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Opinion
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Editorials
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Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook Editor
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Sunday, 07 February 2010 16:48 |
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This edition of the Outlook was heading to the printer when news broke of a devastating 7.0 earthquake hitting Haiti, already the poorest country in the western hemisphere. |
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How can there be, as you report: "civility and mutual respect, but, lacking unanimity," when there is no unity? Truth be told, our church is sadly divided. The dividing walls still separate us from our Lord. I weep for our Church. I wonder for the witness viewed by those attending worship.
Richard Mobayed
Huntington, W. Va.
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The new format is really positively upbeat. The vivaciousness is only surpassed by the content. The articles were challenging even though I may have some differing perspectives than the authors’ but the presentation was challenging. The Sunday Soteriology piece … should be placed in every pastor’s and session member’s mailboxes or e-mail accounts. It was an additional reminder that the Eucharist is a “channel of grace” and the ever-present Christ comes to us “from the future with the power of the future” with the
“anticipation of the final messianic banquet.”
The OUTLOOK is doing an excellent job keeping us abreast of both sides of issues facing the reality and vitality of our PC(USA).
W. Gene Campbell
Elmwood, Ill. |
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Letters to the Editor
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Written by K. Dean Myers
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Sunday, 31 January 2010 16:41 |
Many thanks for Bill Tammeus’ column, “Sunday soteriology” (January 25). I agree with him completely about weekly Communion because of my recent service as Interim Pastor of Firelands Presbyterian Church in Port Clinton, Ohio.
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Letters to the Editor
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Written by Jim White
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Tuesday, 26 January 2010 18:04 |
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As a long-time subscriber to The Presbyterian Outlook, I commend you for your editorial on "So what about the Muslims?" |
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Editorials
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Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook Editor
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 18:51 |
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Switzerland votes to disallow the construction of minarets (see p. 16). |
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Commentary
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Written by Bill Tammeus
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 17:16 |
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Some weeks ago, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, preached at a Kansas City area church. So I went to the early service and, at the Communion rail, received the body and blood of Christ. |
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Commentary
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Written by Tom Ehrich
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 17:07 |
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By doing much of its work off-site and online, the Multichannel Church challenges a longheld assumption, namely, the necessity of being together on Sunday. |
Tom, your thoughts make great sense BUT I'm thinking of a church that has incorporated 99% of your suggestions yet it is not growing or changing significantly, which I feel validates the thought that "outsight " alone cannot reverse established trends simply because the internal, and perhaps even prevailing external, forces are too rigid and inflexible to cope with.
Jim Babcock
Bozeman, Mont.
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Editorials
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Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook Editor
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 17:04 |
The time has come to turn the page from a black-and-blue magazine serving a black-and-blue church to become a high-def, full color, twenty-teens magazine informing and empowering a high-def, full color, twenty-teens church.
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Commentary
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Written by The Presbyterian Outlook
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 16:49 |
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Friends, Presbyterians, people of God – I come to bury Frozen Chosen, not praise him. |
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Commentary
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Written by Christopher H. Edmonston
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 16:47 |
“How good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity.” Psalm 133:1
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Commentary
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Written by Christian Iosso
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 16:44 |
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How tragic it would be if the denomination-wide revival of enthusiasm around being the missional church were relegated to being all talk, no action! |
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Commentary
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Written by Eric Hoey, Philip Lotspeich, and Ray Jones
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 16:43 |
Can you believe we are now consulting calendars for 2010?
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Commentary
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Written by jill schaeffer
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 16:40 |
I’m fourteen and, playing my first game on the girls’ basketball team in high school, caught the ball and dribbled down court to the basket. Made the basket. Expected cheers, received dead silence. I looked back to the other side of the court and saw all the girls standing there watching me. The lady coach sauntered down: “We play by woman’s rules, here.” On Brooklyn streets I played by “boy’s rules.”
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Commentary
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Written by George Hunsinger
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 16:37 |
If we have any hope of being a light upon a hill in this new decade, Christians in our country must insure that we will never again countenance the torture of war criminals.
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Commentary
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Written by Byron Wade
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Sunday, 10 January 2010 16:32 |
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After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying, ‘My servant Moses is dead. |
Greg Warner’s article … focused on ministers who escape the stresses and demands of pastoral vocation by committing suicide. I served a parish in which one of my predecessors, a generation before I began my duties, took his own life after Sunday worship in his office in the church building. The residual effects of that tragedy were deeply etched in the life of the congregation. Feelings of guilt, anger, and abandonment were never far from the surface during my 13-year tenure in that church.
Mr. Warner describes well the usual constellation of issues that drives some pastors over the edge — impossible expectations, lack of appreciation and support, financial strains, feelings of failure and inadequacy. This is a toxic emotional cocktail that leads almost inevitably to depression and personal disintegration. I’m not a trained psychological professional, but in forty plus years of ministry observing the passing ecclesiastical parade, I believe I can see another factor in play. To state the problem in simple and rather inelegant terms, given the rigors of seven years of higher education and the attendant internships and qualifying exams, ordained ministry is a difficult profession to get into. At the same time, it can be even more difficult — and for some even impossible — to get out of.
