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Voices

The seminary and the church

 

The seminaries and their constituent congregations enjoy a deep and abiding relationship within the ethos of American Presbyterianism. In fact, in a time when much of our denominational ecosystem is under some degree of stress and decline, it is my observation that the seminaries and the great majority of our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations remain its healthiest components.

With respect to our ten PC(USA) seminaries, I have already had ample opportunity in my three years of serving as a seminary president to get a good look at the complexion of theological education in North America, and I believe they are without peer. They represent the gold standard when it comes to the quality of education, the quality of faculty, the quality of clergy being sent out into the church, the value base still alive in our denomination for the stewardship of the mind, and their sheer institutional strength and stability.

It is also interesting to me, in terms of the relationship our seminaries have to the church, that over the last decade, when Presbyterian seminaries have chosen presidents, they have overwhelmingly chosen pastors and not academicians--persons who, even if they have a Ph.D., are coming straight from the parish where they have spent most of their ministry. That is a profound statement, I believe, that at a deep level the church and the seminary want to be in still closer conversation.

And maybe it's about time, the church and the seminary may be saying to one another. From the church's perspective, there is this sense--not always justifiable, in my humble opinion--that the seminaries are out of touch with the life of the church; that their faculties are not sufficiently engaged in the on-the-ground life of the church; and that the questions we pursue in seminary are not necessarily the questions that most concern the church.

Voices

Finding our balance

 

What is the meaning of Reformed theological education for the life of the Presbyterian Church in these days of extreme diversity and conflict?"

These days, pastors and faithful disciples in the pews are wondering if the Presbyterian Church can hold together amidst all the tossing and turning. Some wonder why we don't just call a meeting, hire a good lawyer, get a divorce, split up the property, and move on. Seminary students wonder if there will be a church to serve after they graduate. We know it wouldn't be the first time the Church has divided, though concord after these divisions has lasted for only a short time. And we know from our constitution that Visible oneness, by which a diversity of persons, gifts, and understandings is brought together, is an important sign of the unity of God's people. It is also a means by which that unity is achieved. (Book of Order, G-4.0203).

In these days of extreme diversity and conflict, as we seek the peace, unity, and purity of the church, it seems as if we are walking a tight wire. The question becomes, "How shall we maintain our balance?" That's a question for Reformed theological education.  

Voices

From pulpit to seminary

 

 

A few weeks ago, after Pittsburgh Seminary had announced that I would be its next President, the editor of The Presbyterian Outlook asked me, "Bill, why are you leaving the parish to return to the academy?" The short answer might be "the three great things about academia: June, July and August!", but real scholars know better. It never really slows down that much in the summer months with all the Hebrew and Greek courses, and all the continuing education events. Administrators and staff especially plow right on. Faculty members put the finishing touches on those tomes they have been trying to write all year.

Still, the editor's question hung in the air waiting to be answered.

Actually, there were two parts to the question: (a) Why are you leaving the church for the school and (b) What should the school be doing for the church these days?

Voices

The Good Pastor

  

Excerpts from an address at the Louisville Seminary Luncheon, 216th General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Richmond, Va, June 30, 2004 and published in the fall 2004 issue of The Mosaic of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

 

For more than 150 years, this precious schoolhouse of the church has specialized in training good pastors for the church -- good pastors who have been called to live and hope as expectant servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. ... Reverently and expectantly, I want our first conversation as family to focus on a vision about the good pastors we hope to continue to train in our community of the Word at Louisville Seminary.

First, I believe the good pastor is a passionate/compassionate believer of the Christian gospel. Our people in the pews long for pastors who passionately/ compassionately believe what they preach and teach. Indeed, from a parishioner's viewpoint, one of the most priceless affirmations a preacher can receive is: "I can tell you really believe what you preach." That is, our congregations deeply yearn to call good pastors who will articulate with passion the belief that Jesus Christ is incomparably the most significant event in the history of the human race; that Jesus is God's own heart of flesh who crawled into the cradle of Bethlehem and who climbed onto the cross of Golgotha; that Jesus, in the words of Joseph Sittler, "comes to us in the world where we are, where we have been, and where we are going...."; that Jesus is the risen Lord and Savior of all times and all places; that to know God now in Jesus Christ is to know God forever.

Voices

Good news is no news

  

I was sitting in my office in mid-May, writing thank you letters to donors, when the phone rang.

"This is Jordana Hochman from Morning Edition. I was referred to you by the Association of Theological Schools."

"Well, what can I do for you?"

"I have a question. Depending on your answer, I may want to interview you."

"So?"

The essence of her question: "Well, since the mainstream churches are dying--declining, at least-- and not hiring new clergy, what are your graduates going to do?"

