Monthly Archives: October 2007

Update on the Proposed Merger of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and The Reformed Ecumenical Council

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Late last week it was announced from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) meeting in Trinidad and Tobago that their recommendation to The Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) for the new name of the combined body after they merge is the World Communion of Reformed Churches.  The proposed name is the topic of a WARC news story.  However, to make things clear a definition of “communion” was included:

Communion is an expression of our being together in the body of Christ as we move towards that oneness which is the gift and calling of God, fully expressed in the Trinity. Our desire to enter into communion signifies the commitment of our churches, in the richness of diversity, to mutual caring, respect and service of one another, as witness to our common
calling by the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ.

The proposed name first goes to REC for approval and then to the WARC member churches according to the story.

WARC, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is clearly the larger body with 214 member churches in 107 countries.  These include the major Reformed churches worldwide such as the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church (USA).  In the US it also includes the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Church in America, the Christian Reformed Church in North America, and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.

The REC, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is roughly one quarter the size of WARC with 39 member churches in 25 countries.  In North America the only member is the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

The proposal is for a uniting convention in Grand Rapids in 2010.

Reformation Day – 2007

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36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

Tradition has it that on this day in 1517 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, an invitation to debate this and 94 other theses.  While not the actual beginning of the Protestant Reformation, it was an act of speaking truth to power that in time shook the western church to its foundations and ultimately resulted in the Lutheran church, and numerous other branches, splitting from it.  A century early, Jan Hus was teaching against indulgences, so that controversy was not new to Luther. But Luther, and many of the reformers that shortly followed, found strong political, if not popular, support that saved them from and their message from an untimely end in flames as Hus found.

94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell;

95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.

It has been a long week around here

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Has it only been a week?  It seems much longer, but it was only a week ago today that the fires broke out around Southern California.  We have lived with a week of evacuations, uncertainty over the status, or continued existence, of homes, and smoke-clogged air.  We have had closed roads, canceled sporting events, and fire crews and aircraft moving around us.  It has been a long week.

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance workers arrived last Sunday and they stopped by our Synod Meeting on Friday evening to introduce themselves and let us know what they were doing. ( Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, California wildfire response page).

There were numerous people who called in to request to be excused from the Assembly because they were under evacuation or otherwise affected by the fires.  Even the Synod Moderator was checking in with family several times a day to find out the status of his home.  By adjournment on Saturday he could report that the evacuation had been lifted for his area and his home was safe.

And at the Assembly we twice sang a new hymn, “O God of Mighty Wind and Flame,” by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette written in response to the current disaster.  I appreciate the tie-in to the tune Ellacombe which is also the tune frequently used for “I sing the mighty power of God.”

But it was also a long week for me as part of a Synod Task Force that was working on a new mission design for the Synod.  We had our last meeting on Tuesday with the Synod meeting starting Thursday evening.  The Synod meeting was pretty full with reports and we gave ours on Friday afternoon and then did two rounds of Q&A.  “The devil is in the details,” if you will pardon the expression.  Much of the questioning was about details:  why people were selected this way or that, why this or that was put where-ever.  And some of the questions were due to the fact that certain details did not agree between our three documents.

The surprise came on Saturday morning when the Assembly debated and voted on the new design.  While there were several proposed amendments and a few that were approved, overall the design was approved in its basic form with only details changed.  In general, the new design strips the synod organizational chart down to its essentials:  Ecclesiastical matters, corporate matters, and cross-presbytery ministries.  The synod size is reduced with reductions by almost half to the Assembly and the council.  And only Book of Order committees are specifically mentioned in the design so the design is flexible allowing each division to organize themselves as they see best for their function at any given time.

But maybe the biggest surprise, and stress, of the week was being asked to take a significant role in the new structure and help shape the cross-presbytery ministry piece.  No good deed goes unpunished.  Anyway, after prayer and talking with several people I agreed to do it, but I committed all of them to keep praying for me as I take on this position.  We shall see what the next year holds.

The End of Daylight Savings Time – NOT!

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In these days of electronic gizmos, don’t rely on them too heavily.  As we get ready to go to worship this morning I had to get my older son out of bed.  He was awake but just taking his time since his clock told him he was plenty early.

Well, it turned out that his and my other son’s clock, our VCR, and even the time on the hoster of this blog, have the old Daylight Savings Time rules.  Last year this was the day we set out clocks back.  Wait a week and they’ll be correct again.  Or, as my older son figured out, set them for Mountain time.

