PCUSA feels like a 'failed experiment, now in its waning days,' pastor says By Craig M. Kibler The Layman Online Wednesday, October 8, 2003 PORTLAND, Ore. – "I often feel like I serve in a denomination that is a failed experiment, now in its waning days," Anita Bell said in the opening plenary session of Gathering VIII. Telling the more than 250 people in attendance Monday that she had just celebrated the 20th anniversary of her ordination as a minister of the Word and sacrament, Bell, the co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition which sponsored the Gathering, said that, "when I was ordained, the PCUSA was just months old, the transfer of offices to Louisville was yet to be decided, the structure and details of our life together as Presbyterians in this newly united denomination were still to be fleshed out." Now, the suburban Philadelphia pastor said, 20 years have gone by. "I found a home in the Presbyterian church because of her confessional roots and connectional fellowship. I have begun to wonder how much is left of these roots and fellowship. I've come to wonder if there is anything left in life and faith of the PCUSA capable of uniting her diverse and often quarrelling constituencies. Our common life together seems to be defined by a series of disruptions that leave us mired in conflict and mistrust, our mission hampered, our resources drained." Bell bemoaned the state of the church today, saying that she found herself "grieving the loss of a church I have longed for, but have never really known. Do any of you remember a time when we lived peacefully with one another in the PCUSA? When we were ordained, we promised to 'further the peace, unity and purity of the church,' but have any of us really tasted what we have promised to further? Can we envision what that church would look like – a church in which peace, unity and purity is woven into the fabric of fellowship? Have we ever, in 20 years, known such a reality?" Citing the theme of Gathering VIII, "An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God had in Mind," she told the audience that "many of you are like I am. I am hungry to experience the church God has in mind, to know a fellowship that is healthy and growing. I crave a unity in the body that would allow us peace, companionship, partnership in life and ministry." Bell then lamented the absence of that fellowship in the past 20 years. "Some of us are tired," she said. "In our 20 years together we have not yet found such a fellowship – in fact, many of us have lost our taste for 'unity' because what has masqueraded as unity has been shoved down our throats in forms that have demanded that we deny the Truth for the sake of a truce and a facade of oneness. After 20 years, we find ourselves still on the battlefield – with those who champion a liberal agenda promising to renew the battle at the next general assembly, the next general assembly – leaving the church fractured, some would say shattered, some would say without hope of resurrection." She then ticked off a litany of what she called "wayward efforts toward unity in the church," such as the call to rally around mission, but "with no substance;" the motto that being Presbyterian is all that matters, "as if that were the name by which we were saved;" praising the structure of the denomination, which she dismissed as "irrelevant;" and polity and the Book of Order, which she said "gets more ignored the larger it gets." In contrast, Bell said, evangelicals "happened upon a truth – that theology matters. Evangelicals called the church back to our theological roots: that Jesus Christ is Lord of all and the head of the church, the historical Jesus, the one of Scripture; the authority of Scripture, and not just a part of Scripture, but the whole gospel; and that our lives are called into transformation, according to the Word and the Spirit at work within us." These are great roots, she said, claimed from the "foundation of the early Church. These roots have not been claimed by the whole of the PCUSA, but we in this room and those who companion with us on the journey back home, we center our lives and ministry around these roots." Bell cautioned the audience, however, that while theology matters, "somehow we in this room struggle to find enough roots in our theological confession to bind us together. Theology matters, but it is not enough to hold our fragile fellowship together." "So," she said, "we turned to theology plus – theology plus strategy. We find ourselves at this moment in the church's life standing together theologically and confessionally, but tearing at one another on the question of strategy. The new litmus test for family membership is 'What is the next right step? What is the way forward? Do we leave, do we stay, new wineskins or old church structures?'" Bell said that those present at this Gathering "seek a vision for the future of our church, an essential effort for this time, but our quest is so laden with emotion that we find it difficult to talk with one another – even though we are brothers and sisters who share an evangelical faith. We do talk but, too often, we talk behind one another's backs, sometimes in disparaging ways that shame our family connection." "There are those of us in this evangelical fellowship," she said, "who are so sure we are right about the way forward, we are willing even for the family's ranks to be thinned along the lines of who agrees with our strategy" so that the strategy "becomes the test for continued fellowship. "We all know that the PCUSA is fractured and the efforts of the powers that be to unite this struggling denomination have only further divided her. But what concerns me most as we gather here in Portland in our evangelical fellowship feels the strains of efforts to find a way forward. We share a fellowship theologically, Biblically, confessionally, and yet we tear at one another over strategy." Evangelicals are working hard to "put skin on the truth of our union with Christ, working hard to create the path to a healthy, livable, companionable church that has peace, purity and unity woven into the fabric of that fellowship," said Bell, adding: "We are at a precarious time in our fellowship as we search for the way to be an orthodox, faithful, effective expression of the body of Christ. … Remember – we are not our own. We belong, body and soul in life and in death, not to ourselves but to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ."

Respond to this article

Home · Archives · The Layman · PLC Publications Presbyterian Lay Committee · Feedback · Links