The PC(USA) News Service recently ran a news story based on an interview PCNS coordinator Rev. Jerry Van Marter did with Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick. For the most part the questions and answers were predictable and soft-ball but a few points stick out. If you will permit me, I am going to intersperse my comments in this post rather than saving them for the end.
Maybe the headline item is that Rev. Kirkpatrick has not ruled out running for a fourth term as Stated Clerk. He says that he will seek to discern his call to this ministry over the summer. (Is this like the current political fashion of first announcing your candidacy on a late-night talk show and then making a “formal” announcement later?)
For me the most interesting response was about the Office of the General Assembly’s view of the legal memos on property that have come to be called the “Louisville Papers.” Rev. Kirkpatrick says:
He said a legal opinion on church property that
denominational critics have derisively called “The Louisville Papers”
and labeled “hard-line” and “secretive” are simply that — legal
opinions on church property law.“That’s not the advice we’re giving churches and sessions,” Kirkpatrick insisted, citing a more recent paper from his Constitutional Services office entitled “Responding Pastorally to Troubled Churches.” That
document states: “We commend using a response team that seeks a time of
prayer and conversation aimed at understanding the conflict and
identifying steps toward reconciliation.”
I believe that this is the first response I have seen out of the Stated Clerk’s Office about these documents and I am glad there was finally some acknowledgment and explanation of them. I think we are all hearing a variety of stories from “the trenches” about the different approaches presbyteries are taking. And, unfortunately, I think that the knowledge of the existence of these memos soured the environment and forced congregations to respond aggressively in the process of leaving the denomination rather than trusting the presbyteries and the connectional process that we have. Yes, I am aware of the hard-fought civil legal battles that have been and are being fought. I would like to hear more about the “vast majority of cases” that Rev. Kirkpatrick refers to where the presbyteries are not going to court.
Beyond that the interview goes over much of the denominational, international and ecumenical events that have been covered in other PCNS news stories over the last couple of months and how from these events the story says “Despite the departure of a handful of disaffected Presbyterian Church(U.S.A.) congregations in recent months, General Assembly Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick remains convinced that the troubled denomination “is in a potential tipping point of renewed growth and vitality.””
I think all of us hope that he is correct.