Church Of Scotland Redesigns Their Web Page

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Within the last couple of weeks the Church of Scotland has rolled out a redesigned web site.  It has a simple and clean look with great consistency between pages.  One of the more interesting features is that many of the pages have contact information for relevant individuals right at the bottom of the page rather than in some central directory page.

I have to say a word about navigation because they appear to have put a lot of thought into it.  When you go to the home page you don’t see top nav links for any of the “institution” of the church.  Instead you see topics, especially topics someone not connected to the church might be interested in.  Clicking through to the next level you get to much the same type of thing but now splitting out that topic.  For example, if you click the top nav bar for “Connect” your navigation choices on the left are now “Young Church,” “Emerging Church,” “Rural Church,” etc.  It is not until the next level down that you start to really see program names, such as under “Young Church ” you then get “Clann,” “National Youth Assembly,” and “Cosycoffeehouse.”  You can argue that this is too many clicks to get what you want, but it also struck me that the titles were nice and descriptive allowing you to narrow down what you wanted before you got the cute program names that would only be meaningful to insiders.  Another subtle example of this is that the guides to various liturgical days and seasons are not arranged according to the liturgical calendar but alphabetically.

Along those lines, it also appears clear that the site is primarily focused on those that are not familiar with the church.  The emphasis does not appear to be as much about news, announcements and resources as it is about connecting with the general population, introducing the church to those who are not familiar with it, and talking about its ministries within Scottish society.  Have a look at the “Speak Out ” page, which is about the church speaking out, not as much people speaking back to, or through, the church.   The page begins:

The Church of Scotland plays an important role in Scottish and
international life. It is involved in a range of political, ethical and
social issues and campaigns which affect peoples’ lives, such as human
rights, poverty, climate change, health and education.

It then starts talking about specific ministry initiatives and structure.

For those familiar with the old site, like my regular search for polity or GA details, the new site will probably take some getting used to.  They have a helpful page, the “Help! ” page, to give you some orientation to the new site. Nice touch.  I also found that the navigation links at the bottom reflect the old organization more than the top or side bars do. 

The site structure seems to have changed significantly so that my old links and bookmarks don’t work and there does not appear to be redirection. The extranet site appears to be gone and the information rolled into the main one, such as the Acts of the General Assembly page, making it one unified site.  In my survey of the site it appears that most of the previous material is there somewhere, including some behind a password protected members’ section.  My biggest complaint about the redesign is that there is still no newsfeed, Atom or RSS, for the Kirk’s news stories and nothing that I have found so far promoting social media for the denomination.

The redesign of the web site is probably not a surprise.  Back in late 2009 there was a bit of a dust-up when a design firm let it be known in a trade journal that they were doing work for the Kirk to update their image.  The Kirk was not pleased because it wanted to make this info known on its own terms and tried to retrieve their payment for the services, a claim the courts later denied.  Clearly the Kirk has been conscious of their public image and working on it.

So I look forward to surfing around the new site, getting to know it better, and especially looking for information that has been added.  It is an interesting implementation of a particular emphasis and I hope it gets the intended results for the Kirk.

Web 2.0 And The Internet Are Changing The World — Follow-up

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Last week the journal Nature published a news piece, Peer Review: Trial by Twitter , about the changes that social media, blogs and instant communication are having on how science is done, or more specifically, how science is reviewed.  For those thinking about this sort of thing in any realm I would suggest you have a look.

I won’t rehash the history of this, you can check out my earlier post, but here are a couple of the good lines in the new article about how things have changed:

Papers are increasingly being taken apart in blogs, on Twitter and on
other social media within hours rather than years, and in public, rather
than at small conferences or in private conversation.

…

To many researchers, such rapid response is all to the good, because it
weeds out sloppy work faster. “When some of these things sit around in
the scientific literature for a long time, they can do damage: they can
influence what people work on, they can influence whole fields,” says
[David] Goldstein [director of Duke University’s Center for Human Genome
Variation].

