Monthly Archives: March 2008

Happy Feast of Saint Patrick Today

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Today I wish you a Happy feast of Saint Patrick, Bishop and Confessor.

But wait, that’s on Monday.

Well, for the vast majority of the world it is, but in an interesting application of “The Rules” that a GA Junkie would appreciate, if you are “observant,” then today is the day to celebrate.

You may have heard that in predominantly Roman Catholic areas there is a problem because Holy Week starts tomorrow and nothing trumps Holy Week in the church calendar.  To be specific, this is all laid out in a set of rules known as the General Rubrics (GR).  On the Roman calendar this Monday, March 17, would be the feast of St. Patrick except that is a third class feast day and since Monday of Holy Week falls on the same day this year and it is a movable feast of the first class with very high precedence [GR 91] then St. Patrick’s day is “commemorated or omitted altogether” [GR 95].  It gets a bit more complicated on the church calendar since there is an allowance for saints that are patrons of a particular city or nation making the feast day one of the first class in those places [GR 57(a)].  However, this is still not good enough to trump Holy Week since the patron’s day comes out twelfth in the order of precedence and Monday to Wednesday of Holy Week are in seventh place.  (For reference, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are highest precedence and Ash Wednesday is also in the group that is seventh.)  In this whole precedence and rules thing, the rule would be to celebrate the feast of Saint Patrick on April 1. (Quick version: Rescheduled feasts are to be pushed after the day that displaces them but both Holy Week and the week following Easter Sunday have higher precedence (the week following Easter just barely) and then there is another displaced feast of higher rank to be celebrated first on March 31.)  There are a couple of variants floating around which would move it earlier, but technically it should go later.

Well, you can’t just omit St. Patrick’s day in some parts, and April 1 was too long to wait, so a compromise was reached by the Irish bishops with the approval of the Vatican to celebrate it today.  See, the PC(USA) is not the only ones with “creative polity.”  And of course, secular celebrations will go on virtually unaffected.

I personally find feast days helpful as a spiritual exercise, but not in a veneration or patron saint sense.  As regular readers know, I welcome All Saints Day (November 1) as an opportunity to remember those that I have know who have been a spiritual inspiration to me and are now part of the Church Triumphant.  In the same way, I appreciate the historical saints, beatified by a particular church or not, who are a witness to the faith and can encourage us in our “running the race” and “fighting the good fight.”  May we be found faithful as well.  Sola Dei Gloria

Notes on African Presbyterian Churches

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Over the last couple of weeks there have been some interesting reports about Presbyterian activities and politics in parts of Africa, but the reports of governing body actions have been too short to warrant a full post.  So here is a post bundling news from Sudan, Ghana, and Malawi.

Sudan
There were two brief reports by Anyuak Media from the General Assembly of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) a couple of weeks ago.  The first article is about the Rev. Philip Akway Obang being elected as the General Secretary of the SPEC.  Rev. Philip (as the article refers to him) has a degree in business administration as well as theological training.  The article says that he has been a church worker for 18 years doing evangelism and parish ministry, probably in a capacity like a Commissioned Lay Pastor.  He completed his theological training four years ago and was ordained a pastor two years ago.  One of the reasons for the article from Anyuak Media is because Pastor Philip is the only Anyuak pastor in the SPEC so there is cultural pride here.

The second article about the GA talks about establishing the first Synod in the SPEC.  The article reports that the new Synod will have two presbyteries, the North and West, and have about 70 pastors.  This is pretty much the extent of details on the new Synod and from a polity and connectionalism perspective it is not clear the role of the new governing body.  The article almost makes it sound like it is the highest governing body and that it might be operating in parallel with the GA.  Part of the confusion might be related to the church structure necessitated by the civil war in that country.  According to Reformed Online the SPEC maintains separate administrative units in government held areas and rebel-controlled areas so this might be related to that division.

