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Revolution from the bottom up

Advent 4: Luke 1:46-55

 

I didn't grow up in the church. As a teenager my faith was incubated in the Jesus movement of the early 70s, culminating in several trips down the aisle to follow Christ. It took me awhile to learn that the gospel is bigger than personal salvation. And yet if this passage is any indication, it is certainly not less. In the first stanza of the Magnificat Mary sings: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior ... all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me ..." The use of the first person singular pronoun indicates a very personal experience of salvation.

Entering a world remarkably like our own, marked by political upheaval, economic uncertainty, and religious conflict, the God who acts in Jesus Christ, notes Charles Talbert, "did not go to the top (to Caesar or Pilate) to get things changed; nor ... to the left (to the Zealots)," much less to the religious right (to the Pharisees, or the Sadducees). No, God made a beeline for the bottom. God went to the poor, to the oppressed, to the outcasts, beginning with a teenage peasant slave-girl from the boondocks of Nazareth, a nobody from Nowheresville we know simply as Mary. But Mary is also evidence that God goes to the center, straight to the heart, offering forgiveness and deliverance, and seeking to reign there as Savior and Lord. Blessed are you, Mary, and blessed are you and I, for responding personally. 

Book Reviews

Books for 2006 holiday reading and giving

 

Another sign of the holidays--the Outlook book editor compiles a sampling of books that make both good gifts for Christmas and good books to get and read for yourself. Here is the 2006 list:

 

Resources for Year C

Luke for Everyone, by Tom Wright.  WJKP, 2004. ISBN 0-664-22784-8. Pb., 320 pp. $14.95.

Wright's popular for Everyone series combines the diligence of his New Testament scholarship with his passion for preaching and teaching in the life of the church. Here Wright offers constructive expositions and useful illustrations for each section of Luke's Gospel, along with his own translation of each text.

 

New Proclamation Commentary on the Gospels, by Andrew Gregory, David Bartlett, Morna Hooker, and Henry Wansbrough. Fortress, 2006. ISBN 0-8006-3752-6. b., 320 pp. $35.

A one-volume commentary on the four Gospels as they are represented in the Revised Common Lectionary.  The authors represent Anglican, American Baptist, Methodist, and Roman Catholic traditions.

Editorials

The Big Deal

When one of our pastors, speaking at a denomination-sponsored peacemaking conference, asked the rhetorical question, "What's the big deal about Jesus?" shock waves vibrated around the church.

Dirk Ficca, the executive director of the Parliament of the World's Religions, wasn't intending to sound dismissive when he asked that question on July 29, 2000. He was pressing folks to see Jesus as a revelation of God's will for the world--downplaying the claim that Jesus is the only instrument of salvation--in the hope of building better interfaith relationships.

Ficca's proposal generated wide outcry. For good reason. Presbyterians cry foul when anyone minimizes Jesus' work of redemption. The next two meetings of the General Assembly Council wrestled over it. The following GA struggled clumsily with it. The one thing that GA did get right was to direct the Louisville Office of Theology and Worship to prepare a response for a subsequent GA to consider.

Voices

ACREC urges church to bear stronger witness for peace in the Middle East

 

Editor's note: As Presbyterians continue their quest to promote peace and justice in Israel-Palestine, we offer for our Outlook readers' reflections both this letter prepared by the Advisory Committee on Racial-Ethnic Concerns and the essay by John Wimberly that follows. The letter was sent to leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in mid-August when the Lebanon-Israel conflict of last summer was front-page news.

 

The Rev. Joan Gray, Moderator of the 217th General Assembly
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk
The Rev. Allison Seed, Chairperson, General Assembly Council
Ms. Linda Valentine, Executive Director, General Assembly Council

 

Dear Friends and Colleagues in the Mission and Ministries of Christ's Church;

Sadly and painfully we are all very aware of the seemingly endless cycles of vengeance, violence, destruction and death among the peoples in the Middle East. Time and time again we have called ourselves in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) family to pray and work for the peace and justice of God-in-Christ among all peoples. We write to call for a stronger witness now for justice for all peoples in the Middle East, in the interest of long-term peace and the restoration of fairness and balance to U.S. foreign policy. We urge you as leaders of the Church to share the following letter with the full Council and the church as a whole as a contribution to that witness.

