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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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....

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

A Reformed Thanksgiving

The editor's rhythm meanders at a different pace than that of the preacher. Publishing cycles being as they are, I get to write a Thanksgiving meditation on Reformation Day. There's a connection there.

Thank you, God, for the Reformation of the church.

Sola Scriptura. Thanks spring from the seeds of renewal that predated the Reformation. Those sacrificial pioneers, Jan Hus and John Wyclif, were convinced that God's living Word is best understood through the written words of the Apostles. In her dark days, the church cordoned off those words, so the people could hear only what was mediated to them through the clergy. Hus, Wyclif, and their Reforming successors released into the people's hands those dangerous words for all to read and hear. Their gift opened not only eyes, but voices of praise and thanks.

Appreciation with REAL impact

It's noon on Wednesday. In fifteen minutes you are meeting a colleague for lunch to discuss a conflicted situation in the presbytery. The phone rings, and you discover that your daughter has a fever and you need to take her home from school. You wonder if she will be able to go to school tomorrow. Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock there is a memorial service. Your spouse is out of town on business for two more days. Should you call the pediatrician? What if your son gets sick, too? Whose turn is it to drive school carpool? The session meeting went late last night and with several interruptions this morning, you are behind on final sermon preparation for Sunday. The bulletin has to be completed before day's end, and the hymns you chose weeks ago just don't seem to fit now. You didn't sleep well after the session meeting last night, as you mulled over how to respond to budget issues. You're pulled in three directions by three very influential elders, all of whom are pressuring you to advocate their proposal, and two of whom think of themselves as special friends of yours. As you hurry out of the office, the administrative assistant hands you a note. Oh no, the dentist appointment at three o'clock!

Grieving families, worship preparation, presbytery obligations, meetings, colleagues, your own family's needs, session responsibilities, disagreements, self care--a day in the life of a congregational pastor.

In Appreciation

Editor's Note: These tributes to pastors arrived at the OUTLOOK too

late to be included in the recent Pastor's Appreciation issue (October

23).

Delaware

Lewes Presbyterian Church honors pastor Buz Hughes for his loving

leadership in believing, growing, and sharing the love of Christ.

Memorial Service for William P. Thompson scheduled for Louisville center chapel

A Service of Remembrance for William P. Thompson, former Co-Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., will be held in the Chapel on November 28 at 11:00am. Mr. Thompson died on April 27. This service, to be led by former colleagues of Mr. Thompson, had been envisioned for a time before the General Assembly in June, but now follows the service earlier in the year for James Andrews and the Centennial remembrances of Eugene Carson Blake. Mr. Andrews was Mr. Thompson's successor in the reunited Church; Mr. Blake his predecessor. The current Stated Clerk, Clifton Kirkpatrick, will participate in this service, as he did in the Thompson funeral back in May.

Statement of the Board of Directors of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

November 8, 2006

Comments on David Ray Griffin's Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11

Louisville, KY--The Board of Directors of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation (PPC) has reviewed the decision to publish David Ray Griffin's Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11. The book was published by Westminster John Knox Press (WJK), a PPC imprint, earlier this year. "David Ray Griffin is a distinguished theologian who has published a number of books with PPC," said Kenneth Godshall, chair of the PPC Board of Directors. "This particular volume is not up to WJK editorial standards and not representative of the PPC publishing program."

The book makes the extraordinary claim that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were orchestrated by the federal government and made to appear to be the work of al-Qaeda. The book also challenges Christians to wrestle with questions raised by American foreign policy. "Griffin's theological reflections are helpful and timely," Godshall commented. "The Board believes, however, the conspiracy theory is spurious and based on questionable research." For more than 160 years the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation has published works that contribute to worldwide scholarship in the areas of biblical studies, theology, religion, and ethical issues of importance to the larger society. Under its WJK imprint, PPC publishes a theologically and religiously diverse selection of books that often extend beyond the Reformed tradition and the official policies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Scott Anderson enrolled as inquirer

Scott Anderson, the only openly gay member of the former Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, has been enrolled as an Inquirer under the care of the John Knox Presbytery after a unanimous vote of the presbytery on Nov. 14.

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