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Thanksgiving 2000

Grace and gratitude lie at the heart of Christian faith. Yet their meaning is far from selfÐevident. This has become clear to me, year after year, in teaching seminary and divinity students, for whom the most basic aspects of the gospel are sometimes as difficult as a foreign language. The difficulties in understanding grace extend, however, beyond the classroom, as should be clear to anyone who has focused carefully and critically upon the divisive debates that have strewn their wreckage over the life of the church in recent times. So then, what is the meaning and substance of grace?

St. Paul and The God Poseidon

Marrying, as I did, a gorgeous redhead (there being no other kind) includes automatic induction into the League of Timid Men.  This explains why I did not object when my lady wife announced that she was going to learn to ski so she could join our grown children on the snowy mountains.  Actually, I was delighted to hear this decision since she had been contemplating learning to hang glide.

Presbyterians initiated UNICEF’s ‘Trick-or-Treat’ program 50 years ago

The PC(USA) General Assembly has declared July 2000-June 2001 the "Year of the Child." By a happy providence, this All Hallows Eve, Oct. 31, is also the 50th anniversary of the United Nation's International Children's Emergency Fund's "Trick-or-Treat" program.

The Need for Good Neighbors

Present at this year's General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was Roy Sanderson, our oldest surviving General Assembly moderator. When I asked this sprightly 93-year-old what he was doing these days, he told me he was taking a computer class at a college in East Lothian. I was full of admiration.

A Czech Visitor Looks at the PC(USA)

Editors' note: Andrew Stehlik of the Czech Republic recently served a year as a mission-partner-in-residence with the PC(USA) Worldwide Ministries Division in Louisville. He wrote about his impressions of the PC(USA) in the Czech Working Group newsletter for July 2000. The working group, created by the General Assembly Council in 1995, works closely with the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren to improve and expand the relationships between the two churches.

The Pathway to Partnership

I resonate with William Saum's reminiscence of General Assemblies focused on "great issues confronting the church and the world." I lament with Saum that little at this year's Assembly reflected the enthusiasm of last year's cutting-edge report from the Church Growth Task Force, "Hey, I am doing a new thing . . . . Do you get it?"

Presbyterians Do Mission in PartnershipPolicy Statement

The PC(USA) seeks to engage the church in faithful and vital global mission.

As Christians, we understand "Mission" to be God's work-centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and made real through the active and leading power of the Holy Spirit -- for the world God loves.

The Death of Denominations?

Actions by recent General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are beginning to force many of our members to consider a choice between God and our denomination. We are not alone. Other denominations are doing the same. If denominations continue to force their members to choose between their deeply committed personal religious beliefs and their denominational affiliation, the denominations will lose.

The PC(USA) and the China Christian Council

Today there are a number of conflicting accounts as to the status of Christianity in China. One persistent version begins with the assumption that an atheistic Communist government will not tolerate the presence of a true Christian church. Consequently, Christianity in China must be sharply divided between an "apostate church" -- represented by the China Christian Council which is supported by the atheistic government -- and the "true underground church," which is subject to continuous persecution and harassment.

The Gospel – Fixed or Dynamic?

Two years ago I spent a semester teaching Christian ethics at Gujranwala Theological Seminary in Pakistan. Participating in the life of the Christian community in a Muslim country -- faculty discussion with Pakistani professors and others sent by the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand or the United States, or one of the Korean churches; getting to know students, many of them women -- was a rich experience.

Closin the Back Door of the Church

John Haberlin's "A Response to the Continued Membership Decline" has opened the door for a serious discussion of the continued membership decline in the denomination.

He suggests that we focus on attendance rather than membership for appraisal of church growth or decline.

Strengthening the office of Elder

Soon, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will begin as new round of conversations with the Episcopal Church, focusing on the recognition of their office of bishop and our office of elder. We should make this an opportunity to clarify and strengthen our understanding of the eldership, for the sake of life within the Presbyterian Church.

There is a Way Out

While a gay legislator addressed a recent political convention, a delegate held up a sign which read, "There is a way out." The intended reference was that gays and lesbians can simply change by becoming heterosexuals. Regardless of how one feels about that advice, the phrase itself provides wise counsel for Presbyterians. Although caught in a seeming interminable struggle over the ordination of gays and lesbians, there is a way out for the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Ground Your Weapons – A Letter from Scotland

"The spectacle presented by the indecent squabbles of priests of most denominations, and the unfairness and rancor with which they conduct their differences utterly repel me . . . . The Church's hand is at its own throat . . . . The Master of the New Testament is put out of sight."

Mission at Home and Abroad

In 1993 the General Assembly adopted an insightful, prophetic document presented by Worldwide Ministries, "Mission in the 1990s." It offered five crucial challenges, all of which have as much urgency and relevance now for the PC(USA) as at the beginning of the decade.

The Center of Inclusion

Over my ministry I've been called a conservative, a Communist, a secularist, an evangelical, a liberal, a Congregationalist and now lately a centrist. I'm getting calls from people saying, "You represent the center. Do something." A person cozies up to me at a meeting and asks, "What are those of us in the center going to do when the denomination splits?" I am hearing a plea that the ill-defined, nebulous center will miraculously rise up to hold our denomination together.

A Commitment to Unity

The 212th General Assembly affirmed the fragile unity of our denomination by rejecting one of the Beaver-Butler overtures and by delaying for one more year consideration of the overtures dealing with sexuality and ordination. One can infer from their decisions the belief that Presbyterians are neither ready to divide the denomination nor to continue debating the issues surrounding sexuality and ordination.

Guiding the Ark and Fighting the Woodpeckers

Long time pal Phil is retiring. I write, inviting him to join me in forming a senior step ball team. We were champs in seminary -- in the game where the batter throws a tennis ball against the Alexander Hall steps at Princeton and the fielders have to catch it before it bounces.

Recruiting the Future Leadership of the Church

A professor friend at Union-PSCE some time ago sent me a tape recording of one of his classes. The visitor for the day was a Methodist bishop whose assignment was director of worldwide evangelism for the United Methodist Church. He described in detail his experience in his first parish in a small church in a poor neighborhood in Sydney, Australia:

Post-Denominational Presbyterians?

There are some questions which need to be asked:

* Are denominations any longer viable? Or are they archaic? Or are they "The moral failure of Christianity?" (Richard Niebuhr)