In the years that I was a seminary professor teaching homiletics, I sometimes had the sad duty of counseling a student who entered divinity school for the wrong reasons: their pastors encouraged them, the dynamic of their university Christian fellowship was skewed toward theological study, their parents wanted them to be ministers, etc. Seminary and ordination wasn’t their idea, it was someone else’s idea for them. Never did I attempt to dissuade them from withdrawing from school — far better they should discover that ministry wasn’t for them after a semester or two of study rather than to wake up in a parish years later realizing that their vocational gifts and preferences weren’t suited to church work. What was most difficult for those seminarians in redirecting their lives was moving beyond the idea that by leaving seminary they had failed — failed their churches, their families, their ministers, themselves, and, worst of all, failed God.
While I’ve known a few colleagues who committed physical suicide, I’ve known far more who committed vocational suicide. Rather than pulling a trigger, draining a pill bottle, or jumping off a bridge, the pastor bent on vocational suicide commits some egregious breach of the codes of ministerial conduct and lets the presbytery exercise its discipline. I’ve seen some sexual misconduct cases in which the offenses were so blatant it was obvious that the offender was expecting — and even wanting — to get caught. It’s not unlike what law enforcement professionals call “suicide by cop” when the person bent on self-destruction stockpiles weapons and ammunition, starts a shoot out, and lets the police do the killing for him.
According Warner, “Experts say clergy suicide is a rare outcome to a common problem.” Thankfully that is so, at least as regards physical suicide. Vocational suicide, regrettably, is anything but rare. The fatalities resulting from “suicide by presbytery” have tragic consequences not only on ministers, but those ministers’ marriages, families, and congregations. The sins of the pastors are literally visited to the third and fourth generations.
Deane A. Kemper, interim minister
Dorchester Church
Summerville, S.C. |
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Editorials
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Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook editor
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Monday, 28 December 2009 23:02 |
What a decade it’s been! Just as December 7 became a defining date for the 20th century, so, too, September 11 stands as the defining date for the new century, at least so far.
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Letters to the Editor
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Written by Paul Muresan
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Tuesday, 15 December 2009 15:46 |
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I am very sad to read about “the journey “ of Mark Achtemeier. |
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Letters to the Editor
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Written by Dennis Canfield
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Monday, 14 December 2009 16:47 |
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While Mark Achtemeier may be an "unlikely candidate for radical change," I, as a long-time member of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, am an unlikely candidate to avoid the same radical change. |
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Editorials
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Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook editor
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Monday, 14 December 2009 00:00 |
Merry Christmas from all your friends at The Presbyterian Outlook!
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It was such a joy to read the interview with Dr. Hauerwas … . Finally, a leader who dares to speak truth to the powers, both political and religious, and who calls us all to have the courage to speak honestly about hard issues. It reminds me of a time in our church life when there were "giants in the land," as one has said. I think often of the question: Where is Reinhold Niebuhr when we need him? And in politics, dare I say - we need those who will remind us of such principles that we have no need to fear, but fear itself. That still holds true. We are victims of our own fears, and those imposed on us by some who promote it to intimidate and control. From big business, to the Town Hall, from local parishes to inter-religious warfare, from Congress, Pentagon, and White House, we long for informed integrity, honesty, and forthright statements about the realities and possible solutions for our life together.
We need leadership in all levels who dare to speak truth as they see it, regardless of the political or religious repercussions. Hauerwas is so right, in my opinion, in saying "the church has lost its ability to be a disciplined community because we're now in a buyers' market." Just as politicians at all levels are to afraid to speak truthfully, lest they not get elected next time around, so pastors and church leaders seem to fear holding up the call to serious discipleship, lest membership drop, budgets fail, and jobs are lost.
We call on Afghanistan to correct their corruption at every level, yet our leaders in the U.S. are daily in the news with charges of taking bribes, personal misconduct, infidelity, secret memos, and private deals for their constituents, which undermine any public trust in the body politic. Where has truth telling gone? Churches are no less mired in internal bickering, priestly misconduct, bogged down in theological nit-picking, while not attending sufficiently to the big issues of loving enemies, making peace, not war, feeding the hungry, and taking care of the millions who are starving, brutalized, imprisoned unfairly and left unheard and unseen.
So, I say amen to Hauerwas' call for truth telling. There was a day when religious and political leaders could "tell it like it is" (in each's humble opinion), and so beckon a nation to rise to its potential strength, deal with the troubles with courage, equanimity, and trust in the better side of humanity. We seem to have lost the desire to seek solutions for the whole, not just the few. This is one of those times as never before when truth telling to power is desperately needed. The Church could be leading the way on this, even if we died trying. I wonder if we are up to it?
Ann Williamson Young, H.R.
Cornelius, N.C.
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Editorials
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Written by Jack Haberer, Outlook editor
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Monday, 07 December 2009 00:00 |
So how will you spend Christmas afternoon? The one thing I don’t miss now that I’m no longer serving as a congregation’s pastor, is the way I used to spend Christmas afternoons.
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Letters to the Editor
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Written by Steven Shussett, teaching presbyter
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Tuesday, 01 December 2009 21:50 |
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Thank you for your recent issue on “reclaiming our piety.” |
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