Book Review: Diana Butler Bass, Grounded, 2015

Book Review: Diana Butler Bass, Grounded: Finding God in the World: A Spiritual Revolution. 2015.

I have been a fan and an avid student of Diana Butler Bass since the days when her popular book, Christianity for the Rest of Us traveled through my church circles with enthusiastic popularity. But now she has left me behind. I do not know for sure where she went. But she left the church. I am church! My abiding spiritual life, blessed by a deep and personal relationship with Jesus Christ, is fully alive in and through the institutional church. I am committed to fighting for the vitality, the effectiveness and the vibrant future of the institutional church. The church embodies my spiritual life. But now, in my reading of her new book Grounded, Diana Butler Bass has abandoned me and the institutional church. She has moved, as a result of her “third conversion”, to some strange place that is, I guess, more aligned with Karen Armstrong’s Charter of Compassion than it is with my stodgy Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

She writes in her Conclusion this paragraph that for me lacks the nuance and sophistication that I found in her works. I find this to be a remarkably simplistic summary of things:

“The old God, the one believed in, preached and celebrated, and served in conventional religious institutions, is fading from view. And a new God, one of intimate longing and infinite love, experienced and proclaimed by seers and prophets through the ages, has risen just over the horizon. It is a new spiritual day.”

I read here her dismissal of the “conventional religious institutions” like the one I am committed to and serve in. This Great Emergence we are living through is certainly NOT going to happen like this. Our Reformation will not be an instantaneous on-off switch from an old God to a new God. There will be fits and starts, there will death and life, there will be success and failure, there will be new and old all mixed up together, and there are institutions doing fresh, creative, bold new things. Good bye, Diana Butler Bass. I am sorry you have abandoned our team, and walked out of our conventional institutions to live into some ethereal “earthy spirituality.” As for me and mine: We are church!

Book Review: Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me.(2015)

This is an important book, beautifully, poetically and elegantly written. I have white skin. But I did not feel attacked reading this book. I have white skin; I am confused by the "Black Lives Matter" movement. My response, in my own mind, seems to be, "Well, of course!" But that does not feel like an appropriate, public response. I am broken-hearted by the list of official, law enforcement violence against black people. I try to understand this issue of racism which is tearing at the fabric of our society, but I cannot. I have no access, no glimpse, no opportunity to experience the intimate reality of being a black person in America today. (I do not even know if the jargon of "white" and "black" people is still appropriate and correct?)

This book gives me that glimpse. For that I am grateful. I can glimpse, through this book, a bit of how a perceptive black writer views inner-city gangs, broken schools, the Civil Rights Movement of old, police violence. This book is written as an open letter to the author's teenage son. We share the role as the father of a teenage boy; although in vastly different worlds. I feel his love for his son, as I am filled with love for mine.

This comment, from the book, shook me: "But race is the child of racism, not the father."

This challenge, from the book, motivates me: "And I still urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name."

I struggle. I pray.

Syrian Refugees

Myths and Facts about Syrian Refugees:

Our Coordinating Council sponsored an excellent conversation concerning the viability of our congregations hosting and supporting refugee families. Our conversation was led by the staff at our International Service Center. As part of their presentation, these facts were offered in response to some of the common myths we hear:

Myths and Facts: Resettling Syrian Refugees

Myth: All Syrian refugees are dangerous.
Fact: 2,234 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the United States since October 1, 2010 (the beginning of fiscal year 2011), and only after the most extensive level of security screening of any category of traveler to the United States. None have been arrested or removed on terrorism charges.
Refugees are not terrorists. Many refugees are victims of terrorists.

Myth: 70% of the Syrian refugees coming to the United States are young, single, adult men.
Fact: Single men unattached to families comprise less than 2% of all Syrian refugee admissions to date. Last fiscal year, 1,682 Syrian refugees were admitted. Roughly 77% of them were women and children. Only 23% were adult men.

Myth: 250,000 Syrians are arriving in the United States imminently.
Fact: This is false. Since the conflict in Syria began in Fiscal Year 2011, the United States has admitted just over 2,200 Syrian refugees. In Fiscal Year 2016, the Administration remains committed to its goal of resettling at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States.

