by Patrick Heery
Editor of Presbyterians Today
Amid uncertainty about the future of the PC(USA), we walk, eyes opened by Christ, to see the dying-and living-things in our midst.
On a one-way street in Indiana, Pennsylvania, sit two Presbyterian churches side by side, a sign of splits old and new. Every Sunday morning for the last 200 years, Presbyterians have followed the same sidewalk to worship the same God in two different churches. Once--and now again--denominationally divided, Graystone Presbyterian Church (which voted to leave for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church last year) and Calvary Presbyterian Church are part of a shifting landscape that has raised questions about the unity and future of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as well as most other denominations.
"The death of the church is nothing to fear. Death was conquered once, and it will be conquered again."
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In recent years, more than 200 congregations have left the PC(USA), many of them the largest (and wealthiest) in the denomination. As they have left, more than 270 new worshiping communities have cropped up. Generally small, and certainly not wealthy, they are an odd, Spirit-infused, racially diverse group of young adults, new immigrants, church exiles, evangelicals, and justice activists. In the meantime, debates have raged over theology, worship style, sexuality, women's rights, foreign policy, church governance, and finances.
The result has been, in many quarters, a good deal of confusion, pain, and uncertainty. Some Presbyterians, feeling betrayed either by parts of their own congregation or by the denomination, are quite angry. Elsewhere, pockets of Presbyterians, unsaddled by disputes old or new, feel excited, as if on the verge of a new kind of Christianity, and can't fathom why we're still debating.
We as a church-including our leaders and publications like this one-have not always, however, been honest about this division. We have not told the stories of those leaving. We have skirted controversial issues. We have invited silence in place of expressions of both joy and pain.
We have polished when we should have demolished, promoted when we should have prophesied, repackaged when we should have created.
I think we genuinely believed that if we just concentrated enough on the positives, we could return this church to its 1950s (supposed) glory. The problem is that what this church needs is not a rebuilt temple but an empty tomb-a void that sends us out onto an Emmaus road where we encounter an unrecognizable Christ who leads us along unfamiliar paths.
That path led the approximate 150 members of Graystone who voted against its withdrawal from the PC(USA) into the arms of neighboring Calvary, where, member Rudy Steffish says, "there has been a rebirth of mission." From veterans' ministry to antipoverty work to mission in Rwanda, Calvary's new family has stumbled upon a deep hope for the future. "With all the new members, a new excitement has taken over," Steffish says. "It truly is a church that is involved in our denomination and in our community. A renewed sense of pride has been mixed up between the original members of Calvary and all the new blood. People leave Calvary with smiles, singing hymns, and, still, by the end of the week, are talking about what joy we feel."
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