Monthly Archives: June 2007

Decently and in Order: We Presbyterians can be an interesting lot

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Congratulations to the Bergen (NY) First Presbyterian Church as they celebrate their 200th anniversary later this month.  The church began as a commissioned group of East Guilford, Conn., Congregationalists.  In reading an article from the Westside News about the anniversary and events one item at the very end of the article sparked my interest.  The church met in homes and school buildings before it built its first building in 1828.  In 1854 the church moved about a mile north when the railroad came through and they wanted to be part of the developing community.  The location of the original church building became a cemetery and has a stone marking the location of the church.  What attracted my attention was where the article says:

It is also said, according to historical accounts, that some families who were members of the congregation in 1854, picked their burial plots in Mt. Rest Cemetery to be in the spots where their pews had been when the church building stood there.

Not to be irreverent, but I can think of about a dozen one-liners that could be said about that, many related to listening to sermons.  I had considered the title of “Descently and in Order” for this post but thought that pun was a bit much, even for me.

State of the PCUSA: II — Departure of churches from the PC(USA)

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This past week the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) issued a formal response to the New Wineskins Association of Churches (NWAC) document that details their perceived problems with the PC(USA).  The New Wineskins Strategy Team Report, A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven, was adopted at their Winter Convocation in February.  While there was some general response at that time, this week the PCUSA sent a letter from Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick and General Assembly Council Executive Director Linda Valentine to all the middle governing bodies promoting new materials from the Office of Theology that directly addresses the NWAC concerns (the PCUSA letter calls them “mischaracterizations”).  The Presbyterian News Service has issued a press release on the letter and materials and the letter, a one page summary, and the four page detailed commentary can be found as a single PDF file on the PC(USA) Middle Governing Body Connect site.  (The titling of the file as “wineskins-letter-brief” had me looking for the long version but as best as I can tell that is the whole thing.)

The material is basically what many of us PC(USA) watchers would have expected out of Louisville:  It is well written, contains numerous references to the confessions, particularly the confession of 1967, explains in detail the actions of the General Assembly with respect to different reports, like the Trinity Report, and overall is a great rebuttal to the NWAC document.  There are however two problems.

The first problem is that it will have difficulty getting into the hands of the members in the pews and when it does it is written at a level that will put the average person asleep faster than a slow sermon on a hot day.  There is an obvious reason for sending it to Middle Governing Bodies and that is because that is the place that it will be used and understood.  I can’t see this getting much “trickle down” from there the way that the NWAC strategy report got distributed.

The second problem is the persistent one in the PC(USA) about our words matching our actions.  As much as the NWAC is a relatively small percentage of the churches in the PC(USA), there are also a small number of churches on the progressive side whose theology and actions, when they become known through the media (including this blog), seem to contradict the nice words in this document.  (If you want examples I refer you to my blog posts of Sept. 28, 2006; Nov. 11, 2006; April 19, 2007)  This is not helped by actions at the national level which include the infamous “Re-imagining Conference,” the “Louisville Papers,” and the publication of “Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11.”  I realize that there is a rational explanation behind every one of these and I am lumping three very different issues together.  But that is the way that many of the PC(USA) members view what has been happening in the denomination over the last couple of decades.  In their minds all these things can not be separated!

This is not to say that there are not good things coming out of Louisville.  In particular I point to the Director of Evangelism and Church Growth, Eric Hoey’s comments in the June Perspectives where he realistically assesses the declining rate of adult baptisms and membership decline and says:

This tells me very clearly that Presbyterians do not know how to share the “Good News” of their faith and welcome people into our churches through baptism… If we continue down this path of not being able to share our faith, the apple of the PC(USA) will soon fall apart! (emphasis his)

This almost seems to reinforce the NWAC contention that the PCUSA has lost its missional interest.

Anyway, I’ll get down off my soapbox now, but it is important to remember that the PC(USA) operates on several levels and it has been my experience that what happens at higher governing bodies has little day-to-day importance or visibility to the “member in the pew.”

We will see what will happen with this document.  In my experience, it will get a limited circulation to people who already know this material.

In the mean time there is serious action with NWAC leaving the PC(USA) in favor of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.  While several churches are moving in this direction, I will highlight two.

