From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org
Future Church Envisioning Work Group Reports
From
PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>
Date
21 Jul 1998 00:52:27
Reply-To: wfn-news list <wfn-news@wfn.org>
20-July-1998
98214
Future Church Envisioning Work Group
Reports Initial Findings to the GAC
by Julian Shipp
CHARLOTTE, N.C.-The commonly called "Blue Sky Committee" - or Future Church
Envisioning Work Group - of the General Assembly Council (GAC) shared its
vision of the church of tomorrow during its report to the Council here on
June 11.
The 10-member think tank was authorized by the GAC in February to
envision the status of the denomination in the future. The committee has
been mandated to operate for two years and report its findings and
recommendations to the GAC at the end of that time. The committee does not
have any planning or implementation authority. It has been charged to look
beyond the normal scope of the GAC's activities and envision what the GAC
should be doing well into the new millennium.
"We are conducting a new type of visionary thinking that may be less
apparently [or] immediately practical," said the Rev. Tom Fisher, Future
Church Envisioning Work Group chair. "We have to talk about the future and
think through whether the future will represent a simple continuation of
the past and present or are there going to be radical discontinuities.
"It's not that we're trying to anticipate God's activity before God
does God's thing," Fisher told the Presbyterian News Service. "It's more
like `How do we get ourselves in position to be properly discerning of what
God is doing in the world and appropriately respond?'"
The "Blue Sky" group held its first meeting in May in Louisville, Ky.
During that meeting, Fisher said, committee members identified four primary
concerns relevant to the church's future. Committee members determined the
PC(USA) of the future must
* learn to stand in solidarity with people on their own turf and relate
to them on their own terms
* create within the church an "ethos of experimentation" or a "culture
of creativity" where no one is denied the joy of being part of the
creative enterprise as it pertains to envisioning her or his future
* work more to promote churchwide sharing and thinking, with
particular emphasis on informing members of the initiatives of the
"Blue Sky Committee" at the congregational level
* pay increasing attention to ecumenical and interfaith concerns in
the context in which the committee operates.
The other "Blue Sky Committee" members are Patricia Brown, moderator of
the 209th General Assembly (1997); Youngil Cho, GAC chair in 1996-97; the
Rev. Fred Denson, GAC chair in 1997-98; Cathy Chisolm, the current GAC
chair; Travis Britten, youth member (Presbyterian Youth Connection); Andy
Browne, youth member (GAC); Adelia Kelso, Congregational Ministries
Division representative; the Rev. Marian McClure, Worldwide Ministries
Division director; and Peter Pizor, Worldwide Ministries Division
chair-elect.
Additional "Blue Sky" meetings are scheduled during September, November
and March.
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