Voices

After divestment

The 2006 General Assembly has, hopefully, put the divestment argument to rest. It replaced the controversial divestment instructions passed by the 2004 General Assembly with instructions to our committees and staff to pursue a strategy of investing in those who work for peace in the Middle East. The GA affirmed the Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) process, which has been so successful for decades, as one appropriate means to this end. Given that the Middle East has witnessed a new round of death and destruction in Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine, the GA resolution seems even more prophetic today than it did at the end of June.

I think the GA was able to reach a consensus resolution on divestment for a variety of reasons. First, both pro- and anti- divestment advocates have spent the past two years discussing/debating/dialoguing about the best strategy for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the Middle East. As a result, we were a much more informed denomination in 2006 than we were in 2004. Second, the GA acted with remarkable independence. Anyone who thinks that lobbyists for one party or another prevailed in Birmingham wasn't there. Third, the table for a balanced outcome in Birmingham was set by an excellent forum held on Israel/Palestine the day prior to the GA convening. The speakers were reasoned and reasonable. Denominational staff and committee members who created the forum deserve praise. 

Voices

Authoritative witnesses: Accept no substitutes

 

Editor's Note: As Presbyterians discuss and study church policies and the TTFPUP report, we offer for our Outlook readers' reflections both this article by Ted A. Smith, and the following article by Michael D. Bush and Christopher A. Yim.

 

Our Presbyterian system places great demands on the governing bodies of the church. We believe that presbyteries and sessions should examine officers in light of essential tenets of the Reformed faith. We also believe that governing bodies should apply all the standards set by the whole church, rather than requiring subscription to partial and local lists of essentials. And so we ask elders and ministers to know the Reformed tradition well enough to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit in individual cases. A range of groups -- most notably the Presbyteries of Santa Barbara and San Diego -- have put forward guidelines to help sessions and presbyteries in this demanding work. But while the texts of these guidelines profess fidelity to Scripture and confessions, the practice of using them promises to displace the very authorities they celebrate.

Voices

Freedom within certain bounds

(Editor's Note: This article is written in response to  "When departures relate to practice," a commentary by Douglas Nave in the Oct. 16 issue of The Presbyterian Outlook.)

 

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may appropriately permit officers freedom of conscience while requiring compliance with the ordination standards in the Form of Government. The historical and judicial examples Douglas Nave offers to support his claim that such would be unchristian or unpresbyterian are either mistaken or irrelevant.

Consider Jesus. We read that Jesus did not "reject the sanctity of the Lord's Day."

While Lord's Day observance developed to honor his resurrection, after the fact, Jesus did honor the Sabbath, even as he transformed it in light of his own presence in the world. He worked this transformation, in part, by healing on the Sabbath. These healings were not ethical expressions of faith, as Mr. Nave suggests, but rather were acts through which Jesus taught. This is a different matter, unrelated to Mr. Nave's point.

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Longtime missionary to Asia died Nov. 8

Jessie Woodrow McElroy Junkin McCall, 87, of Black Mountain, N.C., longtime Presbyterian missionary to Asia, died November 8. A memorial service in celebration of her life was held November 12 at Montreat (N.C.) Church, where she had been an active member since 1981.

She was born June 24, 1919, daughter to Presbyterian pastor, I. Stuart McElroy Jr., and Alice Wilson McElroy, missionaries to Japan. In June 1939, she graduated from the University of Richmond and married William (Bill) F. Junkin Jr.