The first is Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church in Signal Mountain, Tennessee.  This departure is notable because of the size of the church and the amicable way in which it happened.  It is a church of 1800 members and following the congregational vote of 1,082-10 on January 28 the Presbytery of East Tennessee established an Administrative Commission to review the situation.  The report of the Commission in the presbytery meeting packet (report begins on page 7) is interesting, if for nothing else than it’s generally positive and friendly tone.  For example, from the forward:

We wish to acknowledge the cooperative spirit and non-confrontational approach evinced by the Session of SMPC, and especially the Clerk of Session, Steve Frost, in their interactions with the ARC. Every request from the ARC to the Session for information and records were met in a timely and gracious fashion. The character of conversations moved quickly from cautious to cordial to trustful. This alone distinguishes the current situation with most other dismissal requests in the denominations, which have been characterized by hostility, distrust and, oftentimes, aggression. The ARC has tried to find a different way that, while recognizing our obvious differences with the members of SMPC, emphasizes our commonality resulting from being a part of the Body of Christ. If we have succeeded, it is due in no small measure to the like-minded approach taken by SMPC’s Session. Indeed, the letter of January 10, 2007, was notable for its pastoral and gracious tone, and made a pastoral approach by ARC possible. We thank God for these, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

In the action items the recommendation is:

That Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church be dismissed from the Presbytery of East Tennessee, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), with property, real and personal (i.e., all assets), to the Presbytery of the Southeast of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, effective immediately upon receipt by the Stated Clerk of PET of notification of acceptance of SMPC by the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of the Southeast of the EPC; said dismissal being contingent upon no other conditions.

So the church got to leave with their property and name.  In addition, the church agreed to continue to support the presbytery mission budget for another five years and the two parties agreed to a transition support structure for any Associate Pastor that wanted to remain in the PC(USA).  The Presbyt
erian News Service has a press release on the departure as do other media sources.

The second high-profile church to vote to leave the PC(USA) is Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh Presbytery.  On June 3 the congregation voted 951 to 93 to request the presbytery dismiss them to pursue membership in the EPC.  This action is probably not a surprise since the church called the Rev. Dr. D. Dean Weaver in 2005 to serve as senior pastor.  Rev. Weaver is co-moderator of the NWAC.  The yes vote exceeded a threshold that the church set with the presbytery so now negotiations over the details of the departure, including the property, will begin.  According to the PC(USA) press release another church in Pittsburgh Presbytery has reportedly reached an agreement with the presbytery to pay the presbytery $250,000 over 10 years.  The Memorial Park Church has issued its own press release about the congregational vote.

In addition an opposition blog was established last Saturday June 9.  I am a bit hesitant to mention it since it contains one entry with strong language and accusations against the way the meeting and vote was conducted and I do not see an e-mail address or name for contacting the author.  I won’t link to it but if you use “memorial park church blog” in your favorite search engine it should come right up.

And finally a reminder that the General Assembly of the EPC meets next week where they will vote on establishing a special transitional presbytery for NWAC churches that wish to transition to the EPC in that way.

Passings: Ruth Bell Graham

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Ruth Bell Graham, arguably the most famous Presbyterian who is not generally thought of as a Presbyterian, died yesterday at home in the southern Presbyterian capital of Montreat, North Carolina.  While married to the great Baptist evangelist Billy Graham, she was a life-long Presbyterian herself.  I have often wondered if they got into some of the heavy theological discussions that occasionally happen in my household or if they agreed to disagree and left it at that.

I will not attempt to summarize her life and contribution to her husband’s work, there is plenty being written about that in the media today.

I will note two things:

First, according to the news reports she, and when the time comes her husband, will be buried at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte.  This is something that she reportedly resisted strongly for some time but the news reports indicate that she did finally agree to it.

Second, some quotes from the family…

Billy Graham: “I will miss her terribly, and look forward even more to the day I can join her in Heaven.”

Franklin Graham: “My father would not have been what he is today if it wasn’t for my
mother.”

General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America: Approval of the Federal Vision Report

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The 35th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America has just voted to approve the Report of the Ad Interim Study Committee on Federal Vision, New Perspective, and Auburn Avenue Theologies.  The vote was by a show of hands and from the view on the webcast it appeared to pass by a very wide margin.

The time for the delivery of the report and debate was set at one hour and was subsequently extended twice, once for 30 minutes and once for five minutes.  The third vote to extend debate failed.

The debate was decent and in order, but also emotional and strong.  There was a procedural motion that I did not get the exact wording on but which would have referred it back the study committee and added two Federal Vision proponents to the committee with a new report to next year’s GA.  This procedural motion was actually what most of the debate was on. That motion failed by a narrow enough margin that the hands had to be counted.  Sorry, I did not get the count from the webcast.

I’ll give a more comprehensive account of my impressions of the GA as a whole at another time.  At this point the GA moves on to more routine business and we will see what the blogosphere does.