Myth: Syrian refugees receive insufficient security vetting.
Fact: All refugees of all nationalities considered for admission to the United States undergo a rigorous security screening involving multiple federal intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies, such as the National Counterterrorism Center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Departments of Homeland Security, State and Defense, in order to ensure that those admitted are not known to pose a threat to our country. The safeguards include biometric (fingerprint) and biographic checks, and an interview by specially trained DHS officers who scrutinize the applicant’s explanation of individual circumstances to ensure the applicant is a bona fide refugee and is not known to present any security concerns to the United States. Mindful of the particular conditions of the Syria crisis, Syrian refugees go through an enhanced level of review.

Myth: It’s impossible to thoroughly vet Syrians, given the ongoing conflict.
Fact: We have, for years, safely admitted smaller numbers of Syrian refugees and we have a great deal of experience screening and admitting larger numbers of refugees from other chaotic environments, including where intelligence holdings are limited. Syrian refugees go through an additional layer of security screening tailored to the particular conditions of the Syrian crisis, the classified details of which have been shared with the U.S. Congress, and we continue to examine options for further enhancements for screening Syrian refugees.

Theological Conversations: Dean K. Thompson "Presbyterian Virtues"

The PC(USA) Office of Theology and Worship has started publishing a series of "Theological Conversations." The paper by Dean K. Thompson in this series titled "Our Presbyterian Virtues" tickled the deep pride I have for our great Presbyterian Church:

What are the Presbyterian virtues: "the life of the mind; enjoyment of the natural creation; humility and self-criticism arising out of the awareness of justification by faith alone; love of the simple life contrasted with a life colored by pomposity; a deep sense of awe before God and the mysteries of the faith; and a strong awareness of our public responsibility." Amen!

See Theological Conversations, Our Presbyterian Virtues by Dean K. Thompson.

Report to the Presbytery September 22, 2015

Do Mission.

In a moment Kim is going to report for our Mission Committee. Please join us in work we are doing in partnership with Presbyterian World Mission in support of the Presbyterian Church in Honduras. All of our congregations do mission, reaching out beyond the members of the congregation into the local community and around the world. Mission is a key aspect of our identity together in Christ. Mission is an important part of who we. We are reminded of this in the first chapter of the Form of Government of our Book of Order:

“The congregation reaches out to people, communities, and the world to share the good news of Jesus Christ, to gather for worship, and to offer care and nurture to God’s children, to speak for social justice and righteousness, and to bear witness to the truth and to the reign that is coming to the world.”

I encourage each congregation, especially as you prepare your budgets and build stewardship efforts, to intentionally evaluate and review your mission. I want to encourage these principles as you do mission:

Do mission in partnership: Your mission work should never simply be writing checks and giving away money. Build partnerships and relationships with people. Presbyterian World Mission has created abundant ways for us to stay in personal relationship with our mission co-workers. You should know the world mission co-workers you support by name. Many, if not most, of our congregations participate generously in local mission through food pantries and local social service ministries. We may gather thousands of dollars’ worth of groceries to give away, but do we build relationships with the people and the families that receive this generosity? We need to be careful to do mission. It is very easy to support patterns of dependency motivated by pity, which make us feel good but do not build relationships and do not inspire or transform people in Christ.

Balance local and global: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” We have an opportunity to do mission around the world through Presbyterian World Mission. There is also work to do in our own communities. We have a clear, unambiguous calling from the Lord to go to all the world. We have a clear, unambiguous conviction that the whole world belongs to God. We need to have a balance in our mission work between local and global. We need to educate ourselves and participate in the work of the Church in our neighborhoods and all around the world.

