Coalition executive receives strong support at Gathering The Layman Online Friday, October 4, 2002 ORLANDO, Fla. – The Rev. Carmen Fowler, whose validation as a minister of word and sacrament has been rejected by the Presbytery of Central Florida, has won strong encouragement from the participants of Gathering VII, an event she helped organize as executive director of the Presbyterian Coalition. On Friday, that support included an impromptu laying on of hands by hundreds of ministers and elders while Jerry Andrews, a former co-moderator of the Coalition, prayed that the presbytery will overturn the decision by its committee on ministry. Besides her work with the Coalition, an evangelical renewal group, Fowler is a member of the staff of the 5,500-member First Presbyterian Church in Orlando. For the second-straight year, First Presbyterian is the host of the annual Coalition Gathering. The Rev. Dr. Doug Pratt of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in Allison Park, Pa., announced to Gathering participants that the board of the Coalition had told Mary Sample, chair of the presbytery's committee on ministry, that it would be glad to meet with the committee any time during the three days of the Gathering. But, he said, Sample would not agree to a meeting. Fowler was the pastor of Rabun Gap Presbyterian Church in Georgia before she accepted a call to First Presbyterian. She routinely applied to become a member of the Presbytery of Central Florida, but the committee rejected her application. Evangelicals were outraged by her rejection at a time when many presbyteries are affirming the ministry of liberals who publicly announce that they will not obey the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA). "We're the laughingstock of the denomination," Gathering participant Bruce Yearick said. "The standard for Carmen is being applied randomly and somewhat oppressively." The committee did not make a report about her rejection and, therefore, did not publicly say why it would not validate her ministry. But it did tell her privately that the Presbyterian Coalition was not a "validated ministry" and that Coalition's position of affirming that sessions had the constitutional right to withhold per-capita support of higher governing bodies were problems.

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