Presbyterian Church (USA) and Church of Scotland Parallels

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A new news article “Church of Scotland leaders see many parallels with PC(USA)” talks about a visit by two Church of Scotland ministers to the Presbyterian Church (USA) offices in Louisville.  The story from the Presbyterian News Service discusses the ministers’ trip and how they talked with PC(USA) staff, particularly Rev. Tom Taylor, about similar issues for both churches.  These include the decline in membership, lack of young people joining/participating in the church, restructuring the national offices, and the controversy over ordination standards.  The story says that Rev. Taylor had visited the Church of Scotland offices last spring for similar discussions.

Beyond those listed in the story, the list of parallel challenges between the two churches goes very deep.  Three or four years ago, at a meeting of a presbytery committee I was on, I read off a list of issues before the General Assembly that included the ones mentioned above plus some more that included more subtle polity and membership issues.  I then informed the committee that I took the list from the Church of Scotland GA and everyone in the room recognized that they would also be issues at the PC(USA) GA the following month.

Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water (or lack thereof)

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One of the names for the Los Angeles area from the indigenous peoples was “Valley of the Smokes” because the mountains and the on-shore winds worked together to trap the smoke from campfires in the basins.  In the last four days our area has lived up to that name, but interestingly it is because the off-shore Santa Ana winds are stirring up the fires.

Last night the moon was a pumpkin orange color and the past few mornings the sunrise has been spectacular, all due to the smoke in the air.  But our neighborhood smells of smoke, there are white ash flecks on everything outdoors, and pretty much all outdoor sporting and recreation events are canceled.  The other day on my way home from work I passed a fire strike team from the San Francisco Bay area that was headed to one of the fires.  And I don’t even live that close to the current fires.  It has made for some interesting NASA imagery.

I am sure that you are aware that since early Sunday morning an almost unprecedented series of fires has been burning throughout southern California.  One of the fires very first casualties was Malibu Presbyterian Church.  The Presbyterian News Service issued an initial news story on Monday about the Malibu Church loss and the fires.  Today the News Service posted a “ special update“, reprinting an update that Rev. Steve Yamaguchi, Executive Presbyter of neighboring Los Ranchos Presbytery, put out.  Steve also talks about how in the midst of this loss the church is still a witness to the community talking about Christians being a “resurrection people.”  Updates are also available from the Presbytery of the Pacific web site, the Presbytery of which Malibu is a part.

In addition, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has two staff members in the area and I am hoping that we can hear from at least one of them at our Synod meeting that begins tomorrow.

But while the Malibu fire has gotten a lot of press, it is among the smaller of the fires that are burning.  The two major fires and several smaller ones in the San Diego area have displaced 250,000 people, including several Presbyterians I know.  The Presbytery of San Diego lists several of its churches as evacuation centers, but one of those, Solano Beach Presbyterian Church, had to be evacuated itself, at least for a day or two.

The good news is that the winds are slowly calming down, the temperatures are dropping, and the humidity is rising.  But there is a lot of brush and timber burning and even under ideal conditions it would take a while to get this much acreage under control.  I don’t know if any of these fires will, by itself, pass the record Ceder Fire of 2003 that caused major destruction in the San Diego area, or the slightly smaller Zaca Fire that burned most of this past summer in the wilderness north of Santa Barbara.  But as of this morning’s situation report the Harris Fire on the north side of San Diego was at 194,000 acres with 1% containment so it could set new records.

Just as the smoke is casting a shadow on southern California this disaster will be casting its shadow on the meeting of the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii the next few days.  We appreciate your prayers and as interesting news and Presbyterian specific information becomes available I’ll post updates.

Singing All the Verses

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The closing hymn in worship this morning was “God of Grace and God of Glory“, the words written by Harry Emerson Fosdick, a Baptist minister who served a Presbyterian congregation for a while.  This is one of my favorite hymns and Fosdick’s words speak powerfully to me, about crowning the Church’s story, facing evil, and about being “Rich in things and poor in soul.” (O how I love “things.”)

It always intrigues me how hymns that come out of certain traditions become classics transcending the different publishing streams.  This hymn, written by one of the great progressive ministers of the 20th century who preached against fundamentalism, is found in many hymnals published by evangelical publishing houses.  In a like manner, Augustus Toplady‘s famous hymn “Rock of Ages” appears in Methodist hymnals despite Toplady’s very strong theological disagreements with John Wesley and the contention that the hymn was penned as a rebuke to Wesleyan theology.

