As the General Assembly receives the report of the PUP Task Force and starts to discuss it, one simple question ought to be on our minds: What are our alternatives?
One, the GA can approve the report. This could lead to pressure for schism and anger breaking out because now Presbyterians will essentially permit an action that by vote of presbyteries three times in the last twenty years we have refused to approve.
For the churchgoing Christian, there's plenty to like about "The Da Vinci Code": The whole time, people are talking about the faith. The important places are locales like museums, libraries, and sanctuaries. Knowledge of ancient languages, (Western) history, culture, and art is essential. And it's oh, so literary, even to the point of playing with words, so that the keys to the puzzles lie with being able to figure out the clues within the words. Just delicious.
Ah, but for the churchgoing Christian, there's plenty not to like, as well.
by Jack Rogers. Louisville: WJKP, 2006. ISBN 0-664-22939-5. Pb., 176 pp. $17.95
You are invited to travel with Jack Rogers on a life-changing, personal journey as he moves from being a conservative evangelical who viewed homosexuality as a "sin" to a progressive evangelical who now promotes the acceptance of homosexual orientation and practice.
Dr. Rogers, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly in 2001 and former professor of theology at Fuller and San Francisco Theological Seminaries, was asked by his pastor, Dean Thompson, in 1993 to participate in a Bible study about homosexuality. The group took seriously the seven official guidelines of the Presbyterian Church for Biblical interpretation. The first of these is "To recognize that Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, is the center of Scripture." The seventh guideline is to "Seek to interpret a particular passage of the Bible in the light of all of the Bible."
Having been going to GA's for thirty years and serving on the GAC for five years and as an executive presbyter in the past, I offer to you four barometers of where the PCUSA may be going. I do not think that they will happen as described, but they may. It is much more likely that some of them will happen.
LOUISVILLE -- In what's being described as a "huge transition" in the way the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) does its work, the denomination is cutting $9.1 million from its budget -- which means 75 workers on the church's national staff have lost their jobs and the positions of 55 overseas missionaries are being eliminated. (link to list of names)
But John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, said the real story isn't only the numbers -- the deepest budget cut and most extensive reordering of the denomination's staff in nearly 15 years -- but the intent of a shrinking mainline denomination to reconfigure itself to be more responsive to Presbyterians at the local level.
"We are at a watershed," Detterick said during a news conference May 1 -- shifting from a denomination that tells congregations from on high which programs the PC(USA) will offer to one that supports the mission work being done by individual Presbyterians and congregations.
Conspiracy Theory. Loved the movie. Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts put on a show.
This year's conspiracy theory installment, The Da Vinci Code movie, based on the wildly popular book out for several years, promises to sell many more tickets than the Gibson-Roberts film.
Americans love conspiracy theories. Attributing the worst motives to "those other people"--especially if they represent the bureaucracy of government, law enforcement or the religious establishment--pulls readers and viewers into a web of juicy intrigue. It makes high entertainment.
But conspiracy theories prove less entertaining to those falsely accused of such conspiring.
Popular fascination with Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code continues unabated. The book has been on the bestseller list for more than 160 weeks with more than 10,000,000 (that's 10 million) copies sold. The May 19 release of the feature film based on this fast-paced adventure story and starring Tom Hanks as the handsome scholar Robert Langdon exposes Brown's provocative and disturbing ideas about Jesus Christ and early Christianity to an even larger audience. A directive from the Vatican urging Roman Catholics to boycott the movie will probably only increase the desire of some people to see the film.
c. 2006 Religion News Service
I'm not sure if I've ever seen such an explosion of public interest in Jesus -- from a variety of angles old and new (some would say odd). Whether this fascination simply means that Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has created a new industry, or whether it signals something deeper -- that's up for debate. As a pastor with 24 years of ministry experience in a nontraditional setting and as an author on related matters, I think it's a good measure of both.
Through this resurgence of interest in the known Gnostic gospels, through intrigue surrounding the newly discovered Gospel of Judas, as well as through interest in all things Da Vinci, Americans are expressing, I believe, a simultaneous spiritual disappointment and hope -- and each has live political ramifications.
Both films feature, prominently, the country's president--a fit, trim, handsome, well-dressed, well-manicured white man somewhere in his 50's. Both feature terrorist plots against the president. In both, the terrorists themselves are somewhat shadowy foreign figures whose motivations are uncertain, but seem more political than personal. In both, an affair not only undercuts the integrity of the participants, but puts everyone else at risk, as well. One is a deadly serious drama and the other a completely satirical goof, but both have somber, sober, cynical undertones.
by Anne Rice. New York: Knopf, 2005. ISBN 0-375-41201-8. Hb., 336 pp. $25.95.
