 Getting serious  The Layman – Volume 36, Number 5 – Posted November 24, 2003
For 37 straight years, our denomination has been losing members in a country whose population has been increasing. In 1965 we had 4.25 million members; we now have 2.45 million, a decrease of 42.4 percent. That is the opposite of the Biblical pattern for a healthy church that we see in the Book of Acts, where believers are added daily, rather than people leaving day by day. Yet the alarming dwindling of Presbyterians in number and vitality has not been put at the top of any agenda by the GA or any of its agencies. Rather, officers in Louisville continue to focus denominational energy on comparatively trifling topics; they fiddle while souls are being lost and the PCUSA burns. So what can you and I do? I am getting serious about my stewardship responsibilities. Last month, I did something that I have never done before in my 27 years of adult membership in the PCUSA – I have asked my session not to pay my $5.44 share of the General Assembly per capita. I came to my decision after I had sat down and listed all repudiations of Jesus of the Gospel that the General Assembly and its agencies have made over the last 10 years:
I am getting serious about praying for God to forgive us and renew us. When I look at the troubles of the PCUSA, the warning from Deuteronomy 31:17 sounds in my mind: “Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?” Those same Scriptures teach that the only way to health and wholeness is to humble ourselves and pray and seek God’s face. Here is a prayer that has helped me to do that. It came out of a conference this summer as some Presbyterians lamented the sad state of our denomination. Someone suggested we needed a “weather prayer” like Gen. George Patton had his chaplain write asking for good weather for air cover to win the Battle of the Bulge. Patton sent it on Dec. 22, 1944, to the soldiers of Third Army to pray; on Dec. 23, the skies cleared for six days, and the German offensive was reversed. I am praying that prayer regularly: Most Merciful Father, You rule the heavens and over all the earth. Nothing is established without your word, and nothing touches your children that you do not work for your purpose. O Lord, we bow before you now, humbled by the disgrace to your name that we in the PCUSA have brought by our sins and the sins of our fathers. Although we enjoyed your great goodness and knew you as God, we stopped glorifying you and giving you thanks. We exchanged the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ for our own imaginings. Now, O Lord, our sins have made the body of Christ an object of scorn to all who hear of us. We turn back from our sins, Dearest Father. Forgive us. Grant us mercy. See the desolation of this denomination and of us who bear your name. O Father, do not leave us to ourselves. Do not cut us off. But deliver us from this barrenness into renewed life in you. Abide with us, Lord. Abide in us, Lord. Make us fruitful to your glory. We have come to the end of ourselves – we have no power, and we do not know what to do. You alone are God, and we look to you. There is no help other than Your faithfulness, Your righteousness, Your mercy. Revive us, O Lord, for the sake of your Son Jesus, for his life and his love that bore our sins even to death on the cross. For the sake of Jesus, renew us and give us a witness to the world that YOU SAVE. Amen. These are two ways that I am getting serious. How about you? Peggy Hedden, a ruling elder in Columbus, Ohio, is the chairman of the board of directors of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. * For more information about per capita and other contributions, see pages 13-16. |
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