wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Coalesce around repentence, Andrews urges PC(USA)

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #9015 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05604
Nov. 10, 2005

Coalesce around repentance,
Andrews urges PC(USA)

Leader tells Coalition to turn a deaf ear
to the din of erroneous voices in the church

by Jerry L. Van Marter

ORLANDO, FL - What are Christians to do when faced with the reality that they
live "within the eternal and perfect life of God" but also "in the midst of
our fallen generation"?

	Repent, the Rev. Jerry Andrews told the Presbyterian Coalition in a
"state of the church" address during its Nov. 7-9 national conference here.

	"The alienation of the world from God and the alienation within the
world are the environment in which the church lives out and announces the
reconciliation of God in Christ," said Andrews, the group's president. "The
painful acknowledgement of these two realities can be cause for
schizophrenia."

	But one without the other, he said, can result in detachment or
despair.

	Affirming the truth of alienation within the world and the church "is
a cause for repentance and reformation," Andrews said.

	As conference participants condemned the report of the Theological
Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church (TTF), Andrews prayed
that "for the sake of our witness in an alienated world ... and that we may
more fully experience the peace, unity and purity of our life in God, may we
have the wisdom, courage and grace to acknowledge our own need and repent of
our sin."

	We should begin, he said, by repenting of neglecting repentance.

	Confession and repentance requires "making ourselves vulnerable," he
said, which isn't always easy to do in an era of polarized politics and
diminished trust in the church. "Confessing our party's sin requires
near-heroism or foolishness," he said, "while confessing the other side's sin
gives the appearance of mere accusation."

	We also need to repent of neglecting the Bible, Andrews added: "The
voices of the world and our own voices have been heard more frequently and
given more deference than the one Word of God which we are called to hear and
obey."

	Undue authority has been given to voices saying that a common
understanding and commitment to the Bible cannot be attained, he said - and
"agreeing to disagree," a common refrain these days, is a voice of
"resignation and defeatism."

	"Our sin in listening to this voice is faithlessness, which produces
laziness .... The peace, unity and purity of the church is diminished by our
faithlessness and laziness," he said. "It is enhanced by sustained and shared
hearing of the Word."

	Another errant voice, Andrews said, asserts that the world sets the
agenda for the church: "While the church appropriately becomes familiar with
the world, it must remember that the world is foreign."

	Listening to this voice, he said, "is rejecting not only the Word
written, but the Word incarnate," and results in "the sin of ingratitude,
produced by an arrogance."

	The peace, unity and purity of the church is "diminished by our
ingratitude and arrogance," he said, and "enhanced by a renewed deference to
all the Word teaches us to be and do."

	Yet another mistaken voice in the church, Andrews said, misquotes the
Word by asserting that the individual conscience is sovereign. "The church
believes and teaches that God alone is the Lord of the conscience," he said.
"Thus the conscience has a Lord, and is not itself sovereign."

	The notion that the conscience is sovereign "has made discipline in
the church rare, and of little effect," Andrews said, and has "led to the sin
of pride in each of us, and the sin of cowardice in the church. Our peace,
unity and purity is diminished by our pride and cowardice. It is enhanced
when we exercise and abide by the discipline of the church."

	Finally, Andrews told his audience, we must repent of "neglecting to
love one another." Mutual love is "half-hearted," he said, when it is
"present, but sometimes absent."

	Peace is absent in the world in part because of strife in the church,
he said. 

	"Among us, apathy masquerades as tolerance, and the vocabulary of
love has become an instrument of division," he said. "We have not loved as
have been commanded. Let us repent of our failure to love enough, and love
more."

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