really being an expression of what God intends for the church. 

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PC(USA) leaders debate better communicating with constituency

"Communication, communication, communication."

That's how Linda Valentine, executive director of the General Assembly Council, recently expressed what she sees as a top need of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

She frequently cites, for example, a Presbyterian Panel survey from May 2005 that revealed only 15 percent of Presbyterians in the pews considered themselves to be "generally informed" about the denomination's mission work.

It's become almost a mantra -- there's a disconnect between the national church and the grassroots, and that to build support (both financial and otherwise), the denomination needs to do a better job of "telling the story" of Presbyterians involved in mission.

Exactly what that means, however -- how to tell those stories most effectively, what technology and strategies to use in a financially-constricted environment -- is still being worked out. It's also not totally clear what impact those "good news" stories about the PC(USA) might have on the denomination's track record of unrelenting conflict.

Voices

“Amazing Grace”: More to the story

The film "Amazing Grace" is coming or has come, to a theatre near you. A high-minded friend who has seen the film told me that it was a "must see." He also told me that the film's music was the tune of what has become our country's unofficial national hymn: Amazing Grace, or, as the tune is also called, New Britain. This hymn was, until the 1930s, sung to a variety of other tunes. Had it not been married more recently to the tune to which it is usually sung today, it might have never made it to the charts.  

Movie Reviews

Amazing Grace: a study guide for small group discussion

Link to Movie Review article, Mar 12, 2007

 

Advance Work:

1) Ask one member of the group to research the life of William Wilberforce, and how the movie emphasized certain parts (his opposition to slavery) and omitted others (his views on 'The 'Trouble in The Colonies,' the American Revolution).  He served 45 years in Parliament.  What American politicians have enjoyed such a breadth of service in Congress, and what legacy did they leave?

Voices

Parent Tears

Parent tears ' My tears have been my food--day and night.' Psalm 42:3 Feed us OH-God on the tears of our sorrows..

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Church-backed aid agencies want children to be civilians in Sudan

Nairobi, 19 April (ENI)--A consortium of international relief agencies, monitoring violations of the rights of children in areas of armed conflict, is calling for their protection in the west of Sudan, warning that their well-being is at a critical juncture.

'Children are very much affected given the displacement, uncertainty and numbers of armed militias that are involved in Darfur,' Karimi Kinoti, a regional representative of the British agency, Christian Aid, told Ecumenical News International at the launch of the group's latest report, Sudan's Children at Crossroads, An Urgent Need for Protection.

Editorials

Deli church in a supermarket world

Mom always stopped the car whenever she scouted an open parking space near Joe Gatta's on Main Street. His little deli -- the size of a one-car garage -- provided the freshest fruit and vegetables, delivered there right from the farm.

Today Joe Gatta's is no more. In a supermarket world, only a few delicatessens still survive. We Americans enjoy the wide array of choices and the wide range of prices -- from store brand staples to exotic imports -- now provided by the superstores that dot the landscape.

That culture change has depressed many a Main Street. It also has hurt many a Church Street. Many small and medium size churches have suffered through an era of diminishing returns, as supermarket churches have boomed.

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Denominational leaders wrestle with funding options

In the beginning, the Mission Funding Task Force of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) set out to develop a new funding system for the denomination.

But one of the most significant things the funding task force figured out was that it couldn't fix the PC(USA)'s financial problems -- they couldn't dream up some new configuration to make it all better. Conrad Rocha, a council member from New Mexico who leads the task force, said this is not a problem along the lines of "you have a roof that has a leak" -- something that can be repaired quickly -- but more like a chronic illness the denomination must learn to live with.

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Another 20 minutes with Cliff Kirkpatrick

Outlook Editor Jack Haberer, recently sat down with PC(USA) Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick to discuss some of the pressing issues in the church. This is the second of a three-part account of the conversation, but the entire interview is now available at the following link:

Read the entire article with comments here

 

JH: Over the years you have attended lots of events of organizations around the church, particularly interest organizations of the left and right. Of late you seem to be attending a lot fewer of them and are sending staff in your place. Is there a message being conveyed in that? Or what would be the reason for that? 

 

CK: I don't know that I've been to that many (fewer). I was at the Coalition meeting in Atlanta along with the Presbyterian Global Fellowship. I met with the tall steeple pastors prior to the New Wineskins recently in Orlando. I guess I did miss the Covenant Network. There are several reasons for it.  Part of the reason is some family dynamics and part is my commitments to the World Alliance [of Reformed Churches]. 

Voices

Christian Education: What’s it take?

What's it take to build an effective Christian education program these days? 

That question is being asked in virtually every Christian education committee in every church everywhere. Curriculum publishing companies are asking it as well. Their answers could help congregations become centers of vital Christian education. 

That first question is the biggest: So how do you build an effective Christian education program these days? The one word that arises repeatedly is relevance.  

 

Voices

Curriculum Resources

The following publishers provide a variety of age-appropriate curricula for use in the churches:

 

Akaloo by Augsburg/Congregational Ministries Publishing

Bible Blitz® by Group Publishing

FaithWeaver® by Group Publishing

The Kerygma

Living Inside Outâ„¢ by Group Publishing

We Believe: God's Word for God's People by Congregational Ministries Publishing

Workshop Rotation Model Sunday School by Potter's Publishing

Voices

Making God’s Word REAL

No matter what level of student you're teaching--pre-school, adult, or anyone in between--your goal is not only to get through the lesson, or even for your students to get information, but to have actual learning going on in your classroom. You want your students to understand God's Word, and to be changed by a relationship with Jesus.

