I don’t know how many of you struggle with the labels that we use to describe each other, particularly in a setting like this where we need to concisely describe different sides in a discussion, debate, or controversy. While I try to minimize it, there are times that I just can’t avoid the “liberal,” “conservative,” “progressive,” “evangelical,” etc. labels.
So I was amused by the November 23 and 24 Prickly City comic strip that has a bit of fun with that. Hope the link works. Enjoy!
Within the last few hours the Presbyterian Church (USA) web site has posted a news article with the first endorsed candidate for Moderator of the 218th General Assembly. The candidate is the Rev. Bill Teng from National Capital Presbytery.
Rev. Teng is the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, VA, and served as the presbytery Moderator in 2004. Teng was born in Hong Kong and has lived in the United States since he was 18. He says “I look at myself as a product of Presbyterian mission,” and he is a fourth-generation Presbyterian pastor. This echoes his vision for the church where he is quoted as saying that the PC(USA) needs to “go back to the basics.” Later in the article there is a quote where he elaborates on this saying “there needs to be someone who could stand up and remind our church
what its primary calling is, and that is to go back to the basics, to
put our emphasis on mission and evangelism.”
In other business, there are three more overtures now posted on the 218th business web site for a total of 16. Two of these are social witness actions. Overture 014 directs the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy to develop a new, comprehensive, AIDS and HIV policy. The other, 015, endorses a movement know as “Publish what you Pay” which would have corporations in the “extractive industries” (oil, gas, minerals) in developing countries publish a full accounting of their finances so that corrupt practices would be visible on their balance sheets. The third overture, 016, asks the GA to receive the report of the Form of Government Task Force and then declare a two year (or more) period for the church to study it rather than dealing with it quickly in the single GA. It is important to remember that the GA can make changes to the rewrite of the Form of Government, but once sent out for presbytery approval, presbyteries can only vote the changes up or down, they can not modify the document.
At this point I expect a bit of a quiet period in announced GA business during the Advent Season, but things will heat up again as we enter Ordinary Time after Christmas since many presbyteries vote on their GA commissioners in January. And yes, my son will be a candidate for YAD at one of those meetings.
In my previous post I had a few opening remarks about this series of blog posts. In this one I present a relatively brief and simplified development of why the Presbyterian system of government is structured like it is.
I frequently tell a group that the Presbyterian system of government is “made up of the less desirable aspects of the possible alternatives.” It has neither the stream-lined nature of an Episcopal system with bishops to make the decisions or the simplicity of a congregational system where it is every church for itself. The Presbyterian system is hierarchy by committee. And we like it, or at least tolerate it. Why is that? Why in the world would anybody want to do it this way?
We do it because of the example from the Bible and our Reformed view of God, the Church, and humankind.
Being Reformed, the place to start is with the Bible. While we draw mainly from the pattern of the New Testament Church, there are instances in the Old Testament where our understanding of church government is foreshadowed. One example is where Moses called out and trained additional leaders from among the Israelites. (Exodus 18:15-26) Later when the Israelites wanted a king Samuel the prophet made it clear that what they really should accept was God as their King to reign over them, not an earthly king. (I Sam 8) And throughout the Old Testament God raised up prophets, leaders, great warriors, and even kings from any segment of society, not necessarily a priestly or royal class.
But in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was given to an individual for the necessity of the occasion. In the New Testament, with the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, it dwells in all believers and therefore changed the model for church government. In the New Testament we see the decision making of the church being done in community, by groups of leaders.
It is also in Acts, specifically Acts 6, where we see the initial differentiation of those set aside to different offices. When the works of mercy, the “daily distribution,” became too much for the apostles, they had the Hellenists choose seven from their group to take over this work and these seven were set aside with prayer and laying on of hands for this task. These were the first deacons in our Presbyterian model, while the apostles could now concentrate on “the word of God,” the role of the elders. It also sets the standard for how individuals are chosen and set aside for any Presbyterian office: The call is made by God and confirmed by the community and the individuals are set aside by prayer and laying on of hands.
The specific differentiation of ministers/teaching elders and ruling elders does not have a clear-cut moment like this in scripture. John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (ICR) says “In giving the name of bishops, presbyters, and pastors, indiscriminately to those who govern churches, I have done it on the authority of Scripture, which uses the words as synonyms.” (ICR Book 4, Chapter 3, Section 8) (The word “presbyter” is also translated “elder.”) We do have references to groups of elders in Acts 20:17 ff where Paul meets with the Ephesian elders and again in Acts 21:18 in Jerusalem where “Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.”
