Monthly Archives: January 2009

Community In Football

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I guess there is some football game on Sunday.  American football that is.  Our small group Bible study is getting together and some of us will watch it.  People seem to think that it is something big, but it is nothing compared to what the rest of the world calls football.  Just wait until 2010 in South Africa.  But I digress…

So once again the United States comes to a halt on a Sunday to watch a sporting event.  I reflected on this last year and yesterday a discussion started on the Puritan Board about doing this on a Sunday.  It does of course revolve around not just issues of the fourth commandment but the second as well.  I found it interesting how that crowd was about evenly split, it seemed to me, between watching and not watching.  A while back Ethics Daily had an opinion piece on “Has Sports Become A Religion In America?”  (See above about the sport the world is passionate about if you think Americans are the only ones.)  On NPR yesterday there was an interview with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Bob Dvorchak where he said that their football team was more important than religion and how it unites the Pittsburgh diaspora that resulted from the shutdown of the steel mills.

Well, to keep things in perspective I have seen three positive stories about football and community in the last few weeks that I would like to share with you.  Only one is explicitly Christian or covenant community, but the others could be as well.

Lions vs. Tornadoes high school football game
(H/T A Reforming Mom)  In his Life of Reilly column for ESPN Rick Reilly had a great story a few weeks back about a Texas high school football game between the Lions of Grapevine Faith Christian School and the Tornadoes of Gainesville State School.  It is important to understand that the Tornadoes play no home games, have no cheerleaders, and really no spectators cheering for them at games.  Gainesville State School is a maximum security youth facility.  So Grapevine Faith specifically scheduled a game with them and then shared their crowd with them as well.  Half of Grapevine’s cheerleaders and supporters were on Gainesville’s side of the field cheering them on as if they were their own team.  In an e-mail to the fans the Grapevine coach wrote: “Here’s the message I want you to send:  You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”  And they sent that message.  The article quotes one of the Gainesville players in the huddle of both teams at the end of the game as praying “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank
You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world
that cared about us.”  And the Gainesville coach told the Grapevine coach “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”

Update:  Just after posting this and double-checking the links I notice that Rick Reilly has posted an Epilogue to this story today.  It turns out that word got around about this, like really around, and the NFL commissioner brought the Grapevine coach to Tampa for the game on Sunday.  You have to admire the quote from the coach: “I hate it that this thing that we did is so rare.  Everybody views it as such a big deal. Shouldn’t that be the normal?”

Tony Dungy keeping community together
(H/T my friend and fellow soccer ref Jim over at APC Blog)  With Tony Dungy’s retirement from coaching ESPN ran an article about his character, and yes about community.  It was about the 1997 season when he was coaching at Tampa Bay and after the team had a great start to the season his kicker started missing and costing them a couple of games.  While the fans and press were up in arms to replace the kicker, what Dungy knew was that the kicker’s mother was dying of cancer.  Dungy stuck with him through the bad games and once called him into his office and simply told him “You’re a Buccaneer. You’re part of our family. You’re our kicker.”  That unconditional acceptance was what Michael Husted needed and his kicking returned to form the next game and Tampa Bay made the playoffs.

The touchdown belongs to the whole team
A couple of weeks ago, before the conference championship games, I heard an interesting radio commentary by Diana Nyad about Arizona receiver Larry Fitzgerald.  Her observation was that when he scored a touchdown, it was not about celebrating by himself in the end zone in front of the fans, but going back to the other ten players on the field who helped make the touchdown possible and celebrating with them.  Again a community ethic and she says that Fitzgerald says his mother wouldn’t want it any other way.

(The one and only pro football game I watched much of this year was the championship game Arizona won and I did get to see Fitzgerald make a couple of great plays and score touchdowns.  True to Diana Nyad’s commentary he did not put on a show in the end zone.  But he did linger there with arms raised for a few seconds and then, true to form, the TV cut away before I ever saw him jog back to his team mates to celebrate with them.  Maybe I’ll see more on Sunday.)

