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When departures relate to practice

Editor's note: This article was written in response to "What the amended PUP report actually means" by Clark D. Cowden, which appeared in the September 4 Outlook issue.

Much has been written about General Assembly's new Authoritative Interpretation of Section G-6.0108 of the Book of Order. Among other things, that Authoritative Interpretation provides that sessions and presbyteries, in conducting their examinations, must determine whether a candidate for ordained office "has departed from scriptural and constitutional standards for fitness for office" and "whether any departure constitutes a failure to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity."  Chief among the questions being debated is whether a candidate or officer-elect can declare a scruple with respect to matters not only of belief, but also of practice. The answer is clearly "yes."

The Virtue of Mark’s “Little People”: Part Two

I have been suggesting that, while Mark's Gospel aims to bring disciples into ever more full and mature faith -- to turn them into those who faithfully confess Jesus to be God's Son, both with their lips and with their lives -- the irony is that disciples do not model faith in his Gospel. It's "little people" who do. It's a "little person," in the form of an unnamed, Roman soldier presiding over his execution, who models the faithful confession of one's lips. Similarly, it's a whole string of "little people," making mostly cameo appearances in the narrative, who model the faithful confession of one's life.

In the Gospel accounts, some of these "little people" have names, but most remain nameless. Only two can be imagined moving among polite society. Quite a few are women. Their number could comprise all the human characters who are not Jesus and who are neither family, nor opponents, nor disciples of Jesus. At a minimum, they include a leper (1:40-45), friends of a paralytic (2:1-12), Jairus and a woman with a hemorrhage (5:21-43), a Syro-Phoenician mother (7:24-30), a half-believing father (9:14-29), blind Bartimaeus (10:46-52), a sympathetic scribe (12:28-34), a poor widow (12:41-44), Simon of Cyrene (15:22), and the women at the cross and tomb (15:40-41, 47; 16:1-8).

Calling

Both less and more than family and good friends,

still you belong there at the high moments and the low,

included in the laughter and the tears, all

   the embraces,

words and gestures of delight and consolation,

across the years even participating in remembering,

noting the absences, the gaps among the circled chairs,

the ones who couldn't make it for whatever reason,   

   glad or sad.

One woman’s Calling

Editor's Note: This text was originally a plenary speech by Charlotte Johnstone at the 2006 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women. Additional "Dispatches" appear in each issue of Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian Women. It is reprinted here by permission of the publisher, Presbyterian Women.

There is a young woman at Forbearance Church who is about to take a major step in her life. She is following others who, in the past 50 years, have paved the way for her. I want you to care about her--because she may enter your lives someday, somewhere.

Ministry means planning … and adjusting

Editor's Note: This article is based on the second chapter of the author's book: Azure Wind: Lessons for Ministry from Under Sail.

I am a planner. I have learned to think ahead, to anticipate, to consider various options and possibilities and to make choices that meet a goal. I've planned programs, workshops, meetings, fund-raisers, and construction projects. When I began planning for my sabbatical, I brought those same skills to the table.

For eighteen months I had been working toward a sabbatical that was to include an active adventure--sailing--and a reflective experiences--reading and writing. I wanted to do this with friends and family and I knew that I would have to organize and plan for this moment with great care. I looked up charts and measured miles and averaged boat speeds, based on the reading I was doing.

Our tortured, war-torn conscience

What to make of Maher Arar? A Syrian-born computer engineer, now a naturalized citizen of Canada, an ordinary man with a wife and family, Arar was detained by American authorities on September 26, 2002, while changing flights at Kennedy Airport. Arar's infraction? He had a co-worker, who had a brother, who had connections to people whom officials suspected of having links to al-Qaeda. Based on this thin thread of suspicion and without being charged with any crime, Arar was taken from his family, put in chains, handed over to the government of Syria, and for ten months subjected to acts of extreme physical and mental torture. We now know that Arar was completely innocent.   

How could something like this happen? Why America's resort to torture?  Seasoned interrogators have long known that torture is a poor tactic to elicit reliable information. Under torture a person will say whatever his tormentors wish. In fact, a classic military text on interrogation, based on concrete experience gained during World War II, says that the best way to extract useful information is through kindness, not brutality.

Solitude: A place for your soul to come out

©Ruth Haley Barton, June 2005.

Used by permission.

"The soul is like a wild animal--tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self-sufficient. It knows how to survive in hard places. But it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush. If we want to see a wild animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the woods, sit patiently by the base of the tree, and fade into our surroundings, the wild animal we seek might put in an appearance."

-- Parker Palmer

I will never forget my first experience with extended solitude. It was a field trip, of sorts, that was part of a seminary class on spiritual formation; our class gathered at a nearby retreat center to spend the day under the guidance of our beloved professor. The morning was wonderful but, in some ways, very similar to what I had already been experiencing in shorter times of solitude. However, when lunchtime came, we were told that we would eat lunch in silence so as not to interrupt our attention to God by being pulled into social interaction.

The Virtue of Mark’s “Little People”: Part One

"Preach the gospel at all times," urged Francis of Assisi, adding, "if necessary, use words." And we may wonder that the truth he administers -- that actions preach louder, and better, than words -- doesn't paralyze proclamation altogether.

Still, the example of the canonical evangelists should nerve us to keep on. After all, if they knew and observed Francis' rule (and who can believe that they did?), then, by whatever calculus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John judged the necessity to be great. For, of words -- gratias Deo, such marvelous words! -- they used plenty.

Corrosive criticism

Over the years of teaching seminarians and leading them later in continuing education seminars, I have come to realize that we have not prepared clergy to handle criticism.

Nothing seems to demoralize clergy more than personal and professional criticism. It hurts. It throws us off balance. It causes us to question our competence. Long after the initial sting there lingers a smoldering resentment that a parishioner could be so unloving, unjust, and unfair. This resentment grows and deepens in the absence of offsetting affirmation and praise. Often, too, the resentment festers when there is no one to talk to about the injustice except one's life partner who must also endure the insult and pain.

World-renowned preacher, seeking meaning, leaves church to teach

c. 2006 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

Barbara Brown Taylor has been an Episcopal priest, a teacher, columnist, author and -- according to Baylor University -- one of the best preachers in the English-speaking world.

Her new book, Leaving Church (HarperSanFrancisco), describes her experience of burning out as the priest of a parish she had wanted very much to serve and then leaving not only the pastoral ministry but also many of her former beliefs.

"I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real," she said in an interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. "And I'll capitalize both of those R's, because God is a word that means different things to different people, but we might agree it's what is most real."

The clergy shortage: What it means for churches

c. 2006 Religion News Service

When church members describe their ideal pastor, they often prefer "a nice young man with a family," as one denominational official said. Nice young men and women do become pastors, but they are a minority in the pool of American clergy. I concentrate here on the word "young." Whether male or female, young clergy are in short supply.

In one sense, this is no surprise. For at least the past 25 years, an increasing percentage of seminary students have been second-career students; that is, they have worked in at least one other occupation prior to seminary.