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Presbytery treasurer misapplies $1 million in mission funds

The Presbytery of New Covenant, based in Houston, Texas, has uncovered three years of mishandling funds, effectively redirecting restricted funds (contributed to particular causes) to the presbytery's own mission efforts. In a letter sent November 9 to all member churches, General Presbyter Mike Cole and Moderator Rupert Turner announced the dismissal of Phillips Lacy, the director of business affairs. They state that Lacy does not appear to have benefited from the inappropriate actions. However, his handling of such funds was hidden well enough to avoid discovery by either their internal checks and balances or their annual, external professional audits.

The presbytery's leadership is studying options for paying back the funds, which will be explored at length at the stated presbytery meeting scheduled on November 18.

Uncategorized

Scott Anderson to seek PC(USA) ordination

Scott Anderson, an openly gay member of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is seeking to be ordained once again as a PC(USA) minister.

Anderson, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches and a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, set aside his ordination in 1990 after two members of the congregation he then served in California publicly revealed that Anderson is gay.

But Anderson said in an interview that he is asking John Knox Presbytery in Wisconsin to approve him as an inquirer seeking ordination. If the presbytery accepts him as an inquirer, he intends to declare a "scruple" or an objection to the part of the PC(USA)'s constitution that limits ordination to those who practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single.

Anderson met with John Knox's Committee on Preparation for Ministry on Nov. 2, receiving the committee's support. The presbytery will consider his request on Nov. 14.

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Buchanan urges Covenant Network to accept PUP task force call “to reach across the aisle”

COLUMBUS -- John Buchanan is pastor of Fourth Church in Chicago and editor of The Christian Century magazine, also is a co-founder of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which for the past decade has tried to convince the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to ordain gays and lesbians.

He was moderator of the General Assembly in Albuquerque in 1996 -- the assembly that passed the rule limiting ordination in the denomination to those who practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single.

And on the opening day of the Covenant Network's 2006 conference, Buchanan said the denomination is now in a new place -- a place where the report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the PC(USA) provides "a precious opportunity to try to live together as if the gospel makes a difference," as the Covenant Network's executive director, Pamela Byers, has said.

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A tale of two gifts: PC(USA) deciding on allocations

People aren't exactly holding their breath, waiting for Denver businessman Stanley Anderson to come up with the $150 million he promised in June to give to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

But the denomination is close to realizing more than $9 million in unrestricted funding -- the result of a bequest made by a Colorado family more than 40 years ago, which has been held in trust since then and is just now becoming available.

Basically, church officials have heard little since Anderson stood up before the General Assembly in Birmingham and promised a massive unrestricted gift -- the day before the news broke that Anderson had financial difficulties.

He said then he'd give the money by November 2006, but so far nothing has materialized. "He's given several different dates," said Joey Bailey, the PC(USA)'s chief financial officer. "If it comes in by the end of the year, we're going to be really happy."

Editorials

Salt of the earth

We voted. Congress changed hands. Some of us crowed over the victory. Some of us grieved the loss. Let's think twice about that.

It wasn't too long ago that mainline Protestants dominated American politics. Our churches were expanding with the baby boom. A nation recovering from war was finding our message reassuring. Our children's Sunday school classes were informing. Our fellowship was welcoming. What's more, the Hitler-Stalin legacy reinforced our determination to be a church-transforming-culture, or as Jesus put it, the salt of the earth.

It wasn't too long ago that the Anabaptist vision of church--a city set apart--shaped the culture of the non-mainline Protestant churches. Worshiping mostly in tiny sanctuaries on the edge of town, they followed a pietistic approach to ministry, aimed at saving souls, not cultures.

Movie Reviews

“Women’s Ordination: Past, Present & Future” DVD

How important are the stories we carry in our hearts! They guide our lives and nurture our growth. Evelyn Fulton, a lifelong advocate for women and the first woman to graduate from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary in 1949, recalled: "My mother, and my father, too, always said 'You can do anything you want in this world.'"