…

For many researchers, the pace and tone of this online review can be
intimidating — and can sometimes feel like an attack. How are authors
supposed to respond to critiques coming from all directions? Should they
even respond at all? Or should they confine their replies to the
conventional, more deliberative realm of conferences and journals? “The
speed of communication is ahead of the sheer time needed to think and
get in the lab and work,” said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a postdoctoral fellow
at the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Mountain View, California, and
the lead author on the arsenic paper. Aptly enough, she circulated that
comment as a tweet on Twitter, which is used by many scientists to call
attention to longer articles and blog posts.

and finally

To bring some order to this chaos, it looks as though a new set of
cultural norms will be needed, along with an online infrastructure to
support them.

The article then has a good discussion of where fast, open reviews have been tried as well has whether or not they worked.  It also outlines some interesting ways that social media and Web 2.0 are being integrated into the traditional infrastructure.  I’ll leave it for those interested in this sort of thing to have a closer look.

A Very Preliminary Look At Amendment Voting In The PC(USA)

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The holidays are now behind us and traditionally this is the time when voting on amendments to the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) kicks into high gear.  So I thought that I would take the first, preliminary look at possible trends in the voting.  But first some preliminaries…

Let me first make a couple of comments about the question “why bother?”  Well, beyond the fact that crunching data is the sort of thing that I enjoy doing I also think that it gives one of the best windows into what is going on in the denomination at this time.  It is a widely accepted generalization that the decisions of the General Assembly do not necessarily reflect the thinking of the “people in the pews.”  The usual evidence that is pointed to is the fact that three times previously the GA has sent an amendment to remove or rewrite G-6.0106b in the Book of Order, and three times it has been rejected by the presbyteries.  Another example of a disconnect is the negative reaction from many churches to the GA decision to boycott companies who supply items linked to the Israel-Palestine conflict.  So, while Research Services gives us statistics based on opinion poles of sampled members, the vote counts, both the absolute and relative numbers, give us an insight into how ruling and teaching elders react to the issues the Assembly sends down to them.  In short, I think the vote numbers can give us an insight into how the PC(USA) is changing.

So what is different this year about the vote?  I think there are four things that need to be taken into account.

1) Each year the Assembly sends an amendment with a bit different wording and that might make a difference.  This year the proposed language speaks more about the examination, that the governing body is responsible for it, and that they are to be guided by the Scriptures and the confessions.   One of the more interesting lines is “The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003).” So while the confessions and the Scriptures are to guide the governing body, the candidate’s qualifications seem to be focused on the constitutional questions.  So, how will any individual commissioner view the proposed wording this time around?

2) This vote is coming right after another vote two years ago while the previous interval was seven years from 2001 to 2008.  There are a number of ways that this could manifest itself with two possibilities being the reduced turnout due to a “fatigue factor” and/or little change in the numbers due to less time for the church to evolve.

3) I will not develop this point here, but will just say that in looking at the numbers for the last four votes (96-B, 97-A, 01-A, 08-B ) I consider the vote on amendment 01-A to be a unique case with a turnout of conservative voters in proportions not seen in the other three votes.  I will say that so far for 10-A this observation seems to still hold with the current numbers looking a lot like the last round of voting.

4) Overall, the voting is not just about “fidelity and chastity” this year but there is also the addition of the Belhar Confession to the Book of Confessions and a whole new revision to the Form of Government.  The voting could have different dynamics this year due to this expanded slate and the dynamics of the timing of scheduling the votes.

OK, now the data.  While the official count is always kept by the Office of the General Assembly , it only gives the totals.  For the Amendment A vote I have been comparing the breakdown by presbytery from several sources: the Yes On Amendment A site, Covenant Network, Reclaim Biblical Teaching, and the Layman.  Voting on the Belhar and nFOG are covered by both the Layman and the Reclaim Biblical Teaching site.  Then for breaking news there is always Twitter.  I’ve got my own tally sheet shared online, but I don’t claim to have it updated as quickly as the others.  And if you want a detailed list of resources related to these votes you should start with Robert Austell’s GA Help web site.