Our model for the proceedings of church government is taken from Acts 15 where the dispute arose over whether a new follower of Jesus must also convert to Judaism. We are told that “Now the apostles and elders came together to consider the matter.” The first general assembly, or at least presbytery meeting, that we have documented. What did they do? They had speakers tell of their experiences and witness to God’s actions/revelation. There was a motion, it seems to have passed by consensus, and their decision was sent out to the Church, particularly those at the center of the dispute.
This example shows several important aspects of Presbyterian style government:
The development of church government in the next few centuries is thoroughly discussed by Calvin in Book 4 Chapter 4 of ICR. Let me, at the risk of over simplifying, summarize a few important points:
First, a system of bishops, pastors and elders did develop, but the role of bishop was not one of having “dominion over his colleagues” but was one to coordinate matters and preside over an assembly. This is similar to our understanding of the role of the Moderator in a Presbyterian setting.
Second, individuals were selected to serve in these higher offices by what we would recognize as a search committee, but they were then verified by votes of the bodies and the whole membership of the church in that district.
Third, the offices of teaching elder and ruling elder became distinctive.
So, to summarize to this point, we structure our churches and conduct our business in the same manner as we understand the early church structured itself based on the example of the church in the Book of Acts.
While the example is Biblical, there is also a Reformed theological underpinning for doing it this way.
Probably the first and foremost principle of Reformed theology is the sovereignty, and supremacy, of God. Just as Samuel cautioned the people against wanting an earthly king, so one reason there are no individuals with “dominion” is because Jesus Christ is the head of the Church. This is affirmed at the very beginning of the Presbyterian Church in America’s Book of Church Order and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Order. (Editorial comment: I view this as a very important principle and was disappointed when the Form of Government Task Force pushed this down to the second paragraph of the new Foundations of Polity section of the Book of Order rewrite.)
Another aspect of the sovereignty of God is the concept of “election.” Accepting that it is a part of Reformed theology, what it means is that God has formed and called the Church, not us humans, and it is the body of Christ. Therefore this covenant community, the body, the community of faith, is important in everything we do. Church government involves community as well as the sacraments and the discerning of call and selection of officers.
In making us part of the body, God has bestowed on each believer different spiritual gifts and talents for building up of the body. (I Cor. 12) We each have a part to play, and the ordained offices are only one group of many different possible parts and each part is important in its own way. We have the Reformed concept of the “priesthood of all believers” which has the double implication of all believers having direct access to God and all believers having a part to play in the body. However, not all gifts are the same and it is contrary to I Cor. 12 to use the “priesthood of all believers” to argue that anyone has the “right” to be a teaching elder, ruling elder or deacon. God could call anyone, just as leaders in the Old Testament came from every strata of society, but it is conditional on God’s call and God bestowing the gifts and talents for the office.
We believe that there are several reasons why we make decisions better as the community rather than as individuals. First, with regards to different spiritual gifts, in group decision making each person brings their own unique perspective to the problem. Another aspect was expressed by Dietrich Bonhoffer in his book about Christian community, Life Together. About the importance of community he writes “The Christ in [a person’s] own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”
A third, and very significant, aspect of vesting power in groups is the Reformed concept that original sin has so completely corrupted us humans that we can not be trusted to make decisions individually. There is a need for accountability in the context of community. This is the “total depravity” of the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Confession expresses it like this in Chapter 6, Sections 4 and 5:
4. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.
5. This corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned, and mortified; yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.
Therefore, making decisions and holding power as groups is more likely to discern God’s will and defeat an individual’s selfish tendencies. But as is well known to many Presbyterians, the Westminster Confession, in Chapter 31, Section 3 cautions that it is not just individuals, but our sinful nature can even pervade the group:
3. All synods or councils, since the Apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith, or practice; but to be used as a help in both.
This brings us to what the Reformation was all about in principle: Returning the Church and its theology to what it originally was in the early Church before being corrupted by human sinful nature. It is why John Calvin was so thorough in discussing the organization and practice of the early church in ICR. One of the often quoted, in whole or in part, phrases or slogans of the Reformation goes something like (in Latin) ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei; “The Church reformed, always reforming according to the word of God.” (I will admit at this point that as far as I can tell from my reading this seems to have come down as oral history since neither I nor others who cite it and have looked can locate an original or early reference for this. However, it is so tightly ingrained in Reformed theology that I treat it as valid tradition and not urban legend.) This phrase, and particularly the “always reforming” part, is brought out on numerous occasions by any number of individuals and groups, to claim that the Reformed church is to be doing a new thing. That is fine for Isaiah (43:19) but my trusty New Dictionary of Theology (S. B. Ferguson, D. F. Wright, and J. I. Packer eds.) and an article on the PC(USA) web site by Anna Case-Winters agree that “always reforming” is to point us to recovering the old, original things.