Jesus has lived the first seven years of his life in Alexandria, Egypt. The novel covers his family's move back to Galilee after King Herod's death and Jesus' first year in Nazareth. The plot concerns how the boy Jesus discovers his birth story and true identity.
Two incidents found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas open the novel. Jesus' blunt words to a bully result in the bully's death. In view of the ensuing ruckus caused by the dead boy's family, Jesus decides to raise him from the dead. In the context of that incident, we also learn that the child Jesus had earlier fashioned sparrows out of clay on the Sabbath day, and then clapped his hands to make them fly away after he was criticized for working on the Sabbath. In an afterword, Rice defends her decision to embrace these apocryphal accounts because she finds a deep truth in them that speaks to her.
The advisory board of the Cross Cultural Alliance of Ministries (CCAM) has challenged the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to focus on critical issues faced by the denomination at the 217th General Assembly this summer.
"We are leaders from the various racial ethnic caucuses, and speak for ourselves. While we have varying opinions about the final recommendations of (PUP Task Force) report, we are of one mind that the issue of ordination standards must not monopolize the agenda and resources of the church. ... We need also to grapple with the matters that are at the heart of our decline," they said.
(RNS) A Gallup poll of eight Muslim countries has found that only a small minority of their residents said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were justified.
Between 5 percent and 18 percent of residents polled in those countries said the attacks were justified, Dalia Mogahed, executive director of Gallup's Muslim studies said May 2 at a forum that revealed some results of the Gallup Poll of the Muslim World.
The results were based on polling in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan.
One week after "March Madness," Presbyterian seminaries held their own version of the Final Four on April 8 at the second annual Ultimate Frisbee Revival held at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Va.
More than 70 players from five seminaries participated, along with dozens more who came as spectators or participated in the weekend's other events. Players participated from Princeton Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Columbia Theological Seminary, Union-PSCE and its neighbor, the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, for a double elimination tournament.
Editor's note: In the March 20 issue of the Outlook, part of this poem appeared as the lectionary for March 26, 2006. It was not until it was printed that the writer and the Outlook discovered that it was an earlier version and a later version including a further section had not been transmitted to the magazine. We are now running the poem in its complete form for further inspiration and edification.
I've never been bitten by a serpent
although one early dawn hour
I was awakened by my brother
who appeared quite happy
having just recovered his lost snake
under my bed.
Perhaps I, unlike the poor Israelites,
was spared because I don't ever remember
complaining about my mother's cooking,
but complain about the food the Israelites did.
LOUISVILLE -- At the opening of the General Assembly Council's meeting April 26, John Detterick, the council's executive director, predicted that "virtually every council member will find something to be unhappy about."
That's because a denomination that prides itself on caring for the world doesn't have enough money to go around.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is facing a $9.1 million budget shortfall. The denomination is cutting its budget and eliminating dozens of jobs from its national staff. The exact number of positions lost hasn't been announced yet, but the cuts unquestionably will be deep and painful.
The budget proposal presented to the council called for a mission budget for "essential work" in 2007 of $97 million, including more than $4.4 million drawn from reserves.
LOUISVIILLE -- Seeking to calm the storm over divestment and get people talking constructively about the Middle East, Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly, is proposing a plan.
First, the General Assembly this summer in Birmingham would create a task force to carefully monitor events in the Middle East -- a task force whose members would be committed both to working with Palestinian Christians who want to end the Israeli occupation and to deepening relations with Jews and Muslims in the area. That task force would present ideas on "how to move forward on these sensitive areas" to the assembly in 2008.
Second, the assembly would refer all overtures regarding divestment (and there are a truckload of them) to the Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee. Many of those sending overtures want the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to revisit the assembly's highly controversial decision, made in 2004, to begin a process of phased, selective divestment in some companies doing business in Israel.
Peace River Presbytery unanimously endorsed H. Timothy Halverson (Tim) as a candidate for moderator of the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on Nov. 17, 2005. In support of his candidacy, General Presbyter Graham Hart said, "We need a strong and articulate voice from the center to hold us together in these difficult times. ...Tim's education, ministry and spirit reflect the breadth of the church."
Editor's Note: Before each General Assembly, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly shares what he considers to be the top ten issues coming to the assembly, based primarily on overtures that have been submitted and his travels and conversations with Presbyterians across the denomination. Here is Clifton Kirkpatrick's non-prioritized list for this year's assembly:
Can a disintegrating organization of Christian believers find a way to reverse its downward spiral? Our national leadership needs our help to find a way.