But another aspect of “God of Grace and God of Glory” that has gotten me thinking is to see which verses a given hymnal includes.  Modern hymnals seem to prefer printing only four verses of any hymn so they make an editorial decision to cut one of the verses of this song.  (To the credit of the current Presbyterian Hymnal they include all five verses but their changes to make the hymn gender neutral, while well intentioned and subtle, do change the meaning of verse four slightly and are awkward with the meter.)  The hymnals generally all use the first three verses. (God of grace and God of glory…, Lo! the hosts of evil round us…, Cure thy children’s warring madness…)  The 1970 Presbyterian hymnal The Worshipbook skips the fourth verse but has the fifth:

Save us from weak resignation
To the evils we deplore;
Let the search for thy salvation
Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Serving God whom we adore,
Serving God whom we adore.

The elimination of the fourth verse removes the problem of making it gender neutral and the fifth verse may be favored here for it’s slightly more socially conscious words.

On the other hand, today our congregation used the version of the hymn from Word Music’s Hymnal for Worship and Celebration.  (They have made editorial changes to numerous hymns that I have problems with, but that is another post.) In that hymnal the song concludes with the fourth verse:

Set our feet on lofty places,
Gird our lives that they may be
Armored with all Christ-like graces
In the fight to set men free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage
That we fail not man nor Thee,
That we fail not man nor Thee.

While this too has a slightly social righteous edge, to me it clearly reflects a more triumphant evangelical tone and I can see why a publishing house like Word would prefer it to the fifth verse.  But ending with “That we fail not man nor thee” is just not a particularly satisfying ending to me.

To me the hymn is a complete package and I am disappointed when one of the verses is left out, whether it be “That we fail not man nor thee” or “Serving God whom we adore.”

Official Presbyterian Blogging

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Official Presbyterian Blogging.  Or is that Blogging Presbyterian Official?

The Presbyterian News Service is reporting that Linda Valentine, the Executive Director of the General Assembly Council, is blogging her three nation Asia trip.  As the article says:

LOUISVILLE — In what’s believed to be a first for a top Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) official, General Assembly Council Executive Director Linda Valentine is writing a blog during her three-nation mission tour of Asia.

The article is only three paragraphs long but this blog is a milestone in PC(USA) communications, using the “New Media.”  As of this writing there are four entries from Linda Valentine about the trip.

What I found more interesting was the apparent “back story” (sorry, I’m from the LA area) to the blog.  If you go to the top level of the blog it appears that the PC(USA) started one on TypePad ( www.presbyterian.typepad.com) about a year ago but it appears that it never got past three entries on Sept. 5 and Sept. 11, 2006.  I don’t know what else is buried in subdirectories like Linda’s is, but subscribing to the top level feed did not get me Linda’s rss feed.  Have to do that through Linda’s page.

I am curious to see if this blog continues once Ms. Valentine’s trip is over or if the trend spreads.  And I would hope that entries would not be too “scripted” by the corporate image people and lacking candid comments or written for the leaders by staff writers.

Want to be a Stated Clerk?

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The Stated Clerk Nominating Committee (SCNC) has begun taking nominations/applications for the position of the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly.  The opening of the application window was announced on the committee web page as well as in a Presbyterian News Service press release.  If you are interested, you have until Dec. 23 to apply and the Nominating Committee will announce their choice by April 22, 2008.  However, any other persons who submitted applications and were declared qualified by the Nominating Committee may chose to continue in the process and run against the committee nominee at the GA vote in June.

While the process talks about “qualified applicants” (if you want to read the details it is available in an extract of the Standing Rules of the General Assembly) from reading over the section of the Standing Rules and the application form it appears that you simply must be a Minister of Word and Sacrament or an Elder in good standing in the PC(USA) with no charges pending against you or disciplinary cases that prohibit you from serving.

Well folks, start praying about it.  Not just for whether God is calling you to do it, but also pray for the Nominating Committee to do its work and the GA to select the person God is calling to serve the denomination in this position.

PC(USA) GAC Meeting: Change is coming. Will it be enough?

