Responses to Common Faith, Common Mission

Response #1 by Florence L. Johnson

It is indeed an honor and a privilege for me to have been asked to respond to Cliff's presentation, “Common Faith, Common Mission: The Gift of the Constitution.”

I am responding to this paper as a former Congregationalist, who is now extremely happy as a Presbyterian. I have grown to love and deeply respect the church’s history, creeds, The Book of Confessions and the Book of Order.

The world we live in today is very different from the world when early parts of the Constitution were written. Our history reminds us that these volumes did not come easily to the church, and today we find ourselves in a similar predicament—finding the common ground that makes the church welcoming to all so that further loss of membership will cease and new members will be welcomed. This must be accomplished without losing the values that make our church Presbyterian.

For the most part, it appears that the Constitution has been ignored. If future leaders are not being prepared for their responsibilities in the church by being taught the Constitution, then we are at peril. I agree with Cliff that we should reclaim the gift of our Constitution and use it to share the good news in this century. As a former elementary teacher, my head is swimming with various methods for sharing the most basic core values to proclaim what our Constitution teaches in order to lead others in what we believe and show them what they are missing.

How can leaders of the Presbyterian Church lead if they do not know the Presbyterian Constitution? I believe the Constitution (Part I, which includes The Book of Confessions, and Part II, the Book of Order) defines a Presbyterian. All of this proclaims what we believe and how we are to govern ourselves. If future leaders do not understand this, then they will not be able to understand the church they are to serve. If Presbyterians are to be Presbyterians and serve their church, it is imperative that they are prepared. Because of our society’s penchant for immediate gratification and short attention spans, any information has to be disseminated in a creative and thoughtful manner. The question of informing our future leaders about the church is not when, but how.

People want to be a part of a church that is alive, welcoming, and doing good works in the world. People want a church that believes and understands from whence it came, and why. People want a church that has a vision and a strong sense of community; a church that reaches out to those in need; a church that keeps its members and recruits more because it teaches and believes that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and the Word of God, that the Great Ends of the Church are our common calling, that we uphold a generous orthodoxy growing out of Scripture and the confessions that affirms the great themes of the Reformed faith, and that we hold to an ecclesiology built on covenant community and a commitment to Christian unity.

I would like to present my church, East Liberty Presbyterian Church, as an example of what can be accomplished. Our church is not only a beautiful church to behold, but is a church filled with diverse, beautiful people who reach out into the community to spread the gospel, not so much as to what it preaches, but how it puts those words into action.

We are all made in the image of God. He or She has given each of us a brain. Because we are unique individuals, we are not always going to agree on every point. Wouldn’t the world be a dull and depressing place if we all looked the same, acted the same, and thought the same on every issue? As Presbyterians, we have core values and common faith that we share, as well as many diverse views on many subjects. The church respects diversity until there is a disagreement. Why can’t we agree to disagree and respect each other’s opinion? None of us really knows the truths of the world; we can only abide by what we believe and feel is the truth. We will only know the truth when we see God face to face. But in the meantime, can’t we respect each other’s opinions? I always say, why would people on the outside of the church want to be a part of the church when they see how we treat each other in the church?

I have been reading a book by Jack Rogers entitled Presbyterian Creeds: A Guide to the Book of Confessions. I think this book would be a help to anyone wanting to ponder what it means to be a Presbyterian. Dr. Rogers offers us help in remedying what Dr. James I. McCord, Chancellor of the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton Theological Seminary, called the church’s “theological amnesia.” The book discusses the ancient creeds, the Reformation confessions, as well as contemporary declarations and the background of how they came to be.

Our church has a lectionary by which pastors know what Scripture to preach on a given Sunday. Why couldn’t Scripture related to the history of our church be included in the lectionary, so that the glorious history of the church would be reviewed annually, showing just how important the past of the church is to us?

Our church has a richness that should be shared and built upon. In a society with all of our technological advances, I find it difficult to think that we cannot find a method by which the good news can be shared with our leaders and, more importantly, understand what it means to be a Presbyterian.

Response #2 by M. Craig Barnes

I hold our Stated Clerk [of the General Assembly, Clifton Kirkpatrick,] in high esteem and certainly applaud his efforts to find the common ground that binds us together as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). So, this brief response is not a critique of purpose, but is offered only to assist in his important agenda.

I begin by cautioning him against championing the third use of the law without maintaining Calvin’s commitment to the first two uses. If in previous generations we have been guilty of a preoccupation with the first two uses at the expense of the third, we dare not devote ourselves exclusively to the third use without giving a balanced attention to the first two uses of the law. Calvin presented these three uses of the law with seamless integration. To avoid using the law to convict us of our sin (the first use), or to provide standards that guard us from moral chaos (the second use), inevitably results in the third use of the law digressing into a moral compass that spins and spins without an ability to find true north. If our Constitution [of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)] is based only on the third use of the law, the Christian faith to which it calls us can only be formal, lacking in specific definition. That will hardly bind us together as Christians, and certainly not as Presbyterians.