Balance a response to poverty, evangelism and reconciliation: These three – responding to poverty, evangelism and reconciliation have been identified by World Mission as our critical issues. In our congregations, we seem to have an affinity for responding to poverty. Many of congregations have active local mission work to the poor in our communities. But what about the mission of evangelism, sharing the name of Jesus? What about the mission of reconciliation, bringing people together across barriers of cultural, social and racial differences? We need in our mission work to seek a balance between alleviating poverty, the work of evangelism and the work of reconciliation. These three are the guiding principles of Presbyterian World Mission, and may also be guiding principles for our congregations.

Connect with the larger Church: Consider the larger church as part of your mission work.  You have the opportunity to participate in and support the ministry and mission of many other congregations through your support of the Presbytery. A number of our churches are now naming the Presbytery as a Designated Mission, and providing specific, designated support to the work of the Presbytery. This is a growing line item in our proposed Budget. Theologically, it is important to consider support for and connection with the larger church as part of your congregation’s mission.

This is part of Presbyterian World Mission’s organizing statement: “As Christians, we understand "Mission" to be God's work for the sake of the world God loves. We understand this work to be centered in the Lordship of Jesus Christ and made real through the active and leading power of the Holy Spirit. The "where" and "how" and "with whom" of mission is of God's initiative, sovereign action, and redeeming grace. The message we are called to bear is the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ.” Let us do mission together in the name of Jesus. Amen!   

The Crisis at Presbyterian World Mission

Our Presbyterian World Mission has sounded a loud cry of an immediate, dire financial crisis. (See https://www.pcusa.org/news/2015/5/5/presbyterian-world-mission-funding-gap-may-force-r/). An all-star list of our General Assembly Moderators and other leaders helped to amplify the cry across our Church with their pastoral letter. Our stellar mission co-workers, serving in partnership all around the world, are being called home, new terms of service are being cancelled and our whole international mission presence faces a massive downsizing. As an Executive Presbyter serving a Presbytery that has had a long and vital commitment to Presbyterian World Mission this news breaks my heart. I have sitting on my bookshelf here at the Presbytery of Carlisle a whole line of those cute, little statuettes which were given to the “Top-Ten” mission giving presbyteries. (I believe this little annual recognition was itself cancelled in recent cutbacks.) Mission leaders in our Presbytery are rallying to raise support for World Mission, and we hope to provide funding for a new mission co-worker position, and thus begin to turn the tide on this crisis. For those of us convinced that the future of our denomination requires closer linkages with global Christianity, our own Presbyterian World Mission is a vital piece of our common life.

Nonetheless, it may be that the funding crisis at World Mission also presents us with the opportunity to ask some important structural questions:

1)      The recruitment, calling and support of our mission co-workers:

As an Executive Presbyter, I am directly involved with the employment of many church leaders, especially pastors. In fact, I guess that in my, one Presbytery I work with the hiring and installation of more pastors in any given year than World Mission hires co-workers. Every Presbytery in our Church hires and installs pastors regularly. In this process, our Presbytery functions with a high degree of professionalism, competence, consistency and theological rigor. Supporting the process of pastoral transitions is one of my most important ongoing, job responsibilities. We have a carefully defined process for hiring pastors which is rooted in our ecclesiology and supported by our polity. This process has abundant support from the Office of the General Assembly, including the office of Vocations, and many theological requirements of this process are defined in our Book of Order. My question is why Presbyterian World Mission does NOT use this well-honed, theologically rigorous process for hiring mission co-workers. The whole personnel process of World Mission has been subsumed within the World Mission administration and separated from all direct connection with our presbyteries and congregations. Why has World Mission created a completely separate, autonomous personnel process? Why has World Mission created a personnel process aside from and different from the polity and practice of every presbytery in the church? I believe I can answer these questions: World Mission, probably initiated by Robert Speer in the great era of foreign missions, made decisions to function as a corporation. All the rest of us, i.e. all the presbyteries and congregations, function as a church. I believe the distinction between functioning as a corporation and functioning as a church is profound and irreconcilable.   

