Summer 2012 FOP/ECO gatherings
What if you need to leave?
By Carmen Fowler LaBerge, The Layman, September 4, 2012
As congregations affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) examine the narrow path forward to the future filled with hope that God has planned, they are seeking to discern which denomination is the best fit. At the summer event of the Fellowship of Presbyterians (who will remain in the PCUSA) and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (a new Reformed body) participants were offered examples of congregational discernment processes.
Discernment: Answering the question ‘should we stay or should we go?’
The workshop was led by Tom Pfizenmaier, pastor of the Bonhomme Presbyterian Church in Chesterfield, Mo.
Pfizenmaier observed that there are three basic paths down which PCUSA sessions can lead their people:
- “stay in the PCUSA and pretend nothing is happening;
- “stay in the PCUSA and enter a confessing role of alterity, or otherness;
- “leave the PCUSA for another Reformed body.”
He then eliminated the first path, saying, “That is not a faithful path.”
Turning to the second path, Pfizenmaier presented the case for adopting a “Confessing role of alterity” within the PCUSA. He highlighted the evangelistic witness of Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17 and then read Isaiah 6:8-13 acknowledging just what kind of people to whom the prophet agreed to be sent.
“Send me!” Really? “Have you read the rest of the passage? God says go and say to this people who will keep on hearing but do not understand …” Isaiah asks, “How long?” God answers, “Until the land is a desolate waste and only a tenth remain.” Isaiah was called; Isaiah was sent to a people who were never going to listen.
Pfizenmaier quipped, “Yes, I’m building a case for staying!”
Turning to Jeremiah 1:17-19 the images of an iron pillar, bronze wall, and being fought against were lifted up. So was the assurance of God’s continual presence with the prophet He chooses to send to His obstinate people.
Next was an appeal to be like Hosea who was called to love the adulterous one.
Pfizenmaier concluded his examination of the passages, declaring, “That’s a varsity assignment — this is not going to be easy at all. We see in those passages that there is a lot to be asked of us if we stay.”
The conversation then turned to examination of the third possible path: Realigning with another Reformed body.
Matthew 18:15-17 was read and the comment made that “we don’t write them off, we recognize a need to re-evangelize them,” Pfizenmaier said.
I Timothy 1:18-20 was described as addressing “the shipwrecked faith and false teaching in the Ephesians church where Paul handed them over to Satan.” The speaker then turned to First Corinthians 5:1-5 “where the purpose of handing them over is identified as redemptive that they might learn.”
Pfizenmaier acknowledged that the question most folks ask is “what in the world should I do?”
He offered up several voices of counsel:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together p. 35. “What love is, only Christ can tell us in His Word … despite all the protests of my human love.”
Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian, pp 18-19, “There is an attempt to bring people together organizationally on the basis of Jesus’ statement (in John 17), but there is no real unity, because two completely different religions — Biblical Christianity and a “Christianity” which is no Christianity whatsoever — are involved. It is perfectly possible to have organizational unity, to spend a whole lifetime of energy on it, and yet to come nowhere near the realm that Jesus is talking about in John 17. I do not wish to disparage proper organizational unity on a proper doctrinal basis. But Jesus is here talking about something very different, for there can be a great organizational unity without any oneness at all — even in churches that have fought for purity.”
If then, we must leave, Pfizenmaier probed, does that make us schismatic?
To answer that question he described to the two views that currently co-exist in the PCUSA.
“Progressives,” he said, “might view evangelicals as tearing apart the denomination, which is governed by a majority under our polity.”
“Evangelicals might view progressives as schismatics: tearing the Church’s fabric in three directions simultaneously:
- “Tearing our Biblical interpretation from the clear teaching of Scripture and Reformed interpretation as presented in the Book of Confessions,
- “Tearing ourselves apart from our 2,000 year history of moral theology, and
- “Tearing ourselves from the vast majority of the ecumenical community of worldwide Christians, most especially the global South.”
The pastor then described the process being undertaken at the church where he serves.
“Four key issues we’re thinking about at Bonhomme:
- “What are the essentials of the Christian faith for us? What are those things, those truths, without which this is not the Church?” He said that the answer included the Gospel, knowable and made known in the Bible, which reveals that the only Gospel is Jesus.
- “Has the denomination fallen into true apostasy relative to its commitments to the essentials in Christology (the unique person and unique work of Christ)?” He said that those questions include an exploration of the denomination’s espoused and actual theology related to the blood atonement (who is Jesus and what did His death and resurrection really accomplish?) and universalism (which is functional atheism because if the God of the Bible is really real and we really believe it, then there’s no room for universalism nor pluralism).
- “Would leaving the PCUSA actually constitute dividing the Church?”
- “The issue of Biblical interpretation and the Book of Confessions or what role do our confessions play in our interpretation of Scripture?”
Addressing the final question Pfizenmaier said, “When using all the tools of the historical critical method are we doing exegesis or isogesis?”
- Exegetical method
o Analogy of Scripture: Scripture to interpret Scripture is a part of our Reformed heritage.
- Isogetical method = Reader response theory – the text doesn’t mean anything apart from what it elicits inside of me.
o Sociology, philosophy and psychology as equal players on the field with the Scriptures
He concluded that when it comes to the most basic matters, “We’re not even working out of the same paradigms.”
One participant asked, “Can we really stay in a house that has shifted on its foundation?” Sharing that he was ordained 40 years ago he declared, “I haven’t changed, they have.”
Pfizenmaier added that there, “other issues to consider and practical realities to think about in the process” include:
- “What is my presbytery context (supportive, neutral, hostile)?
- “How effective can we be in ministry/mission within this context?
- “What weight do our confessional documents hold?
- “Do we see things getting better or worse in the future of the PCUSA?
o authority and interpretation of Scripture
o Christological crisis
§ atonement
§ universalism
o further redefinitions (marriage)
To examine discernment resources developed and used by PCUSA congregations click here.