| MEMO to the middle |
| Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook Editor | ||||||||||||||
| Monday, 11 July 2011 00:06 | ||||||||||||||
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As editor of a magazine that speaks to the whole church, I feel compelled to write to Presbyterian friends in particular groupings of conviction — while allowing the rest to eavesdrop. In the last two editions, I addressed those celebrating and those grieving the adoption of Amendment 10-A. In this final correspondence, I write to those caught somewhere in the middle. So change is upon us. The fidelity-chastity ordination standard has been replaced by the “joyfully submit” standard. And the new Form of Government has been adopted, jettisoning an operations manual in favor of a streamlined constitution. You voted for it. Now’s the time to enact it — with care. Neither the passionate advocates nor the steadfast opponents had the votes to pass or defeat either of these sea-changing amendments. It was you, the centrist majority, the middle of the church, who swung the vote. Who won? Who lost? This much is clear. Small government won big, and the command-and-control administrative model lost hands-down. As in all governmental structures, be they a family or an empire, the PC(USA)’s pendulum constantly swings between more centralization and less. These two approved amendments signal an intentional move toward decentralized governance, i.e., localism, states’ rights. We Presbyterians have been trending in both directions. The Book of Order has been expanding at a crazy rate — adding rules to cover every contingency, preventing deviations from the norm. Yet congregations have been operating more and more congregationally, their sessions setting policy, developing mission programs and funding projects without even considering the denomination’s policies and programs. Now the governance model will better match the congregationalist trend. For better or for worse. For it to be better rather than worse, we all need your help. For one thing, we need you to rekindle your passion for the gospel. Advocates on opposite ends of any debate commonly speak of you as the mushy middle — spineless wimps. You know better. You have a passion for the faith, a passion for the church. You stand at the center, defined not as a bland golden mean but as the theological center: God. Those caught up in the cause célèbre, the battle of the era, can inadvertently slip into “God-of-our-cause” thinking — and God becomes a means to an end. Your resistance toward such thinking is good. But you sometimes also get caught by the trap of disinterestedness. Please eschew such passivity and help us all to focus on the true center of the faith, namely the Trinitarian God, for indeed the chief end of all of our lives is to glorify that God of the universe, that God of love. Second, we need you to re-engage your gifts of reconciliation. You build bridges. You understand in ways that escape others’ grasp how unity in Christ comes from Christ alone, how it transcends uniformity in conviction. Your love for Christ drives your passion for relationships, for mutual ministry, for corporate learning. Now’s the time to schedule lunches with folks who feel heartbroken and disenfranchised. Now’s the time to love one another in this diverse fellowship, and you are equipped to lead the way. Third, we need you to help us integrate in a whole new way. Your tolerance for ambiguity helps you hold things together: a simple faith and scholarly study, social justice and evangelism, formal liturgy and informal praise, Presbyterian distinctives and ecumenical initiatives, freedom of conscience and majority rule, Reformed theology and ever-to-be-reformed openness. We need you to pull these and other dialectical opposites together with theological clarity and God-honoring devotion. Help us reclaim our common Christian language of faith — the language handed down to us from the apostles, the prophets, and most of all the living Word, Christ Jesus our Lord. Yes, you who often protect the status quo have voted for change. Please help the rest of us to live into these changes with grace, with confidence and with faithfulness. —JHH Your Responses (7)
Dean H. Lewis
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Medanales, NM Dear Jack, With all due respect, I beg to differ with my friends Jim Monroe and Wil Sawyier in their letters in the August 22 edition. Wil writes that in the past "there was not anything that would automatically prevent anyone from ordination"; Jim writes of the "recent reach for top down control and rigid conformity". How quickly they forget! When Wil was ordained in 1949 and I by the Presbytery of Arkansas in 1953, no woman could be ordained as a minister of word and sacrament, no matter how well qualified a presbytery might find her. It seems that it took some "top down" change to make that possible. And I might add, "top down" is a bit misleading in both cases, since the policies were adopted by vote of the presbyteries, not simply by decision of the General Assembly, or, heaven forbid, its much maligned agencies. Grace and peace, Dean H. Lewis Medanales, NM |
p.w. gregory
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lambertville, nj In my first church, almost 35 years ago I was a very young pastor who thought of course I knew it all. There were a group of older ladies who gathered every Friday to oil and polish the wooden pews. When I responded to one of their questions about faith with all my high sounding theological logic and reason, one turned and said, "Parson, we do indeed respect you, but you pastors come and go, but we will always be here on Fridays". In deed true. All those older church ladies have all gone home to the Lord. What they said remains true. The church, local or national, may very will be run into the ditch by others and all their learning, but the old ladies who oil the pews as a matter of calling and faith, will always be there, no matter how acidic the church or the process becomes, or just how mean and nasty we become. Cleaning up our mess. I wonder what letter we can send them? |
Kyle Walker