Therefore, the Presbyterian system of Church government is intended to be a self-correcting system so that on balance over time we should not wander too far from the will of God. That is why we do it the way that we do!
While I have regularly presented this material to groups before, I found the experience of putting it into concise written form to be a rewarding exercise. I hope this is brief enough, yet informative enough, to be useful. I do know that a few devout and faithful Presbyterians have differed with me on some of these points so I do welcome your comments via the comment section or e-mail to steve@gajunkie.com. Hey, it’s a self-correcting system.
Coming next: GA 101: Connectionalism – The Presbyterian Big Picture
A question that has been in and out of my thinking for many years, and is back in it at the moment, has been the discernment process for calling individuals to ordained office. One particular manifestation of this has been the church nominating committee having a certain number of positions to fill on the session or board of deacons. Do they just keep going until they fill all the slots, or do they stop and leave positions vacant if they can find no more willing individuals who they have discerned to have the proper God-given gifts and talents for that office? In many Presbyterian churches I am aware that there is some pressure to fill the slots because each elder or deacon has a particular program area of responsibility: we need an “outreach elder” or there is no one for the “food pantry” deacon yet. I was very happy when my own church dispensed with the elders being assigned to oversee a particular ministry and simply made them the governing body with responsibility for “shepherding the flock.”
I’m writing on this now because I am having a very “hurry up and wait” day at work. You may know the type: there are an endless series of short jobs for the computer to do. Short enough that you really can’t leave and do something else but long enough waiting that you have some time that you need to fill. Well, I filled part of it with some web surfing in directions I had not ventured before and came across an interesting blog called “ Building Old School Churches.” Even if you are nowhere near being an Old School Presbyterian church there is some interesting material there. What caught my attention today was a post by Andrew Webb titled “ On Whether to Vote to Ordain.” In the post he talks about an experience he had early in his career at a presbytery meeting when a candidate was examined to be a pastor, the discomfort he felt with that candidate, and the guidelines he formulated from talking with experienced ruling and teaching elders about it. His guidelines, with his emphases, are:
1) Remember
that Presbyteries aren’t rubber stamp operations, we are gate-keepers,
and we’ll be called to account by God for every man we let into the
sheepfold. So ask yourself, “is that man a true shepherd or something
else?” No church absolutely has to get someone if that someone was
never really meant to be a pastor. Calling the wrong man will do them more harm than calling no one at all!
2) Anyone can graduate from seminary, my wife could graduate from seminary but she isn’t qualified or called to be a pastor. Not everyone who graduates is called.
3) If you are
in doubt, ask yourself, “would I be able to stomach this man being the
shepherd of my own family?” If the answer is no, don’t vote for him. Christ’s other lambs don’t deserve less than your own family!
4) Go home
and read Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 [vs. 17-36]
and treat those words as Christ’s advice to you.
I would add that we are a called covenant community and it is the responsibility of the community to be gathering around candidates, helping them discern their call and their gifts and talents throughout the candidate process, not just at the examination. And furthermore, once God has spoken through the vote of the community to affirm the call, it is our responsibility as members of the community to support, nurture, and guide that person as they live into that call, even if we voted in the minority.
I know that within my presbytery the candidates committee has done a good job mentoring and discerning calls with candidates and I have been satisfied with all that have come to presbytery, the ministry committee, or a search committee of which I have been part.
Do we do as good a job with ruling elders when we ask members of our churches to serve on session? What could we do better before and after the elders are elected and ordained to develop their gifts for the ministry? Are our sessions bodies that are seeking to be guided by the Holy Spirit and discerning where God is leading the church, or a group that gets together to “get the business done” once a month? As an example, on presbytery committees that I have chaired I always insisted, no matter how late the meeting was running, that we did not just “close in prayer” but that we closed in prayer for each other and our churches and church members with a sharing of joys and concerns. In many cases I suspected that several people wanted to get out of there and get home, but as a community, holding each other in prayer is one of the most important and powerful things we can do.