So, at the present time the Belhar Confession trails by 17-12 (remember it needs 2/3 for a confession to be approved), nFog is passing 10-7, and after a flurry of voting yesterday Amendment A is currently failing 15-20.  In total, 67 of the 173 presbyteries have voted on at least one of these items, eight have voted on two and three have voted on all three.  You can see that so far the presbyteries are taking the votes deliberately and not usually taking more than one at a time.

Of the four that have voted on both the Belhar and 10-A the votes have been very similar: Alaska – 24% yes Belhar and 31% yes 10-A, Lackawanna – 45% yes Belhar and 40% yes 10-A, New Castle – 72% yes Belhar and 70% yes 10-A, Santa Barbara – 23% yes Belhar and 27% yes 10-A.  While this is not proof that commissioners view Belhar and 10-A as being closely linked, it is suggestive that many may view both of them through a common filter.

Correlations for nFOG with the other two are not as close.  Sometimes there is a similar proportion, like Alaska that had identical 7-22 votes on each, or Des Moines which had 64% yes on Belhar and 70% yes on nFOG. Sometimes it is not as close, such as Eastern Oklahoma that barely passed 10-A but passed nFOG on voice vote, or Northumberland which was 36% yes on Belhar but only 13% yes on nFOG.

But these are early trends of just a small number of votes so we will see what develops over the next six months.

I want to finish by taking a quick look at the repeat voting on G-6.0106b comparing Amendment 10-A to 08-B.  We have reports on 35 presbyteries having held their votes and so far two have moved from “no” to “yes” (Eastern Oklahoma, Eastern Virginia) and one has moved the other way (Lake Huron).  So the net change at this point is one to the yes column.

Looking at the total yes and no votes, we find that there are 6% fewer total votes (3848 versus 4101) for these 33 presbyteries.  It is interesting to note that this 6% decline in commissioners voting exactly matches the overall decline in membership in the PC(USA) over the last two years (3.1% plus 2.9%).  Taken as a whole, the
number of commissioners voting yes is up 5% (1875 this vote versus 1786
in the last vote) while those voting no have declined 15% (1973 down
from 2315).  If the decline in total votes were proportionally represented in the yes and no votes we would expect 88 fewer yes votes and 199 more no votes.  So the decrease in no votes can not be explained only by the increase in yes votes but there must also be a decline in the number of commissioners who favor “fidelity and chastity” who are voting.

For the 33 presbyteries with reported numbers (Northern NY and Cayuga-Syracuse had hand or voice votes without recorded numbers), 23 had a decrease in the number of votes, 9 had an increase and one was exactly the same.  Now, some normal fluctuation in the number of commissioners attending the meeting is to be expected and I have usually placed this at +4%.  Taking this into account,  eight lower totals and five higher totals for a total of 13 more are added to the unchanged category.  This total of 14 is just a bit less than half of all the presbyteries voting so far.  The greatest decline is from Elizabeth Presbytery which had only 76% of the commissioners present as they had for the last vote.  This could easily be attributed to the inclement weather in the northeast this weekend. However, Genesee Valley, which voted at the same time, had only a slight decrease of 3%.  The largest increase was in Newton Presbytery which had 1.14 times the number of commissioners as the last vote.  Of the four increases that I consider significant (in a statistical but only quasi-rigorous sense), there are three presbyteries that voted no and one voted yes.  Tempting but dubious to draw conclusions from such a small sample.

If we look at yes and no votes broken down by presbytery, on average there are 19% more yes voters and 13% less no voters.  For the presbyteries that voted yes there was only a 1% increase in the number of yes voters and 16% decrease in no voters.  For the presbyteries that voted no, the increase in yes voters was 31% while the no voters decreased by 11%.  That increase in no votes was pulled by a couple of large increases, but it suggests that the Yes on A get out the vote campaign is having an effect while the similar effort for No on A is not as effective.

