Monthly Archives: March 2010

Equipping Elders

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A few days ago I was musing on the training and continuing education (or lack thereof) of ruling elders in Presbyterian churches.  This has been a continuing reflection of mine to try to figure out how to better equip ruling elders for not just their administrative duties but their polity and spiritual shepherding duties as well.  Being a good elder is not easy and takes work.

It is always worthwhile for ruling elders to be reading their branch’s confessional standards on a regular basis, and to be familiar with their polity documents (The Code, Book of Forms, Book of Church Order, Book of Order).  But there is a need for resources to fill in between those documents and to help understand their context.

For a broad overview of Presbyterianism for not just ruling elders but members as well, my church, and others I know, have used Donald McKim’s Presbyterian Questions, Presbyterian Answers with good response. For theological background I have enjoyed the “Armchair Theologians” series of books on religious figures like Augustine, Calvin and Barth.  These are easy reads that give a good overview of each individual’s life and theological thought (which are usually linked).  I could see that academic theologians might have problems with the details, or lack of details in the books.  And for some the illustrations might be a problem either because it always represents God as the stereotype man with the flowing beard, or because it portrays God at all in violation of the Second Commandment.  And the PC(USA) has a low-cost set of studies at ThePresbyterianLeader.com that are designed for leadership training and discussion of current hot topics.  I can not tell you anything further about these because I have not purchased any yet but I have seen good reviews from others in the PC(USA).

But that is a perfect lead-in to a brand new resource that is both comprehensive and free for download…

A big thanks to the Presbyterian Church in Canada for putting together Equipping Elders.  (And to Colin Carmichael, the Associate Secretary for Communications, for bringing it to my attention.) This 194 page resource is available as either the free download or for 20$CAN from the PCC Book Room. for a 3-hole punch loose-leaf version to put in a binder.  And what surprised me is how “platform independent” this is; it is very much about being a ruling elder and some, but not much, is directly tied to the PCC.

Probably what impressed me the most about this resource was how comprehensive it is – how much useful material is in one place.  It addresses important topics that ruling elders need to know to be good shepherds of their flocks:  Congregational care and home visitations along with suggested prayers for praying for members’ needs on those visits.  Understanding the implications of different sized congregations.  Why membership matters.  Stewardship.  And, relevant to this post, why and how elders need to keep on learning themselves.  The book says:

Ordination to ruling eldership in The Presbyterian Church in Canada is a lifelong commitment to a call to ministry in and with the church. Whether serving as term elders, experiencing periods as inactive elders, or attending session meetings monthly for 20 years, all elders are always elders.
     This ordination for life means that elders have responsibility for developing their skills, learning more about their ministry and growing in the faith. Elders need to be lifelong learners. Lifelong learning assumes that we all continue to learn new things over the years, whether this is through formal training, reading, discussions with others, experience, or picking up new information and ideas from a variety of sources.

Check it out, and if you know of any similar resource that puts that much practical information for ruling elders in one place, at any price, please let me know.

Moderator Designate Of The General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In Ireland

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Three news sources, the BBC, U.TV, and Daily News, are reporting that the Rev. Norman Hamilton, pastor of Ballysillan Presbyterian Church in north Belfast, has been chosen by the presbyteries as the Moderator designate of the 2010 General Assembly.  Presuming that he carried the five presbyteries that voted for him in the February vote, he received votes from six of the nine presbyteries that voted for candidates not making it into the second round.  He received the votes of eleven of the nineteen presbyteries.

The BBC provides this reaction from Rev. Hamilton:

“I am greatly humbled and surprised that this has come to me.”

“I hope during my year to bring a very Biblical perspective to a wide range of issues that are important to both church and society.”

Called Meeting Of The General Synod Of The ARP

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As observers of Presbyterian denominations know it is a very rare event for a denomination to call a special meeting of its highest governing body.  At about this time today a Called Meeting of the General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church will convene at Bonclarken Conference Center in Flat Rock, N.C., to hear the report and act on the recommendations of the Moderator’s Commission on Erskine College and Theological Seminary.  This Commission was created by the 205th General Synod last summer and the minutes of the Synod meeting (p. 44, 47th page of the PDF file) record the adoption of the following Memorial from First Presbytery:

That First Presbytery encourage the 2009 General Synod to instruct the Moderator of Synod to form a special commission to investigate whether the oversight exercised by the Board of Trustees and the Administration of Erskine College and Seminary is in faithful accordance with the Standards of the ARP Church and the synod’s previously issued directives.