2)      Our theology of ordination:

One of the most compelling aspects of our Presbyterian theological vision today is our understanding of ordination as expressed in the offices of Teaching Elder, Ruling Elder and Deacon. Our theology of ordination is beautifully articulated in our Book of Order and is a hallmark of modern, Reformed theology today. My question is why some of our most important church leaders, namely our mission co-workers, are not included within our theology of ordination. Our theology of ordination is limited to church leaders serving in our own congregations and church related institutions. Are not our mission co-workers serving with partner churches and institutions all around the world worthy of ordination as much as church leaders serving here at home? Certainly, many of our mission co-workers are, in fact, ordained officers. But we do not require all mission co-workers to be ordained officers as we do our installed pastors and session members. I suggest that all our mission co-workers need to be ordained officers within the PC(USA) and named as such in the Book of Order. I will argue for the creation of mission co-worker as an ordained office in addition to Teaching Elders, Ruling Elders, and Deacons. My preference would be to begin the long process of constitutional amendment seeking to add mission co-worker as an ordained officer in the Book of Order. This potential new church officer as mission co-worker may also be used to include those that are not already ordained who are emerging to lead new worshiping communities.

3)      Election by the People:

Please see the Book of Order F-3.0106, “Election by the People”. Clearly one of the sacred, historic, theological principles of our church is the election of our church officers by the people. But the long standing, personnel procedures of Presbyterian World Mission has abandoned this foundational doctrine of our Church. With this neglect we have lost a vital means by which we connect our mission co-workers with the Church. Our mission co-workers should be directly connected with our presbyteries and congregations and elected to service by these Councils. Thus I suggest that all mission co-workers should be formally elected to their positions by either a congregation or a presbytery. This is always our procedure for Teaching Elders, Ruling Elders and Deacons. The hiring of mission co-workers must stop being an invisible, hidden process held tightly by World Mission administrative staff. We need an open, public, transparent search process exactly parallel to the search for a new Teaching Elder. Claiming this practice of electing our mission co-workers will be a big step toward directly reconnecting World Mission with our presbyteries and congregations.

In my recent, little book on the history of our foreign mission work I wrote: “The future of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and all of American mainline Protestantism, will require a greater immersion in the powerful movements of global Christianity. These connections will span the globe gathering brothers and sisters from profoundly different cultures together in the church. When local congregations today see themselves as part of the remarkable movement of Christianity around the world the spark of spiritual vitality and energy will fill hearts and our churches. Certainly, congregation-based mission partnerships are important. There will also be a crucial role for governing bodies and church councils who seek to create opportunities for partnership and shared mission practices across the great barriers of culture and language. And a revitalized, national agency of Presbyterian World Mission with a team of professional mission personnel is evolving into a leading piece of the foreign mission enterprise.” (See my The Presbyterian Mission Enterprise, Wipf and Stock, 2015). May it be so for Presbyterian World Mission and the future of our PC(USA).

Bebb Wheeler Stone's important reflection on our life together.

Copied here is a wide-ranging, important article about the future direction of our denomination. Bebb is currently serving as the Interim Pastor of our Silver Spring Presbyterian Church.

June 23, 2015

from Rev. Bebb Wheeler Stone, PhD.

A letter from a Presbyterian Teaching Elder, baptized and raised in the PC(USA), to all my Friends in Christ:

I write out of a concern that the word ‘missional’ does not help us learn from the errors so evident in the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s general approach, which has been to downplay key parts of our ethos in an effort to avoid conflict and build a brand.

We have inherited a liberating, egalitarian way of being faithful to Jesus Christ in the Reformed tradition’s understanding of Scripture, polity, theology, and ethics. This Way, Truth, and Life of being Christian is indeed not simple, but its practice through 500 plus years has protected us from the extremes of zealotry (Christianity as an ideology, for example, or ‘Christianism’, where folks compete to be ‘holier than thou’) as well as from a completely culturally captured faith with no prophetic word.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has struggled to be faithful in contemporary life, wrestling with scholarly interpretations of Scripture, insisting on its Teaching Elders being trained in Hebrew and Greek. Our denomination has refused to relinquish the Hebrew Testament and its formative meaning for Jesus' life and ministry. Our denomination has refused to relinquish the prophets, and their consistent speaking truth to power for the sake of justice and peace, values at the very heart of God. Our denomination has refused to relinquish reason and values science, as we love God with heart, mind, soul and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.

