General Assembly (2012) #5

Gradye Parsons reelected as Stated Clerk

                In a remarkable expression of unity, the General Assembly reelected Grady Parsons to a second, four year term. Gradye ran unopposed, and was elected unanimously by a voice vote.  Gradye is known for often referencing the Bible story of Jesus and the disciples in the storm as a parable for the church today: “We are in the boat. There will be storms. We will not die.”

General Assembly (2012) #4

Mission Coordination Committee, Action Item 10-09; Approved by Committee by a vote of 51 – 0.

All the Committees  of the General Assembly are scheduled all day today with their lists of Action Items. Given my position within our Presbytery, I pay close attention to some of the behind the scenes, administrative work that supports the work of our Church. I have followed in recent years the careful planning process that Executive Director of the General Assembly Mission Council, Linda Valentine, has put in place to guide the work of the Mission Council. This year a new “Mission Work Plan” was developed and forwarded to the Mission Coordination Committee. This year Carlisle Teaching Elder Commissioner Steve Gribble is serving on the Mission Coordination Committee. A number of General Assembly staff people, including Linda Valentine and Roger Dermody, discussed this plan with the Committee. The Committee had a careful and thoughtful discussion of it, before voting to approve it.

Two aspects of this are important in my mind. First, this intentional planning process is an important example for the Presbytery and our congregations. We need to do careful planning. This Mission Work Plan is a good, comprehensive example of strategic thinking. It is a good exercise to define goals, objectives and our priorities. Second, I appreciate the focus of this Mission Work plan. I would like to communicate this plan around our Presbytery, and discuss how we respond to this plan from our General Assembly Mission Council.

This Mission Work Plan has been approved by the Committee and will be considered by the whole General Assembly. The plan is copied here, and may be found at PC – biz as item 10 – 09.

Mission Work Plan 2013 – 2016:

The General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) recommends that the 220th General Assembly (2012) approve the following vision, mission, directional goal statements, and core values for the 2013–2016 GAMC Mission Work Plan:

Vision: Presbyterians joyfully engaging in God’s mission for the transformation of the world.

Mission: Inspire, equip, and connect the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in its many expressions to serve Christ in the world through new and existing communities of faith, hope, love, and witness.

Directional Goals:

Transformational Leaders

Inspire, equip and connect the church to: Cultivate, nurture, and sustain diverse, transformational leaders for Christ’s mission.

I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit. John 15:16 (CEB)

Compassionate and Prophetic Discipleship

Inspire, equip, and connect the church to: Make, receive and send disciples who demonstrate and proclaim God’s justice, peace, and love in an increasingly globalized world.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. [God] has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of the sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Luke 4:18–19 (CEB)

New Worshiping Communities

Inspire, equip, and connect the church to: Ignite a movement within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that results in the creation of 1,001 new worshiping communities.

They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved. Acts 2:47 (CEB)

Young Adults

Inspire, equip and connect the church to: Engage and join with young adults in reforming the church for Christ’s mission.

I will set up my covenant with you and your descendants after you in every generation as an enduring covenant. I will be your God and your descendants’ God after you. Genesis 17:7 (CEB)

General Assembly Engagement

Engage with, respond to, resource and represent the General Assembly in alignment with the vision and mission for the General Assembly Mission Council.

The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter. Acts 15:6 (CEB)

Organizational Integrity

Build confidence, trust, and engagement in all that we do by being Collaborative, Accountable, Responsive, and Excellent (C.A.R.E.).

If anything is excellent and if anything is admirable, focus your thoughts on these things. Philippians 4:8a (CEB)

Core Values of the General Assembly Mission Council

C.A.R.E. (Collaborative, Accountable, Responsive, Excellent)

Within the GAMC and the wider church, we will be:

Collaborative. Working together in an inclusive community, we will invite input, share ideas, and seek the best ways to accomplish our common goals.

Accountable. Relying on the Holy Spirit to enable us to trust and to be trustworthy, we will take responsibility for our actions and work with integrity, transparency, and love.

Responsive. Acting as servant leaders, we will faithfully respond to the voices and needs of the church by being timely, helpful, enthusiastic, and mission-centered.

Excellent. Demonstrating faithful stewardship and service through God’s empowering grace, we will work with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.