The state of the PCUSA: I — Membership continues decline

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Well, the numbers are out and, to no ones surprise, the membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA) continues to decline.  The annual numbers for 2006 are contained in a press release from the Presbyterian News Service as well as detailed statistics and commentary in the current (June) issue of the Office of the General Assembly’s on-line publication Perspectives.  Looking back at past issues of Perspectives I see that the 2004 stats were also published there in the June 2005  issue with less commentary (at least direct commentary). [It looks like when they don’t have a GA to float them at they go to Perspectives.]

In reading through the associated articles there are some good points made but in some places they appear more like  analyzing the obvious or spin.  In the former, I give you a couple of lines from the end of the article by Kris Valerius (manager of OGA statistics) titled “The Rest of the Story“:

The bottom line: For
growth to appear, our overall losses need to go down and our overall
gains need to go up. The 2006 picture shows we lost fewer people, but
we also brought fewer into the church. Not the formula for growth.

A few other statistics are mentioned in that article, but I’ll take a closer look at those in a minute.

The rest of the articles take a look at the statistics from various views including “look forward and not back” or “look beyond the numbers to the vibrant and faithful congregations” or “today’s young people are not joiners and membership numbers don’t tell the whole story.”  The latter item is a very valid point and while worship attendance is reported by congregations the OGA does not report these numbers in this statistical summary.  I did appreciate the articles by Clark D. Cowden and Eric Hoey who view the numbers as a wake-up call.  Rev. Cowden writes how the church needs to be missional and reaching out and Rev. Hoey looks at the number of adult baptisms reported and their steep decline in the last three years and says something similar about spreading the gospel.

Being a bit of a geek, well actually a major geek and a research scientist, I have gone back a couple more years to get as much info as I could quickly.  Combining this year’s stats with those published in 2005 gives six years data (2001-2006) to better analyze trends.  The interesting thing is that in this data there are few statistically strong trends.  However, three trends come through “loud and clear” and two more are significant.

The first two statistically significant trends are for the decline in the number of congregations and decline in total membership.  (By “statistically significant I mean that the linear regression has an R-squared of almost 1 (in case you care)).  The six year trend in congregation decline is 47 congregations/year and in membership it is 45,469 members/year.  To put this into perspective, this is a loss of one medium sized presbytery worth of churches and one large presbytery in terms of members.

The other strong trend is the growth in ordained ministers at an average of 41 per year.  While some of the writers are correct that in pointing out that this is an encouraging trend, it is also disturbing to realize that even with more ministers it is not doing any good at growing the membership.

In addition, there are weaker trends ( R-squared of 0.55 and 0.80 respectively) in the slight decline in churches received and the trend in the increasing number of churches dismissed.  Both of these are small numbers, but the recent history of a beginning exodus of chruches to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church may reinforce this trend in the coming year.  Stay tuned.

General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America: Federal Vision Report

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With the 35th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America beginning in Memphis this coming Tuesday, June 12, clearly the hot-button issue is the Federal Vision Report.  I have three previous posts on the report from April 26, May 1, and May 31.  In that last post I mentioned a letter signed by ten pastors (Teaching Elders or TE in PCA terminology) that urged caution in approving the report.  A comment to that post from Andrew Malloy, author of the blog A Submerging Church, alerted me to another letter posted June 5th on the blog Humble Answers that supports approving the report. (It is also available as a PDF.)  Furthermore, by e-mailing the blog you can add your name to the letter in support.  The list of signatories has now grown from the original eight pastors and one ruling elder to 36 more teaching elders, 18 ruling elders, and five who did not specify but were usually in academics.  And the list is growing.  It was interesting to note that in several cases several of the ruling elders were from the same church as a pastor who had signed ahead of them, either originally or in the add-ons.

This open letter is long and the content generally addresses the points in the first open letter and some comments on the web.  Specifically, they defend the breadth, if not the diversity, of the Study Committee, the unity of the committee and the lack of a minority report, the completeness of the report, and the narrowness of the interpretation of the Westminster Confession.  Finally, they address the issue of whether the PCA has had the necessary time to discuss and study the issue.  They point out that several other reformed denominations have spoken and that now is the time for the church to speak authoritatively on the topic.

There has been a low level of response so far, most so far it seems is positive.  But it is looking like the lines are being drawn and the politicking is going on.  When it comes to guessing what action the GA will take few seem to be sticking their necks out.  But, in our Presbyterian system, we pray that the commissioners to the Assembly will be guided by the Holy Spirit.

General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland

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There are several Presbyterian items that I need to get caught up on, but being a GA Junkie, I will turn first to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland which began in Belfast on Monday and continues through tomorrow.