What Is A Presbyterian? — Part 2

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What is a Presbyterian? 

Back in Part 1 I posed this question and my eight possible answers:

As a Presbyterian I believe that my, and my church’s, primary responsibility is to:

  1. Glorify God and enjoy Him forever
  2. Proclaim the gospel for the salvation of human kind
  3. Provide shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship for the children of God
  4. Provide for the maintenance of divine worship
  5. Preserve the truth
  6. Promote social righteousness
  7. Exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the World
  8. Maintain an ecclesiastical government of teaching and ruling elders governing jointly in community

All of this is follow-up to a thought provoking post by Carol Howard Merritt where she had a point that we often hear the criticism of young evangelicals that “Well, they
obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian.”  This continuation of my thoughts was equally motivated by listening to a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago using the term Presbyterian in a way I thought was imprecise.  (I thought he should know better but I’ll ask him for clarification when I see him again in a couple of days.)

“Being Presbyterian.”  What does that mean?  To review the source of my eight possible answers above, #1 is confessional from the Westminster Standards, #2-7 are constitutional for the PC(USA) with about a century of tradition behind them, and #8 is polity from a variety of Presbyterian constitutions.

In addition, “Being Presbyterian” is used in a variety of settings these days from a blog by Colin Carmichael for the Presbyterian Church in Canada to a book (On Being Presbyterian) by Sean Michael Lucas.  And there are a number of web sites, from churches to denominations, that have their answer to what it means to be Presbyterian.

As I mentioned above, what partly motivates me here is listening to my friend use the following three words interchangeably:  Reformed, Calvinism, Presbyterian.  While (most of the time) these three words are very closely related, each does have a distinctive meaning.  So in this context what makes Presbyterian different?  As one of the comments on Part 1 pointed out, it is #8 above, the ecclesiastical government, that makes Presbyterians uniquely Presbyterian.  The other seven items could be claimed by a number of other traditions, Reformed or otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong here, there are many different aspects to being Presbyterian, otherwise there would be no need for all the books and web sites.  But I suggest that the “Presbyterian distinctive,” the unique identifier, is the manner of church government.  (And I should point out that since this form of government has its roots with John Calvin in Geneva, we may call it Presbyterian, but other Reformed churches use it as well.)

It is true that Reformed Theology, Calvinism, and Presbyterianism are very closely linked and historically originated in this order in a very short period of time.  (With due recognition that to a certain degree Reformed theology is recovering the theological work of Augustine.)  In terms of their most basic theological principle, the sovereignty of God, there is almost complete agreement.  And as I have been commenting here on the Presbyterian distinctive, R. Scott Clark has re-posted his series on Who or What gets to define “Reformed.” (Part 1, Part 2, A little more…)

It is unfortunate the term “Calvinism” has come to represent a fairly narrow (five points to be exact) theological concept put together by a Dutch synod 55 years after John Calvin’s death.  This loses sight of the richness of the three volume Institutes of the Christian Religion which may be the single most important development of Reformed Theology.  However, I am in agreement with my trusty New Dictionary of Theology (Ferguson, Wright and Packer, editors) that to make Calvinism synonymous with Reformed Theology loses sight of the rich history of Reformed Theology before and after Calvin.  As the Dictionary says:

Reformed theology is often called ‘Calvinism’ due to the towering impact of John Calvin.  However, this is not an entirely satisfactory term.  First, owing to the above pluriformity [the Reformation in other cities] Calvin neither could nor did impose his views on others.  The autonomy of the various Reformed centers saw to that…   Second, it is doubtful whether Calvin’s distinctive theology, rooted in biblical exegesis, was properly grasped by many who came later…

More to the point, what we know as Presbyterianism grew out of Calvin’s theology and church order in Geneva and is evidence of how limited a scope the term ‘Calvinism’ came to represent.  We speak of Reformed Baptists and Congregationalists being Calvinistic, but they lack the connectional system typified in most Reformed and Presbyterian branches.  So just having Reformed theology does not necessarily imply you are Presbyterian.