For the past two years--2005 and 2006--we women have been telling our stories. We have laughed, cried, and been amazed again at what God has called us to do. In our stories is the history of the Presbyterian Church opening its ministries to women.

On the DVD, "Women's Ordination: Past, Present & Future," thirteen of these wonderful women tell their stories. They all eventually became successful as pastors, executives, community leaders, moderators, and theologians, but it was not easy. The DVD was produced by the Women's Ordination Mission Team of Chicago Presbytery to be sure these women's stories can be an inspiration to a new generation of women and men.

Uncategorized

In Christ

Editor's Note: The following essay is the fifth in a series dealing with topics of interest and importance to Presbyterians. Author Johnson explains: "The report from the General Assembly Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church provides us both the occasion and the urgency for theological dialogue within the PC(USA). This and succeeding essays are offered as a constructive effort in that direction."

 

Like the preceding essays, this one aims to break open a conversation between two adversaries locked onto one another. I am respectfully looking for fresh--and faithful--avenues through the current impasse of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) while giving voice to the center in the current theological discussion. 

The focus for this essay is the difference between two primary ways to articulate the Gospel, one using the phrase Christ in me/us and the other using the phrase me/us in Christ. Both phrases belong to the Bible, especially Paul and John, but Western Christianity over the last 350 years has stressed Christ in me/us almost to the exclusion of the other phrase. With this emphasis Christianity grew in huge numbers during the 18th-19th centuries.

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Singing in the Reign

Advent 2: Luke 1:68-79

 

Behind this text is a life-long struggle with infertility, and then the announcement comes: "Your prayers have been answered!" What? Zechariah is not quite speechless; doubt escapes his lips:  Are you sure? We're getting up there in years, you know ... I guess the angelic messenger hoped for better from the priest: "Behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things come to pass..." He's speechless now.

Nine months later Elizabeth gives birth to a bouncing baby boy, and only when a still-mute Zechariah scribbles down the instructions, "Name him John," does he go from silence to sound. But the proud father doesn't merely sing the praises of his own newborn son. In this passage Zechariah is singing in the reign.

Voices

Amendment B and an irony of Southern Presbyterian history

 

Recently, a church in Appomattox, Virginia, advanced an overture to the Presbytery of the Peaks with the intent of ensuring uniformity as to the interpretation of ordination standards, particularly as they relate to Amendment B.  Amendment B is the only (for now) specification of what it means that those ordained are to live "a life in obedience to scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the Church." Among all the things that biblical and theological obedience could mean, Amendment B and the Appomattox church want it clear that it means "fidelity within the covenant of marriage of a man and a woman or chastity in singleness."  

The overture will not be considered until the March 2007 presbytery meeting. Still, that a church in Appomattox, Va., would champion such an overture is a symbolic indication that the north truly has won the ideological debate in the Presbyterian Church. I offer as explanation the following story of democracy in America and in the American Presbyterian Church.

Voices

Glimpses of the Emerging Center

c. 2006 Religion News Service

RICHMOND, Va. -- 'Your generation will have to die before we can move on,' a 20-something told a 60-something at a national church convention last summer.

'He could be right,' the 60-something said last week, but maybe not.

Veterans of religious wars are highly invested in seeking control of the Titanic, rather than rethinking the Christian enterprise for challenging, post-modern times.

While the same old warriors fight the same old battles over sexuality, church property, denominational leadership, control of seminaries, doctrine, and who's to blame for shrinking membership, more and more believers gravitate to the margins.

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Praying to be an evangelist: Dave Peterson in Houston

Here is a prayer that Dave Peterson, pastor of a 4,500-member Presbyterian church, has taught himself to pray: Lord, make me an evangelist!

"When I started out in ministry, evangelism was literally No. 13 on the list," said Peterson, who leads Memorial Drive Church in Houston. Peterson is also co-chair of the steering committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s major fundraising drive, the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands, which is raising money for new church development and international mission work.