There are several high-profile items of business, but as with many Presbyterian denominations, same-sex issues top the list.  These come under the report of the Board of Social Witness.  While the report deals with many of the ministries of the church to society, the report also contains a section (starting on page 21 of 31) titled “Pastoral Guidelines — Homosexuality.”  This section was written in response to action at last year’s GA requesting “guidelines to help our Church to develop more sensitive and effective pastoral care.”  The writers of the report, to avoid labeling someone as “homosexual” and thereby defining who they are by that title chose to refer in the report to “people who have same sex attraction.”  In addition, this report was not setting the PCI position, that is still the report of 1979, but rather provides guidelines.  The report begins with some stories from individuals and families to illustrate the need for pastoral care and then states:

We are all fallen human beings and for each one the fall has affected our sexuality as it has all aspects of our being.
    However, as with all areas of sexual attraction, what we do about it as individuals is a matter of choice for which we are morally responsible. This is the sentiment behind the Assembly’s comment on the Report of 1979.
    When we condemn homosexual practice in isolation or single it out as somehow worse than other sexual practices outside of heterosexual marriage then we demonstrate homophobic attitudes.

I am particularly impressed with the footnote that goes with these paragraphs which begins:

4 Despite all attempts in the media to push the idea that same sex attraction is purely genetic the jury is still out and may remain so. While there are studies that point towards biological factors there are other studies that lean strongly towards the nurture side of the debate.

In the section that followed this I was struck by the balance the writers use and the insight into our culture, both religious and popular.  It is extended but I quote in its entirety:

    5.4 When a church states that it cannot agree with practicing same sex relationships it is most often taken as rejection of the person because of their perceived identity – ie ‘I am a homosexual!’ However, as a church, we believe our identity should be defined primarily in terms of our humanity before God and not in terms of sexual orientation. It would be helpful in dialogue if we focused more on the whole person before God and did not make sexuality the focus of our understanding.
    5.5 Exploring this point of perceived identity would also promote greater understanding of those within the Presbyterian Church who wish to exercise genuine pastoral care yet maintain Biblical integrity regarding marriage as being solely between a man and a woman and sexual practice as being for that relationship alone.
    5.6 There is the need for the church to understand that a consistent approach is needed. Compassion begins in the pulpit and works out from there. Condemnation from the pulpit closes the door to compassionate care outside the pulpit. Pastoral care is built on proclamation.
    5.7 The ‘rights’ dominated culture so aggressively surrounding ‘gay’ issues sends a message to the church that it is not acceptance as people that is being sought but rather endorsement of a way of life. The problem for many within the church is that while they would want to accept people in the name of Jesus Christ they cannot, in all integrity of conscience, endorse a way of life that they see as contrary to God’s Word.

The report then goes on to discuss pastoral care for these individuals.  Some of this is the usual counseling practice about confidentiality and avoiding labels.  Some is the call for the church to be loving, open and understanding to the individuals.  And some is wise counsel that immediately preaching their sinfulness and need of repentance and forgiveness will probably turn them away from the church where they could hear it later after relationship has been developed.

The Assembly took up the report and the reports (official PCI, Belfast Telegraph) indicate that the debate was lively, as I would expect.  It was said multiple times that for some this report goes too far and for others not far enough.  There was an amendment to send the report down to the presbyteries which lost 163 to 168.  The pastoral care report was approved 159 to 120 but the report of the Board of Social Witness was arrested due to the time and it will resume later in the week.

In other actions, Dr. John Finlay was elected and installed as the Moderator of the Assembly.  In his speech he encouraged the church to “practice what it preaches” so they could convince the secular world about the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  In a related action, the Assembly voted down a Business Board proposal to install the Moderator at the end of the Assembly to work for the coming year and run the following year’s assembly.

Today’s business included guidelines from the Doctrine Committee about participation in inter-faith events.  The guiding principles the committee brought were that the “integrity of the Gospel is not compromised” and that acts of worship are “separate and distinctive.”

What is probably the second highest profile decision in front of the Assembly was the sale of the PCI main offices.  This was approved by the 2004 GA but last year’s Assembly voted to rescind the action and the action to rescind must be agreed to by this year’s Assembly under church law.  From the quotes in the daily summary it must have been a very lively debate with arguments for and against the historic nature of the building, cost of upkeep and refurbishment, location in central Belfast, and the relevance, or lack of, to modern culture.  In the end, the motion to rescind was affirmed by a vote of 332 to 234 and the business items related to refurbishment put off due to the hour.

A couple of thing that strike me:  One is the amount of business which has lapsed due to arrested reports.  The Assembly appears to have a busy time ahead of them at some point.  The second is the vote tallies.  Roughly the same number of members voted in favor of rescinding as voted in total for the same-sex pastoral care report.  Where were those extra 234 for those votes?