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Presbyterian missions: Knowing heritage, serving as global partners

Missions as an integral part of Presbyterian church life and biblical mandate is both Tom Hastings' practical work and his urgent interest. The church devalues its past and waters down its present and future missions mandate at its peril, he says.

Appointed a PC(USA) mission worker in 1988, Hastings teaches practical theology and Christian education at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary. He also lectures and preaches, and works in a prison chaplaincy ministry.

As with many who live and serve in two countries and contexts, Hastings' appreciation and concern for both his American home church and Christian work in Japan are evident.

The years Presbyterians have worked with local believers in Japan span years of change, turmoil and reconfiguration in missions efforts by American churches, he says. Presbyterians came to Japan and often did excellent work in education, health, and church work. By the 1970s, Christians in America were backing away from the stereotypes of bad mission work, but lost touch also with what was important, he says.

While American Presbyterians are indifferent or ignorant of their history, Japanese Presbyterians take it very seriously, he says. "The Presbyterian legacy in Japan is taken very seriously in Japan," he says. Over the past century, hundreds of American Presbyterians have served in Japan. "Who will be the stewards of this history?" he asks.

Task Force Recommendations release August 25th

CHICAGO -- Tweak here, clarify there, make the sentences crisp and clear.

On Aug. 25, the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will announce its long-awaited recommendations. But today -- the day before the big day -- the task force spent about an hour editing and improving draft sections of the report it had made public in July. The task force went back into closed session after that for more private discussions.

That leaves about a three-hour block of time scheduled for Aug. 25 to make the recommendations, discuss them and vote on the final report.

Many of the editing changes suggested were minor, meant to sharpen a point or clear up cluttered language -- there were certainly no roaring discussions. The task force members have seen these drafts before; any major differences of views, if they existed, apparently have been worked out in private.

So they concentrated today on the fine points.

Hanover Presbytery (1755): Samuel Davies and Patrick Henry

The organization of the Hanover Presbytery, now Presbytery of the James in Virginia, is a fascinating tale of pious migrants settling the Mid-Atlantic region, of emerging church leaders challenging them to grow and cooperatively come together during the turbulent years before the American Revolution broke out.

Francis Makemie, the father of American Presbyterianism, wrote A Plain and Persuasive to the Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland (1750). He advised migrants to the New World to move south into Virginia and to build houses, churches, and school, to grow tobacco. Makemie then moved north, won a right to preach and build churches in New York and vicinity. He helped form America's first Presbytery. The body grew, disagreed over matters such as the First Great Awakening, split into Old Side -- New Side, but carried on. Pious people, but without clergy, streamed into Virginia. Some began to form "reading houses," as they were called, because Williamsburg's Anglican establishment would not allow other Protestants to build "churches." A William Morris, for example, joined with his neighbors to meet and study books they had, including Luther's Galatians commentary, John Knox's Scot's Confession, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and George Whitefield's sermons. The movement spread. When asked by authorities to which denomination they belonged, they identified themselves as Presbyterians, aided by New Side clergyman from New Castle, William Robinson.

Task Force Considers what Church of 21st Century will be

DALLAS – What will the world be like in the 21st century – and what will the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) need to be like in order to reach that world?

In other words, what will the future church be like?

One year later, divestment exposes sharp divide between Jews, Protestants

They marched together for civil rights in the 1960s, sang the 1980s hit “We Are the World” for famine relief in Africa and held interfaith discussions following the release of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

Carl named fifth president of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

The Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Board of Directors on July 21 named the Rev. Dr. William J. Carl III as its next president. Carl currently serves as pastor of the 1,700-member First Church in Dallas, Texas, a position he has held since 1983.

Church members ministering “where God wants me to be”

Sometimes the path is straight and clear. And sometimes the journeys of the heart twist around through thickets and wilderness and desert and what seem to be dead ends. But they keep walking. Across the church, acting from faith, ordinary people stir concrete and walk into prisons and set up cots. Sometimes people end up in places they never would have imagined, meeting people whose lives seem so different and yet with whom they discover they have so much in common.

And when they get to that unexpected place, they often say: "This is exactly where God wants me to be."

Task Force: No position on ordination

DALLAS -- The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) apparently will not take a position on one of the church's most divisive issues: whether gays or lesbians who aren't celibate should be ordained.

While the group's final recommendations won't be released until August, the task force says in a draft report released July 19 that it "was not asked to take a position on human sexuality or ordination and we have not attempted to do so. We did invest considerable time and energy in conversation, seeking to understand each other's points of view. We did not try to convince fellow Task Force members of our own perspectives or to decide whether the church's current position should be changed."