The Anyuak Media article also provides a brief overview of the Presbyterian church in Sudan and the Reformed Online site expands on that.  The SPEC is the northern church while the Presbyterian Church of Sudan (PCOS) works mainly in the south.  Unlike northern and southern US Presbyterians, this is not a result of the civil war but due to the history of their development.  The SPEC began as a presbytery of the Egyptian reformed church while the PCOS was established by American missionaries.  Both have parallel administrations due to the civil war and both have churches in the other’s regions, apparently without problems.  The World Council of Churches web site says that they cooperatively run a seminary.  The half-century history of civil war has kept the two churches from uniting.

Ghana
The Presbyterian Church of Ghana is one of the more active African branches and it enjoys a good working relationship with the civil government.  A couple of news articles have appeared recently.  One covers the installation of the new national executive committee of the Bible Study and Prayer Group of the Presbyterian Church in Kumasi.  The featured speaker was the Right-Reverend Dr Yaw Frimpong-Manso, the current Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ghana.  He reminded the new officers to live exemplary lives and to be agents of change.  Another article covers the first graduation from a new campus at Okwahu of the Presbyterian University College.  The ceremonies included a message from Ghana’s President John Agyekum Kufuor read by Ms Elizabeth Ohene, Minister of State in Charge of Tertiary Education.  The message said “the Presbyterian Church had been a faithful ally of government in
providing the manpower needs of the country since it established a
primary school in 1843 and a training college in 1948.”  The article does note that the GA Moderator was present at this ceremony as well.  And finally, regional Presbyterian leaders have condemned violence in Bawku that destroyed property belonging to workers at the local Presbyterian hospital and is causing some of the workers to leave.  The church is actively providing supplies to workers who lost property in the violence.

Malawi
This not so much news, but blog posts about visiting Malawian churches on the blog Swords into Plowshares, the Peacemaking Blog of the PC(USA).  These blog entries record the visits, meetings, adventures, and worship services of a PC(USA) affiliated group as they traveled through this part of Africa.  The visit included the Presbyteries of Blantyre and Dwangwa, and the Livingstonia Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP).  One major focus of the trip was the programs to combat HIV/AIDS in the country and caring for those with and affected by the disease.  The PC(USA) has a significant presence in partnership work in the country.  While the blog entries make no mention of the internal controversy in the CCAP, and I have heard no updates for a while, several of these governing bodies are involved in territorial disputes over church planting I have mentioned before.

Upcoming PC(USA) General Assembly — Mid-March Update

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As the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gets closer the overture process is winding down, but lots of other things are winding up.

On the official web pages, my observation in my last post was correct and the GA Business page has been generalized, the overtures removed, and all information shifted over to PC-biz.  Also, the two previously unlisted overtures, 62 and 68 have appeared in the list now.

One can understand why overture 68 was being worked on for so long.  Foothills Presbytery has put together an extensive overture, both in recommendation and rational, that does some major word-smithing of the Form of Government Task Force (FOG) proposed text for the new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity and Form of Government sections of the Book of Order.  I should note right up front that the task force might have rearranged the first four chapters into three new chapters of Foundations, but this overture rewrites a lot of text in both sections to change the theological focus.  The overture runs almost 16,000 words in length and if pasted into a word processor comes to 38 pages.  Just some more light reading for the commissioners.

To quote the overture the intent of this theological redirection is:

1. Ensure that any revised Form of Government (and Foundations) approved by the General Assembly shall give pre-eminence to the Reformation marks of the true Church, with due consideration of their inner dynamics.

2. Ensure that any revised Form of Government (and Foundations) approved by the General Assembly shall give preference to the church participating in the mission of the triune God in contrast to the church as the delegated/ instrumental bearer (or provisional
demonstration) of God’s mission to the world.

To put it another way, from the Rational, “the marks of the true Church are participatory—where Christ is, there is the Church (ubi christus, ibi ecclesia). The marks are not instrumentalist—where the church is, there is Christ (ubi ecclesia, ibi christus).”  So this is about making the constitutional language reflect the initiative of God and that the church participates in the mission of God.  Much of the language in the General Rational section of this overture closely parallels the Missional Polity document the task force worked with and this overture appears to be proposing changes to the FOG that would more closely align the two in theological perspective.