It is important to note that in some limited cases being Presbyterian does not imply that you are Reformed.  While the Cumberland Presbyterian Church has a clear Presbyterian polity and theology of a covenant community, its 1984 Revision of the 1883 Confession of Faith says, concerning Saving Grace:

When persons repent of sin and in faith embrace
God’s salvation, they receive forgiveness for their sin and experience
acceptance as God’s children. [4.10]

This is one item, and somewhat out of context, but it is a taste of their confession which does not follow the five points of Calvinism.

Now, it is all well and good to rehearse the history and summary theology of Presbyterianism, but what does it mean to be Presbyterian?

My answer is grounded in action and result:  The action is with God whose nature and will we try to understand through the witness of Scripture, including the example of the New Testament Church.  The result is that Presbyterians live as the Body of Christ into which God has called them, organizing their ecclesiastical government in a way that allows us to discern God’s will in community and hold each other accountable as the Body of Christ.

Practically speaking, our Presbyterian distinctive is the ecclesiastical government which results from the reliance on the covenant community when we recognize that individually we are fallen, imperfect and fallible individuals.  And we acknowledge that synods or councils “may err; and many have erred,” but it is better than “going it alone.”  You might think of it as the worst way to run a church, except for all the other ways.

Getting back to my original list, all eight of those ideas fall out of the belief in the sovereignty of God and the nature of the covenant community.  And therefore, while they can be applied to a wide range of denominations, there is a practical tie to Presbyterianism.

So “being Presbyterian” means a lot of things.  It begins with the nature of God and what God as done for us, which leads to the call upon our lives as covenant community and the Presbyterian distinctive of our polity.  So when we hear “Well, they
obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian,” the imperative of the covenant community is that if God has called them into it, we accept them as they are and then be in discussion with them about what “being Presbyterian” means.
S.D.G.

Blog Tricks

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I am sure most bloggers and blog readers are familiar with a series of on-line tools for characterizing a blog.  I’ve done them but have not shared them before since they are a bit off-topic and it seemed, at least to me, not particularly revealing.  As  Alfred North Whitehead said “It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”  Anyway, today I came across one of these on-line tests that really was interesting, so here are several of these measurements and I have saved the new and different one for last.

Wordle
Maybe one of the most interesting metrics of a blog, or any writing, is the pictorial representation of the word usage in the writing at www.wordle.net.  The current, before this post, representation is shown.


Any surprise that “Presbyterian” is the dominant word?  And where else would you find G-6.0106b as a listed word?  Anyway, I find it interesting but no new revelations here.

Typealyzer
The Typealyzer site will give you the “personality” of a blog.  In the case of my blog it comes out INTP, and is described as “The Thinkers.”  Their description reads:

The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to
difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for
something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle
connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and
imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing
and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as
arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to
understand what they are talking about.

Again, nothing new (to me) there.  But from a blog, how do they figure I’m an introvert?

Blog Readability
The Blog Readability Test tells you how high of a reading level a blog is written at.  Putting mine through comes back with College (Undergrad).  Fair enough.

You are… 
There are another series of tests about the individual, not the blog really, that are designed to associate you with some individual or character.  These range from theologians (and yes, I do score highest on John Calvin) to Winnie the Pooh characters (Owl, if you care).

Well thanks to Elizabeth Kaeton over at Telling Secrets I now know about The Way of the Fathers and Which Church Father Are You?  Now here is something new, different, and educational.  For me:


You’re St. Melito of Sardis!

You have a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins.

Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!


Some interesting parallels there, so now I want to learn more about St. Melito of Sardis who I had never heard of before this lunch hour.

And now back to our regularly scheduled Politics of Presbyterianism.

What Is A Presbyterian? — Part 1

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What is a Presbyterian? 