Let me warp up this discussion with the general observation that I am seeing the whole range of behaviors in different presbyteries.  The three presbyteries that switched all had significant increases on the prevailing side with 12%, 21% and 22% increases.  On the other side were varying decreases from 5%, to 14% to 23%.  The switch in position was a two-way street apparently caused by both gains and losses.  There were a couple of presbyteries with uniform change, such as Great Rivers which had a 3% increase in both the number of yes and no votes, or Newton which had a uniform 19% increase in both columns.  There are also presbyteries, like Central Florida and Stockton, where the total number of votes was very constant and the votes shifted columns.  It was into the yes column for Central Florida and towards no for Stockton.  There is only one presbytery, Mississippi, where the no votes were stable (47 versus 49) but the yes votes increased (up to 11 from 2).  And there are two presbyteries, Boston and New Castle, where the yes votes remained constant but the no votes declined significantly.  And then there are the rest of the presbyteries which exhibit more complex changes that can not be explained solely with these simple end-member models.

So, that is what I am seeing so far.  As I said, this is preliminary because with only around 30-40 presbyteries having voted on each amendment drawing statistical conclusions would be a bit early.  However, there are interesting trends developing and we will see how those play out.  Stay tuned… I’ll get out the white board and draw geeky charts and graphs next time.

On A Personal Note…

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I rise to a point of personal privilege.

In worship this morning we had the privilege and responsibility of ordaining three new ruling elders and a deacon and installing those four, plus three more previously ordained, to our church boards.  As always it was a moving and joyous event.

It is with thanks, praise, joy, and at least a small amount of pride (forgive me), that this GA Junkie and Presbyterian polity wonk shares that my son Phil was ordained as a new ruling elder.  As he begins his service on the session the responsibility of ordained office passes to another generation of our family.  And having served as a Youth Advisory Delegate to the 218th General Assembly he has some experience with higher governing bodies and exposure to what this Presbyterian thing is all about.  My congratulations to him and prayers to God for guidance for all of our new officers.

I thank you for your indulgence as I try to share that the future of the church is in good hands.

I now return you to our regular wonkiness.

Web 2.0 And The Internet Are Changing The World — An Example From The Scientific Community

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Here is an interesting case study that might be of interest to the Church Virtual/Open Source Church/Wiki Church types out there.  In watching this unfold in my professional life I found some interesting parallels in what happened with the reaction to this scientific discovery and what I think about regarding how the church does theology and polity in a Web 2.0 world.

While I want to focus here on the interaction that took place in the on-line world, let me briefly describe the announced scientific discovery behind this so that you have some context.

Back on December 2 a team of researchers associated with the NASA Astrobiology Institute published an interesting paper in Science magazine and held a press conference hosted by NASA to announce and discuss their results from bacteria they found in Mono Lake, California.  This bacteria appears to, at least partially, substitute arsenic for phosphorus in the chemical building blocks of the cell.  These building blocks could include enzymes and proteins.  There is a good discussion of the science related to this in articles from Wired, Science Daily, and a NASA article.  The abstract, but not the full article, is publicly available from Science. (Those readers in academic or research settings may have institutional access to the full article.) Interestingly, while researching this story I found an article from last Spring in The Times (of London) that has much of the scientific story at that time.  If you are not familiar with the biology and chemistry behind this you might not realize that, if the results hold up, this is a very significant scientific discovery.  At a minimum, they have discovered a life form that can live in an extreme, and normally very toxic, environment.

Well, this story went “viral,” if you will pardon the expression.  The press conference was streamed and, having been tipped off by a colleague that it was “going to be interesting,” I followed along and heard the news and the discussion.  There was plenty of coverage of the event across the news spectrum ( for example PC Mag, The Boston Globe, The Telegraph, just to name a few in addition to those above)  as well as the blogosphere (e.g. WeirdWarp, The Curious Wavefunction ).

Now, previous controversial discoveries raised a bit of professional chatter as well as some brief media attention and then usually disappeared from the radar to all except those who really cared.  (an example in a moment)  This announcement took a different path — five days later a widely publicized critique also went viral.  The original critique by Rosie Redfield appeared on her blog as a way, as she puts it, to clarify her thinking.  This was picked up by Slate and then spread to other blogs and developed a life of its own with one asking if this was a NASA publicity stunt and another wondering if this is “flim-flam.”  In short, the new Web 2.0 allowed for scientists to “wonder out loud” to both their colleagues and the public and media at large as well as providing a platform for the general public to discuss and weigh in on a discovery which was not necessarily in their realm of expertise.

