The Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area did not make a mistake when it voted in January 2008 to restore the ordination of Paul Capetz, an openly-gay theology professor who will not promise that he will live in celibacy, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission has ruled.
It’s a tradition that many Presbyterian churches don’t follow – but one with a strong theological vision.
While many folks celebrate New Year’s Eve with champagne and parties, or an evening around the TV with a bowl of popcorn, some Christians choose to wave in the New Year at church.
When do churches need a new hymnal -- not just new volumes, but new selections? Who decides how many hymns to include, which ones are "in" and which ones are "out"? Leslie Scanlon, Outlook national reporter, recently talked with David Eicher, the new hymnal editor for the Presbyterian Publishing Corp. to get more information on the new Presbyterian Hymnal now in the planning stages.
L.S.: Let's start with your background. Why don't you introduce yourself to the church a little bit?
D.E.: I've been involved in music in the Presbyterian Church for almost 30 years. My background was not Presbyterian; I was raised the son of a Church of the Brethren and grew up in a real hymn-singing tradition. My parents both sang. And my sister and I, when we got old enough -- the great excitement was when finally my voice changed and I could sing tenor, and then we had a soprano, alto, tenor and bass. The whole family would sing. One of our games in the car when we were traveling was to see how many stanzas of hymns we could sing through, without any books.
David McFarlane remembers the first Board of Pensions retirement seminar he attended. He was chairing the Committee on Ministry for Western New York Presbytery, and one of his responsibilities was to encourage pastors nearing retirement age to attend the seminars.
So it was suggested that he go himself -- the argument being something like, "You'll never convince anybody to go unless you go yourself."
McFarlane, then in his 40s, did go. He and his wife, Ann, walked into the room, sat down next to an older couple and struck up a conversation. The older man said he was intending to retire in about three weeks. He had not said a word to his session. The couple was living in a manse, owned no home and had no idea where they would live. They had made no plans.
"We were just stunned," McFarlane said. "My glory, three weeks away ... I said, 'No matter what else we do, we won't do that.' "
Now, after many years and after retiring themselves, the McFarlanes are among a number of "consultant couples" who speak at retirement seminars sponsored by the Board of Pensions. They don't offer advice; in other words, they don't tell people what to do. But they do walk people through questions they're likely to encounter as they consider retirement -- questions such as where to live and how to use their time when they step aside from the pulpit. They try to help them envision what, for them, retirement might be like.
Last year, some megachurches got tongues flapping fast when they decided to cancel worship services on Christmas Day -- which happened to be Sunday morning.
This year, churches face another Christmas "what to do" decision, because Dec. 24 lands on a Sunday. So congregations big and small must decide whether to offer both Sunday morning worship and a full lineup of Christmas Eve services -- or whether that's just too much.
Some people want a traditional late-night Christmas Eve service, with a choir and communion and candlelight.
LOUISVILLE -- In some ways, the anniversaries of women's ordination that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is in the midst of celebrating this year -- 100 years for deacons, 75 years for elders, 50 years for ministers -- are momentous, historic events.
And in other ways they are like a panorama of smaller stories -- layers of personal remembrances, snippets of impressions, allegories laden with history and meaning and politics.
Some are funny stories -- such as when a class of five women arrived at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 1980 and found urinals in the women's restrooms and potted plants in the urinals.
Some are painful -- the stories of women who felt called by God to serve at a time when the church said, "Absolutely not."
And some tell folks that as far as the church has come, there are still young women, and women of color, and lesbians who want to be ordained, and mature women scarred by the fighting, who would say the Presbyterian church hasn't come nearly far enough.
These are cynical times, and this is supposed to be a season of hope.
We have the president of the United States flying off in fierce secrecy at Thanksgiving to greet the American troops in Iraq — an unabashedly Hollywood patriotic moment — followed almost immediately by more deaths of more soldiers far from home.
"Make them stop! Make them stop!" That's my younger daughter's advice to the people in our town who fired up their Christmas lights and decorations, even put up their trees, well before Thanksgiving.
"Don't they know they're rushing the season?" my older daughter asked.
It’s been a distressing, violent year since hijacked planes plunged into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The months since then have brought a whole crop of pain around the world — suicide bombings in the Middle East, retaliation in Palestinian villages, war in Afghanistan, Hindus and Muslims attacking one another in India, a Russian plane filled with children falling from the sky, to name just a few. And, in the United States, economic news so bad that almost everyone knows someone who’s lost a job.
LOUISVILLE - Billy Graham -- preaching a vintage message of a world that's changing and a God with eternal answers -- has kicked off a four-day crusade in Louisville by saying the world needs Jesus and racial reconciliation.
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