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To expand the alphabet soup in the title, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)‘s General Assembly Council (GAC) concluded their fall meeting just over two weeks ago in Louisville and everywhere there was talk of change.  The question of course is will it happen and if so, will it be enough?  Let me discuss what has come out from the Presbyterian News Service.

It should be noted that this meeting included the executives of Middle Governing Bodies (MGB’s, that would be presbytery and synod representatives).  This was highlighted in the article titled “ Consensus sought on communication strategy.”  This reports begins by saying:

General Assembly Council (GAC) Executive Director Linda Valentine has
said that Presbyterians around the church repeatedly tell her the
denomination needs to improve its communication efforts.

I would disagree somewhat:  I think that the communications efforts are generally good.  I think it is the message, coordination, and uneven levels of coverage that need to be improved.  OK, maybe that would be included in “communication efforts” but I think there are levels of nuance here.  I’ll get back to that in a moment.

This article continues on to talk about Karen Schmidt’s presentation to the GAC and MGB representatives.  Ms. Schmidt is the new deputy executive director of communication and funds development for GAC.  She comes with corporate experience and is looking to  develop a corporate approach to communication strategy for the PC(USA)  including “branding.”  To help develop this strategy she asked those at the meeting a series of questions.  By a wide margin, the representatives said that “the whole church” is “doing the talking,” they agreed that we are “the church” (as opposed to a type of charitable organization), and that the audience is the people in the pews.  Also by a wide margin those present felt that communication should be identified as coming from the Presbyterian Church (USA) as opposed to one of its agencies.  Finally, the participants ranked “Foster/improve climate of trust,”, “Engage to empower/drive support,” and “grow membership/worship attendance” as the primary purposes of the communication.

All of this sounds nice, but part of the problem over the years has been agencies, or even corporations, related to the PC(USA) making statements (or publishing books) that don’t represent approved policy or doctrine but are viewed as coming from the PC(USA) as a unit and not that branch of it.  And yes, it does speak to the people in the pews.  At least that is the audience that pays the most attention even if that is not the intended audience.  So, if the PC(USA) does develop a unified communication strategy it had better be just that – unified.  And if they are going to speak for the denomination as a whole, it needs to be consistent with the policy and doctrine of the denomination.

Now, on to some more change…

Another article from the Presbyterian New Service titled “ Sea Change: New PC(USA) staff transform evangelism and world mission efforts” shows the new directions in Louisville.  The article begins with:

New staff people are bringing about a sea change in
the way the Presbyterian Church (USA) carries out its ministries in
evangelism and world mission.

Tom
Taylor, deputy executive director for mission, Eric Hoey, director of
evangelism and church growth, and Hunter Farrell, director of World
Mission, outlined their new approach to the Evangelism and Witness Goal
Area Committee of the General Assembly Council meeting here Sept. 20.

In the article it talks about how Rev. Taylor wants to “develop a culture of evangelism and mission in the whole denomination” and that the seven GAC “program areas” have been renamed “ministry areas.”  He also talked about their “buzz word” acronym CARE in decision making.  Does the decision conform to “Collaborative, Accountable, Responsive and Excellent.”

I have come to appreciate the very candid and honest comments from Eric Hoey.  (I note his comments on the PCUSA membership decline in this previous post.)  In this article it talks about his talking to his staff in Louisville about what they understand their work to be.  The article says of his impression of the staff from talking to them since he arrived a few weeks ago “…they lack focus and cohesiveness and are somewhat dispirited by
uncertainty about funding and the continuation of their positions as
the new GAC structure unfolds.”

Finally, the brand new Director of World Mission, Hunter Farrell, spoke.  The article says of his comments:

He said he wants to bring together the new
Presbyterian Global Fellowship, middle governing body executives,
seminary professors of mission, the Witherspoon Society, Antioch
Partners ( a joint effort of the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship and
the Outreach Foundation), General Assembly mission staff and others.
“All these groups have their perspective about what God is doing in
this world.”

Instead of each group doing their own thing, he wants them to see how they can more effectively accomplish mission together.

Again, focusing the effort and trying to get a variety of groups on the same page.  And an impressive accomplishment if he gets all those groups at the same table.

While I have previously talked about whether the new blood would be able to make changes in the corporate culture, after hearing these comments, and the unified front of Taylor, Hoey, and Farrell, I now have guarded optimism that they will be successful.  The questions do remain about whether they will meet resistance, how much change they can affect, and will it be the right type and enough to revitalize the denomination?  Time will tell.