Erskine College and Theological Seminary (“Erskine”) are linked educational institutions in Due West, South Carolina, founded by, and still associated with, the ARP.  In case that is not obvious from the name, the institutions are named for one of the principal leaders of the secession Presbyterian branch in Scotland, the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, who helped establishe the Associate Presbytery in 1733.  It is worth mentioning that the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church descends from this branch and is not, nor was ever, a part of the mainline American Presbyterian branch.  Furthermore, the ARP can trace its founding to 1822 without any subsequent reorganizations making it the American Presbyterian branch with the longest time period since the last division or merger.

Erskine is still associated with the ARP — the vast majority of the trustees are elected by the General Synod and it is considered an agency of the church.  The College on its web site is not as clear about this association.  It refers to its status as a “Christian institution” and its Mission Statement does refer back to its ARP origins.  The Theological Seminary describes to itself as “organically and historically related to Erskine College” and the Mission Statement is:

Erskine Theological Seminary is an educational institution of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Seminary has been called by God and commissioned by its host to serve not only that denomination, but also the entire Church of Jesus Christ. The mission of Erskine Theological Seminary is to educate persons for service in the Christian Church.

According to the minutes (pg. 10) the ARP General Synod budget for 2009-2010 includes $617,000 in unrestricted funds for support of Erskine College.  In addition, Erskine is the beneficiary of special offering funds and occasional special allocations.

I don’t know how far back questions started to be raised about the Christian world view of the College but I do know that there was significant discussion by the 204th General Synod (2008)  as reported by ARP Talk, and various reports suggest that there were issues well before that Synod.  (ARP Talk is an unofficial source of news, commentary and advocacy edited by the Rev. Dr. Charles Wilson that has devoted a lot of electronic ink to the Erskine debate.)  The heart of the issues with Erskine has been with the infallibility of Scripture and whether the faculty upholds and teaches in accord with that belief.  As a general statement of the Synod, but clearly aimed at the college, the Synod took the following action, described as the most significant since 1979.

That the 2008 General Synod go on record by stating that the position of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church on Scripture is that the Bible alone, being God-breathed, is the Word of God written, infallible in all that it teaches, and inerrant in the original manuscripts.

While that position went into the minutes it seems to have had little affect on the college.  ARP Talk continued to report from students, faculty and alumni about the world view of some members of the faculty.  Independent blogs were set up that both advocated for change at Erskine as well as another that defended the school.

Additional perspective on the situation comes from an article by Joel Belz in World Magazine which describes the dynamics that have caused the present tensions in the following way:

It’s true, of course, that such a prickly relationship between a denomination and its colleges and seminaries is hardly a new thing or a newsworthy matter. But this may be different. There is, for example, no mountain of evidence that the two ARP schools have lurched noticeably leftward in recent years. What’s happened instead is that the sponsoring denomination has itself moved decidedly to the right—and now wants to take firm steps to bring its college and seminary with it.That’s a rarity in the ecclesiastical and educational history of America.

This was a high-profile issue at the 205th General Synod last summer and coverage included blog reports from ARP bloggers Brian Howard (three parts – 1, 2, 3), and Tim Philips (with a whole bunch of his follow-up articles).  There was also a lot of Christian media coverage of the meeting including the previously mentioned article in World Magazine, at least two articles in the Layman, and the Evangelical Press News Service (provided by Tim Philips).

