 New PCUSA mission leader An evangelical breaks the glass ceiling softly By John H. Adams The Layman Online Friday, December 29, 2006
Go figure. The trail of Tom Taylor That is the trail of Thomas T. "Tom" Taylor, recently selected to be deputy executive of the General Assembly Council with responsibility for the six major program areas in the denomination. The reasons for the bends in the trail are less obvious, especially the last move.
Caldrons for issues The work areas have been some of the cauldrons for the boiling issues in the denomination. For instance:
Since he agreed to work for the denomination, Taylor is not about to criticize what happened in the past – or more recently. He is not publicly bearing a torch for change. He says he wants to get to know the people with whom he will be working. And his bosses are the members of the General Assembly Council, a group that finds little in common with the evangelical wing of the denomination. During a recent hectic week, he was trying to sell his house to prepare for the move to Louisville, and going through the wrenching experience of resigning as the pastor of the 1,600-member Glenkirk Presbyterian Church in Glendora, Calif., 27 miles from Los Angeles. It is a congregation that defies the downward pull of the denomination. The Glenkirk data is impressive. More than 1,000 of the congregation's 1,400 members attend worship services on Sunday. That's 75 percent, compared to a denominationwide average of 51 percent. Sunday school enrollment is 1,537 – more than membership – which reflects an emphasis on teaching and discipleship. Per-member giving is $1,785, nearly double the denomination's average. The congregation has a vibrant teaching ministry and a broad commitment to world missions. It supports four mission projects in the four-million-member Presbyterian Church of East Africa, whose moderator, David Githii, has frequently criticized the PCUSA for its leftward drift. Ties to Confessing Churches But some eyebrows were raised because Glenkirk is one of more than 1,300 Confessing Chuches in the denomination. Taylor explains: The session signed a Confessing Church resolution before he answered the call to Glenkirk. He was wary about the Confessing Church Movement, believing that some of the churches joined mainly for political reasons. But he says the Glenkirk session explained to him that the purpose of their resolution was simply to proclaim three tenets – that Jesus is Lord and Savior for all, and not merely one of many paths to God; that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative Word of God; and that God's holiness standards still apply. Taylor said he agreed with their answer and made no effort to modify the session's stand. But Taylor himself was a party to a similar Confessing Church resolution when he was serving as the minister of the Church of the Valley in Apple Valley, Calif., before being called to Glenkirk. He was moderator of the Valley session when it approved its resolution on April 24, 2001. Taylor has also been involved with other evangelical groups, including Presbyterian Global Fellowship, an ad-hoc body led by tall-steeple pastors who want to remain loyal to the denomination but believe churches ought to support mission that is vibrant with gospel ministry, even if that cuts out some money that used to go to the denomination. Big-tent Presbyterian But Taylor is also a big-tent Presbyterian, although he didn't begin that way and suffered a "crisis of faith" after he enrolled in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in preparation for law school. Taylor describes his late father as a free-lance fundamentalist who accepted calls to serve small churches and missions. "I thought the church was made up of prostitutes and drunks," he says, describing the cultural milieu where his father ministered. During college, he began to question the easy and clear-cut answers his father had to complex life and theological issues. But he didn't abandon the faith; he hungered to understand it in a different way. Before graduating from college, Taylor had been accepted for enrollment in the University of Illinois College of Law. But he said he asked the law school to defer his enrollment for three years so that he could attend Yale University Divinity School and sort out matters of faith. Focusing on the New Testament and Christian history, he earned a master of divinity degree. At Yale, he discovered what it meant to have a personal experience with Christ. Then he attended law school, and then entered private law practice in Salt Lake City. He practiced law from 1990-1995, during which time he came in contact with members of First Presbyterian Church in St. Lake City. He says they powerfully influenced his life with their love and acceptance. Those relations led to a discovery that he was being called to the ministry. He was cleared for ordination and joined the staff of the Salt Lake City congregation as associate pastor, serving there from 1995 to 1998. His next call was a big step up, from associate pastor to senior pastor of the 1,000-member Church of the Valley. He served at Valley from 1998 to 2002, when he was called to Glenkirk. Since Taylor's departure from Valley, the congregation's membership and giving have declined by nearly 50 percent. Vocations have meshed Taylor didn't fully abandon his stint in the law. In 1997, he wrote an article for Preaching magazine titled, "From the Court Room to the Pulpit: Ten Commandments of Persuasive Preaching I Learned as a Lawyer." But his blockbuster was a book about lawsuits against ministers and churches – 7 Deadly Lawsuits: How Ministers Can Avoid Litigation and Regulation (Abdingdon Press). The genesis of that book began years earlier – in 1991 – with an article about clergy malpractice that was published in a law journal. Taylor became a widely recognized expert on the issue. He was quoted by The Wall Street Journal and other publications. In 1997, he wrote an article titled "Will Your Church Be Sued?" that was published by Christianity Today. It had the sure touch of an insider. "What is a minister's worst nightmare?" Taylor asked in the lead. "How about a large group of lawyers gathered to discuss the best way to sue clergy and churches? In 1992, the American Bar Association hosted just such a seminar, and similar ones have been held regionally across the country since then. … A Christian lawyer who attended one such meeting described it as "blood being poured into shark-infested waters … it seems clear that, guilty or not, ministers and their churches have become large and desirable targets for many plaintiffs' attorneys and their clients." What about the PCUSA lawyers? Taylor was asked whether the same description – with a few word changes – might be used to describe the "privileged and confidential" legal and administrative strategies drawn up by the denomination's lawyers to seize church property and control of congregations openly discussing their disagreement with the direction of the denomination. "I haven't read them," he said of the documents, which have been prominently posted on the Layman Online since August 9 and were the theme of a special issue of The Layman, "The War over Property," in September. |
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