But as a young pastor, Peterson said, evangelism "was the last thing I was interested in."

Uncategorized

Hearts & Hands “most important thing the denomination is doing”

Dave Peterson, the Houston pastor who's co-chair of the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands fundraising campaign, is as curious as anyone about what will happen next.

The Hearts & Hands campaign doesn't have enough money in unrestricted donations to pay its operating costs for 2007 -- and the campaign's leaders hope the General Assembly Council can find a way to come up with enough funding soon to keep the $40 million campaign afloat.

Uncategorized

November Dusk

The Eve of Christ the King

 

Gray, fading, year-worn light

portends an absence of anticipation.

No consideration, even, as to whether

or not it will begin again after

the evident onset of the dark....

Uncategorized

talk to me about the waiting…

 

mostly I crouch, head bowed, eyes closed

against the soft black, safe in liquid suspense.

but even in the nothing there are constant somethings:

a fluid symphony, simmering, rolling, rushing past;

a metronome beating out the time,

world without end--and a voice:

hushed murmur, burbling laugh,

distant yet irresistible.

Uncategorized

“Lullaby on the loudspeakers”

Advent is a busy time in the life of anyone, let alone a pastor. A hospital was the last place I ever planned to be during the weeks leading up to Christmas, with the exception of visiting other people. But one year, my body decided otherwise. And so, in mid-December, I lay under the surgeon's knife for the second time in a year.

A hospital is not a haven of quiet and rest. It is anything but a peaceful place. I had a roommate who smoked in the bathroom and turned the lights and TV on in the middle of the night with no regard to my feeble attempts to sleep. Across the hall, an elderly woman with no idea where she was howled with pain and cried for help at least once every three minutes, day and night, day and night, day and night. 

Uncategorized

“Jesus is coming … so now what?”

 

Advent 1:  Luke 21:25-36

 

I was a tall, skinny, spindly-legged girl, gawky and uncoordinated. I recall my kindergarten teacher being alarmed when initially I could skip only on one side of my body. But all through my elementary years jump rope proved particularly challenging. Remember the schoolyard motion -- elbows bent at the waist, palms down, a slight rocking motion, hands pushing the air in time with the rope? I could do that for hours. Days. I never knew how to jump in.

I feel like that with a text like this. I'm not quite sure how to jump in here.

Scholars come along and try to give us a push: It's just apocalyptic literature, they say. So we jump in -- only to discover that apocalyptic is the double-dutch of biblical genres, and we collapse in a tangled mess of dispensational exegesis.

The fact that it's Advent, too, the beginning of the church's liturgical calendar, the Christian New Year, complicates matters as well. Because this text is more about an ending than a beginning, and it hardly evokes a sense of celebration. Yes, we're assured Jesus is coming again ... but not before we're bombarded with images of persecution and pestilence, cosmic disturbance and destruction. Don't let the prescribed lectionary boundaries try to soften the blow -- force yourself to go all the way back, at least to verse 12 and start reading there. Linger over these verses and you begin to get the sense that apparently followers of Jesus are not exempt from suffering. So much for a happy New Year.

Uncategorized

Thousands attend Houston revival planned by Presbyterians

Presbyterians in Houston, Texas, were instrumental in staging one of the largest faith celebrations ever in the Lone Star state, where the gospel of Jesus Christ came in the form of BMX bikers, skateboarders and concerts.

Luis Palau's CityFest Houston mixed evangelism with elements of a music festival, extreme sports and celebrity appearances to draw in a total of some 225,000 people to the modern-day open-air Christian revival, which was held Oct. 7-8.

Memorial Drive Church (see stories in pages 3 and 4) took the lead in organizing the $3.7 million multimedia outreach that was supported with volunteers and donations from about 600 Houston-area churches, including a throng of Presbyterian congregations. 

The family-friendly event was also backed by scores of high-profile city leaders, businesses and professional sports franchises like the Houston Astros baseball team and the Houston Texans NFL football team.

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