As I read through the proposed language I find no changes in church operations, although the argument can be made that the FOG Task Force has removed operations from the new Form of Government anyway.  In some cases the word-smithing does not really change any language but places things into more readable forms, like creating bulleted lists, or splitting items in a list into more exclusive bullet points.  But there are a lot of changes in language placing new emphasis on the Triune God and the mission of God (missio Dei).  Some of the changes are linguistically subtle.  Some of these strike me as just some “clean-up” editing.  For example (added text in italics)

G-1.02 A congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) can be organized and dissolved only by the authority of a presbytery and shall function under the provisions of this Constitution.

Some, while subtle word-wise, are theologically more important.  An example of this:  A line in G-1.0301 would change from

One becomes a member of the church through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and acceptance of Christ’s Lordship in all of life.

to

Believing that Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord over all of life makes one a member of the church.

This is a good example of one consistent change in the overture where the language of “faith” in Jesus Christ seems to be uniformly replaced with “believing.”  Change like this are intended to place a greater emphasis on participating, as opposed to call and response.

As I read through this overture it strikes me that this seems to be somebody or some group’s idea of what the task force report should be if it is to be truly missional.  Looking at the members of the task force there is no one from Foothills so it did not come directly from a member who wanted to see more.  The overture is so complete and so extensive there has to be a “rest of the story” on this one.  It would be interesting to know how long the presbytery commissioners wrestled with this overture since it is so extensive.  And being this extensive, it will give the commissioners on the GA Form of Government Revision Committee even more to do.  I look forward to listening to, and maybe talking with, the GA overture advocate for this one.

Well, what else is new?  Maybe the most high-profile of the remaining overtures is 80 from Peace River Presbytery which complains about the Evangelical Presbyterian Church “actively pursuing a strategy to persuade Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) churches to disaffiliate.”  One interesting twist on this overture is that it asks for an investigation by the Executive Office of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) into the EPC’s actions.   Remember that the current president of WARC and presumably the head of the Executive Committee is the Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick.  (Have I heard that name before?)  If it were to go to WARC he would obviously recuse himself from any investigation.  A similar overture that complained about the EPC was proposed, but not approved, by Mississippi Presbytery.

The remaining overtures are directed at social witness policy, or closely related topics.  Some that impact PC(USA) entities: 76 on Directing GAC to produce Adolescent Human Development Resources since the 217th General Assembly discontinued the human sexuality resources; 78 on Directing PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance) to continue nurturing relationships with presbyteries affected by the storms of 2005; 79 is another request to reinstate the Office for Environmental Justice, similar to overture 24; and finally 77 is a request that this GA celebrate “Living Waters for the World.”  The remaining new overtures are 73 – “On the use of non-disposable food service items,” 74 – On addressing the violence and suffering inflicted on Iraqi women…, and 75 – On temporary suspension of military aid to the State of Israel.

That does it for the major new business that I have seen published.  I would note that there will be a meet and greet with all four Moderator candidates at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville, NJ, on April 25.  And the Witherspoon Society has gotten their GA web site started.

Sin Is Not Just Present, It Is Pervasive

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The doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith. — Reinhold Niebuhr

I won’t say that yesterday was a “good” day for sin, but it was clearly a day that it was prominent.  On the serious side a crime fighting and “squeaky clean” politician was caught in scandal.  And as the Reformed community we shake our heads in disappointment but not in surprise, for “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

And while in this news event several of the traditional “deadly” or “mortal” sins were transgressed, the Vatican comes out with their list of seven new “social” sins.  (Technically, as this Toronto Star article says, a Vatican official discussed modern problems with a Rome newspaper and it was the news media that distilled and spun them down to the more attention-getting “seven modern sins.”)

Update:  There is a good story over on GetReligion called “Seven Sensationalist Sins.”  But for us geeks, the diagram of the combinatorics of the original seven deadly sins, chose two is priceless.