Speaking of “not in your realm of expertise” let me comment briefly on my professional view.  As I suggest above the results are interesting.  A number of years ago I was a bit player in some research on the tufa towers in Mono Lake so the environment is not completely unknown to me.  It is a weird and wonderful place but the habitat harsh.  Anything that survives there will be interesting.  To me these bacteria are clearly a good subject to understand better.  On the other hand… I am strongly persuaded by the arguments of the critics and find the most radical conclusions about the arsenic substituting for phosphorus lacking the strong support I would look for regarding such a revolutionary conclusion.  To invoke Carl Sagan’s second best known quote: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”

In short, what has happened here is that a tantalizing and potentially extraordinary discovery has been extracted from the “traditional” scientific process and is now “owned” by the greater on-line community through the ability to distribute the information to the whole world in real time and for the on-line community to be able to interact with it.

Whether you think that is a good thing or not we must accept that it is the new reality of our society.  If you want to make an announcement of an extraordinary discovery to the world, be prepared to have anyone out there weigh in, not just your colleagues in the small academic fishbowl of your discipline.

Consider two previous extraordinary announcements.  Back in 1989 there was a claim that nuclear fusion could be accomplished on a lab bench at low temperatures – the so-called “cold fusion.”  Because the experiment was simple and the researchers published their experimental setup, physicists everywhere were trying to reproduce it, all without success.  But what happened is that the theory did not go away but a few people continued looking at the possibility even if the original experiment was not verified. (article in Wired, Wall Street Journal ) 

Another similar, and NASA connected, discovery was the announcement in 1996 of possible life preserved in a meteorite that originated from Mars.  The publication of this finding was also accompanied by a NASA news conference and picked up by the press.  But with a unique sample and without the web it left the skeptics in the general public without a forum for discussion or criticism.  Now, with time, the scientific community sees better explanations for what was seen in the original meteorite study, but like cold fusion a much lower profile search still continues. (Good backgr
ound info)

Returning to the arsenic life debate, the topic was hot enough that there was a panel discussion at the American Geophysical Union meeting regarding, not the science, but the course the reaction had taken.  This was live streamed and I enjoyed watching and tweeting my thoughts as the discussion progressed.  However, if you are looking for other Twitter messages check out the hashtag #arseniclife and the tweets by Alexandra Witze, @alexwitze, a contributing editor to Science News.  Her coverage was very good.  Some of her more thought provoking tweets about the process (names in front are the speakers on the panel – listing available from the panel moderator’s blog):

Steele: Everyone has a voice now. Is this how science will be self
correcting on a much quicker timescale?

Petit: Information is good, and messy. The more we have, the more it
flows and more robust society is

Steele: Scientists shd have more responsibility to understand effect of
what they say to public.

Harris: Does refusing to engage in conversation ever help one’s case?
(Not that this happened here.)

Oremland: I think not engaging hurt us. Gave us appearance of being
elitist.

Petit: Peer review worked fine. It put out a hypothesis that’s being
chewed on pretty hard.

Steele: If you stick to peer review process are you being elitist?

Sperling: there is a time needed to get things right. Blogosphere will
claim it’s about conversation, but they want scoop #arseniclife

Oremland: Point is about human response to things without time for
reflection.

One final detail on this – while the researchers would have preferred to have responded in the traditional “comment and reply” format, the nature of the response in the blogosphere did persuade them to publish a non-traditional reply to the criticism that had been distributed.

Going forward it will be interesting to see how quickly these claims are verified or contradicted.  It will also be interesting to see how quickly the viral nature of this news dissipates.

Regarding what this means for any organization and it’s interaction with modern society and culture I encourage you ponder this case study and come to your own conclusions and lessons.  Having reflected on this for almost a month now, let me share a few things that come to mind.

1) The easier access to information and the ability to discuss it has changed society.  Just as Luther’s German Bible and the Authorized Version of the English Bible put God’s word in the language of the people, the Internet now puts all manner of information at our finger tips.