At that meeting the minutes (pg. 71) record the Report on Erskine College and Theological Seminary where the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and the Pres
ident say:

A few students have publicly criticized Erskine for failure to live up to its Christian profession and some of those criticisms are valid and are being addressed. Because Erskine does not require a profession of Christian faith for admission, there will always be some students who do not embrace our mission statement or live by Christian values.
…
Every year Erskine hires some new faculty and their appointment is probationary for the first year. In their application and during interviews, they subscribe to our mission statement and to Synod’s document on the Statement of the Philosophy of Christian Higher Education. They also affirm Synod’s view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture. New faculty are carefully evaluated by the Academic Dean and some of those professors who do not embrace or practice our mission are not invited to return. One or two senior professors have been singled out for criticism and the administration has investigated those criticisms and taken appropriate action. Erskine has sought to faithfully measure up to the expectations of Synod to be a Christ-centered institution. We, like many ARP churches, have not always succeeded but we sincerely strive to please Christ in all that we do.

In addition, there was a panel discussion one evening where the President and a Vice-president of Erskine answered questions posed in writing and during the debate the next day the Synod granted voice to Erskine students to address not only the synod committee but to allow a representative to speak to the full Synod.  In the end, the Synod approved the Memorial, quoted above, and a Commission was appointed.  It was announced in January that the Commission was ready to report and the Called Meeting of General Synod was scheduled for this week.

The Aquila Report provides us the text of the Preliminary Report of the Commission — the full report will be distributed to the General Synod today.

The Commission does not mince words — It comes to the following unanimous conclusions (summarized here – read the report for the full text of each):

  1. The General Synod has been negligent in its oversight of Erskine College and Seminary.
  2. There are irreconcilable and competing visions about the direction of the college and seminary among the members of the Erskine Board of Trustees.
  3. There are irreconcilable and competing visions about Erskine’s mission as a liberal arts college on the Erskine Board and within the Administration and faculty… Despite vocal differences among the faculty and Administration, it was not evident that the trustees have given any clear direction in these matters.
  4. It became evident to us as we listened to all the parties concerned that Erskine College and Seminary stand at across roads as the search is conducted for a new president. The General Synod must speak clearly at this critical juncture so that the message of our interest in Erskine’s success is unambiguous. The next president must have the full support of the ARP Church and its Board of Trustees of Erskine College and Seminary.
          In our candid conversations with trustees, faculty, and members of the search committee, we came to the conclusion that no presidential candidate could garner the whole-hearted support of every Erskine Board member. It would be grievously unfair to the next president and potentially disastrous for these institutions if he does not have this unqualified support.
  5. Almost without exception, present and past members of the Board of Trustees believe that the size of the Board is a significant obstacle to effective governance.
  6. In an effort to govern the institutions effectively with such a large number of trustees, the Board is subdivided into several committees. While committees can be an effective means of utilizing the special experience and skills of trustees, the committee structure presently employed by the Erskine Board is a hindrance to proper governance and oversight because, in the nature of the case, the Board relies heavily on its Executive Committee. The result, despite the best of intentions among those serving on the Executive Committee, is that most trustees are left without knowledge about large parts of the institution entrusted to their care.
  7. The structure and composition of the Board of Trustees are problematic for the faithful oversight of the seminary.
  8. The ideological divisions on the Board have created significant challenges for the Erskine faculty. The College faculty are rightly troubled that the Board of Trustees and Administration have given them little guidance for the implementation of Erskine’s mission. The lack of clear directives has led to widespread faculty confusion about their responsibilities to the ARP Church in the classroom setting.
  9. The Board has been negligent in its responsibility to hold the Administration accountable for the faculty it employs. The Board has not instructed the Administration to evaluate the faculty either on the quality of their teaching or on their ability to integrate faith and learning in the classroom.
  10. The so-called “culture of intimidation,”found by Second Presbytery’s Committee on the Minister and His Work several years ago, is still present on the campus. There is an atmosphere in some quarters of Erskine College and Seminary that is inimical to faithful implementation of the mission.

The preliminary report does not present recommendations but instead says:

This Commission has been constantly aware that the very nature of our work is sensitive. It involves the reputations of trustees, administrators, faculty, staff, and students.The goal of our report is that Erskine College and Seminary emerge from this process with the tools and vision necessary to fulfill the missions the ARP Church has given to them. This goal must also inform how the Commission reports certain conclusions.
…
Some have asked that our entire report be delivered to delegates weeks in advance of the called meeting of General Synod. We are sympathetic to this line of thinking. We, too,want the delegates to have sufficient time to discern the Lord’s will prior to the hour of decision.