Pop quiz, multiple choice, chose the best answer, you have five minutes:

1.  As a Presbyterian I believe that my, and my church’s primary responsibility is to:

  1. Glorify God and enjoy Him forever
  2. Proclaim the gospel for the salvation of human kind
  3. Provide shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship for the children of God
  4. Provide for the maintenance of divine worship
  5. Preserve the truth
  6. Promote social righteousness
  7. Exhibit the Kingdom of Heaven to the World
  8. Maintain an ecclesiastical government of teaching and ruling elders governing jointly in community

OK, time’s up.  Pencils down.

Yes, I am being a bit facetious here, but in reflecting more on Carol Howard Merritt’s great post about young evangelicals, especially the first point she made (“Well, they obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian.”), I think I realized why it touched a nerve with me.  Over the years I have come to realize, or at least quantify, that what people think a Presbyterian is depends on how much emphasis they put on each of the eight possible answers above.  I think that in most cases people are not even aware they prioritize these things.  But I have found that as I talk with someone about their Presbyterian viewpoint, it does not take long before I can identify one or two of these categories that is more important to them and that they associate with “being Presbyterian.”

So from what I have seen, in many cases where we fail to understand, or at least we disagree with, our Presbyterian sisters and brothers it is because one person or group places a higher value on one category, say #1 or #2, and the other side can not understand why they don’t appear to value another priority, maybe #6 or #8.  And these can be applied to specific circumstances:  For example, when we talk about doing mission do we think of doing #2 as a first priority and #6 while we are there, or doing #3, #6, or #7 as a primary mission figuring #2 will happen in the process.

Now, for the diversity of Presbyterians reading this who might not get all the references, #1 is of course from the Westminster Standards, specifically the first question of the Shorter Catechism.  Numbers 2-7 are “The Six Great Ends of the Church” found in the PC(USA) Book of Order at G-1.02 with a footnote that they date from the very early 1900’s and were incorporated in the Presbyterian Constitution in 1910.  And #8 is the only unique point of Presbyterian polity in the list and can be found in some similar form in most Presbyterian Constitutions, such as 4-3 in the PCA Book of Church Order, 1.4(5) in the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, or G-4.0301b in the PC(USA) Book of Order.  (More on #8 next week in Part 2)

You may or may not think there is one right answer, or at least best answer, on this list.  You may think there are some clearly wrong answers among the possible choices.  All the Presbyterian branches I have studied recognize the Westminster Standards as a confessional standard, although they may place differing values on it from subscription to “one among many.”  And as I said, I regularly see something like #8 in Presbyterian constitutions.  At this point the PC(USA) may be the only branch to incorporate the Great Ends of the Church.  (Please let me know if another branch uses it.)

Back in 1997 the 209th General Assembly kicked off a two-year celebration of the Great Ends of the Church, although I’m not sure how much happened after GA adjourned.  At the GA one of the questions the Moderator candidates responded to in writing was something like “which is the most important of the Great Ends.”  It was interesting reading the responses as the candidates seemed to fall all over themselves to say that the Great Ends were all important and then some of the responses would single out one of them as a little bit more important.  That was my introduction to specifying and observing the diversity of Presbyterian though and viewpoint using the Great Ends.

So I encourage you to think about this yourself.  First, how do each of these points, or maybe other I don’t list, shape your view of what it means to “be Presbyterian.”  And secondly, how do you project this upon others when you try to decide if they know the meaning of “being Presbyterian.”

In Part 2, I’ll rant about words having meanings, particularly the word “Presbyterian.”

Young Evangelicals And The Presbyterian Church

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I suspect that many of you, like me, are regular readers of the blog Tribal Church by Carol Howard Merritt.  (If you are not, I highly recommend it if you want an honest look at where the church is among young adults today.)  And if you have not carefully read today’s entry I encourage you to have a look.

Carol uses the change in the presidential administration as a vehicle to touch on two important themes — one in the general religious landscape and one in the PC(USA).