General Assembly (2012) #3

Inside and Outside

                On Monday morning at the General Assembly all the difficult work begins. The glorious opening worship service opened the week on Saturday. The first several, full, business sessions included a lot of preliminary work like introducing the commissioners to the electronic voting system, introducing the various agencies of the General Assembly, and discussing the process and procedures for debates and decisions. Of course, there is now a long standing tradition of devoting an early, full business session to the election of the new Moderator.  Again at this General Assembly this was done on Saturday evening, the first day of the Assembly.

                Now on Monday morning all the Commissioners gather in their assigned Committees to tackle the Action Items assigned to them. Committees will meet for their meetings during the day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. The full plenary session of the General Assembly will not gather together again until Wednesday afternoon.

                It seems to me, as I try to grasp all the different action items before this Assembly, that it is possible to categorize them into Inside the Church issues and Outside the Church issues. This year there are several Inside the Church issues before the Assembly that are important and transformative:

•                 The report of the Mid Council Commission and the possible elimination of the Synods as a governing body. This also includes the question of non-geographic presbyteries.
•                 The report on the Nature of the Church in 21^st Century is an important theological statement about the way we understand the Church today.
•                 The proposal concerning the revision of the four Special Offerings is significant and has already sparked significant debate.
•  

                The issues coming before us in what I am calling “Outside the Church” are also numerous and significant. These include:

•                 The debate over our understanding and involvement in the Middle East.
•                 The debate of Immigration policy in United States.

There are issues that have a huge impact both inside the church and outside the church.

• This year the debate over the definition of marriage clearly is the most heated issue and divisive question before us.
• In a less controversial light, the call for 1,001 New Worshipping Communities is a goal with impact both inside and outside the Church. We must as a church begin to embed into our heart and soul the need to plant, create and give birth to new communities. Simply continuing and maintaining our current congregations is not good enough. But for several generations we have neglected our calling and spiritual obligation to plant new communities of faith.  
• The concern which has influence both inside and outside the church and is important to me is our commitment to World Mission. At this General Assembly we will celebrate the 175^th anniversary of Presbyterian World Mission, which was started in Pittsburgh in 1837. In my mind, this continues to be one of the most essential aspects of our common ministry.

The list of issues and concerns is long and important. Please pray for the work of our General Assembly. 

General Assembly (2012) #2

Rev. Dr. Neal Presa Moderator

                I am pleased with the election of Neal Presa as our new Moderator. He was elected out of a group of four qualified, articulate and experienced candidates.  Of course, the office of moderator of the General Assembly is an important symbol for our church. Almost any Presbyterian leader with some church experience can lead a meeting. But our Moderator is a symbol of who we are and, even more, who we would like to be. As such a symbol, Neal Presa is an excellent choice, in my mind, for our desire to live into a larger global Christianity.

                Neal Presa is a Filipino-American whose education included an M.Div. from San Francisco Seminary, an Th.M. from Princeton Seminary and M. Phil. and Ph.D. from Drew University. He is currently serving as the pastor of the Middlesex Presbyterian Church in the Presbytery of Elizabeth, New Jersey. He has extensive experience in global ecumenical relations. This experience included service on the American and North American Area Council of the World Communion of Reformed Churches and participation with the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council. In a Presbyterian New Service article he is quoted: “We must reclaim our unity in the God who gathers us in worship and sends us out into our communities and, indeed, the whole world to invest and share our lives in others.” 

General Assembly (2012) #1

Opening Worship
I am writing from Pittsburgh, the site of the 220th meeting of the General Assembly (2012). The General Assembly started today with a glorious opening worship service within the large Convention Center. It was estimated that about 3,500 people were in attendance. As is our tradition, the outgoing Moderator Cynthia Bolbach was the preacher. Because of her recent battle with cancer, she preached seated in a wheelchair. Her message was a moving call to relationships and service across all the many boundaries that exist in the church. The worship service was filled with music featuring a huge choir, a brass quintet, a large bell choir, and Bill Carter and his Presbybop Quartet.

There was a creative and interesting touch on the traditional Unison Prayer of Confession. During the prayer all the congregation turned toward the opposite side. The “right” side of the congregation first confessed, allowing the “left” side to respond. Then it was switched. Although this was very simple, it was for me a significant and meaningful gesture symbolizing a reaching out across the “aisle”. We need to ask forgiveness of all those whom we consider to be “on the other side.” Maybe we will find some peace and unity if we can truly ask those across the aisle from us to forgive us.