Statistics tell us that people retain only about ten percent of what they hear or read. And with the best of intentions many, if not most, Christian-education programs still teach this way, by reading and/or by the teacher doing all the talking. But those same statistics tell us that people remember up to 90% of what they experience. So how can you bring real-life experience into your classroom?

Voices

Upholding the integrity of the Workshop Rotation Model

©2001, Potter's Publishing, adapted with permission

 

The Workshop Rotation Model is spreading like the flames of the Holy Spirit across the country. Churches embrace the model as the most exciting Sunday school study method in a long time.  As it spreads it is important to ensure and preserve the integrity of the model, to maintain consistency with its educational philosophy.

The model's initial attraction is its varied and exciting activities and decorative room interiors. If the model were to rely only on attractive workshops, however, the flames soon would burn out. 

Theological and educational underpinnings support the Workshop Rotation Model providing the possibility of creative and sound Bible study.   

Voices

Transforming ministries of adult discipleship

Stephen Prothero has confirmed statistically what we had perceived anecdotally. His book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't says that Americans are biblically illiterate. George Barna's Growing True Disciples: New Strategies for Producing Genuine Followers of Christ reinforces that assessment. It's no wonder that publication after publication today calls us to re-think our approaches to adult discipleship and the Christian Education that enables such discipleship to develop.

The challenges facing our work in adult discipleship parallel the challenges facing the entire ministry of our congregations. In our high velocity society, we can ill afford to follow the traditional practice of simply repeating last year's program. We need to experiment with ministry designs aimed at developing adults as Christian disciples.

Voices

Challenges to Christian Education in a less Christian American culture

 

The Church in North America finds itself in a culture that is no longer Christian. Those attending church are getting older while younger people increasingly stay away. The "dropout rate" for college sophomores raised in the church is astronomical (by one count 90 percent). Furthermore, the received wisdom that these adrift youngsters will find their way back to church and faith as parents seeking baptism and nurture for their children no longer bears itself out. (Jim Singleton calls this the "Little Bo Peep" strategy--"Leave them alone, and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them.") They aren't coming home!

Increasingly the word "missional" is used to describe both the situation in which the church finds itself, and the strategy for us to follow in this "post-Christendom" era.  Eddie Gibbs gives a succinct definition: "Missional refers to those congregations who see Western culture [because it is no longer Christian] as a field ripe for mission engagement, thus acknowledging that the period known as Christendom is over." In the congregation I serve as Associate Pastor for Adult Education I have the challenge to reshape one of our denomination's largest adult education programs in light of these realities. Here are some reflections on the issues we face and the steps and changes we're beginning to make.

Book Reviews

Ecstasy and Intimacy: When the Holy Spirit Meets the Human Spirit

by Edith M. Humphrey. Eerdmans, 2006. ISBN 0-8028-3147-8. Pb., 295 pp. $21.

 

This is an exciting book. It links the doctrine of the Trinity with the spirituality of ordinary Christians. Humphrey, who teaches New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, organized her book around three triads: love, light and life. In keeping with the Trinitarian motif, each triad has three sections.

The heart of Humphrey's work is her understanding of the Triune God and how this God relates to believers. For her, the Trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living in a perfect community of love and sharing. The Triune God is not self-contained but stands outside the divine self. This is the meaning of ecstasy. The purpose of this ecstasy or standing outside of the divine self is to have an intimate relationship with men and women. This is the "holy tryst" that Humphrey defines as "a holy meeting in which God, through his very own love, brings humanity (spirit, soul, body) to himself" (p. 17). This occurs especially through the action of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, for Humphrey, Christian spirituality is "the study of what happens when the Holy Spirit meets the human spirit" (p. 17).

Book Reviews

Dreams Where Have You Gone? Clues for Unity and Hope

 

 

by William G. McAtee. Martha Gilliss, editor. Louisville: Witherspoon Press, 2006. ISBN 1571530657.  Pb, 434 pp.  $24.95.

 

Dreams Where Have You Gone? is several things: a survey of Presbyterian history, a chronicle of the Union Presbytery Movement, an oral history of that movement, a memoir of a Presbyterian pastor, and a probing assessment of where the Presbyterian reunion of 1983 came from with questions about where we are going. It is a wonderful book that can be read at several levels and will provide wisdom and insight for all its readers.

Movie Reviews

The Lookout

Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) had it all: he was a star athlete, young, handsome, and charming. He's driving a convertible at night along a country road, and wants to show his date, and his best friend in the back (with his date), how amazing it is to drive with the lights out and watch the luminescent fireflies. They are at once enchanted, thrilled, and frightened. As he speeds up to heighten the sense of danger, the others start "freaking out," begging him to turn on the headlights, and as he does, they all see the combine inexplicably parked on the road, just before they hit it head-on.

Voices

Paintball with a purpose

How many church members know what paintball is, and how many churches have a paintball ministry?

One answer is families in the Santa Ynez Valley Church in Santa Ynez, Calif., and their church. When members started playing paintball, they had no idea it would turn into the church's most highly attended outreach ministry.

"About two and a half years ago my sons were wrapping up the school year and we wanted to do something to celebrate," relates the church's paintball coordinator Jack Drake. The Drakes decided to play paintball and figured it would be more fun if they got a group of people to join them. After passing out some fliers around school and church, their anticipated group of 15 became a group of 40 who traveled the two hours to the commercial paintball field. They had so much fun that day they decided to make their own paintball field, closer to home.

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