The first point Carol mentions is that your typical young “evangelical” probably does not fit the stereotype from a few years ago.  While “social evangelicals” have been around for a while, with organizations such as Evangelicals for Social Action, Carol says that today:

Well, there is a new passion for social justice, for living out the
words of Jesus. And I cannot help but notice the Joshua Generation—the
young Evangelicals who cannot swear allegiance to Christian Right, who
are finding their own way.

and

There are a swarm of young Evangelicals who are wandering right now.
Twenty-six percent of young Evangelicals support same-sex marriage.
They no longer have a spiritual home in the congregations of their
youth.

There is a group that is between the traditional descriptions of the evangelicals and the progressives.  She asks “Can these young evangelicals call the PC(USA) their home?” That is my paraphrase of her question.  What Carol says is:

Often, when I’m around denominational types, things are said that
make our denominations inhospitable for people who grew up Evangelical.
I guess I should just spell it out. Because I love my church, I need
to let you know that if we want to reach out to a new generation, we
will need to learn to accept Evangelicals or ex-Evangelicals. You may
not agree with me, you may not have had the same experience, but still,
personally people communicate to me regularly, “You’re not one of us,
and you never will be.”

Carol points out three places where the younger generation is challenged

  • “Well, they obviously don’t know what it means to be Presbyterian.”
  • “Christianity has not been a force in our society since the sixties.”
  • “Evangelicals are dumb.”

Check out the article for her discussion of each of these.

On the one hand, questions and comments like these are nothing new — American Presbyterians have been debating, and dividing, over what it means to be Presbyterian from pretty much the beginning.  On the other hand, times have changed.  Mainline denominations are now sidelined and American Christians are losing denominational identity and loyalty.  What does that mean for the institution of the PC(USA)?  Clearly these young evangelicals are having trouble seeing themselves in it.  For established conservative churches withholding per capita they are having trouble seeing themselves in it as well.  How big a tent can we be, or to put it another way, can we be all things to all people?  How we, not as an institution but as a community, answer these questions will decide what the PC(USA) will look like in the future.

Some Brief Observations On PC(USA) Amendment 08-B Voting

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In the last week and a half five more presbyteries have voted on Amendment 08-B (the modification of G-6.0106b that would remove “fidelity and chastity” language) sent to the presbyteries by the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  Some brief news, observations and comments…

1)  The unofficial vote count now is 4 yes and 14 no.  You can follow the unofficial vote count at The Layman, Presbyweb, or the Presbyterian Coalition.

2)  The official vote count, that is those votes that have been received by the Office of the Stated Clerk, is 1 yes and 11 no.  The official tally list has the reported votes for all the amendments and ecumenical statements.

3)  At this time no presbytery has switched its vote from the last similar vote in 2001-2002.

4) The National Korean Presbyterian Council, an organization of 400 Korean churches in the PC(USA), has sent a letter to the churches in the PC(USA) arguing against any changes to G-6.0106b.  The letter is available in Word format from the Presbyterian Coalition web site.

5)  About 10% of the presbyteries have now voted — 18 of 173.  The final tally in 2002 was 46-127, the current 4-14 mirrors 10% of that pretty well.  This is either by shear luck (or providence) or voting order is pretty random if the final numbers end up about the same as the last vote.

6)  The decline in total numbers of commissioners voting continues with vote totals being an average of 80% of what they were in 2001-2002, a trend I noted earlier and my analysis has been confirmed by The Layman with a bit more data and similar explanations.

7)  In a fit of shear geekiness I threw together a model to project the presbytery vote counts into the future.  I’m still refining the methodology and would like to have more data from this round before I put out my forecast for the future of G-6.0106b.  Stay tuned for that.  But one striking feature of my current model projecting forward three GA’s  (2014) is that in that time as many presbyteries disappear (decline to zero votes) as change their votes.  I was not expecting that many to disappear, that was not part of the model, so I’m looking to see if that is a reasonable result and rethinking some of my algorithms for the next iteration.

