Arizona White Paper

A few weeks ago, a group of tall steeple pastors met in Scottdale, AZ to discuss the state of the PCUSA. All of these pastors are firmly in the moderate to conservative branch of the denomination.

A letter introducing the White Paper, along with the White Paper itself was published on the Presbyterian Outlook website

As expected there are a few responses, some for, most against. There is much railing against the fact that all the signers were pastors of tall steeple churches, and that they are all white males.

I'm not sure that I could tell that they are all white males from their names, at least one response agrees with me on that. However, they are all males, but why is that a surprise.

While it is true that the PCUSA and its predecessors found that there is a scriptural basis for the ordination of women, both as elders and as ministers of Word and Sacrement, it is hard for a biblically conservative woman minister to find a pulpit outside of a small to medium sized church.

A case in point, SWMBO, also known as the Pastor. Graduated from a conservative seminary, PTS in Pittsburgh. Born and raised in the PCUS as a child, affirms the Westminister Confession without quibble. That said, either did not get a response, or got a polite thank you, but after being listed as the required women's candidate.

There aren't that many women who are Senior Pastor's in any church over 1,000 members that I know of, if there are please enlighten me.

So the fact that .... the letter prompting this response was published by a group of white, male pastors of large churches, who were inviting the whole church to consider their concerns to quote from the Outlook, is nothing if not disingenuous, and a Red Herring to detract from what the White Paper actually says.

A response by the Stated Clerk, GAMC Exec Director, and the current Moderator of the GA is, according to Jack Haberer, In the process, they urge their fellow Presbyterians to pursue a course of unity, citing John Calvin’s resolve, “‘So far as I have it in my power, if I am thought to be of any service, I shall not be afraid to cross ten seas for this purpose, if that should be necessary.’”

But did Calvin really pursue Unity as the end all and be all, or was he pursuing to reform Christianity into what the Scriptures really said.

As you can probably tell, I can understand where these pastors stand. I fully support the ideas they espouse. I can also understand why there aren't other names there, pastors of smaller churches who do not have the security of a tall steeple. These pastors know full well that in some locales, to publicly say what the White Paper says could be a career breaker.

There is that kind of disunity and distrust in the PCUSA. Another blogger at Mountains and Magnolias talks about how the PCUSA has become almost episcopalian in scope, and that the tall steeple pastors are looking at congregationalism.

He has a point, but I don't believe the part about becoming congregational. That's already here with many large to small churches simply exiting the PCUSA in place. Yeah they're still listed, but they don't all pay per capita and many don't attend Presbytery meetings any longer. Why?? Its the same thing every year or so, we said NO once, why can't it stick !!

Is the new nFog, which appears to push unity as the main driving force and will if adopted will promote anything but; going to really ...engage elders and pastors in shaping a more responsive polity to paraphrase from the response letter?

Will the nFog be more responsive to those who see the PCUSA as heading down the road to biblical irrelevancy?

Does it give a voice to those who see that the current way we nominate representatives to GA does not allow for the diversity of opinion and theological views that should be the goal of GA?

You can probably quess the answer to all those questions, and more from the moderate/conservative side of the PCUSA. I think NOT!!

And so it goes ..... !!

One more off the Bucket List

As I approach my sixth decade (good grief, did I actually write that), I've been realizing that there are things I wanted to do but never got around, or had the patience to do.

One of which was to get my Amateur (ham) Radio License. I was really into shortwave (SWR) radio listening when I was younger, even bought and built a Heathkit receiver for use when I was stationed in Greece to listen to the Voice of America, BBC and Radio Canada.

While stationed there, I helped run the local military MARS station at the detachment, which also allowed me to listen to Hams in the US and elsewhere try to get QSLs from stations all over the world.

My problem was that I could never get past the Morse Code requirements. I could never send or receive at the speed needed. So I resigned myself to be a passive listener.

I didn't keep up with the license requirements, so when someone said they had just gotten their Technician level license, I asked what was the Morse requirement. He said there was none !! Sure enough, I was qualified for the Tech license, at least an online test said I was. When I sat for the test, I passed with flying colors.

A friend of mine had given me a 2m/440mhz Kenwood mobile rig, so I ran some coax up through a hole in the ceiling of a closet, installed a 2m antenna in the attic, and promptly started talking to locals through a repeater. Of course, there is only so much you can talk about locally, and I was definitely not going to get QSL cards from them. So, now its on to get my General, and a HF rig. Slowly, but surely I'm putting the 'shack' together, but first I'll dig out my old SWR set, and see if it still works.

73

After Christmas Blues .....

Its been snowing here in Cannoli, PA for the past week. Not heavy amounts, but enough that I need to head out at least once a day and clear the back door and walk. The good news is that that's the only area I have to do, the front of the manse is handled by the church.

My wife does the area from the manse to her office. The joke is, her office is on the other side of the connecting door to the church.

Anyway, I finally got the last of the outside decorations down after Epiphany, so all the lights are off the lawn, the wreath down from the front, and the lit electric candles out of the windows. It just looks drab at night now ...



I think it looked quite nice, of course some of the locals were scratching their head until the first candle was lit.

.... and so it goes !!