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Bryan, TX Jack, I commend this series but I caution about creating straw figures. I can't speak for the grieving and middle groups but I can speak for myself as a celebrant. Even in the pro-10A camp there are those of us who have sought to be true Evangelicals who happen to be strong supporters of LGBT ordination. Just because we advocated for 10A does not mean we stand behind the 1991 Sexuality Report. To be clear, I am behind LGBT ordination as good exegesis after careful study and good pastoral care after much experience in pastoral care of LGBT young adults. I do not come to this place as a result of careless permissiveness and I don't throw out my passion for evangelism and mission by necessity just because I stand in this place on this issue. I found the Sexuality Report then (in 1991) and now (20 years later) to be an extrabiblical exercise more akin to 1960s free love movement (and perhaps written by some of the same folks) than to advocating the ordination of persons in monogamous committed loving relationship regardless of sexual orientation. And, I realize the comments after this post will try to push me back into the free love box. Such assumptions were never and are never true of me and I'm not alone in this perspective. Some of us are already thinking ahead to next things when those in presbyteries open to gay ordination will be passionate advocates to gay or straight teaching elders to live in fidelity in the covenant of marriage regardless of gender (without concern for the state's recognition or lack thereof) or chastity in singleness. Even more, I look forward to the LGBT community showing up to our churches. And they will. Whereas we weren't trusted before because we asked the impossible and absurd, watch as Presbyterians are now facing the LGBT community who is simply seeking the full gospel message that affirms God's gift of creation and offering the structure and stability for loving, committed, monogamous relationships that a church provides. I'm excited for the evangelism possibilities for those of us ready to embark upon this mission. A group has been denied the gospel message. As an evangelical, I'm ready to get to work not having to apologize for our church's reduction of the gospel any longer. |
p.w. gregory
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lambertville, nj I think we have established the fact that we can beat each-other over the heads with our big red letter- 'Jesus words" Bibles. When I was in Iraq these religious disputes were usually settled by car-bombs and IED's. I do not htink we have come to that, but as the Bible thumping does show, there are folks for whatever reason who will not be reconciled to "joyfully submit" or submit under any pretence. So how does one base unity in the new enity post PCUSA (1982-2011). Let us hope we are more creative than untiy based on property or per capita. A marriage made of economics alone does not work in people marriages, works less in institutional structures. Here is a suggestion, activists, on both sides, the "Laymen" crowd and the Office of Social Witness, DC office take a chill for a time. For a period of three years the evangelical/traditionalists will agree to a moratorium on trying to take their churches EPC, PCA, or ARPC, or AARP. For those three years each church agrees to a period of study, prayer and discernment as to where they fit in the new land of FOG. If at the end of those 3 years they remain committed to departure, grant them gracious leave without the threat of legal/financial back-mail. Spending money on both sides "lawyering-up" is a curse upon the church. In return Louisville will agree to no substantial changes or new ammendments effecting the issues of church/property/ordination/or polity for a 3 year period to allow the church to process the change. Again I doubt this would gain any traction simply because of our nature to fight and bicker. But look at numbers, in 15-20 there will be on one left to mourn the PCUSA or what it, or said, good or bard, right or wrong. And in some ways that would be a shame. |
Tom Paine
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Metairie, LA Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Matthew 5:9 Red Letters |
Linda Lee
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Mukilteo, WA Revelations 3:14 - 19 "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, I am rich, have become wealthy and have need of nothing - and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked - I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I LOVE, I rebuke and chasen. Therefore be zealous and repent." Jesus words in red letters. |
p.w. gregory
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lambertville, nj Well done Jack. I would not see the receent nFOG as being an endorsement of "smaller or more limited centralized govt", but none the less. The problem is that for the last 50 or so years, really since the Confession of '67, both sides, Left and Right, have been caught in their own echo-chamber of debate. Both sides struggle with the core fact that the church, at least on the macro-national-raw numbers aspects of counting people and money is dying, and the dying will continue in the next decade, apart from any theological, ideological matters before the church. The Left would say the church-national has yet to fully engage the pain, the hurt, the dislocation of people, the suffering, and dis-empowerment of racism, sexism, etc. And the pull is an ever stronger one to more public advocacy, if the DC and Louisville office is to be believed. The Right would say the church dies because of playing fast and lose with with biblical authority, and making stuff up as you go along. Well, both tend to be right, to a degree. As politics, all church matters tend to be local, and if the local church fails to engage the local community in which it finds itself with a compelling reason to go to church, people stay home, drop-out, find the church irrelevant to their life and needs, and that cuts on both sides of the divide. I think the message of both 10-A and to a greater extent the nFOG, is that the "Church" as a post-WW2, monolithic-industrial, central planning and central message agency is no more, and has not been some for quite some time. The American religious experience at the core is congregationalists and autonomous, vice denominationalists, collectivist, or centralized. Social networking, the 'net, the diffusion of data and information, has in some ways redendered the central concept of Presbytery, an 18th century model where churches were associated based on how far one could ride a horse in a single day, somewhat anolog in a digital age. Now there are plenty left who love the PCUSA, old and new, love the Presbytery, love staffing committees, loves the process and more time attending meetings and doing denominational stuff. But those folks are aging-out and there are far fewer people to serve on that next Presbytery or Synod task force. But I bet there is local church down by the gas-station that could use your time and energy. |
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