Discernment of the Call to Ordained Office

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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.

PUP Report and Ordination Standards: Nothing has changed?

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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.

PCA SJC Federal Vision decisions: Update and Correction

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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.

Presbyterian Outlook issue on Web 2.0

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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.

GA 101: Preface

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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?

 

Looking Ahead: 218th General Assembly of the PC(USA)

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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 sisters and brothers in Christ, sharing our
common faith in, and allegiance to, Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
let us proceed to vote on the question before us.


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.

What matters to whom? Different Perspectives on the Controversies in the PCUSA

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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.

Moderator Designate for the Church of Scotland 2008 General Assembly

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The Church of Scotland nominating committee has selected the Rev. David Lunan, Clerk to the Presbytery of Glasgow, as the Moderator Designate for the General Assembly to be held this coming May.

The Rev. Lunan was ordained in 1970 and served as a youth worker before that and in parish ministry in Moray and Glasgow until 2002 when he became the clerk of the presbytery.  He served as Moderator of both the Presbyteries of Moray and Glasgow.  The Church of Scotland press release talks about his implementation of alternate styles of worship during his parish ministry as well as his extensive youth work.  He is also credited with “raising the profile” of the organization Christian Aid.

While the news coverage pretty much just covers the material in the press release, the Scotsman.com has an article on the six nominees that the selection committee considered.

PCUSA Communication: No apparent change yet

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Previously in my blog I have noted two things that pertain to today’s comments:

1)  The Presbyterian Church (USA) seems to be better at sending Presbyterian News Service reporters to “progressive” events than “evangelical” events.  [ Previous Post – See the last paragraph] (Pardon the labels.)

2)  The Presbyterian Church (USA) has a new communications person in Karen Schmidt, the deputy executive director of the General Assembly Council for communications and fund development.  And at the GAC meeting Karen talked about a unified message. [ Previous Post]

While I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, unfortunately enough data points are developing to form a trend.

My latest observation:
In doing the research on the latest convocation of the New Wineskins Association of Churches I found information in other blogs (like Toby Brown’s Classical Presbyterian), The Layman, and the Presbyterian Outlook.  As far as I can tell, the Presbyterian News Service was silent.  While the PNS did not cover the NWAC Convocation, they did cover the meeting of the Covenant Network the following week with two articles, one on the meeting in general and their statement from the meeting and the other article on the testimony given at the meeting given by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals.

Now, I do not have a problem with the coverage of the Covenant Network meeting, but I do question the continuing trend to cover “progressive” events like the Covenant Network meeting while not covering, at least in the same detail, “evangelical” meetings that occur at almost the same time.

Federal Vision Controversy: Current Events and Judicial Decisions

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As I follow the developments of the Federal Vision Controversy I see that there have been a couple of recent events that make a new blog entry worthwhile.

The most significant of these are two associated rulings from the Presbyterian Church in America‘s (PCA) Standing Judicial Commission (SJC) in the two cases related to the Federal Vision controversy.  To make a long story very short… Central Carolina Presbytery complained to the GA to have the SJC investigate Steve Wilkins, pastor of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, LA, or at least to have his presbytery, the Louisiana Presbytery do it.  The SJC had the presbytery do it, the presbytery did it, and reported back to the SJC last spring that there was not a problem.  In the mean time the GA adopted the report critical of the Federal Vision/Auburn Avenue Theology.

With that as background, a couple of weeks ago the SJC unanimously decided these cases and they have just become available on the web on Puritan Board.  You can either read them in a post to the board with some interesting follow-up discussion or as links to documents on their server. ( Central Carolina complaint decision, Louisiana response decision, agreement to copyrights will be necessary)  And if my very crude description of events in the paragraph above makes no sense to you, each of the decisions has the respective time-lines in them in great detail.

To give a one-line description of the SJC decision:  Louisiana Presbytery did it right, but came to the wrong decision.

Now, the detailed version:
In the SJC Report on the Memorial from Central Carolina Presbytery the SJC originally found a year ago that Louisiana Presbytery had not properly “dealt with the allegations that TE Steven TE Wilkins’ views are out of accord at key points with the system of doctrine as summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms” and as a result the Louisiana Presbytery “has not met its responsibilities under BCO 13-9.f and 40-4, 5, and thus has not adequately protected the peace and purity of the Church.”  The SJC then directed the presbytery to conduct an examination with six specific requirements.

Part II of this decision then examines the actions of the Louisiana Presbytery in response to the original decision.  The SJC found that while the presbytery complied with the directives of the SJC, they did not reach a decision “consistent with the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America.”  And this is were we jump off to the second decision released…

In the presbytery action on the examination the vote was 13 to 8 to exonerate Pastor Wilkins.  Following the vote Teaching Elder (TE) James Jones filed a complaint that quickly found its way to the SJC.  TE Jones was joined by one additional Teaching Elder and five Ruling Elders.  The points in the complaint are that it is a matter for the GA, that TE Wilkins redefined theological terms, and that TE Wilkins had “serious variances” with the Westminster Standards.  This became the second SJC decision that was released.

In their decision, the SJC ruled that the Louisiana Presbytery had failed to apply the correct constitutional standard and that in doing so it had erred and should have found a strong presumption of guilt that some of TE Wilkins’ views were “out of conformity.”

Now, here is where I am not sure what happens next.  Problems were declared with Louisiana Presbytery and TE Wilkins, but I have not found in these decisions an order about what to do next.  I will keep looking around but my guess is that it will return to the GA and this year’s Assembly will determine the corrective action.  (Let me know if I missed this somewhere.)  It should also be noted that while the SJC found the strong probability that some of TE Wilkins’ theology is out of conformity, the actual decision only says that the presbytery did not use the correct standard.  The problem is not the Federal Vision theology itself but how the presbytery decided if there was a problem.  Judgment on the Federal Vision/Auburn Avenue theology has not been directly rendered.

In a related action, on his blog De Regnis Duobus (Concerning the Two Kingdoms) the Rev. Jason Stellman posts a letter from the Pacific Northwest Presbytery declaring that the Rev. Peter Leithart, in compliance with the fifth recommendation of the Federal Vision report adopted by last year’s GA has posted a public letter declaring the differences in his views.  Rev. Stellman also reports that he was elected to be one of the members of the study committee to look at Rev. Leithart views.  It is interesting to note that Peter Leithart, while apparently a member of Pacific Northwest Presbytery and therefore a PCA Teaching Elder, is pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho.  The church is a member of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).  The committee is to report back in January.
 
I think that to no one’s surprise the conversation about the Federal Vision controversy continues in the blogosphere.  In some cases it contains harsh criticism on both sides producing more heat than light.  But in others it is very civil and even sheds light on the nuances of the controversy.

One of the more interesting was a well as enlightening was a discussion held on the blog De Regno Christi back in late September.  If you look at their Federal Vision thread you can find a multitude of posts and comments about very specific points under discussion.

In another twist Jeff Meyers reports that an overture is being introduced in different presbyteries of the PCA about informing the presbytery if ordained individuals views differ from the standards.  The twist is that while the constitution and ordination vows refer to differences with the “Standards,” that being Westminster, the overtures refer to differences with the Federal Vision report, raising it to the level of constitutional standard.

Well, I think that is enough for now.  The discussion continues and will undoubtably surface at the PCA GA in June.