So as members of the covenant community we have responsibility for who is ordained as a minister/teaching elder, ruling elder, or deacon and we should not just leave it to the nominating committee or candidates committee to do the work for us. Their work is important and most do it well. But in the end the call of God through the voice of the people comes from the larger community.
In the wake of the adoption of the report from the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity (PUP) by the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) we heard a lot about how “the standards have not changed.” For example: coverage of a press conference, a pastoral letter from the Moderator and Stated Clerk, and the Stated Clerk’s new Advisory Opinion issued following the General Assembly all state that as a fact.
Now a new high-profile case is coming before a presbytery as a result of the passage of the PUP Report. The Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area has called a special presbytery meeting for Saturday December 1 to consider the request of Mr. Paul Capetz to have his ordination as a minister of word and sacrament reinstated. Mr. Capetz requested, and was granted release from the exercise of ordained office back in May 2000 and the presbytery’s Stated Clerk has confirmed that at the time no charges were pending. Back in 2000 Mr. Capetz could not affirm the newly adopted Amendment B which inserted G-6.0106b into the Book of Order. Now with the passage of the PUP report Mr. Capetz writes in his request for reinstatement:
In the meantime, however, a possibility then unforeseen by me has been opened up by the decision of the 217th General Assembly (2006) to approve the recommendations of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church as an “authoritative interpretation” of section G-6.0108 of the Book of Order.
He continues on later in his request:
Since the church has now seen fit to find a way beyond the impasse occasioned by the incorporation of G-6.0106b into the Book of Order, I have prayerfully discerned that it is appropriate for me at this time to request of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area my reinstatement as a minister member.
Clearly something has changed. Mr. Capetz explicitly says so. The word from the top of the PC(USA) says that the standards have not changed. So has the process changed? Has the understanding of the standards changed? Really the question is, if there are “standards” but they are no longer considered standard, what are they? Why were they put, and continue to remain, in the Book of Order. Unfortunately, I don’t think we are being honest with anyone when we say that the standards have not changed. In the strict sense that the Book of Order has not been changed, that is true. But in reality, to me, when the application and understanding of the standards has changed the standards have effectively changed.
Lest you think this is semantics, or that the PC(USA) is alone, just look at the current top controversy in the PCA with the Federal Vision theology. Louisiana Presbytery is facing a church trial on charges that they failed to properly apply that denomination’s “standards” in the theological examination of a minister member.
I would like to commend the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area for the process that they will be undertaking at their special meeting. Numerous documents are available on their special meeting web site and the docket clearly shows the discernment process they will be going through. The landscape has changed and they are undertaking the process as the authoritative interpretation directs.
I will be interested to hear about the experience of the discernment process and the outcome. For advance coverage of the meeting there is an article on the Layman Online as well as a post by Toby Brown on Classical Presbyterian. At the moment that is all the other coverage I can find.
After doing some more reading and seeing some developments on this topic, I need to bring a correction and update.
But first, the story so far…
As I talked about in my last post on the Federal Vision controversy, in October the Standing Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church in America delivered two rulings concerning Louisiana Presbytery and their examination of the Rev. Steve Wilkins concerning his adherence to the Westminster Standards. Specifically, they found that while they conducted the required examination by the correct procedure, they did not judge Rev. Wilkins by the right standard. Both rulings can be found in posts on Puritan Board.
In my last post I had left it there and said that I did not find in the decisions what the next step would be. Well, I did not read carefully enough and was looking too closely at the second decision and should have been looking at the first. There it is, after a reference to the second case that threw me off:
Amends – Pursuant to BCO
40-5 the Standing Judicial Commission hereby cites Louisiana Presbytery
to appear “to show what it has done or failed to do in the case in
question.” To implement this process, RE Samuel J. Duncan is hereby
appointed to: a) serve as prosecutor in this matter and conduct the
case, which is designated as Case 2007-14;…
And additional notes about the case including preparing an indictment, Louisiana Presbytery entering a plea by February 1, 2008, and going to trial March 5, 2008 if they plead “not guilty.” It is important to note here that it is Louisiana Presbytery that is on trial here not Rev. Wilkins directly.