However, it should be evident to all that the discussion and debate over Erskine over the past several years has generated much heat and little light. This is at least partially to be explained by the widespread use of blogs, internet discussion boards, and “Facebook” as methods for disseminating sensitive information.

We believe that the release of some conclusions and our recommendations would have the effect of depriving the General Synod of the deliberative process such a premature action is meant to effect. Our report would then be removed from the carefully reasoned and prayer
ful deliberations of elders and ministers in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and would instead be subject to the publicly-voiced opinions of anyone with internet access, whether or not they hear the Commission’s full report or have any real interest in the future success of Erskine College and Seminary. The realities of what takes place on the Erskine campus and among the trustees are nuanced and delicate.


Debate about these matters should be marked by the fruits of the Spirit of God and not the sometimes mean-spirited clamoring that so often occurs on the internet.

Conclusions like these have caused not a little bit of concern from various quarters in both the church as well as academia, and have produced a new round of media attention.  There is an article from Inside Higher Ed that recaps the story to this point, discusses some of the implications, and quotes one anonymous faculty member saying of the report “They are not traditionalists. I’m a traditionalist. They are extremists… I am not sure what they want except control.” 

The other dynamic in this drama is the announced retirement of the Dr. Randall Ruble as Erskine’s President on June 30.

So, with an attitude of prayerful support and discernment, and what I hope is not “mean-spirited clamoring,” I and others await the Spirit-led discernment of the General Synod.

I would conclude by adding one further prayer concern for those traveling to the meeting — Tim Philips has arrived there and is blogging about the meeting.  He reports this morning that with snow expected there is a concern whether the meeting will have a quorum so that it can actually take action on the report.

Second Vote For The Moderator Of The General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In Ireland Tomorrow — Presbyterians Doing Things Decently And In Order

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Originally I was not planning to post a pre-meeting comment about tomorrow’s second vote to select the Moderator designate of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.  The vote is necessary because in last month’s voting the Rev. Norman Hamilton and the Rev. Norman McAuley each received five presbytery nominating votes with the remaining nine votes divided between three of the other four candidates.

But today Alf McCreary, the religion correspondent for the Belfast Telegraph, has an opinion piece in that paper titled “Church’s election process shows the need for reform.”  In that article he brings up two good arguments why the church should modify their election procedures.  While I see his point I am not sure that I agree with him.

His first point is that the second vote should be taken the same day as the first rather than waiting the month.  He argues that this would provide a longer lead time for the nominated candidate to make the necessary preparations for the Assembly and their moderatorial year. 

From the practical consideration of giving a designate a chance to prepare I could see that the four extra weeks to make arrangements could be useful.  But from the management of the presbytery meeting and the discernment process of the body having the vote at successive meetings is more logical.  Going through the process twice in one evening would get it over with but would also prolong the evening since every presbytery reports to a central office and 18 presbyteries would have to wait for the last one to report to know if another vote is necessary.  Yes, times could be set for voting to be completed, but to set pre-determined inflexible times for making decisions goes against the Presbyterian concept of the body taking the time to discern God’s will together.  (Note: this is not an argument against a specific body setting its own time to end debate.  Any individual governing body is welcome to limit their debates as they decide for themselves.  My argument is with outside constraints limiting discussion.)

And if the amount of lead time is truly a concern then move the moderator voting back a month so there will be sufficient time after a runoff should there be one.

Mr. McCreary’s second point is equally valid – that with a term of one year by the time the Moderator has come up to speed through on the job training their moderatorial year is up.

While valid points, what both of these arguments miss is the nature of the role of the Moderator in the Presbyterian system.

First, the Moderator is chosen for his previous experience, service to the church and divinely bestowed gifts for this form of service.  Particularly if the moderator designate is a pastor they have already moderated session meetings and probably church committee meetings.  The presbyteries in selecting their nominee should consider the skills and abilities each candidate has for presiding at the meetings and representing the church throughout the year.

As an aside, while the selection to be a Moderator of a higher governing body is an honor it should not be viewed as a “lifetime achievement award” or automatic post when you have “put in your time.”  Like all positions within the church God bestows specific gifts upon each believer for them to use for the building up of the Body.  Not all these gifts are alike.  While everyone has gifts, not everyone has the gifts of administration and leadership desiresable for the position of Moderator.  The body’s work of discernment is related to identifying those who do possess the gifts that correspond to a particular position of service, be it Moderator or another office.

