Lay Committee
gives presbytery
nearly 3,000 letters on Williamson
By John H.
Adams
The Layman
Online
Tuesday, January
27, 2004
PRESBYTERY MEETING AT
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
ASHEVILLE, N.C., JAN. 31 |
Forecast: Sunny, high 46, low 25
Locater map
Larger copy of map available for downloading at
Mapquest
Registration, 8 a.m.
Convene, 9 a.m.
Worship, 9:15 a.m.
Committee on Ministry report
Four items of business, mostly believed to be routine, will be
addressed before the Committee on Ministry report on the validation
of Parker T. Williamson's ministry. That issue is expected to go
before the presbytery in mid-morning, unless it is postponed to the
afternoon session.
Agenda for Committee on Ministry report
COM report, 20 minutes
Response of Williamson and Lay Committee leaders, 20 minutes
Debate by commissioners (3-minute time limits), 60 minutes
Williamson's final comments, 5 minutes
COM's final comments, 5 minutes
Vote |
Parker T. Williamson, chief executive officer of the
Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor in chief of its publications,
personally delivered Tuesday a box of nearly 3,000 letters to the office
of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina in Morganton.
The letters were overwhelmingly – 99.7 percent to 0.3 percent –
opposed to a recommendation by the presbytery's Committee on Ministry to
invalidate Williamson's ministry with the Lay Committee.
Only nine of the 2,946 letters delivered to the presbytery office
supported the committee's recommendation, which will be debated on Jan.
31 at the presbytery meeting at First Presbyterian Church on Church
Street in Asheville, N.C.:
- 2,710 letters that were addressed to the presbytery and sent via
the offices of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. 82 of those letters
were signed by a moderator or stated clerk on behalf of local church
sessions.
- 80 hand-written and individually signed letters that were
addressed to the presbytery and sent via the offices of the
Presbyterian Lay Committee.
- 156 "Open Letters to the Presbytery of Western North
Carolina," statements of renewal leaders and letters from
Presbyterians in more than 30 states that were transmitted via the
Presbyterian Lay Committee's Web site.
A letter from Angela Treadway, director of operations for the
Presbyterian Lay Committee, to William Taber III, the presbytery
executive, accompanied the box hand-delivered to the presbytery office.
(The Presbyterian Lay Committee had scheduled to send the material by
FedEx, but a snow and ice storm curtailed deliveries in the region.)
"Since each piece of this correspondence was addressed to the
Presbytery of Western North Carolina, as is this entire composite
package that we have placed in your hands, we will trust that you will
announce your receipt of it to the presbytery, presumably during your
stated clerk's report," Treadway said.
"We are aware that your office staff is normally quite busy during
the week preceding a presbytery meeting and that logistics for the
January 31 event may be particularly time consuming. We understand that
the task of sorting and calculating the enclosed material could be
particularly burdensome at this time. Thus we are sharing our
calculations with you, in the event that you may wish to use them in
preparing your report to the presbytery." |