Act of Confession from the Opening Worship of the 220th General Assembly:

Right side: I confess to God Almighty before the whole company of heaven, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned by my own fault, in thought, word, and deed; wherefore I pray God Almighty to have mercy on me, forgive me all my sins, and bring me to everlasting life.

Left side: May Almighty God have mercy on you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins and give you time to amen your life.

Right side: Amen.

Left side: I confess to God Almighty before the whole company of heaven, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned by my own fault, in thought, word, and deed; wherefore I pray God Almighty to have mercy on me, forgive me all my sins, and bring me to everlasting life.

Right side: May Almighty God have mercy on you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins and give you time to amen your life.

Left side: Amen

The opening worship service ended with this eloquent Charge and Blessing:

Eternal God, you call us to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

A Community of Mission Practice in Honduras

What good is a new house?

Presbyterian World Mission has defined one of its critical global issues as responding to the root causes of poverty, especially as it affects women and children. The Presbytery of Carlisle has created a partnership with the Presbyterian Church in Honduras. An important aspect of our partnership is our working with the mission committee of the Pena de Horeb Presbyterian Church in Tegucigalpa to build new homes for their church members. We have now participated in the construction of six new homes located in some of the poorest, most difficult areas in Tegucigalpa. Is building new homes a fruitful expression of this huge, conceptual call to address the root causes of poverty?

I believe these new homes are a particularly important example of responding to the root causes of poverty because of the process we have used to do this work. The ministry belongs to the Hondurans. When we first started having conversation with Church leaders in Honduras about ways we could work together, they quickly complained that they had no resources, no organization, and no means to address the profound poverty all around. We encouraged them to gather a group within the congregation to discern and pray about ways they might be able to reach out and serve their members. This small kernel of an idea grew up into a powerful presence in their church. A mission committee was born with a vision of reaching out, gathering their resources, and serving the poorest of the poor in their midst.

The mission committee identified and prioritized a list of projects within their congregation. Some they are able to do one their own; for some they seek support from us. Then we put life into the vision of “communities of mission practice” which Presbyterian World Mission has named as a preferred method of doing mission today. What does a community of mission practice truly look like? I know; I have seen it. It looks like a circle of people gathering in the back corner of the sanctuary at the Pena de Horeb Presbyterian Church after their Sunday worship service. Within the circle are the members of the mission committee of the congregation; the chairperson of their mission committee leads our conversation. Within the circle are our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) missionaries in Honduras. Also within the circle is a small mission team from the Presbytery of Carlisle. This is a community of mission practice. Importantly, there are typically more Hondurans around the circle than North Americans. Out of the conversation within this circle, we conceived of the idea of building new homes for some of the poorest of the members of church. The members of the mission committee in Honduras identify the families, plan and prepare the construction project, and work with our missionaries to organize the work. Presbyterians from our Presbytery show up for a week at a time to walk alongside, offer our support, and get to know the family who is receiving the new home quite. What good is a new home? Come with me and chat with these families for awhile! The answer will be clear.

Report to the Presbytery May 22, 2012

Celebrate John Calvin

First of all I want to say, “Thank you.” In April I used my Continuing Education time and budget to attend a Seminar on the Reformed Tradition sponsored by our Office of the General Assembly. The seminar was in Geneva, Switzerland and included an in-depth study of John Calvin. This was a transformational experience for me, deep in learning and spiritual reflection. We toured, of course, the church where Calvin preached and taught; we had a special tour of the museum of the Reformation, we visited the famous Reformation Wall; we had a special tour of the spectacular archaeological site which is beneath Calvin’s Church. On Sunday we worshiped twice, once in Calvin’s Church where the service is in French, and again in the Auditorium of Calvin, which is owned by the Church of Scotland.

The Geneva of John Calvin was much smaller than today’s Geneva. Calvin’s Geneva was a walled and fortified city, now referred to as Old Town. It is not very large; I walked all around it. John Calvin arrived in Geneva in the 1530s from France. France is only several miles down the road.