I won’t go into more details on this topic since not much has really changed with this situation since my previous discussion, the favorable response of More Light Presbyterians to a string of three yes votes in one day, not withstanding.  Maybe the one significant piece of news is that only 18 presbyteries have voted so far, a number below past votes, and that might suggest the discernment process the GA recommended is being used and presbyteries are taking time to discuss this issue.  I’ll update again when there is significant news or more data.

A Day For Civil Religion

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After watching the Presidential Inauguration this morning (with the boss’s permission) I was appreciative of the historic nature of the ceremony.  One aspect is that while we have a long and drawn-out, maybe even chaotic, process for selecting our leaders, somehow it still seems to work.  We have now had 43 orderly, even decently and orderly if you will, transitions between different chief executives.  And the fact that the new President is not a white male of northern European descent is also an important historical milestone.  So, President Obama, may God be with you and you are in my prayers.

Just as I appreciate “high church” liturgies, I am a bit of a sucker for the pomp and circumstance of national ritual events, especially Presidential Inaugurations which must be the pinnacle of our national rituals.  Every move that I watched this morning was carefully scripted and sent some sort of signal in its action.  For America, this is the height of “civil religion.”

The Wikipedia page for Civil Religion notes several varied meanings of the word, but notes that the term originated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and says that “For Rousseau, civil religion was intended simply as a form of social
cement, helping to unify the state by providing it with sacred
authority.”  It is not a religion with a supreme being at its head, it is a religion of the state.  It is the glue that holds us together as a country.

Alternate meanings include the inclusion of God and religion in civil affairs, such as the plethora of prayers, invocations, benedictions, and prayer services that have occurred over the last few days around all the inauguration events.  While this is not acceptable to everyone, it is a part of our cultural fabric at the present time and expected in our high rituals of civil religion (first definition).  And for a beautiful example of the interaction of culture and religion you need look no further than Rev. Lowery’s benediction.  It was a religious prayer delivered at a civil event, but it was a prayer packed full of cultural and religious references from “Lift Every Voice and Sing” to Amos 5:24.

But today, throughout the campaign, and every day, there was and is always a question whether “civil religion” is an oxymoron in an additional possible meaning of “religion acting in a civil (or orderly) manner.” 

One aspect of being civil with religion was the invitations to give prayers at the various events.  Rev. Warren was not approved of by some, Rev. Robinson opposed by others.  And even the content of their prayers were, and will be, parsed for how they did or did not invoke God at public events and how their words may be offending to some.

But the Bible is clear that (1) we can’t put God in a box to do what we want in the way we want it and (2) many times the message of the Bible should offend.  In the Old Testament you need look no further than the prophets that approached the kings of Israel calling them to account for their misdeeds.  The kings may have been the LORD’s anointed for that time, but they still fell short and messengers such as Samuel, Nathan, and Elijah bluntly reminded them of that.  In the New Testament Jesus says “take up your cross and follow me,” a statement that would have sent shivers down the spines of all who heard it in first century Palestine but has list its deathly and criminal image for us modern hearers.  And Paul writes (I Cor. 1:23). “but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”  At times it is hard to see the Gospel as “good news.”  And at times it is hardly civil.

(As a bit of an aside, there have recently been two well publicized cases of the “offense of the cross.”  In the first, a crucifix was removed from a church in England because it was “a horrifying depiction of pain and suffering.”  In the second, a film crew blocked the view of the communion table cross when shooting a TV soap opera episode so as not to offend viewers.)

There is a place for honest, heartfelt prayers for our leaders both in public and especially in our private prayer lives.  Yes, as Christians we have an assurance of salvation.  But let us not lose sight of the fact that our religious participation is not always to just make us feel good, but also to challenge us to a deeper faith and more energetic service to God.  And our political lives are always subordinate to our faith, not tailoring our faith to our political beliefs.