Merry Christmas

This year my wife, the Pastor, asked if I'd like to assist as one of the readers in our Christmas Eve, Lessons, Carols and Candlelight service. I said, sure, as long as I get to read Luke 2:8-18 from the KJV.

Now I didn't have a blanket, but with a missing front tooth, I did sound somewhat like Linus.



Have a safe, Merry and Holy Christmas.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Saw this movie the day it came out, on an IMAX screen. Loved the movie, but didn't write about it.

Went to see it again last week on a smaller screen, and I must say, my reaction is the same. Its almost like reading the book !! Steve Kloves, who's adapted the books for most of the movies was right when he convinced the producer David Heyman to spread the last book into two movies. You couldn't put all the threads of the final book in 2 hours 20 minutes, you would not give the book justice.

As it is, Steve had to reduce the number of characters seen in the book by having previously introduced characters in the movies do some of the actions. There are also some areas where people who were not fully introduced in earlier movies(Bill Weasley) had to be introduced in this one as they were crucial to certain areas of the story. So dialog had to be written to cover his scars from the werewolf attack.

That said, there is PLENTY of dialog as well as storyline taken straight from the book here so Potter fans will not be disappointed at all.

I can't wait until this coming summer for Part 2.

And so it goes ... ;)

PCUSA being sued !!

Caught this on Church and World (Presbyweb) today: Presbyterians sued over alleged sex abuse.

Now normally I wouldn't worry about this, as the denomination does not have a central authority. However; with all the litigation by churches trying to separate the PCUSA to another denomination while keeping their property; the PCUSA has been arguing with with provided legal assistance, or friend of the court briefs, that the PCUSA is a hierarchical denomination.

What does that mean to us in the pews? Well, it could mean that even though the Hostel where the alleged abuse occurred was owned by a church supported entity, not the PCUSA corporate body, the tactic used by the PCUSA against churches, may be turned around and used against the PCUSA itself. I'm not a lawyer, nor pretend to be one, but is this not possible ??

Interesting conjecture, no ?? The PCUSA could be facing multi-million dollar lawsuits, that could threaten its financial stability. What would happen to the PCUSA then ?? Perhaps something that would be a positive thing. Funding for all the different committees, and associated staff would drop. Many of the committees that make work for themselves would have to stop making work because there would be no one to do the work.

It would pare down the size of the national staff in Louisville. Just think, perhaps the work of the denomination would then be reduced to just one thing - saving souls for the Father and Lord of all.

And so it goes ... !!

Wow .. 17 days 'til Christmas

Its been an interesting month here in Cannoli PA. My wife, the Pastor has been preparing for Advent and Christmas. The local minister's group planned a Live Nativity, and I've been putting up the Christmas decorations.

Now we've never done the Santa, sleigh, reindeer, and elves thing in front of our house at any time.

The first year we were married, we went out to buy some outdoor lights to decorate. So there I was decorating our front door, stoop, and colonial awning/roof with lights. Trouble is they were all blue mini-lights, and when lit at night, reminded my wife of a shrine to the Virgin Mary. All we needed was the statue. I guess my Catholic upbringing subconsciously came out that year.

The next year we were in a different town and state, and so far off the road, that nothing I put up could be seen, except for the neighbors .. who surrounded us as we were in the middle of the piece of land, and 17 neighbors surrounded us. In the summer, we were hidden, in the winter the trees dropped all the leaves, and there we were.

I went out and bought white lights that year, and strung them around the back patio where they could be seen. That year it really was a white Christmas (and a white December as I recall), those lights just made it look like a Winter Wonderland (cue music). I remember taking them down one January, and there was a lot of snow on the roof. Did I mention it was a sloped roof down to the back patio ?? Luckily it was a light snow.

A few years later, and we were again in a new state and town, and we were right on the road, with neighbors in a row with us. We added some new lights, a large wreath that I used the extension ladder to place on the second floor foyer window, garland all around the front door, white lights in all the shrubs, and a lit garland around the post lamp. Still fairly secular, but not gaudy. The only problem came when I was trying to get the wreath up the ladder, luckily the snow broke my fall.

We also put lights on the back deck, as the community's walking trail was in the back of the house, on the other side of a small stream and copse of trees. They really looked good, until the squirrels starting chewing at the red lights. We think they thought the red ones were berries. I guess they got a shock.

Fast forward to today, and I found something on the web that I thought would be perfect for our house, which is, in reality, the manse. I created an Advent wreath made of Christmas lights. The original idea came from this website, and it has turned out nicely. The only change was that I used blue lights instead of purple/violet. The purple/violet lights I found really do not look any different from the rose lights, so I went with blue.

We're getting good comments, and I'm really glad I went with it. I did reuse the large wreath, as it looks good on the double front windows, and I didn't need a ladder to put it up.

So the second Sunday of Advent came, the live Nativity was set up, the temps dropped to a 14 to 15 degree wind chill, and only one set of Josephs and Marys showed up. So the live Nativity was over in about 45 minutes. While the live donkeys we had really didn't have a problem with the cold, the camel we were going to have and all the humans did. Next year we're going to try to figure out a way to provide heat for the creche.

All in all, a rather busy few weeks. Now I can start putting together my want list. I guess you can figure out what I want for Christmas:


And so it goes ....