I want to share with you two theological reflections. First, I believe in our study of John Calvin we have forgotten the amazing openness and hospitality that motivated him. During the years of Calvin’s ministry in Geneva the population of the city more than doubled. John Calvin and the church leaders in Geneva spent an enormous amount of their time, in day to day practical ministry, dealing with the influx of homeless refugees. Geneva was, under Calvin’s leadership, a Protestant city connected with other Protestant cities in Switzerland. But just a few miles down the road was Roman Catholic France. The Roman Catholic King of France did not tolerate the Protestants. If you are a Protestant in France at that time what do you do? You leave. You leave your home, you leave your crops, and you leave any stuff that you cannot carry on your back or on your little cart. You leave, hopefully before the King’s soldiers arrive in your village. And at least, in this part of France, where do you go? You go to Geneva. Why? Because Geneva under the leadership of John Calvin welcomed you. These thousands of homeless refugees from France were welcome in Geneva. There is a very significant theological lesson here. It is a lesson about hospitality. If you have a good, smart tour guide in Old Town Geneva, she will carefully point out buildings where, in the day of John Calvin, the people literally tore the roof off in order to add several additional floors. In a walled, fortified city there is not a lot of extra land. One way to find space is to build up. We have this idea about John Calvin as being very strict, austere and demanding. In a sense that is all true. But is it true because these strict moral codes were all designed to help all of these people live together in a very small space. Thousands of refugees were rushing to Geneva. What did Geneva do about this? Geneva opened the gates and welcomed them in. Such hospitality is an important legacy of John Calvin. This is our theological heritage.

My second theological insight has to do with John Calvin’s five percent rule. But first, let me describe to you modern Geneva. As you may know the city of Geneva is located at the very end of Lake Geneva. This lake is huge and gorgeous. The end of the lake comes to a sharp point and the Rhone River flows out. The city of Geneva sort of wraps around the end of the Lake and is connected by bridges across the river. On one side of the Lake are all the business district of Geneva, all the United Nations buildings, the World Council of Churches, the airport, the bus station, and most of the hotels, including the John Knox conference center where we stayed. On the other side of the Lake is Old Town and most of the residential suburbs.

During some free time in the city I was walking along the lake front on a gorgeous day. This was on Thursday after we had several days of immersion in the theology of John Calvin. The lake front on both sides is gorgeous, with beautiful gardens, views of the lake filled with sailboats and yachts, and the snow capped Alps in the distance. The lake front on the business side of the city is all luxurious hotels, amazing luxury. I was walking along this lake front and I stopped to look at these two cars. Two cars were parked directly in front of the front door of a very, luxurious hotel. One car was a Bugatti, and the other was a Lamborghini.  In that moment, I had this spiritual rush. I thought to myself, what have we become? Our world is motivated by accumulating wealth, by acquisition, by consumerism, by stuff. Why are we so greedy? I turned around and quickly started walking back toward Old Town. I wanted to get away from this obscene luxury and wealth. I walked across a bridge, through the crowds of people shopping in all the very elite shops, cut up the steep hill onto the old, cobblestone streets of the Old Town and climbed up to Calvin’s Church.

When the city of Geneva was overcrowded with refugees, Calvin had another one of his crazy, revolutionary ideas. He approached some of the established, wealthy business leaders in Geneva. He asked them to make small loans to some of the refugees who had demonstrated a gift for some kind, any kind of business or craft. He asked the wealthy businessmen not to charge more than 5% interest. Calvin’s idea of using money to make money to the Glory of God changed our world. Calvin did not invent this idea but he certainly organized it and put it to good use. Calvin was pastorally concerned for the refugees rushing into Geneva. Soon many of the immigrant refugee families were able to get some start up cash and start businesses. This small idea blossomed and soon Calvin’s Geneva became an economic and industrial powerhouse and, of course, soon Geneva became a center for international banking. And even more, this theological vision that money may be used to make money to the Glory of God, came with the followers of John Calvin to this new World. Here that idea motivated the remarkable Protestant Work Ethic which built this nation.

           

So I sat on the steps of John Calvin’s Church and I pondered Geneva, John Calvin and our church today. I believe John Calvin asks a question that is powerfully relevant and challenging for us. It was the question he asked of his people in Geneva. Are we using our money, our wealth for the soothing of our own greed? Or are we using our money to the Glory of God? Buying a Lamborghini may be one answer. Making a sacrificial, financial commitment to the work of the church and seeking to discern the demands of economic justice in our world today may be a very different answer.

           

I celebrate John Calvin. We would, I believe, do well to reacquaint ourselves again with his theological vision and commitments to the glory of God.