Second, the position of Moderator is one of service and not authority.  Granted, he is empowered with the authority necessary to conduct the meetings of the governing body decently and in order.  But beyond that he has no authority of his own but the authorization of the governing body.  In this light, the position is a temporary one and passes to the next Moderator on a regular basis, generally when the governing body next reconstitutes itself.

Having said that I would also acknowledge that the selection process for the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland is both unique among Presbyterian branches and also my favorite.  It is the only one where all those gathered to discern God’s will are not in the same place but rather distributed in their 19 individual presbytery meetings.  Other branches do it by nominating committee or the Moderator is selected from among the members of the Assembly when the governing body convenes.  To me, having one individual identified and endorsed by the wider church represented by the presbyteries is particularly meaningful.

So there you have my commentary on the Irish process.  I can understand the concern for efficiency, expediency and experience.  And I would hope that in our governing bodies we would keep those goals in mind — but only to the extent that we are still concerned with discerning God’s will together.

Great Earthquake In Chile – Feb. 27, 2010

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The aftershocks just keep on going… And will keep on going for a while.

When I got up Saturday morning and turned on my cell phone it immediately filled up with text messages and after clearing those there were a bunch more.  Yup, my day job caught up with me on the weekend and after an event Saturday morning I spent the afternoon studying the developments and looking at the tectonics.

The basic information: The magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile was a shallow earthquake in the Peru-Chile trench and appears to have broken about 400 miles of the fault.  The fault is the boundary between the South American Plate and the Nazca Plate.  The Nazca Plate is a small and young tectonic plate completely under the Pacific Ocean.  The Nazca Plate is going under South America at about 80 mm/year and is responsible for the Andes Mountain Range and the active volcanoes in it.  At the time of this writing there have been 119 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or larger with an additional one now every hour or so now.

This earthquake makes the top ten list of events since 1900 and released about 500 times more energy than the recent earthquake in Haiti.  With the official death toll in this event still a bit below 1000 (it will certainly pass that mark) it is interesting to note the difference that preparedness and economic development have on earthquake survivability.  There is substantial damage and I spent a lot of time studying the failure modes that I see in a great collection of pictures by the Boston Globe, but I don’t see the total collapse of neighborhoods full of unreinforced masonry structures like the pictures from Haiti showed.

The Pacific Coast of South America is no stranger to great earthquakes. (And for the record, a “great earthquake” is a technical term to distinguish an even of magnitude 8 or larger.  There is a magnitude 8 or larger earthquake somewhere on the earth about every year and a half on average.)  The largest recorded earthquake was the 1960 Chile earthquake (magnitude 9.5) on the section of the fault just to the south of this earthquake.  And Charles Darwin experienced a large earthquake here while visiting on the voyage of the Beagle in 1835.

For an idea of the size of this earthquake consider the fact that the point the earthquake began (the epicenter) was about in the middle of the section of fault that broke.  As the earthquake happened it broke about 300 km in each direction.  At a rupture speed of 3 km/sec that give a rupture time of 100 seconds.  That is how long the fault took to break, but it generates different waves that travel at different speeds so the local shaking is longer as all those waves go by.  Another point of comparison is that we would expect the largest aftershock to be about the same size or slightly larger than the Haiti earthquake.  At the present time the largest aftershock is magnitude 6.9 and Haiti was magnitude 7.0.

Now the reminder for my North American readers:  Many of you are probably aware that Alaska had a great earthquake like this one back in 1964 that devastated southern Alaska, especially the Anchorage area.  There is a lesser known earthquake back on January 26, 1700 along the coast of Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.  While this event is detailed in the oral traditions of the indigenous peoples of the area we also have a written record from Japan of the devastation caused by the tsunami there.  And the geologic situation in the Pacific Northwest is very similar to South America with the volcanic mountain range (Cascades) and a small, young tectonic plate (the Juan de Fuca Plate) going underneath North America.  It is good to know that locally this risk is now understood and preparedness measures are being taken.