"First, our graduates will do what they have always done--the great majority will go and serve and lead as pastors, educators, and scholars for local churches, many of which by the way are thriving. God's Word and God's work are being faithfully proclaimed and engaged, just as in every generation since the resurrection of Jesus."

"Is there a disconnect between congregations and seminaries? Isn't your enrollment declining?" she asked.

"No. On both counts. Our faculty members are all deeply involved in local church life. Members of the faculty ordained as pastors who have joined us since 1994 when I arrived have an average of nine years of experience leading local congregations. That is more experience on average than when I was a student here in the mid-sixties!

"We will have 104 degrees received--that's more than average for the last score of years at least. I understand several of our partner seminaries in the Presbyterian Church have increased enrollments and graduations now, too."

I proceeded to tell her about some of the recent graduates and some of the congregations they serve. I spoke of the heavy requirements in this and many other Presbyterian seminaries--both Hebrew and Greek language, lots of Bible, theology, history, ethics, worship, mission, and focus on skills for ministry such as teaching, evangelism, leading worship, and giving pastoral care.

Uncategorized

PDA presence in Katrina’s wake

SACRAMENTO -- This is what Susan Ryan hopes. The next time there's disaster, the next time people are hurting, one of the first things they'll see is someone coming to help from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.

Ryan, who leads the disaster assistance program for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), said the church's emphasis in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita will be on long-term recovery -- in helping people after the immediate-relief assistance from groups such as the Red Cross ends.

The church's disaster assistance teams are well-trained, and are helping in the Katrina recovery effort by setting up tent villages where Presbyterian volunteers can stay while helping churches and families in the affected areas rebuild. "I really encourage the churches to send as steady a stream of volunteers as possible" to show the church's constant presence in times of trouble, Ryan said.

Uncategorized

Task Force members detail report at GAC meeting;
Presbyterians “will have each other,” Wheeler says

SACRAMENTO -- Four members of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) came to tell the church more about their "remarkable spiritual journey," as co-moderator Gary Demarest put it.

And they contend that keeping the church together doesn't have to come at the price of sacrificing what one believes most deeply -- that it's possible, the words of task force member Barbara Wheeler, to "hold on to each other and our convictions about the truth at the same time."

Demarest, a retired pastor from California, made the argument that "the world is watching" as the Presbyterian church and other denominations fight out their differences in public, and that the best way to make a compelling testimony to the power of the gospel is to let the world see that what binds Christians together in Jesus Christ is much more powerful than what divides them.

The four task force members spoke Sept. 22 to a joint gathering of top Presbyterian groups meeting in Sacramento -- the General Assembly Council, the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, the Presbyterian Foundation, the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program, and the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. This is one of many places the 20 task force members will go in the coming months to try to build support for their report and recommendations before the General Assembly votes on it in Birmingham next June.

Uncategorized

Vice Moderator loses church, home to Katrina, she tells GAC;
“We will not be alone as we work to rebuild”

SACRAMENTO -- Jean Marie Peacock, associate pastor of Lakeview Church in New Orleans, left with her husband, Peter, at 2 a.m. on that Sunday, not long before Hurricane Katrina hit.

They drove first to Jackson, Mississippi; and when the news reports still sounded bad, on to Memphis; and when it became clear that the levees had been breached and their neighborhood flooded, on to her parents' home in Illinois.

They live not far from the breach in the 17th Street levy, and they've learned that the water rose seven or eight feet in most of the homes in the area, including theirs. Out of her congregation of 335 members, about half lost their homes.

 "Our church is now dispersed all over the United States," scattered from Massachusetts to Florida to Missouri, Peacock said at the General Assembly Council meeting in California. She's also the vice-moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and she was asked to speak about her situation because so many people wanted to know what was happening with her church.

Book Reviews

The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates

The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates, by Bradley J. Longfield.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.  Pb., 352 pp.  ISBN 0-19-508674-0. $30.

Editor's Note: This book review was written before the release of the recommendations from the PC(USA) Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity.

 

Along with Jon Walton, I serve as the Co-Moderator of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians and was glad to be asked to recommend a book that might be instructive to members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as we awaited the full report and recommendations of the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity. I asked for suggestions from many friends and colleagues. One book got several mentions and so I ordered it and then wondered if I would stay awake as I read it.

When one is pondering "summer reading" possibilities, suffice it to say that the title, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates, would not seem to be the best choice to slip into your beach bag! That said, I thoroughly enjoyed--yes, enjoyed--reading this interestingly written and instructive book by Bradley J. Longfield. I believe that this book ought to be on every pastor's reading list and required reading for seminarians. It should be accessible to laypeople who seek to understand the Presbyterian Church's ways of debating important issues and trying to work through times of disagreement by a responsible use of our polity and understanding of our history.