Modern Parable of the Banquet

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This is a true incident that happened in my university department last week:

There was a university department that had an “Important Visitor” that was to meet with as many of the graduate students as possible for lunch.  When the appointed time came the “Student Leader” met the Important Visitor but they waited and nobody else showed up.  So the Student Leader made some frantic phone calls but found only one other student to join them for lunch.

Upon returning from the meeting the Student Leader sent out a “heated” e-mail that elicited the usual responses:  One student said “nobody is required to attend.”  Another replied “why should I care about this if others don’t care about me.”  Others excused themselves with “I had a class,” “I had another meeting,” or “I had to TA.”  One of the students even commented that if the lack of attendance bothered the Student Leader so much, maybe they should not be the Student Leader.  This caused a third student to rush to the Student Leader’s defense saying that the Student Leader has “put in a lot of time and you can ignore them if you want, but don’t insult them.”

Here endith the parable.

I tell this story because while there are some character shifts from the original in Luke 14:16-24, and while the Gospel version has eschatological overtones that this does not, I still saw echoes of the original that give a modern tone to the “I can not come” and the ecclesiology of the version Jesus told.  I think what surprised me the most in this department incident was that there were greater implications for “professionalism” and “networking” that the students either were not aware of or ignored.  While for many there were legitimate conflicts with classes, for many others the concern was for “here” and “now,” not for taking the long view of their career.  And it is tempting to look for a “parable of the vineyard” ending where the Department Chair comes on in and “destroys” them all.  But that is mixing parables.

So I make the jump to the contemporary church.  These graduate students are one of the most under-represented groups in the Christian church today in the U.S.  What holds their attention?  They want to know how this relates, affects, and benefits them right now!  A time line of a year or more is not much of a concern and eternity is not even on the radar.  And their connection to the church may be tenuous at best if they did not grow up in a faith tradition.

How do we work with the Holy Spirit to get them into church?  Is it the energy, vitality, and uniqueness of contemporary worship?  Do we need to be ready when they have hit rock bottom? (And believe me, many of them will.) Do we need to be in relationship with them so we are ready when they ask “what makes you different?”  Do they need to see a faith community that looks like them, not like me and their parents?  It is tough, but from where I sit these are the question I keep asking myself.

Decision in the PCA SJC Louisiana Presbytery Case

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On March 6 trial was held by the Standing Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church in America in the case of Louisiana Presbytery and their examination of TE Steven Wilkins.  In a moment the results of that trial…

But to cover the bases I want to get caught up on the prosecutor situation since my last post on February 11.  As I mentioned at the end of that post, RE Sam Duncan had announced his intention to resign as the prosecutor in the case.  Upon his resignation TE Dewey Roberts was named as the prosecutor.  Our thanks to Rev. Lane Keister at Green Baggins for posting RE Duncan’s resignation letter.

Well, after trial on Thursday and deliberations that evening, the SJC returned their verdict on Friday morning.  In count 1, a technical count about classifying declared departures that Louisiana Presbytery pleaded “not guilty” to, the charge was dismissed.  In count 2, that the presbytery did not conduct the examination of TE Wilkins to properly find a “presumption of guilt,” to which the presbytery pleaded “guilty,” the SJC “admonished” the presbytery, the lowest form of correction.

Now, I am not going to try to reinvent the wheel here because there is a good summary post at Reformed Musings about the proceedings, and if you want the details from a ruling elder close to the situation in Louisiana Presbytery you must check out HaigLaw’s post about the decision.

Looking forward it is tempting to say that the PCA has sent a message that Federal Vision Theology is not compatible with their doctrinal standards and that remaining leaders and churches who hold to the Federal Vision will flee or quickly be chased away to the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).  But it is important to point out that this whole case was more about examinations regarding the theology than about the theology itself.  And there is not one unified Federal Vision Theology but several varying approaches leaving some aspects doctrinally untested.  So the controversy may continue until a clear declaration regrading doctrinal standards is made by the SJC.  Or, the PCA might take this as a good point to take a break and get distracted by its next controversy.

