The Layman – November 2003 Volume 36, Number 5 – Posted November 24, 2003

Conscience-driven stewardship The highest court in the Presbyterian Church (USA) has now twice declared that “a church may neither be compelled to pay nor punished for failure to pay any amounts” requested by higher governing bodies in per-capita apportionments. It has also declared that, nonetheless, there “is a high moral obligation based on the grace and call of God to participate fully in the covenant community.” But the covenant community depends on reciprocal responsibility. Morality is not blind submission to anyone’s platform. There is nothing absolutely moral about being liberal or conservative, whether the arena is politics or the church. Christians in particular are called to serve God in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, with unwavering commitment to moral – and Biblical – values. Essentially, the Presbyterian Lay Committee, in its “Declaration of Conscience,” is calling on individuals and sessions to weigh prayerfully the moral consequences of their stewardship options. To the Galatians, a church that had lost its moral footing by substituting its own regulations for the gospel of grace through Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul addressed the obligation this way: “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.” The moral obligation is to determine the will of Christ – and to please him. In the case of the Presbyterian Church (USA), there have been too many instances in which the decisions of the church’s governing bodies and the activities of the denomination’s employees are obviously not God-pleasing. (See pages 13-16.) Does it please God the Father to declare that he has been supplanted by a goddess named Sophia? Does it please God the Son to ask, as did a Presbyterian minister and keynote speaker at a denominational event, “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” Does it please God the Holy Spirit to claim, as some Presbyterians say the “spirit” now reveals, that fornication is moral in contradiction to the Spirited-breathed Word of God? Participating “fully in the covenant community” is not optional. But when the covenant community divides itself by decisions and actions that are at cross-purposes with God’s revelation in Christ and in Scripture, choices must be made. It boils down to a critical discernment: Which part of the covenant community is clearly committed to God’s will? Morality does not begin with self-asserted rights or confusion about God’s redemptive purposes. Our tithes and offerings are not merely contributions to our pet causes. They are our joyful response to what God has done – and is doing – to advance his kingdom on earth.

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