2) But maybe this information is too easily available.  As the final tweets suggest “there is a time needed to get things right” and time is needed for reflection.  Do we get information too fast to be able to put it in context and reflect on the meaning?  Do we get too much information to be able to process it properly?
 
3) What is the responsibility of those of us with formal training in these areas to others who are trying to figure out what is means?  How do we communicate if what we view as being responsible is viewed by the general population as being elitist?

4) What have 8-second sound bites, a 24/7 news cycle, and 140 character messages done to our ability to communicate and discuss complex or deep concepts?  Are we looking too quickly for the bullet point or the executive summary with out looking for what is behind it or how it fits into a bigger picture?

Anyway, those are questions that come to mind for me.  Your mileage may vary.  But have fun with it.

Another Comic Strip Mentioning Presbyterians

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Well, Bruce Tinsley and his Mallard Fillmore comic strip are at it again with the reference to Presbyterians.  You may remember his previous reference a little over a year ago where he referred to “radical Presbyterians.”  Rev. Ed has preserved that comic and he and I riffed on it a bit.

The comic strip from today and the reference to “rogue Presbyterians” is not so amenable to the discussion of Presbyterian polity so I only note it for the reference.  (Then again, maybe it does fit the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria post I just finished — I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine if one side or the other is “rogue.”) In fact, it appears that the use of Presbyterian is simply to make the rhyme work in the limerick.

But I will also note the… what shall I call it?  coincidence, irony, providence?… of being at work over my lunch hour on my previous post about Nigeria and Presbyterians only to have a phone call from my family alerting me to the fact that the comic strip had also made reference to both of those.  Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

Tensions In Nigeria Lead To New Presbyterian Branch

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As of a couple of days ago the universe of Presbyterian denominations got a little bit larger with the formation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Nigeria.  This branch was formed when the Mid East Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria disagreed with their General Assembly over the rotation of leadership and so declared themselves autonomous.  How did we get here?

From a polity standpoint this seems to be about an agreement, possibly stipulated in their polity documents, that the position of Moderator of the General Assembly is to be rotated around the nine synods.  (I have looked and have not yet found The Practice and Procedure online so I can’t confirm the exact wording of the policy.)  Mid East Synod believed that the rotation should fall to them at the August 2010 Assembly but when a Moderator from another synod was elected and later installed they first filed a protest and then broke off on their own.

As I said, this started at the meeting of the General Assembly this past summer when The Rt. Rev. Prof. Emele Mba Uka was elected as the new Moderator.  With thanks to the Presbyterian Church in Canada for a story on the election , we know that not only was he elected by a unanimous vote but that a hard rain falling on the training institute the Assembly was meeting at, and only on the training institute, was taken as a divine sign.  Another article from the Daily Sun gives more of the back story and how two original candidates did not have their names placed in nomination and instead Rev. Uka’s name came into the picture at the last minute and he became the sole nominee.  The Rt. Rev. Uka is, as the professor title implies, a senior academic with numerous earned academic degrees, including a Ph.D. from Drew University.

The interesting thing is that nowhere in the reporting I have seen from the time of the election is there mention of any protest or dissent.  The election was unanimous after all.  Having looked over several news articles about the General Assembly and the election from the August and September time-frame there is not a hint of a problem.  In fact, the first mention of the dissent that I saw in on-line sources was from allAfrica.com at the beginning of December.

At that time the article reports that elders from Mid East Synod had presented a petition to the denomination’s trustees opposing the selection of the Rt. Rev. Uka and asking to halt his inauguration, which was later that week.  The article also mentions that there was an earlier protest registered with the trustees but the date is not given.  Specifically, the petition is quoted to state of the actions the “grossly unfair and unconscionable way our Synod was denied our
inalienable right to produce the next General Assembly Moderator.”

Well, the inauguration went ahead on December 7, to which the PCN press release and pictures on the home page testify.