We have understood why Confession is a stronger witness than ‘profession’, and even acknowledged in our Book of Order that "this organization rests on the fellowship and is not designed to work without trust and love" (G-1.0102).

Our tradition bequeathed to our nation a representative method of majority rule in which the conscience of the minority is protected by emphasizing that the church’s power is “ministerial and declarative” (F-3.0107). Through the fires of conflict we have learned the wisdom of "mutual forbearance" (F-3.0105) that is lifted up in our historical principles of church order, reminding us that persons of good faith may differ on nonessentials. We witness to our sense of fairness by our polity, where we prefer parity of ministry to hierarchy. We have learned to work in coalitions and contexts that are ‘secular’, in ways that remain consistent with the values we believe are at the very heart of God: justice, mercy, peace, and love. We see God’s sovereign Spirit moving in every sphere of life.

We need urgently to let go of the neologism ‘missional’, which rolls off the tongue uncomfortably and is not in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary! We have some 250 years of profound ‘mission’ history doing the kind of work that established schools and hospitals, to care for the value, dignity, and humanity of each person. Just as we need to let go of one word, we need to recover our enthusiastic use of another – “Justice" – a word we learn from Scripture itself, an ultimate divine value critical to God's blessing of human endeavors.  

We have tried the road of avoiding conflict, and where has it gotten us? We have tried the road of funding charity, but not justice, and the generations coming of age today have questioned our courage. We know how to do community organizing; it’s in our DNA. Let’s fund the organizers of the Presbyterian Church (PHEWA, among others), pulling them back from the margins to the center of the Presbyterian Church’s work for justice. 

A personal hero of mine, the Rev. William Thomas, H.R., Presbyterian Teaching Elder, used to remind us that the Greek idea of justice is the goddess Dike – blindfolded, with her balance scales (the symbol of our American legal system); but that the Hebrew idea of justice in our YHWH God is the Holy One, no blindfold, with a finger on the scales, ordering right relationships and including the widow, the orphan, and the outcast. We do not worship a ‘fair and balanced’ God; we worship Jesus Christ, who embodied for all to see the way to be and act as a citizen in the Commonwealth of God.

In recent years our uniquely Presbyterian connectional system – in which authority flows from local congregation through Presbytery and Synod to General Assembly, and at the same time from GA through Synod and Presbytery to the local congregation – has been de-emphasized. We have allowed a more congregational polity to take hold, a polity that damages the organism in its global and national responsiveness and witness. We need to recover the larger vision of our Presbyterian connectional polity as a birthright.

 

When we moved our denominational offices to the ‘heartland’ (Louisville, KY) after reunion in 1983, we almost seemed to be in retreat from the concerns of the world beyond our coastlines. With all the past decade’s Reductions in Force, 100 Witherspoon Street has too much unneeded space, and perhaps too much sadness, for our next chapter of ministry and mission. Perhaps now that we have the enhanced capacities of computers for meetings, conferences, and connecting, might we consider decentralizing our General Assembly Offices and our Mission Agency to cities that are more international, diverse, and intercultural? Four come to mind: New York, Atlanta, Houston, and San Francisco.

With the recent changes in the staff at 100 Witherspoon Street, might we reconceive of the role of Executive Director more as a General Presbyter or Commissioner, reflecting more of our Presbyterian heritage? In addition to stated clerks and moderators, we have had a range of general secretaries and chairpersons not modeled on CEOs.

Let’s use our church’s language and polity for our leaders as well as our process! We worship a servant Lord; let’s employ persons, and be persons, who are less ‘executive’ and more ‘servant’ for our church!

AUTHOR BIO: Rev. Bebb Wheeler Stone, PhD., serves as Interim Minister for Silver Spring Presbyterian Church in Mechanicsburg PA. She is a past president of The Presbyterian Health, Education, and Welfare Association (PHEWA), and a founding member of Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options (PARO). Recently she served on the Presbyterian delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women meeting at the