Voices

Recommendations: Joy, needed work for change

In 1984, along with twenty other people, I was appointed by J. Randolph Taylor, Moderator of the recently reunited Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), to serve on the committee that drafted the Brief Statement of Faith as directed by the Plan of Reunion. Our experience together over the next five years mirrors in many ways that of the Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity. One of the chief reasons is that members of both groups were appointed to serve because they were representative of the diverse theological points of view and backgrounds reflected in the membership of the PCUSA. 

One of my most vivid memories from that important time in the life of the church has to do with an informal conversation another committee member and I had one summer day during General Assembly week.  As we stood chatting in the corridor of the vast Convention Center, a number of people came up to speak to my friend, who was and still is strongly identified with the conservative, evangelical wing of the denomination. I, on the other hand, have usually been identified with the more liberal part of the church. He graciously introduced me to them all.  "My goodness," I finally said.  "What is going on with all these people?"  They had been very gracious to me, but I had never met any of them before.  

He answered, "They want to meet you. My friends are always asking me what you really believe."

"What do you tell them?"  I asked.

"I tell them that you love Jesus just as much as they do."

Voices

Appreciation in general, dissatisfied in some specifics

 

I am impressed by the report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church.  Despite critique that I offer below, the care and thoughtfulness of its theology, the honesty and earnestness of its tone, the pastoral wisdom and balance of its approach, as well as the insight and reflection of its ecclesiology make strongly positive contributions.  One does not need to agree with all its points to find in this report a great deal that is constructive and up-building to the body of Christ.  It is a rich resource with content that seems judicious and affirming, instructive and fruitful.  "The Task Force was not asked to resolve all the controversial issues in the church or to relieve the church of all conflict.  The Task Force was asked to help the church deal with current and future conflicts more faithfully."  I believe that at points they have given us some important help. Though a more detailed reflection on the report would take far more space and time than is allowed here, I will venture a few initial personal responses, following the order of the document itself. 

I am grateful for the Theological Basis. The apparent consensus around an orthodox trinitarianism is its primary strength, and points to the central hope for any true "peace, unity, and purity" in our individual or common life. This is not to be taken for granted and is indispensable for our future, not least its affirmation of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Alongside all that is laudatory, unifying, and valuable in this section, two closely related points seemed especially lacking adequate development.  First, I would have expected to find a more developed reflection on what it means that human beings are creatures made in God's image. Surely, it is true we are loved.  But who is the "us" that God loves?  The nature of our humanity, God's intentional relationship to us and purpose for us in love informs our lives and our biblical grasp of what our humanness means. Since our createdness grounds our ethics in meaning and purpose beyond mere naturalism, I wish this had been given more emphasis.

Uncategorized

Implementing the Task Force recommendations: looking ahead

 

 

Let's pretend we jump ahead a year.

Let's pretend the 2006 General Assembly has already met, and it has done exactly what the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has asked it to do. So how will things in the church be different?

That's a question many in the church are trying to figure out -- they're trying to parse the report and figure out how the landscape of the PC(USA) would change if the task force recommendations were to prevail. That's difficult, because the task force report is not simple -- it's full of complicated, interlocking parts.

And, not surprisingly, different folks come up with different answers.

Some contend that the task force is basically recommending local option in practice if not in technical fact -- that if the recommendations are approved, some sessions and presbyteries will routinely ordain and install sexually-active gays and lesbians even though the PC(USA)'s ordination standards, which limit ordination to those who practice chastity if they're single or fidelity if they're married, would not themselves change.

Others disagree. They say it's close to miraculous that such a diverse 20-member task force could, after several years of difficult work, reach a unanimous recommendation with no minority report -- and they commend the task force for asking the PC(USA) to set aside some if its divisive ways and to return to a sense of balance, based on historic Presbyterian principles.

Voices

God of Creation

Herzliebster Jesu  11.11.11.5  ("Ah, Holy Jesus")

 

God of creation, We have seen the horror--

Great devastation, Overwhelming sorrow!

Hear now your people--  Homes and loved ones taken--

Feeling forsaken.

 

Christ of compassion, You who calmed the rough sea--

Hurricane crashing, We prayed for your mercy!

Comfort your people!  Hold them close, now giving

Hope for their living.

 

Give to your children Food to end their hunger,

Clean water's blessing, News of those they long for!

And by your Spirit, Use our gifts and labors

To help our neighbors.

