 New PLC director Battle between light and dark challenging the church, society By Craig M. Kibler The Layman Volume 38, Number 2 Posted May 27, 2005 The battle between the Light and the Dark is challenging the Presbyterian Church (USA) just as it is challenging our society, a new director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee says. “Our denomination faces the same challenge that human culture worldwide faces,” Kerry A. Fraas said. “It’s very simply the struggle between true faith in Jesus Christ versus secular humanism.
That is why, he said, that “it is humbling to be called to leadership on the Presbyterian Lay Committee and join in their important work at this crucial time in the history of the body of Christ.” Fraas is an attorney from Elizabeth, Pa., just south of Pittsburgh. Through his firm, Kerry A. Fraas & Associates, he serves as the solicitor for local, county, school district and township governments, as well as a community college. Fraas received his bachelor’s degree from Dickinson College and his juris doctorate degree from Dickinson College School of Law. He and his wife, Chris, have two daughters: Kerry Ann, 23, who is a Fulbright Scholar in Western European Studies working in Vienna on research regarding reforms in the Austrian welfare state; and Martha, 21, who is serving as an intern in the office of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum while attending Thiel College, from which she will graduate in 2006. Fraas is a member of Mt. Vernon Community Presbyterian Church in McKeesport, where he is an adult Sunday school teacher, chairman of the Mission and Outreach Committee and music leader for the worship team. He also has served as a counselor at the church’s summer camp. Outside his church, Fraas has served as a commissioner to Pittsburgh Presbytery and participates in a regional Presbyterian renewal group. He is a member of the board of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Leaders Prayer Breakfast. Fraas said he grew up attending a Presbyterian church, although his family members were “sporadic attenders. My faith was peripheral to my life. After a classic Eastern liberal education in college and law school, I became a firm agnostic.” Despite his profession of agnosticism, Fraas said he “realized the emptiness of that belief system.” Later, he said, “I asked God into my life and Jesus revealed himself to me in a dramatic way. I decided to throw in my lot and life with him.” That dramatic way, Fraas said, was a turning point in his life. “Jesus Christ appeared to my brother and me in a radiant presence,” Fraas said. “The things that were revealed to me then showed me that I could not deny his reality. I could choose whether or not to follow him, and that there was an entire spiritual realm that was not all good. “I was confused and afraid,” he said. “A few days later, I was given a Bible and suddenly the truth of the Scriptures leapt off the pages in a way that it never had before because I knew now that Jesus Christ was real. Sitting alone at my kitchen table, I decided that I would throw my life to him – not knowing the full ramifications of that decision.” Since then, Fraas said, he has become “intimately familiar with the primary issue of Scriptural authority and the political, procedural, social and cultural battleground on which it is being played out.” In the process, he said, the time “has been filled with amazing grace and can be summarized as a process of surrendering more and more to Jesus and a dying to myself.” As part of that process, Fraas devotes the earliest part of the morning “praying and meditating in a darkened room by myself or in the fields behind my home. I have relevant materials to reflect on, and find that this process is essential to get through the week.” Always, he said, he is “trying to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit at all times. I frequently fall short, but I try.” With that ongoing preparation helping him to understand “the serious doctrinal issues dividing the denomination,” Fraas said he “decided to remain a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA) rather than to worship in another body. I will stand and fight in whatever way God directs me to uphold the authority of His Word, the guidance of the Spirit and the name and person of Jesus Christ.” |
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