But it will be interesting to see what sort of “legs” this topic has because it has clearly “got the attention,” “struck a nerve,” “rattled the cages,” (fill in your favorite cliché here) of the various proponents and opponents to this theological controversy.  And, with out going into details here, note that it deals with the nature of the covenant community, a topic at the core of Reformed theology.  But one post on Green Baggins currently has 707 comments to it and there is a thread on Puritan Board that has developed quite a discussion as well (4239 posts to date). So at least at the moment the topic has momentum in the blogosphere.  We will see what happens next and what happens to the momentum.

The Future of the Mainline Church

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This is one of those “convergence of thoughts” posts were several things coalesce in your thinking and you realize the significant common thread running through them.  What was probably the catalyst for this was the report that the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released last week titled “ U.S. Religions Landscape Survey.”  I’ll return to specifics of that survey in a minute, but in that report I saw nothing that I did not already know from my experience and anecdotal evidence; it just quantifies the observations.

The bottom line is that the report says, among other things, what we already know about mainline Protestant denominations:  the members are getting older and the denominations are getting smaller.  Not a surprise to anyone following the PC(USA) membership trends which saw a 1.4% decrease in the number of churches between 2003 and 2006 and a 5.7% decrease in membership in the same time period.  The one year decline for 2005-2006 was 2.0% for the PC(USA).  Over the same three-year time period the PCA reported a 5.7% growth in the number of churches and a 4.2% increase in membership. (Note that I chose the PCA and not the EPC so there is not an argument to be made that those gains are mostly departing PC(USA) members and churches.)  Similarly for the United Methodists, the title of a Christian Post article yesterday pretty much says it all: No Future for Methodists Unless Change Occurs, Say Leaders.

For the PC(USA) (and, while I did not dig up the statistics, the “mainline” Presbyterian branches in other countries as well), one observation is that we do not retain our young people.  That is supported by the Pew Forum study.

First, another academic survey which again quantifies in today’s college students what I saw happen among my peers at a state university 25 years ago.  The Pew Forum has a Q&A on their site with Alexander W. Astin, the director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA on “ Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose“.  As they define it, college students become less “religious” (they stop going to church) and more “spiritual” (things like “attaining inner harmony”) between their freshman and junior years.  There is also a measure of their political thinking and the students tend to become more “liberal” in their thinking.  (Note that the Pew Forum Q&A does not include confidence intervals but if it is like most national surveys it is about +/-4% which actually renders some of the statistical differences for politics on the Pew page as indistinguishable.) (Digression: If you want an interesting discussion of differing impacts of “progressive” and “conservative” faculty on college campuses check out an article by Harrison Scott Key from World on the Web.)  I’m still doing some thinking about the UCLA study’s categories and classifications, but they support what many of us recognized over the last couple of decades, if not longer. [I will note that my day job is in academania so I have a front row seat to this. I was in a group recently where two students were having a discussion over whose form of yoga was better.]

If I had to summarize the Pew Forum study in one line it would be that today American churches, religion, and spirituality have become a commodity with individuals looking for consumer satisfaction and not brand loyalty.  And no, I’m not the first to say that.

As background, for the total population they found that 78.4% of Americans self-identified as Christians breaking down to 51.3% Protestant, 23.8% Catholic, and the balance of 3.3% other Christian including Eastern Orthodox and two groups not everyone would group with the Christians, Latter Day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The next largest group was “Unaffiliated” comprising 16.1% of the population but within that group, in addition to the atheists and the agnostics there is what you might call the “apathetic,” although the study calls them “nothing in particular.”  Now apathetic is not quite right because part of the “nothing in particular” are “secular unaffiliated” who would be the apathetic, but there is also a “religious unaffiliated” who do say religion plays a significant part in their lives, but apparently not organized religions groups.  If you care about particular states, regions, ethnic groups, or other demographics the report is extensive and the web site easy to drill down through to get some very detailed information.