 

Biblical references:  Genesis 1, Psalm 13, Matthew 8:23-27, 25:31-46; Luke 10:25-37

Tune:  Johann Cruger, 1640

Text:  Copyright © 2005 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette.  All rights reserved.

 

Carolyn Winfrey Gillette gives permission for the hymn's free use by churches that support the relief efforts of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.  Carolyn Winfrey Gillette and Bruce Gillette are pastors at Limestone Church in Wilmington, Del. 

Editorials

Responsibility and faithfulness

The final report of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church contains few surprises. The recommendations flow effortlessly out of the theological prologue that has been strengthened in its final draft. I do not mean that the recommendations were effortlessly achieved. I suspect they required negotiation and prayer, patience and longsuffering. But they demonstrate the same love for the church that characterize the prologue -- and for that, all Presbyterians may give thanks.

Faithful Presbyterians will profoundly disagree about some of them (see guest viewpoints in this issue). What is remarkable is that the same disagreements are incarnate within the Task Force itself, and yet they, after meeting for these past years, have invited the church to work for a more profound unity than we now know. The Task Force has given us the means to walk the walk that they have walked, and to stop tearing down rather than building up the Body of Christ, Presbyterian. They offer an "opportunity of discovering ways that the church can live more faithfully in the face of deep disagreements." And even in disagreement, they were able "to discern in their life together the outlines of Christian identity to which, we fervently believe, the church is called."

The report belies a theological orthodoxy and constitutional integrity that the church sorely needs to begin a renewed quest for genuine unity. It is from that foundation that we are asked -- not so much to eschew politics -- as to speak theologically and personally with our opponents for the sake of the church.  Some presbyteries and sessions and congregations have already begun such mutual engagement. Governing bodies where minds are made up will need to reach out to those with whom they disagree if the process is to succeed. We are being called to personal responsibility, especially those of us who are elders, deacons, and ministers of Word and Sacrament.

Uncategorized

Task Force: Balance, discernment are goals for PC(USA) future

CHICAGO -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should enter a "season of discernment," in which its ordination standards should not change, but local governing bodies should determine whether candidates for ordination have departed from those ordination standards -- and whether a departure in a particular case "constitutes a failure to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity."

The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA) approved that recommendation unanimously on August 25, after three and a half years of intensive work and with several of its members expressing joy in the outcome and a certainty, as Sarah Grace Sanderson-Doughty put it, that "we are being incredibly faithful to Christ and to one another."

The task force says the most important of its seven recommendations, the one from which all the others flow, is that Presbyterians learn to live in harmony with one another and "to avoid division into separate denominations."

The task force contends that it's not advocating "local option" regarding ordaining gays and lesbians, because the denomination's national ordination standards -- limiting ordination to those who practice chastity if they're single or fidelity if they're married -- would remain in effect. To adopt local option would be a distinct change, "and it would be un-Presbyterian," the report states.

Instead, the task force says it's returning to historic traditions of Presbyterian life and trying to restore a balance that hasn't always existed in the denomination's recent conflicted days.

Uncategorized

Church leaders condemn Pat Robertson’s call for Chavez assassination

(ENI) Christian leaders representing both conservative and liberal constituencies have lambasted Christian minister/broadcaster Pat Robertson for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Robertson's call "is appalling to the point of disbelief," National Council of Churches general secretary Robert Edgar said on Aug. 23 following Robertson's statement, delivered on the Christian Broadcast Network.

"We have the ability to take him [Chavez] out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,'" Robertson, a former Republican Party presidential candidate, said on his Aug. 22 television show, The 700 Club, of the Venezuelan president, who has often been at loggerheads with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. "We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong arm dictator," Robertson said. "'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."'

Editorials

Anticipation

When you read this, the final reports of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the church will have been published. The PC(USA) has invested itself in this four year process, not because what it recommends will solve our problems re:scriptural authority and ordination, but in hope that a way forward will emerge from the battles ravaging the reunited church for at least two decades.

To anticipate the report, I remembered a sermon on Jesus' Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13, the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time. There is nothing ordinary about this parable, which speaks to the problem of evil -- not as out there to be restrained by the forces of righteousness in a weed-free church. Instead, the parable invites us to decide how we will deal with the weeds. The good farmer sowed wheat in his field. While he and his servants were sleeping an enemy came and sowed weeds. When the servants discovered it, they asked the landowner how it could have happened, and he replied, "An enemy has done this."