The next chapter in the story appears to be ecclesiastical discipline as the General Assembly Executive Committee issued an order that a number of members of the Mid East Synod are “suspended indefinitely… for acts of insubordination and lawlessness capable
of destabilizing the Church and causing a breach of public peace.”  This according to the PCN’s own press release. Those suspended included not only ministers but public officials including the deputy governor and the commissioner for works in Ebonyi State.  The officials are accused of “using State apparatus as Deputy Governor and Commissioner
for Works in the Ebonyi State Government to sponsor some rebellious members of
the Church in actions designed to destabilize the Church and cause
socio-political disharmony.”  (Clearly this church discipline is not just in the ecclesiastical sphere but related to civil consequences as well.)  The other ordained officials are accused of ecclesiastical infractions that violate the church’s policies.  The press release is long on accusations but there is not much information about disciplinary process or judicial proceedings — it is just stated as a decision of the Executive Committee.

The immediate media coverage seems to echo the December 28 decision of the church, as an article from Vanguard shows.  However, Vanguard was out the next day with the response from Mid East Synod that said “the decision was contrary to the norms and proceedings governing operations of the Church of Christ.”  While the quotes from the Steering Committee of the Synod include a lot of counter accusations and rhetoric, it does include the very Presbyterian statement that “for the avoidance of doubt, no other body or organ has the right to
suspend any member of the church except the session where he or she
worships.”  They also cite the lack of due process.

Now, a couple of days ago, the Synod called a press conference and, among other things, told the reporters (as quoted by allAfrica.com )

“Whereas the Mid East Synod has the ecclesiastical right of self
determination in order to free herself from persisting enslavement,
perpetuation, and bondage; whereas members of the Mid East Synod being a
peace loving people not given to gangsterism and thuggery and violence
in the Church of Jesus wish to declare that in view of the foregoing we
are now Autonomous to be known and addressed as the Reformed
Presbyterian Church Of Nigeria with headquarters at Macgregor College
Afikpo and branches all over the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

(Synod spokesperson) Rev. Nwonu explained that their former church, Presbyterian Church of
Nigeria as presently constituted was being administered not by the
graded and constituted courts of the Church, rather, it was being
administered by the powerful interest groups who arrogate to themselves
the power to set aside the Church’s constitution, laws, policies and
procedures which have been guiding the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria
for over 164 years.

Where will this go next?  I don’t know and I’m not going to predict.  It is important to remember that the PCN is involved in conflicts in the north between different ethnic/social groups that also happen to be divided along Muslim/Christian lines. (My previous comments on the situation)  As recently as yesterday there were additional attacks in the area of Jos.  Regarding the church itself one possibility where this could end up is like the synods of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Malawi where the three synods are growing more autonomous and the General Assembly level has less authority and ability to coordinate and negotiate between the synods.  So, for the moment we now have the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Nigeria.

Importing Pastors — Trend Or Tradition?

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I see that another respected pastor from the British Isles is once again being called to serve a church in the Philadelphia area — a tradition as old as American Presbyterianism that seems to be regaining some small measure of renewed popularity.

I speak, of course, of the Rev. Dr. William (Liam) Goligher who is the candidate to fill the vacant head of staff position at Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia.  TE Goligher is a native of Glasgow, and in addition to college there holds degrees from the Irish Baptist Theological College and Reformed Theological Seminary.  He is presently the head of staff at Duke Street (isn’t there a song by that name?) Church in London.  His impressive resume, training and theological perspectives are on display in the nice booklet the search committee has produced.  Expecting that the committee has done its work and that Rev. Goligher is called and approved by the presbytery, we wish him and his family, and Tenth, well with the pastoral relationship.

As students of American Presbyterianism can probably figure out from the title and intro, this reminds me of the colonial days, and even a bit after, when Presbyterianism was gaining a foothold on these shores and the growth was fueled by Scottish, English and Irish/Scots-Irish pastors, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic region.  Pastors such as Francis Makemie, William Tennent, Samuel and James Finley, and last but not least, John Witherspoon.  These gentlemen brought with them their experience, tradition, knowledge, formal theological training, and sometimes, as in the case of Witherspoon, their reputation.  In this list James Finley is a bit of an exception since the family immigrated when he was in his youth and his training was in the less formal setting of the colonies.