That downward spiral strikes a distinct resemblance to the deterioration of Main Street in many an American town. That hub of the community's commerce, with its pharmacy, supermarket, clothing, and shoe stores faded when developers built the shopping mall or Wal-Mart on the highway just outside town.
As we near the end of another school year, those of us in theological academia ready ourselves for Baccalaureate and Commencement exercises yielding yet another crop of pastors who will soon stand behind pulpit and table in churches all over the country. This will be my first opportunity as the new president of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary to pass out diplomas and wish our graduating seniors well as they take on a new mantle of responsibility.
What will I be thinking as I shake their hands? I will be thinking about a line I said to our program staff at First Church, Dallas at the end of every staff meeting. It was, "Praise the Lord," to which they replied, "The Lord's name be praised." Then I always added a phrase from Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there." My reason for saying this line to 2006 graduates is that I've just come back to the academic world after 22 years of parish ministry in one congregation, and I know it's not easy being a pastor these days.
In many ways the church that today's graduates are heading into is not the same one I faced 33 years ago. The world is not the same either. As a result I want to encourage our soon-to-be clergy to "think outside the box" in two ways as they leave their places of learning.
The Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity (PUP) has made seven recommendations to the 217th General Assembly (2006) meeting in Birmingham in June. The report as a whole is brilliant, subtle and balanced, and deserves careful study by commissioners to the General Assembly and by the church at large. The vote of this Assembly on the recommendations will have a profound effect on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
The heart of these recommendations is number 5, and this analysis and opinion will focus on it. Recommendation 5 proposes an Authoritative Interpretation of section G-6.0108 of the Book of Order. This section states the Church's understanding of our freedom of conscience within certain bounds. The authoritative interpretation reminds the Church of its Reformed tradition dating back to 1729 that establishes the principle of freedom of conscience within bounds and applies the test of adherence to essentials of Reformed faith and polity to those being examined for ordination as deacons, elders or ministers. In recent decades, the Church has applied the test of essentials primarily to matters of faith. The authoritative interpretation retrieves its use in matters of polity, meaning practice or behavior.
For years I have taught confirmands and officers-elect with some pride that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a constitutional form of government. The constitutional rule of law is one of our denomination's greatest gifts. It is also in serious danger of being undermined if recommendation five of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church is adopted as written.
On the whole, the report is a first-rate product. It provides the church with clear guidance on matters of Christology and biblical authority. The Task Force worked hard to model for the church how to resolve differences while building Christian community. Even regarding ordination standards, task force members wisely turned to the historic methods Presbyterians have used to resolve such disagreements, set forth in the Adopting Act of 1729 and the reports of the Swearingen Commission of 1925. For all these, they should be commended. However, in applying these historic methods to our current context, the Task Force both violates the original intent of the documents and sets a dangerous constitutional precedent.
Starting a pastorate is extremely stressful. Sky-high expectations abound! At risk is much more than a job and financial security, but also the emotional and spiritual well being of a family and congregation.
Most pastors recall surprises as they discovered their congregation's unwritten rules. Early in my first pastorate I asked where the pulpit was typically located. I was told the interim pastor had moved it around, which I took to mean that I could as well. I was wrong. The pulpit belonged in the center of the chancel, as everyone knew. I'd been "had" in a game of "gotcha." In this case it only cost me a few credibility points. In my next pastorate, I served "communion wrong" for months before finally figuring out the "right way." I was a source of esoteric entertainment as "those in the know" chuckled at my awkward ways. Hey, I don't mind being a fool for Christ, but some mistakes can be very costly.
Enter clergy coaching.
Several years ago, in the early months of my new position as a seminary president after 23 years of parish ministry, my older daughter, then a ninth-grader, came home from school one afternoon and shared with me a conversation she had had that day with a teacher. In the midst of discussing something else, the teacher had startled her with the question, "What does your father do?" She told me she began to swell with pride as she answered, "My father is the new president of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary here in Austin." There was a pause, she said, after which the man asked, "What's a seminary?"
What is the shape of good pastoral ministry, and how is it nourished for a lifetime? How can pastors develop and sustain vital ministry that nimbly navigates the shifting sands of the world in which we live and the wide-ranging expectations of congregations, while remaining steadfastly faithful to the Gospel? Pastors are expected to discern and respond appropriately to their congregation's particular culture, to shape their ministry in ways that fit the situation while remaining faithful to Jesus Christ. Negotiating emerging ministerial challenges gracefully and effectively requires of pastors the capacities to discern the real needs of the moment and to exercise whatever skills and manners are needed to meet those needs appropriately. Moreover, the will to learn and adopt these skills and manners requires that pastors bear the dispositions of eager learners and willing servants.
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