Voices

The embryonic stem cell controversy and beyond

Readers of the OUTLOOK are familiar with the heated public controversy over the use of human embryos to harvest stem cells for medical research. What are called embryos are actually ova fertilized in a Petri dish. The zygotes are forced to undergo cell division, frozen and stored on a shelf for possible use later, usually for fertility treatment-- but never implanted in a human uterus. For that reason they are not really embryos, technically speaking. The point of interest is that they are currently the best source of "pluripotent stem cells," meaning cells that have the capacity to become any type of cell in the body when properly treated. These cells are needed to develop effective treatments for diseases that already include Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, juvenile diabetes, muscular dystrophy, and paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury.

The sticking point for those who object, including President George W. Bush, is that they believe these fertilized eggs possess the value of human beings and the process of extracting stem cells from them kills human life. Many scientists, on the other hand, have a hard time imagining how a still undifferentiated zygote that will never be implanted in a uterus qualifies as a human being. An estimated 400,000 fertilized ova or embryos are stored in U.S. freezers today, and most of them will be discarded.

Stem cell research is rapidly advancing in many other countries, notably the United Kingdom and South Korea, and in private U.S. labs that do not receive federal funding. Ironically, one of the effects of the Bush administration's ban on embryonic stem cell research funding is that the research is now barreling on outside the ethical guidelines established early in the game by the National Institutes of Health and approved by the Clinton administration. Those guidelines made it clear that only embryos could be used that were created for the purpose of fertility treatment and were in excess of clinical need. When stem cell research is removed from NIH oversight into the private sector, such ethical restrictions are not obligatory.

Voices

The shifting language of Christian Education

Is it time for a survey of the language of Presbyterian Christian Education?

I appreciate the conversation begun by Ben Sparks and pursued by Marge Shaw about the need to rediscover Christian education in our churches. It is not the first time in recent years that someone has asked, "Where has our denomination's historic emphasis on Christian education gone?"

As I look and listen for signs of a vital commitment to Christian education in our churches and the larger church, I am engaging in some interesting conversations. People in our churches and in the church are excited about a number of initiatives that sound a lot like Christian education to me, but when I ask about the difference, I am assured that they are talking about "more than Christian education." So what is going on here? What may be going on is that rather than losing our commitment to Christian education, we are now talking about it in different ways.

Voices

A peace pilgrimage to Japan

Sixty years ago in the blink of an eye an estimated 147,000 people were killed when atom bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Beautiful cities were instantly turned into radioactive wastelands.

As is true in all wars most of the victims were women, children and the elderly. Those near the epicenter were the lucky ones. They were vaporized. Tens of thousands further from ground zero were burned alive, dying in excruciating pain and begging for water. Thousands more died in later months and years of a strange disease called radiation, and even today higher rates of cancer and leukemia prevail in the region. Survivors of the blasts, now in their seventies and eighties, carry monumental physical and psychological scars.

This August, on a peace pilgrimage, I returned to Japan, where I spent nine years (1965-1974) as a missionary. I attended the 60th anniversaries of two bombs that in the words of Einstein "... changed everything except the way we think, and we drift toward unparalleled catastrophes."

Book Reviews

The Gospel According to America: Reflections on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea

by David Dark. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. ISBN 0664227694. Pb., 173 pp. $14.95.

The Gospel According to America is a winding path through the literature, film, and music of the American consciousness. It curves through theology and brings onto the stage of awareness figures ranging from Bayard Rustin to Dorothy Day, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, and Will Campbell. It is not an easy read for those unaccustomed to Melville, Hawthorne, and Pynchon--and far less easy for those who have never listened to Wilco, REM, or Dylan. Written in a style that at times leaves one considering the possibility that David Dark's marvelous offering was translated from the German (not so), the book is demanding; it is not a book for the beach. So why make the journey? Is the demand on the reader worthy?

Indeed it is. For Dark brings biblical insight--delivered in diverse cultural forms--to bear upon our history. He calls us to "stand firmly within the Jewish- Christian tradition and its teaching that evil doesn't come to us self-consciously, introducing itself and offering us a choice ("Join us in our evil"). It's more like a Faustian bargain, a narcissism in which we believe our fantasy to be the only real, unbiased version of events. We surround ourselves with voices that will affirm our fantasy and dismiss as treacherous (or evil) any witness that would call our innocence into question. (p. 76)

Uncategorized

Israel’s Supreme Court approves destruction of synagogues

(RNS) Israel's Supreme Court ruled Aug. 23 that all synagogues in the now-vacated Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank should be destroyed, but that everything portable be relocated to Israel.

The court was responding to a petition by Jewish settlers who objected to the government's plan to destroy all Jewish religious institutions -- 30 synagogues as well as eight yeshivas and seminaries -- in Gaza. The destruction would be part of the government's withdrawal of residents and troops from 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank.

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