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Note #7806 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

More than lip service
03252

More than lip service

Curtis Jones making a full-time ministry of black Presbyterian caucus

by John Filiatreau

DENVER - After 22 years in pastoral ministry, the Rev. Curtis Jones has set
out in a new direction as the first full-time, paid executive director of the
National Black Presbyterian Caucus.

	Jones, who resigned in February as pastor of Madison Avenue
Presbyterian Church, of Baltimore, MD, soon will be moving with his family to
Atlanta, GA, where he plans to open a national office of the NBPC in July or
August.

	"It is strange for me, not having pastoral responsibility," he said
the other day during a break from networking at the 215th General Assembly.
"I love being a pastor. It's a calling for me. Yet I've wanted another
challenge."

	NBPC is an association of about 800 African-American Presbyterians.
Its membership had stalled at about 300 when Jones became its unpaid,
part-time president and director about two years ago. One of his first tasks
he has set for himself as full-time director is increasing its membership to
10 percent of the blacks in the Presbyterian Church (USA) - which he said
would be "7,000 to 10,000."

	In recent years, he conceded, the NBPC has not borne out its name: It
hasn't been very national, because its membership has been minuscule; it
hasn't been very black, in that it hasn't effectively represented
African-American perspectives; it hasn't been very Presbyterian, because it
has hasn't done an effective job of drawing the church's attention to its
historic traditions of devotion to racial and social justice; and it hasn't
been much of a caucus because it hasn't consistently played a political role.
Moreover, Jones said, it has been too dependent on outside support. 

	"We have to become financially self-sufficient," he said. "We can't
be totally dependent on foundations to make our budget." The NBPC's current
annual budget is about $300,000.

	Jones dealt with a bigger budget - more than $1 million - at
250-member Madison Avenue Presbyterian, the first black Presbyterian church
in Maryland, founded around 1848 by blacks who refused segregated worship
across town at First Presbyterian Church. The church had a staff of about 50
people, many employed in ministry at the Madison Avenue Family Outreach
Center. 

	"I went there with a mandate to build a community-based, healthy
congregation," he said. "At the time, Madison was very traditional in many
ways. We wanted to grow, reach out to the young people, get involved in
community outreach. We accomplished all that, we got the membership up to
about 270  but it never really took off and grew the way we wanted it to."

	Jones, whose first pastorate was at St. Luke Presbyterian Church, of
Dallas, said he encountered resistance in Baltimore when he tried to
introduce an "African world view" to a settled, comfortable congregation. "I
wanted to change the members' consciousness and introduce a different world
view - without romanticizing Africa," he said. His talk about the
accomplishments of black nations, advances in math, science and medicine
credited to Africans, the contributions to theology of the black desert
fathers, pleased some members but alienated others.

	"Exodus ought to be meaningful for my people," Jones said. "Many of
the Egyptians were black.  Herodotus talks about the black nations of
Africa. Somehow, we've come to think of Egypt as if it isn't part of Africa,
but it is."

	"My first mistake," he said, "was that I went to two worship services
- and they were both the same. I should have diversified and offered a
traditional Presbyterian service for whose who had so much invested in the
Presbyterian tradition, and a more contemporary service for African-Americans
want more freedom of expression."

 Madison Avenue later went to one service that was traditional and another
that featured drums and African instruments and contemporary music. By the
time he left the church, he said, it had considerably "less traditional
Presbyterian trappings."

	In a first step toward re-affirming the NBPC's mission connection
with Africa, two members - the Rev. Otis Smith, of Northeast Georgia
Presbytery, and Elder Libby Brown, of the Greater Atlanta Presbytery - will
go next week to Malawi to hand-deliver the first AIDS home-care kits to a
PC(USA) mission partner there, the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian. The
church's AIDS-kit program is part of a campaign of the Interchurch Medical
Assistance Program.

	"Recent efforts by the Worldwide Ministries Division and especially
Dorothy Brewster-Lee (a physician who coordinates the Presbyterian
International Health Ministries Office) have been most helpful in giving
Presbyterians opportunities to be a part of the solution to the pandemic."

	Jones said he is "disappointed" with the progress the PC(USA) has
made toward its avowed goal of raising its percentage of minority members to
20 percent by the year 2010. "We've paid lip service to it," he said, "but
Presbyterians have not even begun to wrestle with the challenge.  I don't
think the church has done all it could do." He said he is increasingly
"depressed now at the sense of stagnation" in the PC(USA).

	"I see signs of hope in the General Assembly," he said. "We make
tremendous statements. I'm looking forward to the day when some of that
(passion) will seek expression.  I pray for the day when conservatives and
liberals, gays and straights, will find common ground."

Jones said he thinks it was "a sad day" when commissioners to the current
Assembly voted to grant an exemption to the church's open-meetings policy to
allow the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA) to
conduct some of its "sensitive" deliberations in privacy. "It's ridiculous
that we feel we have to go behind closed doors to talk about God," he said,
shaking his head.

Jones said the debate over the issue put him in mind of the Gospel story of
Peter's walking on the water, "doing just fine as long as he kept his eyes on
Jesus," but sinking when he let fear and doubt divert his attention. He said
he fears that the PC(USA) is taking its eyes off the central tenets of the
faith, and may be on the way to becoming a denomination that is "focusing too
much on the reactions of The Presbyterian Layman - and closed to the real
needs of the world."

Jones said that, while he is "excited about the Mission Initiative" - the
campaign to raise $40 million for foreign missions and new-church development
and redevelopment in the United States - he fears that church leaders have
"given up on the possibility of growth" among African-Americans and placed
their hope instead in "fast-growing, immigrant constituencies."

	"It feels like abandonment," he said.

	The new-look NBPC, Jones said, is not going to be concerned so much
with numbers as with forcing "a genuine sharing of power" in the church.
"That's going to be the great struggle," he said.

	He said he believes the church and American society are sometimes
guilty of "worship of materialism."

	"The business mind-set is so dominant, it's even in our theology," he
said. "We've made such a close alliance with the business community, and
given such influence to corporate executives and CEOs.  There is a danger of
our becoming a privileged elite."

	He sees a prophetic role for the NBPC of reminding the church that
"you can't be a Christian and focus only on yourself - the Biblical response
is to be as concerned about one's neighbor as oneself." He said the PC(USA)
"historically has been an advocate of justice - but there is much more that
we can do."

In recent years, he said, the coalition of Presbyterian blacks "hasn't even
been a blip on the screen."

	Jones graduated from Antioch College with a degree in political
economics and labor relations. His path to the ministry began when he led a
strike against United Presbyterian Hospital in Newark, NJ, from the basement
of nearby Roseville Presbyterian Church. Eventually, hospital occupancy fell
from about 900 to less than 300, the strike was won and the hospital director
was fired.

	That was the start of Jones' path to Princeton Theological Seminary
and to the Presbyterian ministry. "At a time when the strike was not going
well, when it looked as if all was lost," he said, "I'd made a promise to God
that if He got us out of this mess, I'd stop running from my call."

It also was during the hospital strike in Newark that Jones met his wife,
Peggy, a nurse. They have two children - Cleveland, 21, a recent graduate of
Hampton University, and Chadd, 12, soon to be a seventh-grader.

	Jones, who will be paid $60,000 a year as NBPC director, said he
recalls with a sense of longing the era of his coming of age, when passion
for social and racial justice kept the church's eyes focused steadily on the
heart of the gospel. He hopes the NBPC can help restore that clarity for the
PC(USA). 

	

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