wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] New Wineskins spokesman says it's time for PC(USA) to

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

Note #8768 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05317
June 16, 2005

Deathbed confession

'New Wineskins' spokesman says it's time
for PC(USA) remnant to 'get our affairs in order'

by Jerry L. Van Marter 

EDINA, MN -- A seminal thinker in the New Wineskins movement said neither
schism nor congregationalism is a solution to the "fatal illness" he believes
is afflicting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

	"The best thing we can do is take a resurrection approach, affirming
that God takes us from brokenness to death to new life," the Rev. Clark
Cowden, evangelist presbyter of San Joaquin Presbytery, told more than 300
people gathered here for the first New Wineskins convocation.
 
	"The loving thing to do -- what we do pastorally with those with a
terminal illness -- is to get our affairs in order, celebrate what we have
been and done, and prepare for the new future that God has planned for us."

	Borrowing freely from a decade-old "Presbyterian Presence" study
conducted at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Cowden said the
"regulatory model" of church organization, which dates to about 1960, has
played itself out.

	That model, characterized by centralized mission planning and
corporate-style governance, "was once a highly effective bureaucracy, capable
of delivering goods and services to congregations and presbyteries," Cowden
said, but "the current structure of the church is, in important ways,
dysfunctional."

	Dissatisfaction in the church, he said, has reached the point where
"it is breeding ever more dissatisfaction -- and that's a cycle we have to
get out of."

	The New Wineskins movement has its roots in the Presbyterian
Coalition and the Confessing Church Movement -- two traditional-orthodox
organizations within the PC(USA). 

	The Rev. David Henderson of West Lafayette, IN, the New Wineskins
moderator, said the structural dysfunction is symptomatic of intractable
disagreements between traditionalist/orthodox and "modernist/progressive"
Presbyterians in three areas: theology, ethics and the purpose of mission.

	Structural changes must be made in the context of those disputes,
Henderson said. "One, or even two, out of three isn't enough, if we are to
faithfully recreate the church as the body of Christ," he said in brief
remarks following Cowden's June 15 presentation at Christ Presbyterian Church
here.

	To that end, New Wineskins has developed a document with three
emphases -- essential tenets of faith (www.newwineconvo.com/tenetskin.doc),
ethical imperatives (www.newwineconvo.com/imperativeskin.doc) and a
constitution (not available online) -- to be discussed, debated and voted on
during the three-day convocation by "delegates" from churches that already
have endorsed it.
Then what will happen?

	"We can say definitively that we don't know -- we have no idea,"
Henderson admitted. "We don't want to be one single step behind God, but we
don't want to take one step ahead of Him, either. We're trying to identify
those things God is making clear and how to live with them, however
uncomfortably."

	Henderson outlined three possible strategies, while insisting that
"New Wineskins has never been about strategy, but about vision." He said the
document could be submitted to next year's General Assembly as an overture;
the New Wineskins movement could become a "church within the church" for the
congregations that endorse the documents; or the movement could "split off"
from the PC(USA).

	Cowden described the current circumstance as "the nowhere between two
somewheres," or "the neutral zone." The old order has collapsed, he said, and
the new order hasn't yet emerged, "and the result for us is incredible
uncertainty ... like an aerialist between trapezes, or Linus (of the Peanuts
comic strip) while his (security) blanket's in the laundry."

	In the face of such stress, Cowden said, people go in one of two
directions: "They try to return to the way it used to be, or they will seek
out the nature of the new future. In neither case do the roadmaps exist -- we
are the new map-makers."

	He said the church's present predicament is "ripe with creative
opportunity." Recalling the first two centuries of the U.S. Presbyterian
church, when it was marked by minimal structure and an emphasis on
evangelistic mission, he said: "We have done it differently before -- we can
do it differently again. Wouldn't it be great if our system was one that
encourages people to try new things, to encourage innovation?"

	Perhaps the model for what the church has been going through for the
past 40 years, Cowden suggested, is the Israelites' sojourn in the wilderness
with Moses.

	"The 'neutral zone' is time when necessary redefinition and
reorganization takes place," he said. "Maybe God led Moses in the wilderness
for 40 years to get 400 years of Egypt out of their heads, so they'd be ready
for the promised land.

	"What if God has been reorienting us these years and we haven't even
known it? Maybe winter's over, and the new buds are just now beginning to
push up through the ground."

To subscribe or unsubscribe, please send an email to
pcusanews-subscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org or
pcusanews-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org

To contact the owner of the list, please send an email to
pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org