So that is my new findings and update there, but I also wanted to point out that one great source of information on the Federal Vision controversy, particularly thoughtful criticism, is the Rev. Lane Keister and his blog Green Baggins. Well, Rev. Keister has been asked to be an assistant prosecutor on the case and therefore must now recuse himself from the discussion of the Federal Vision controversy. So he has brought on board a set of equally eloquent interim bloggers and changed the name of the blog to Green Bagginses. Because of the focus on Lane as an assistant prosecutor this is now a great source for information on the polity and procedure of the PCA SJC which might be of interest to other GA Junkies, whether or not you are following the Federal Vision controversy. I would highlight Lane’s last post “ Major change to Green Baggins” where he announces he will be an assistant prosecutor and others will be filling in. I would also recommend two posts on the process, “ Lane as assistant prosecutor: Good, Bad or Ugly?” and “ The PCA SJC Process in Brief.” Happy reading.
The latest issue (Nov. 12) of the Presbyterian Outlook has their Reports and Resources section, titled “Web 2.0: The New Connectionalism,” devoted entirely to the church and new technologies. If you don’t subscribe to the paper version you can view it on the web with a free registration for the web site.
The articles are interesting and informative, especially if you are just getting up to speed on the new technology of not just blogs but wiki’s, podcasts, and news feeds, to name a few.
However, I especially appreciated editor Jack Haberer’s editorial “ The church is flat.” In the piece he talks about how the leveling of the playing field by the internet, where any one of us can be the purveyor of news and commentary on our own web page or in our blog, is nothing new. The reformers did it 500 years ago when they stripped the hierarchy out of the church and allowed the common folk to interact directly with God through prayer and scripture. But, he goes on, that was just an extension of what Jesus and the Holy Spirit did 1500 years before that when they too, although in a different way, abolished the need for temple rituals preformed by priests and empowered every individual who believed. And you thought this was something new.
In a comment on my last post looking ahead to the next General Assembly of the PC(USA) Bruce Reyes-Chow asked if I had done a GA 101 post as an intro to the General Assembly. My first reaction was “no and I don’t need to” since I have usually considered this blog for those who are already familiar with Presbyterian polity and politics. (see If you care you understand)
But the more I thought about it the more I thought it would be an interesting exercise. I try to keep the focus of this blog broad enough to capture the full sweep of Presbyterianism globally, so why not attack the question of the General Assembly as a concept and then investigate how it varies in different branches of the Presbyterian family.
So, if you are looking for a single post that gives an introduction to the General Assembly of the (pick one) Church of Scotland/Presbyterian Church in Ireland/PC(USA)/PCA/Cumberland and Cumberland in America/EPC/OPC/etc., then you are in the wrong place. I’m using this series as a personal challenge to do a “Comparative General Assembly” series of posts over the next few weeks. I anticipate that there will be about six posts, including this one, covering different topics. And I’ll begin this series the same way that I begin all my talks about GA with “Why the heck would anybody want to do it this way?”, a general discussion going back to the reformers of our understanding of human nature and the nature of the Church.
From there I plan that each post will first develop a topic in general terms that is usually common to all the branches and then discuss the details of various branches. I will admit that certain churches will get better coverage because details are more familiar to me or they have more material available on-line. I encourage readers to supply details where I get them wrong, or I have omitted details from a church that has significant variation from the others.
So I encourage you to sit back, read along, and join me on this ride through Comparative General Assembly.
Coming Next: GA 101: Introduction – Why in the world would anybody want to do it this way?
For a GA Junkie, two years is a long time to wait. While the webcast of the Church of Scotland GA goes a long way to helping me get my fix of polity and politics, there is nothing like your own General Assembly to really satisfy the cravings. So, with a little over seven month to go until the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) kicks off in San José, California, what can we look forward to?
The first item is that the web site is up and running and beginning to be populated. Now, it takes some real detective work to find the web site because I did not see any links on the major front pages for it. In fact, in looking for it I found that the Office of the General Assembly General Assembly page still lists the 216th in 2004 as the last one there is information for and the 217th in 2006 in Birmingham is still “upcoming.” The best way to find the 218th page that I have found is to look for the coverage of the Stated Clerk search.
Speaking of which, that is the major news that I have seen to date. I don’t think anything has changed there since my “ Want to be a Stated Clerk?” post. Nominations/Applications are due December 23. I have not caught wind of any “announced candidates” yet.
A major item, probably the one that will mark this GA, is the report of the Form of Government Task Force (FOG) and the proposed re-write of the Book of Order. Here there is plenty of action and that web page is loaded. So loaded that I am still trying to find time to digest it all and figure out what the proposed changes really mean. This makes me wonder if the commissioners will have time to reflect upon it or will depend on the interpretations from various groups and individuals. The presentation by FOG will probably be very important in the commissioners decision. Again, I have not heard much buzz about whether people like or dislike the rewrite and I’ll probably be spending some down time in December digesting it myself.