Second, the “contagiously attractive” new paradigm churches to which the Stated Clerk points seem to thrive without the benefit of either our Book of Order or The Book of Confessions. I am not about to suggest we jettison either of these constitutional documents, nor am I all that attracted to these new paradigm churches, but I do share the Stated Clerk’s conviction that there is something we can learn from them. Could it be that these churches thrive, in part, because they hold all three uses of the law together in their proclamation of Jesus Christ? They are unafraid of calling people sinners, they offer a means of conversion and repentance in Christ, and they provide a clear moral compass for transformed living. And they do so in a way that is winsome, dynamic, and hopeful.

Our tradition offers a different understanding of conversion based in the transforming power of Word and Sacrament, but our ability also to be winsome, dynamic, and hopeful is directly related to our commitment to the whole gospel of Christ—even those parts that speak specifically to sin and separation, as well as the means of grace for coming home to God. And that means we must continue to slog our way through the hard work of deciding what specifically is the sin from which Christ is calling people to turn and experience transformation. All of the great debates of previous eras took more than one generation to resolve. Our problem is not that we are divided; the church has always been divided. Our problem is that we are preoccupied with the division and impatient for its resolution.

Response #3 by Carolyn Jones

“Common Faith, Common Mission”—and a quest for “common ground.” Cliff, you would have had no way of knowing, when you put your thoughts together for this conference, how strongly that phrase would resonate with those of us who live in western Pennsylvania! You see, on January 27, our Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra became the first American orchestra ever to play a concert for the Pope at the Vatican. Known as the “Papal Concert of Reconciliation,” the event was attended by 7000 Christians, Muslims, and Jews seeking to set the stage for peace and reconciliation by affirming the “common ground” among the children of Abraham.

Those of us here today would probably agree that our quest for common ground in the PC(USA) is no less important, and one would think that our task ought to be simpler, for we’re all part of the same family tree—rooted in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, producing its supreme fruit in Jesus, whom we know as the risen Christ, and we’ve chosen to go out on the particular limb whose branches include John Calvin and John Knox.

You have given us a helpful road map for our journey by directing our attention to the three books that point us to our common faith and common mission. My concern is that we may encounter some potholes on the road to that common ground. (But then, potholes are not a surprise to people in this part of the country!) Very briefly, I’ll identify just three.

First, even if we agree that Presbyterians, by and large, claim the three books you have named as the grounding for our shared faith, experience has shown that we read those three books differently (when we read them at all)—differently and selectively. Unfortunately, the “gift” that the Constitution offers on occasion is the “proof text” that supports one or another’s particular agenda. So, to accomplish the goal presented to us this afternoon, we face a challenge of education (which the curriculum introduced this morning may help us address).

The second potential pothole, it seems to me, is one of our major dilemmas in these early years of the 21st century: How much diversity in values and beliefs—or even in worship styles—can we tolerate and still maintain the sense of covenant community which our Stated Clerk affirms?

Indeed, today mission begins on our doorstep—and many are both challenged and enriched by their outreach to different populations. Others, however, are persuaded that the church has made too many accommodations to the culture, with the result that the world has turned the church upside down, rather than the church turning the world upside down, for the sake of the gospel. We’re seeing in some quarters so much energy being expended pursuing the first and second uses of the law, that some fear we may never get to the third—let alone to common ground.

Near the close of his address, Cliff described our church as “a redeemed community, with a deep love and trust for one another in the body of Christ.” And truly that is who we are called to be! But assuming that this is currently the state of the church may prevent us from seeing the sneakiest pothole of them all. It seems to me that openness and trust, far from being a given, are what we most need to rebuild, at every level of the church, if we Presbyterians are to live together in covenant community and reach out to the world with the good news.

My prayer is that we will come again to understand that it is Christ who has called us into community as his body. And that it is not our task to create community with not only those who agree with us on every particular, but with those who share a common commitment to the essentials that Cliff lifted up for us a few moments ago:

• the ten themes of the Reformed faith—the essence of our common faith;
• the Great Ends of the Church—our marching orders in common mission; and
• the core values, which encompass them both.

If these conversations can move us in that direction, then not just the Constitution, but our reflection on it as well, can be a gift to us.

The road before us, even with its potholes, is—I believe—a road worth traveling.

And Cliff, some of us would like to be your companions on the journey toward common ground.