PCUSA wants former moderators to dissuade Confessing Churches The Layman Online Tuesday, October 16, 2001 The committee that oversees the work of the Office of the General Assembly has authorized spending contributions to the denomination to train a team of former General Assembly moderators to visit churches that plan on joining the Confessing Church Movement, according to the Presbyterian News Service. The official news agency of the Presbyterian Church (USA) gave no details about how former moderators will try to dissuade congregations from joining the Confessing Church Movement. The sessions of 1,000 PCUSA congregations had already allied with the seven-month-old movement when the General Assembly committee called for defensive measures. The news agency also did not tell Presbyterians about where the money would come from to fund the moderators' training and their strategy, nor did it say how they would determine which congregations are likely to join the movement, which has spread to congregations in 45 states and Puerto Rico. Several moderators, including those allied with the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, have opposed some of the theological expressions of the Confessing Church Movement – especially the Confessing Churches' opposition to the ordination of self-affirming, practicing adulterers and homosexuals. Current Moderator Jack B. Rogers and two other recent moderators – Douglas Oldenburg and Freda Gardener – have been leaders of the Covenant Network, an organization that has described its sole purpose as being to terminate the denomination's constitutional ordination standard. Rogers, formerly a member of the advisory board of the Covenant Network, has been the most aggressive in denouncing the Confessing Church Movement. He blames the Presbyterian Lay Committee for the movement. The decision to dispatch former moderators to potential Confessing Churches came during a meeting of the Committee of the Office of the General Assembly in Louisville. Rogers told the committee that the Confessing Church congregations are being led astray by the Presbyterian Lay Committee. "I feel bad for the hundreds of churches that are getting (drawn) in … not knowing what they're getting into," Rogers said. The Confessing Church Movement within the Presbyterian Church (USA) is an independent, grassroots movement that began without any suggestion from the Presbyterian Lay Committee. The Presbyterian Lay Committee has endorsed the movement, but so have other renewal organizations, including: The Presbyterian Coalition Presbyterians for Renewal Presbyterians Pro-Life The Knox Fellowship The Outreach Foundation Presbyterian-Reformed Ministries, International The Presbyterian Forum Voices of Orthodox Women Rogers accused the Presbyterian Lay Committee and other like-minded groups – which he did not name – of "magnifying" differences within the denomination to justify separation. "Schism is a sin," he added. While criticizing the Presbyterian Lay Committee and the Confessing Church Movement, Rogers did not mention the criticism that has been directed at him by thousands of Presbyterians who do not agree with his views favoring the ordination of self-affirming, practicing homosexuals and the "moral equivalence" of marriage for same-sex couples.

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