One other interesting detail is that among the Evangelical Protestants the second largest group is Nondenominational.  Baptists are the largest group among Evangelical Protestants with 41% of the group and then Nondenominational and Pentecostals are tied for second with 13% of the group for each.  For the record, Evangelical Presbyterians, led by the PCA, are 3% of the group.

I should mention that in the survey there is a third Protestant tradition tracked, that being the “Historically Black Protestant Church.”  However, since Presbyterianism comes in at 0% in this tradition I won’t be regularly referring to it.

One more little detail:  Since the individuals in the survey self-identify their religious affiliation I am curious about the “Mainline Presbyterian” breakdown.  While 1.1% of respondents were PC(USA), <0.3% identified themselves as “Other Presbyterian in the Mainline Tradition” and 0.7% as “Presbyterian in the Mainline Tradition, not further specified.”  So if you are Presbyterian in the Mainline Tradition, but not PC(USA), what are you?  Ex patriot Church of Scotland, PC Ireland or some other global Presbyterian branch?  Another American Presbyterian who thinks they are mainline? Someone who has left the PC(USA) but still identifies with the mainline church, whether or not attending elsewhere, or someone who won’t admit to being in the PC(USA)? According to the narrative of the study these were individuals who identified themselves as Presbyterian but no further, and who said they were not “born-again or evangelical.”  And what about PC(USA) members who identified themselves as “Evangelical?”

With that overview, let me turn to one small piece of the Pew study, specifically the religious landscape with young adults and migration patterns away from the denomination of their upbringing.  The study finds that 62% of Americans over age 70 identify themselves as Protestant while only 43% of those in the 18-29 age bracket do.   As for Unaffiliated, it is claimed by 25% of the 18-29 age group while claimed by only 8% of the over 70 group.  And in each of these groups the age distribution, while not strictly linear, does increase or decrease consistently. The survey also looked at shifting religious affiliations by comparing the tradition an individual was raised in versus where they are now.  (Note that multiple changes or changes back to the original are not seen.)  The biggest changes are seen in the Unaffiliated group with 7.3% of the population being raised unaffiliated but 16.1% claiming it now.  And most of that gain was in the “Nothing in particular” cat
egory.  The second largest gains were seen in the Nondenominational Protestant category with 1.5% raised in that tradition but 4.5% currently identifying with it.  Within those currently self-identifying as Protestants, 18% of Evangelical Protestants were raised outside Protestantism and 31% switched from another Protestant family while for those in Mainline Protestantism it is similar with 16% from outside and 30% from another Protestant family.  That leave 51% and 54% respectively who are currently in the tradition they were raised in.

Now that is a bunch of numbers, but breaking that last one down by denominations the Baptists have the best retention rate at 60% with no change while Presbyterians have one of the worst with only a 40% retention rate.  Of those that were raised Presbyterian and changed roughly equal numbers, about 15% went to each of other Evangelical Protestant denominations, other Mainline Protestant denominations, and No Religion.

I will point out that some of these numbers about migration apply to individuals across the age spectrum.  But considering the UCLA study, the fact that Unaffiliated is strongest among the 18-29 age group, and my qualitative observation of college and college age being the time that young people now lose touch with the church, I would argue that while these trends are not specific, they are at least representative if not dominant in the college age group.

With each of my three children, there is a clear attraction to the energy, vitality, and relationships that certain other churches in town have.  All three, while growing up at home and faithfully attending and serving at our Presbyterian church, also regularly attend the youth group at another church.  (And there are two different “other” churches between the three of them.)  These other churches have thriving youth programs that attract, hold, and educate the kids.  They are not attracted by the theology, they are attracted by the energy and the relationships.  These two other churches are not Presbyterian, but I have seen nothing that a Presbyterian church could not do.  In fact from reading his blog, I think Mark Smith’s church does do things like this with their youth.  But from what I have seen it takes work.  Not just work by the Youth Director, not just work by the Youth Team, but work by the whole church.  The whole church?  Yes, because some of us “frozen chosen” have to be ready to sometimes have worship music that might include a drum set and electric guitars.  Yes, because some of us need to get off our duffs and be ready to help out with youth events like Mark does.  Not only can a small youth team not do it alone, but if we want to empower the younger generation of our members (note, not the “future of the church” or the “next generation”, they are with us today) we need to show them that they are valued by the broad community and have a place in our worship and the life of the community.  And I think we can do that without compromising our Reformed faith and traditions (I’ll have to think more about how some of this might interact with the “ regulative principle of worship“).  [I think I just outlined an upcoming moderatorial sermon.]