So a new president has taken office and this election cycle is over, just in time for the next round of campaigning to begin.  The Washington Post has an interesting article by Eli Saslow titled Obama’s Path To Faith Was Eclectic.  And there is an interesting comment on the article at GetReligion.  In light of what this article says and what we have seen so far, it will be interesting to see the interaction of the civil and faith realms in the next four years.

And having had enough civil politics for a while, I now return to church issues.

Bad News From The Presbyterian Mutual Society In Ireland

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Back in the fall when I looked at the impact the current global financial crisis was having on Presbyterian entities I mentioned that the worst hit appeared to be the Presbyterian Mutual Society, an independent financial organization associated with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.  Well, this week the news about the Society and its future came out as a pretty bad, but not quite worst-case, scenario, if the members agree with the proposed dissolution.

For background, the Presbyterian Mutual Society was founded as a way for individuals to invest their money in a way which would benefit churches.  However, the Society, in addition to the church loans, also got into commercial real estate and with the sharp drop in property values found itself with holdings worth significantly less than the value of the deposits.  As the individuals looked at the situation they decided to take out their money, there was a run on the bank, and the Society essentially collapsed.  An Administrator was appointed to see what could be done.

Yesterday the Administrator of the Society announced that no source of external help could be found to rescue the organization.  As an alternative, the Administrator is proposing an orderly liquidation of the assets.  The statement says:

The Administrator appointed to the Presbyterian Mutual Society has
written to its members with a series of proposals which, if accepted,
would see an orderly run down of its business over time through a
formal arrangement allowed for under insolvency legislation.

This would have the effect of repaying part of the members’ investments
over a period to be agreed. If the proposals are not accepted, the
Society will have to be placed in liquidation with the likelihood of
members receiving less money back than if they proceeded with the
formal arrangement.

and

He said it was unlikely that the Society in its current form could
continue as a going concern. Although its assets “had not disappeared”,
the reality was that the collapse in the UK property market had
significantly reduced the value of the Society’s commercial property
portfolio and the value of the Society’s security over property in its
loan book.

Given current market conditions, the Society’s assets could not be sold
quickly at a fair value and he therefore proposed the business should
be wound down in a managed and orderly way through a formal arrangement
with its members.

It is now up to the members to accept this proposal.

It is no surprise that there has been significant media coverage and political discussion.  This includes calls from the Norther Ireland government for the UK government to cover the deposits, a suggestion for the society members to wait it out and let the property market recover, and questions about the church’s responsibility for the Society and its investments.

UPDATE:  Later today after posting this another news story came out that the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has formed an action group to address the issue.  The group is made up of two past Moderators of the General Assembly and two senior church treasurers.

The members of the Society have until January 30 to return their votes accepting the plan.  We will see what the decision is and if the government steps in to help before than.

Insight From A Word Substitution Game — This Is A Bit Weird

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“Things have taken a turn for the surreal“
from Saving Private Ryan

I was skimming an article from today’s LA Times and it suddenly dawned on me that with a bit of word substitution an interesting analogy could be developed.  It may just be the workings of my strange mind.  Or maybe there is real insight here.  So, from a story by Catherine Saillant in the January 13, 2009 edition of the LA Times, “California Fire Chiefs Debate Stay-And-Defend Program.”   The original article begins:

Fire chiefs in tinder-dry Southern California, faced with lean budgets
while more people squeeze into the region, are starting to rethink
long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations in a wildfire,
debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let residents
stay and defend their homes.

(As you might imagine this is a very real issue in SoCal these days.)

So what if we now create a “derivative work” with the substitution of a few words in some select sentences it now might apply to the PC(USA).  Substituted and edited phrases and sections will be [in brackets].

[Congregational leaders] in tinder-dry [ PC(USA) ], faced with (pick your favorite problem), are starting to rethink
long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations […],
debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let [members]
stay and defend their [churches].

