wfn.org | Diaz Tells Council He Is Seeking a "Presbyterian Revival"

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21-October-1997 
97402 
 
    Diaz Tells Council He Is Seeking a "Presbyterian Revival" 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
SAN ANTONIO, Texas--"We're going to have to have a revival -- a Pentecost 
happening in the church," interim executive director the Rev. Frank Diaz 
told the General Assembly Council when it met here Sept. 22-27.  Membership 
decline in the Presbyterian Church cannot be solved in Louisville alone, 
Diaz said, but "requires a commitment from individual Presbyterians and 
from congregations to reconnect with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior."  The 
General Assembly offices can provide resources, but, Diaz said, "commitment 
to revival needs to occur all across the denomination." 
 
    Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, building on the ecumenical advances 
made this summer with the approval of the Lutheran-Reformed "Formula of 
Agreement" creating full communion between Lutherans and Presbyterians, 
announced that he will be participating shortly in conversations with 
representatives of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church that are designed to 
begin the process of creating union presbyteries with that denomination. 
 
    Eighty percent of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church's congregations 
and members reside within the bounds of the PC(USA)'s Synod of Living 
Waters.  Kirkpatrick will also be discussing the holding of concurrent 
General Assemblies with the Cumberland Presbyterians, which, he said, he 
hopes will be the first steps toward the reunion of these two Presbyterian 
denominations. 
 
            Moderator's conference on spiritual formation 
 
    Current General Assembly moderator Patricia G. Brown presented 
preliminary plans for her moderator's conference on spiritual formation. 
The conference will take place March 13-15 in Louisville and will involve 
synod and presbytery moderators and the chairs of General Assembly 
entities. 
 
                    Congregational Ministries Division 
 
    The Congregational Ministries Division (CMD) Committee voted -- and the 
Council agreed -- that the Stewardship Program Area will remain intact and 
lodged in the Congregational Ministries Division, that an interim associate 
director be named when Vivian Johnson retires at the end of this year, and 
that relocation of  CMD operations currently in the Stewardship office, 
such as Media Services, Research Services and Mission Interpretation and 
Promotion, not take place without substantive conversations with the 
division committee. 
 
    A proposal to move all or some of those operations to the Office of the 
Executive Director of the Council is still being considered by the Council. 
 
                   National Ministries Division 
 
    The Council, at the request of its National Ministries Division 
Committee, agreed to request docket time at next year's General Assembly in 
Charlotte, North Carolina, for the final report of the Presbyterian 
Committee on the "Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women," a 
comprehensive program sponsored by the World Council of Churches to call 
attention to the plight of women around the world. 
 
    The Council also authorized the Mission Responsibility Through 
Investment Committee to file shareholder resolutions with a number of 
companies on the issues of their employment practices, environmental 
safeguards and use of sweat shop labor in the two-thirds world for product 
manufacturing.  Companies so cited include Disney, Nike, Lands' End and 
Mattel.  The Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee monitors 
corporate practices of companies in which Presbyterian investing entities 
-- primarily the Board of Pensions and the Presbyterian Foundation -- hold 
stock and advises those entities on socially responsible investment 
decisions. 
 
    The National Ministries Division Committee voted to increase the amount 
of money candidates for the ministry in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
can borrow from the Theological Studies Loan Fund of the denomination.  The 
loan limits were raised after loan fund officials expressed concern that 
Presbyterian theological students are being forced to assume loans on less 
favorable terms from other lenders because of the limits on denominational 
loans. 
 
    The committee also approved a recommendation that Bicentennial Fund 
donations of more than $100 to projects that have been oversubscribed be 
used, with the donor's consent, for new church development and church 
redevelopment projects in the church.  Contributions of less than $100 to 
oversubscribed projects will be used to cover Bicentennial Fund 
administrative expenses. 
 
                     Worldwide Ministries Division 
 
    The Worldwide Ministries Division Committee announced to the Council 
the appointments of 17 new Presbyterian missionaries throughout the world. 
Additionally, the appointments of 25 mission volunteers were extended.  The 
Council also paused for a moment of silence to honor 17 retired 
missionaries who have died this year. 
 
    The Council was also told by the division committee of the approval of 
four new presbytery partnerships: Twin Cities Area Presbytery with the 
Synod of the Transdanubian District of the Reformed Church in Hungary; 
Tampa Bay Presbytery and the Central Presbytery of the Evangelical 
Presbyterian Church of Honduras; Hudson River Presbytery and the Central 
District of the Moravian Church in Nicaragua; and San Francisco Presbytery 
and the District 4 Prae of the Church of Christ in Thailand. 
 
    The Council also invited Presbyterians interested in helping provide 
pension benefits to three Cuban pastors who were inadvertently omitted from 
the pension rolls when the Castro revolution overran Cuba to contribute to 
an Extra Commitment Opportunity account that will be set up to receive such 
contributions.  The 1996 General Assembly mandated that ways be found to 
restore the pension benefits to the three Cuban pastors.  The Council and 
the Board of Pensions have already contributed to the fund. 
 
    The committee also bid farewell to Norm Miller, who is retiring as 
associate for international health ministries, and to Hunter Farrell, who 
is departing as area coordinator for East and West Africa to take a 
missionary position in Peru. 
 
                     Technology and Finance Office 
 
    The Finance and Technology Office Committee approved a revised 1998 
General Assembly Mission Budget of just more than $121 million, some $5 
million more than the original planning budget approved by the General 
Assembly.  Most of the extra funds result from increased designated giving 
to budgeted General Assembly mission programs. About $1 million has been 
added as a result of an anticipated budget surplus in 1997. 
 
    That surplus will be used to provide funding for "Presbyterians: Being 
Faithful to Jesus Christ," the new every-household publication of the 
General Assembly Council, for evangelism programs and for salary 
adjustments for staff members in the Presbyterian Center in Louisville. 
 
    The committee also approved a package of refinanced loans for the 
Montreat Conference Center in North Carolina.  The loan package was 
approved after committee members heard a positive report on progress made 
at Montreat since the resignation of president William S. Dunifon.  At its 
June meeting, the committee rejected a loan package, citing the lack of 
adequate business and long-range plans for the conference center. 
 
    With the electronic age fully upon us, the Council approved a 
recommendation from its Technology and Finance Office Committee that a 
seven-person "Electronic Media Work Group" 
be established to explore the Presbyterian Church's use of such 
technologies as PresbyNet, the Internet, and satellite and fiberoptic 
teleconferencing and to make recommendations about the church's future use 
of such electronic media to enhance ministry and communication throughout 
the world. 
 
    The recommendation grew out of reports from both the Office of 
Communication and the Comprehensive Strategy for Mission Funding Work Group 
that such a study is crucial for the church in the electronic age. 
 
                         Other business 
 
    Ken Grant and Ray Tanner, officials of the Presbyterian Investment and 
Loan Program, announced that the program currently has assets of more than 
$12 million.  Those funds were invested by the Presbyterian Church 
Corporation, the Presbyterian Foundation, seven presbyteries, four synods 
and more than 200 individual Presbyterians.  The investment and loan 
program offers investment certificates at competitive interest rates and 
makes capital loans to Presbyterian churches and institutions at 
below-market rates. 
 
    All Presbyterian congregations have been invited to participate in a 
study sponsored by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy entitled 
"Building Community Among Strangers."  The study is part of the development 
of a new policy to strengthen the Presbyterian Church's "capacity to build 
human community in the midst of the growing diversity of American society, 
especially in metropolitan areas."  The study is based on Ephesians 2:19 -- 
"So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with 
the saints and also members of the household of God." 

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