An always closely watched item are the overtures to GA. At the present time there are 13 overtures posted.
Of these, three overtures (001, 003, and 013) that deal with the status of churches: Two form union churches and one transfers a congregation into a Korean non-geographic presbytery. The union churches seem to be good news/bad news as I read them. For 001, this appears to be a joint church-plant in Wyoming by the PC(USA) and the ELCA. The other, 013, in central New York could be interpreted as a PC(USA) and UMC church joining forces to continue ministry in the face of declining membership. Finally, 003, the transfer of a church to a Korean presbytery, and there are continuing rumors of a push for a Korean synod, even though at one point language presbyteries were to be phased out.
Overture 004 appears to be a bit of housekeeping to clarify a point in the Rules of Discipline about pronouncing censure. This may have resulted from some questions that arose in a PJC case I was peripherally involved in and that I had offered to overture from my presbytery.
And overture 002 asks to reinstate the annual mission season offering.
There are the usual overtures about speaking out on national and world situations: 006 on Peace and Justice in Palestine and Israel, 012 on Calling for Tolerance and Peaceful relations between Christian and Muslim Communities, and 008 on the Church Addressing Intergenerational Injustice in America.
Finally, the balance of the overtures address the PC(USA) internal issues, principally ordination standards. With the success of last year’s Authoritative Interpretation (AI) in the PUP Report that provided a polity statement without Presbytery approval, many of these contain new authoritative interpretations. One interesting approach is overture 010 from Beaver-Butler that would broaden the definitions of presbyteries and permit presbyteries based on theology. (The web page notes that they are awaiting a clarification about something from the presbytery.) There is overture 005 which would completely rescind the action of the 217th GA regarding the PUP report. And then there is 011 which would strike G-6.0106b and issue an Authoritative Interpretation canceling all previous Interpretations and Guidance on ordination standards. And in more moderate actions 009 proposes an AI that would apply to G-6.0108 indicating that Freedom of Conscience does not apply to the ordination standards of G-6.0106b.
An in an interesting move, the Presbytery of East Tennessee submits overture 007 that would have the Moderator announce each vote with the words:
As commissioner voting is just beginning it is a little bit early to start tracking Moderator candidates. The one that I know of is the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow who, in modern style, announced in his blog on Friday that he would be asking his presbytery, San Francisco, to endorse him as a candidate for Moderator if they elected him as one of their commissioners. I’m sure we’ll be hearing about more moderator candidates soon. But in a similar vain, my son will be going before our session this month to ask to be endorsed as a candidate for Youth Advisory Delegate (YAD) from our presbytery.
Finally, I need to mention that the Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA) has their web site up and running at this time as well.
I have found it interesting that over the last couple of months the same sentiment has been expressed by different leaders in different settings related to the current controversies in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Specifically, these were both racial ethnic leaders, one Hispanic and one African-American, talking about what was important to them and their constituents. Guess what, it is not the PUP Report and ordination standards. It is issues of justice, empowerment, and church growth. The issues of ordination standards and homosexuality are “Anglo” issues. It is not a priority in their congregations and constituencies. There are other things that are more worthy of their valuable time.
Let me extend this a little bit. Yes, I’m going to stick with ordination standards related issues here, specifically the departure of churches from the PCUSA to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Where does this fit in the grand scheme of things?
I’ll return to the 2006 denomination statistics published in the June issues of Perspectives. In particular, I would note that in 2006 there were 56 congregations dissolved and only 6 dismissed. I would also note that there were almost 28,000 members lost by certificate of transfer and about 102,000 just left. Here in So. Cal. our presbytery has several churches hanging on by their fingernails and only one with any rumblings about leaving. And a neighboring presbytery projects that at the current loss rate it will cease to exist in 20 years or less.
What this tells me is that the New Wineskins Association is not the only problem. At the present time the chart from the Layman On-Line indicates 46 churches leaving. We dissolved more churches last year than are trying to leave this year. And while it is obvious that a church that gets dissolved will have few members and many of those leaving are larger and thriving, you still can not ignore the fact that about four times as many people just left the denomination than transferred out last year.
So what matters? We can’t blame the New Wineskins movement alone for depleting our numbers. We all need to carry the burden of reaching out the world around us with the Good News of Jesus Christ.