What I have found interesting in our modern setting is the renewed occasional, but high-profile, calling of ministers from Scotland.  In addition to the Rev. Goligher, recent relocations near Philadelphia also include the current President of Princeton Theological Seminary, the Rev. Iain Torrance , and at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic region, the Rev. Richard Gibbons who took over as head of staff at First Presbyterian Church, Greenville, SC, in 2007.

I should note that while I referred to this as a “renewed” trend, I have not done a systematic search of pastoral calls in American Presbyterianism to verify this statement.  This low level of activity could easily be present throughout the history of the American church and I have just not read the right sources yet.  (Feel free to point me to sources on this.)  And as an argument to the contrary, one of the Presbyterian ministers that married my wife and I was born and educated in England, so the intervening period is not devoid of examples.

Maybe the more interesting question here is why.  Is this just the usual variation that would be found in the standard hiring process or a renewed interest in clergy with European backgrounds?  I don’t know but it seems that the same reasons don’t necessarily apply now as they did in colonial times.  As least in terms of education it is not unusual to see foreign clergy and students taking advantage of American institutions the same way that individuals from these shores look for a change of scenery, educational philosophy and perspective at schools overseas.  I will leave this as an open question, and maybe it needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

So, an observation that I find interesting, but one that may not actually be valid or relevant.  Having now been alerted to this in current pastoral calls I’ll keep an eye out in my future reading on church history and try to see if it is a continuing tradition or a renewed trend.

TRADITION!

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Q. What is the difference between in-laws and outlaws?

A. Outlaws are wanted.

Now, for the record I married into a great family and have always felt included.  But part of the deal with marriage is all the rest of the family, and just as importantly all of the Traditions, are part of the package as well.  I may be included but not always comfortable and at times I have to work at it to participate in the Traditions and customs that are part of the culture of my wife’s family, and probably never more so than at Christmas.  (And again, for the record, my wife has to handle the strange and different Traditions on my side.)

In the movie Fiddler on the Roof the main character Tevya introduces the song “Tradition! ” with the line “And how do we keep our balance?  That I can tell you in one word: tradition.”  And the rest of the movie deals with how Tevya, the family and the village copes with changes in tradition.

The traditions are important in families – It is not simply “this is how we do it,” but in doing it that way the consistency and shared experience of past celebrations provide the familiarity that many people cherish about holidays. 

On the one hand, whether it be our family celebrations, our circle of friends, or our faith communities, we have to first acknowledge that tradition helps us, like Tevya says, to keep our balance.  It provides a foundation and comfort zone to those who are familiar with the tradition.  On the other hand, just like a spouse integrating into a new family, we also need to acknowledge that to those entering the group often these traditions can be confusing or uncomfortable at best, and possibly come across as legalism and perceived exclusion at worst.  What is a balancing or stabilizing effect for some is a barrier or deterrent for others.

The challenge of course is that there is no simple solution to this tension.  Each community, be it family or congregation, must figure out the balance and give-and-take for itself.  How much does it value and find rootedness in the tradition and how things are supposed to be done.  And how much does the community want to make newcomers feel welcome, comfortable, and integrate easily.  Tradition is important for many reasons – but what traditions define the community and what limit it?  How can we step back and determine what is important and what is not?

So I wish you a wonderful Christmas Day and the blessings of this season.  And may you find comfort in your traditions while providing a welcome to those who are being brought into it.

Theft Leaves The Church Of Scotland With Out A Symbol Of The Moderator

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Every Presbyterian branch that I know of has a particular token passed between Moderators as both a mark of the office and a reminder of those who have held the office and those who will hold it in the future.  For some it is a service cross, for others a stole.  For the the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland these symbols include a ceremonial ring.

Last night that ring was among the items stolen from the home of the current Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. John Christie.

Numerous press reports confirm that the ring was among the items taken in an overnight break-in while Rev. Christie was asleep.  There is also a longer article from the BBC with a picture of the ring and some information on it’s previous mis-placement.  Beyond that I have not found any historical details on the background of the current ring.  The BBC also says that the church will make an appeal.  I will update as appropriate.

We pray for the quick recovery of the ring and for the Christie family.