“We don’t have enough resources to put a [lawyer (?), polity wonk (?), tall-steeple pastor(?)] at every [church] in
harm’s way,” said [Pastor Brown]. “We figure, if
people are going to stay, maybe they can become part of the solution.”

[sections deleted]

[Pastor Brown] and [Elder Smith] are working to produce
instructional materials — including a video that explains the Leave
Early or Stay and Defend tactic — to educate the [laity] and [elders] statewide.

It will be up to individual [churches] to decide if they want to
adopt stay-and-defend, [Pastor Brown] said. [remainder of paragraph deleted]

[Leaders] who haven’t yet bought into the concept say they are
waiting for more information, including research showing whether it
saves lives. [remainder of paragraph deleted]

[Pastor Brown] acknowledges that building consensus for the program will be
difficult and could take several years. But he hopes that eventually
the entire [denomination] will follow stay-and-defend guidelines.

“This is a paradigm shift,” he said. “We can’t do it overnight.”

[large section deleted for space, but I hope you get the idea]

But not everyone is convinced it will work.

[Elders] have voiced safety concerns, saying not all [church members] are physically or mentally strong enough to endure the rigors
and trauma of a wildfire. A message that gives [church members] a choice on
whether to stay or evacuate could be confusing, resulting in
last-minute exoduses that clog streets, say representatives for [elders].

[large sections deleted]

“It’s not a solution in every [church],” [Pastor Jones] said. “And where it is
done, there has to be a lot of local support and education before it
can be done.”

[sections deleted]

“It’s not a simple thing,” [Pastor Garcia] said. “It takes a certain personality.”

It sort of works, but I’m probably just being silly here and I really don’t want to advocate an “us versus them” adversarial model.  After all, the objective is for all of us to be in partnership together for the Gospel, not debating flee of fight.  But acknowledging that there is a discussion in organizations like the New Wineskins Association of Churches about whether to remain or realign, this simple (and somewhat silly) exercise did strike me with the thought that for churches that chose to stay education and resolve are necessary if their objective is to reform the PC(USA) from within.

Gracious Witness — The World Does See It

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The World is watching…  And the World has noticed.  (At least here in California.)

As much as we are concerned about the confusion, anxiety, and uncertainty in the future of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), at this moment events are moving faster in the Episcopal Church and their local churches that are realigning with other Anglican Provinces.  The California Supreme Court cases, while they will have an impact on Presbyterians, were about Episcopal Churches here in Southern California.  The bishop is offering reconciliation but the churches are looking ahead to the cases being heard in trial court.  And there are more church cases waiting in the wings (e.g. St. John’s, St. Luke’s).  The Presiding Bishop’s office has brought on new high-power legal talent. Meanwhile a SoCal megachurch has offered to have displaced Anglican churches nest on their property.

At a higher level, while the PC(USA) has some unhappy presbyteries, the Episcopal Church has four diocese that have realigned with other provinces and are looking at a new North American province.  Here in California the Episcopal hierarchy has set up a new San Joaquin diocese along side the realigned one and is trying to figure out how the new court decision might help them there.  And in Fort Worth the Presiding Bishop herself will be stopping by in a couple of weeks to lead a special meeting to bring the diocese back into the fold. 

So, in the midst of all this discord what is the good news?  The Modesto Bee has noticed that while the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians have similar problems, the way they are handling them is different.  In an article titled “Presbyterian Splits Lack Episcopalian Litigiousness” they compare how the the two denomination are handling church departures and observe “[M]any of the Presbyterian churches have been allowed to leave “with
grace” and their property, as opposed to the Episcopalian parishes and
dioceses that have been sued across the country.”  It is nice to see that the “gracious witness resolution” passed by the 218th General Assembly may be bearing fruit, not just in the life of the church but as a witness to the world.  As one of the points of the resolution says:

Gracious Witness: It is our belief that Scripture and the Holy Spirit require a gracious witness from us rather than a harsh legalism