[Please forgive me if I seem hypocritical by making these suggestions and yet my own kids also attend other church youth groups.  I would point out that 1) they are still engaged in our church and its youth group and 2) My wife, and I to a lesser degree, have been active with youth events and the youth team.  But we are not above looking at what makes other youth programs successful and it takes the time and the efforts of a lot of people to change the climate and educate the faith community.]

A final piece of anecdotal evidence:  Over the last week I have been part of two interesting conversations with two young men.  The first had just finished high school and was starting at a local community college.  He grew up in the Baptist church and from what we adults could piece together he was now in rebellion against a strict upbringing.  He could clearly and succinctly exposit his religious views and they were clearly theistic and non-Christian.  Here, I thought, was a college student headed for the Unaffiliated, but I hope that in the near future he is able to work out some of his uncertainties with the help of an understanding and non-judgmental faith community.  The second conversation was with our son who requested that we have him excused from the last few minutes of his school day so he could attend the memorial service for a member of our church.  While it was a wonderful and faithful gentleman who had gone to be with the Lord, he was not a close friend so my wife and I were initially skeptical that all our son wanted was an excuse to get out of one of his least-favorite classes.  But as we talked with him we realized that he was serious about wanting to be part of the faith community that gathered to remember this saint and so we pulled him from school for the worship service.  It demonstrated for me that something had clicked for my son about being community in the church.

Within the PC(USA) this spring it will be interesting to see if the denomination can get and hold the attention of young adults.  One driving force is the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow and his standing for election as Moderator of the General Assembly with a Web 2.0 campaign.  Yes, the other three candidates, Rev. Bill Teng, Rev. Carl Mazza, Elder Roger Shoemaker, all have web sites and Mr. Mazza is blogging.  But Bruce’s web site is updated frequently and has the Web 2.0 bells and whistles like DOPPLR, Facebook, yelp.  From one of his posts it is apparent that questions are being raised about this modern style and whether that is an appropriate way to run a campaign.  For the Moderator election I’m not sure how much of that will help him; it is my experience that few commissioners are in the demographic that appreciates Web 2.0 or that it would influence their vote.  But taking a long view, it should be the hope of those who care about the future of the PC(USA) that Bruce simply doing that will attract and hold the attention of the younger generation of PC(USA) members and leaders.  Or maybe wake some of the rest of us up to what we need to be thinking about.

As I work through my GA 101 series I am thinking about how Reformed Theology, Presbyterian polity and Web 2.0 intersect, inform each other, and maybe conflict.  From a traditional Reformed approach, does an on-line community gathered together in the “virtual” world differ from the covenant community gathered together in the “real” world?  Can you have a true Reformed “Second Life” church?  (That is not Second Life as in The Church Triumphant but as in “The Church Virtual.”)  So I plan to revisit this piece of Reformed theology in detail in my concluding installment of the GA 101 series: Reformed theology and Presbyterian polity for the future — The Church Virtual?

But for now I have written enough and probably glazed over a bunch of eyes with all the statistics.  The take-away is that the numbers continue to not look good for the PC(USA) in the long run and we need to think about how our community, within the bounds of our Reformed faith, needs to adjust.

GA Registration Problems: Site Overload?

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Well today my son got his registration materials for GA this coming June.  But I would guess a bunch of others got their materials today as well because we started following the directions for him to register and the PC(USA) web site is timing out.  Reached maximum connections?  System overloaded and it crashed?  It’s now 9 PM on the left (west) coast.  We will try again tomorrow evening.  I hope PC-biz can handle the strain of having 1000+ people logged in at the same time.