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‘Godcasting’ on MP3 players makes religious messages portable

The radio preacher is finding new life in cyberspace.

"Godcasting" is the latest advancement in online religion, in which preachers convert their sermons to audio to be heard on portable digital audio devices.

Using iPods, or any portable MP3 player, "podcasting" lets people download audio programs that can be listened to whenever they like. It's a form of audio syndication that musicians, businessmen, tech talk show hosts and political commentators like Al Franken have already adopted.

There's lots more God on iPod than jazz, theater or movie reviews. Pod preachers, including Christians, Buddhists and pagans, are among the most prolific users of the new technology. Just as sermons were among the first type of broadcasts when radio caught on in America in the 1920s, podcasting is creating a new form of wireless parson.

Board of Pensions reorganizes; to eliminate 22 jobs

(PNS) The Board of Pensions (BOP) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has implemented a plan to consolidate member services, centralize oversight of third-party providers, and provide for "succession management" in key leadership positions.

"Stewardship -- of people and financial resources -- is so important," BOP President and CEO Rob Maggs told the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) on Oct. 19. "It is critical to have strong management -- the right people doing the right jobs."

In his Oct. 13 weekly letter to board members and other church leaders, Maggs acknowledged that financial pressures were a factor in the reorganization. "We must keep our ... annualized increases in budgets at about 3 percent or less," he said, adding that the board's operating costs will show a year-to-year decline in 2006.

Kathleen Norris to Covenant Network: Bask in the mystery

MEMPHIS --  "We do not know, but we are not lost."

That's a line from a poem that Kathleen Norris's husband wrote, after the two of them sat talking at the kitchen table one night about what she thought about angels and he thought about numbers and what all that might say about truth.

That question came from a man who Norris described as a "recovering Catholic;" a man she knew was ready to talk about religion when he would say things to her such as, "Doesn't it matter that none of it is true?"

But Norris persuaded her husband to think a little as she does, that mystery may be at the heart of Christian discipleship. Our most important relationships all involve mystery, she said -- when people vow during a wedding to stick together for better and for worse, for example, the promise is made without knowing much at all about what surprises that journey will bring.

But we can approach these mysteries as disciples, Norris said -- as people of faith, willing to learn.

Montreat: Preserving Southern church heritage deeply felt issue

For some folks, sitting on a rocking chair on a front porch in Montreat, N.C. calls back a lifetime of memories and connections. They hear in those hills the footsteps of Presbyterians from their own families and others they know and revere, saints of the church who served God in congregations throughout the southern United States and on mission assignments around the world.

What's the value of someone being able to come to the archives at Montreat and find her grandmother's name listed as a Sunday school teacher in the records of her childhood church?

It's hard to know how to put a dollar value on that.  What's the right amount to pay to preserve such memories? When does that price become too much?

That bone-deep love for a place and a heritage is whipping up a storm in Montreat, where the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) has decided that, for economic reasons, for the sake of other priorities in the financially-struggling Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Montreat Historical Society should shut its doors.

Irish church leaders welcome IRA’s arms ‘decommissioning’

DUBLIN -- Two prominent Northern Ireland clergymen chosen to monitor a key part of an internationally-backed peace process say that, "beyond any shadow of doubt," the arms of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) have now been put beyond use. 

The clerics, the Rev. Harold Good, a Methodist, and the Rev. Alec Reid, a Roman Catholic priest, witnessed the IRA's recent act of decommissioning, in which the armed group put all its remaining weapons down, after decades of violent struggle.  

However, the Rev. Ian Paisley, the founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and leader of the largest political party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionists, rejected the declaration on Sept. 27.

Paisley said, "(The IRA's decommissioning) illustrates more than ever the duplicity and dishonesty of the two (British and Irish) governments and the IRA." He said the clerics who witnessed the decommissioning "were approved by the IRA and therefore ... in no way could be independent." 

Bitterly divided Korean congregation works toward ceasefire in turf battle

(PNS) Lawyers representing two factions of a bitterly divided, 2,700- member Korean congregation in Torrance, Calif., are trying to negotiate an agreement to share the church building while a civil court decides which group is entitled to the property.

"I am overjoyed that these conversations are finally happening," said the Rev. Syngman Rhee, a former General Assembly moderator who is working informally -- as "pulpit supply" -- with the loyalist faction of First Church of Torrance. "Some kind of peace is needed."

Rhee was appointed by the group that now governs the congregation, an administrative commission formed by Hanmi Presbytery and the Synod of Southern California.

The congregation split last spring after it tried to call the Rev. Song Kyu Pak as pastor. Because Pak was the subject of an administrative inquiry in Olympia Presbytery, where he had been pastor of Joong-Ang Church in Tacoma, Wash., Olympia could not release him to accept the Torrance call. For the same reason, Hanmi Presbytery could not receive him as a member.

On April 24, Pak announced that he had renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a majority of the Torrance church voted to leave the denomination and affiliate with the Korean Presbyterian Church in America (KPCA). The breakaway faction seized control of the church's property.

Episcopalians reject divestment

(RNS) The Episcopal Church has flatly rejected a church-based movement to pull investments from Israel, instead choosing a strategy of "positive investment" among Palestinians and "corporate engagement" with Israel.

The church's Social Responsibility in Investments committee said the church should keep investments in the region and not follow the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and others who are seeking to divest from Israeli companies. "The goal is for selected companies to change behavior resulting in a more hopeful climate for peace," the committee's 12-page report said. "If the church simply divests, nothing positive has happened."

Many collegians say they are spiritual; struggle with questions, alternatives

The standard litany goes something like this: Presbyterians go to church, bring their children, the children grow up, go off on their own, forget about church. Charles Wiley, who's with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Office of Theology and Worship, said recently that one test of Presbyterians' commitment to ecumenism is that they're ecstatic if their adult children go to church, practically any church, once they leave home.

But the stock wisdom only goes so far.

Recent surveys show that many college students do in fact have an intense interest in spiritual matters and that many of them believe in a higher power and pray regularly. On college campuses, groups interested in religion -- from Buddhist meditation circles to "alternative spirituality" groups to evangelical Christian Bible studies -- meet all over the place, all the time. During Ramadan at some campuses, students who aren't Muslim join in the fasting, out of solidarity with what they affirm as a spiritual way of life. And many classes in religion are packed, as students try to understand the complex relationships between religion and politics in a world in which suicide bombings and violence in the name of religion make the news nearly every day.

College Briefs 2005

Fall 2005 is notable for different reasons as many Presbyterian-related schools begin the new academic year. Let them share with you the new developments on their campuses.