05321
June 16, 2005

Fait accompli

Schism  already happened, 'Wineskins' leader says

by Jerry L. Van Marter 

EDINA, MN — The New Wineskins movement is not schismatic, its leader told 300 Presbyterians attending its convocation on Thursday, “because the schism has already happened.”  

     In its wake, said the Rev. Dave Henderson of West Lafayette, IN, New Wineskins “is trying to restore the peace, unity and purity of our life together as Presbyterians.” 

     The effort involves the development of a three-faceted “constitution” that includes “Essential Tenets of Our Reformed Faith” (www.newwineconvo.com/tenetskin.doc), “A Declaration of Ethical Imperatives” (www.newwineconvo.com/imperativeskin.doc) and a new denominational structure (not available online) that purports to place local congregations at the center of Presbyterian life. 

     Introducing the essential tenets and ethical imperatives, Henderson said 84 sessions have endorsed the draft constitution. “Delegates” from those congregations will be refining and voting on the document before the convocation concludes on Saturday, June 18. 

     The New Wineskins constitution responds to three concerns Henderson said its framers have with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): 

     Theological and ethical integrity

     “The denomination is divided between two stark poles,” Henderson said — the “orthodox/traditionalist” and “modernist/progressive” — “with little common ground, certainly no theological agreement or ability to speak with one voice … with the result that we often speak two different versions of the gospel, and even opposite positions on key ethical issues, when we should be speaking with one unified voice.”

     Mission faithfulness

     “The denomination has been content to redefine mission as denominational maintenance and survival and societal improvement, instead of proclaiming the coming Kingdom of God,” Henderson said.

     Structural ineffectiveness

     “From our origins as a loose-knit association of like-minded leaders and churches,” he said, “we’ve become a regulatory bureaucracy that exists to serve itself rather than the local congregation.”

     Henderson concluded: “We’re offering up today a picture of theological and ethical integrity and missional structure that will be unifying.” 

     That would be extraordinary, given the polarized state of the PC(USA) on some of the issues addressed in the New Wineskins constitution.

     The General Assembly has never been able to agree on a list of essential tenets, for instance; and the New Wineskins’ 10 such tenets include the “infallibility” of the Bible and the belief that Jesus is the only way to salvation — two bones of contention that four years ago led the Assembly to create the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church.

     The ethical imperatives include the statement that all sexual interaction outside “the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman” is prohibited. The same statement is in the ordination standards of the PC(USA)’s Book of Order, and is arguably the most divisive issue in the church today.

     The structural section stipulates that all church property belongs to the congregation —  rather than being held in trust for the denomination. That notion is the subject of growing controversy and frequent litigation in church and civil courts. 

     And the approach taken by the New Wineskins to the whole constitution, Henderson said, “is that these statements would serve in a subscriptionist capacity – a mutual confessional commitment that ‘this we believe and to this we will be held to account.’”

     How a subcriptionist church responds to a clamor for less regulation was not addressed by any of the New Wineskins leaders. 

     The structural section establishes levels of church governance that closely parallel current denominational structures but casts them as voluntary “networks” rather than as governing bodies. Congregations would be part of geographic or non-geographic “ministry networks” of three to eight congregations; three to eight such networks would join together into regional “support networks,” and all together in a “national network” and a “global mission network.”

     Congregations could move freely between ministry and support networks. 

     There is no New Wineskins body that corresponds to the PC(USA)’s synod — a recognition, according to Peggy Hayden, the president of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and a New Wineskins board member, “of their (synods') soon demise.”

     Hedden said the support networks “most resemble the presbytery, as we would like to know it but don’t experience it.” Other than judicial functions, the networks would have very little business to transact. Support networks, for instance, would be responsible for ordination and certification of pastoral leaders — although requirements for ordination would be far more flexible than they are now.

     “This structure is all about encouragement and accountability,” said Renee Guth, a New Wineskins director and Presbyterian elder from Tucson, AZ. “We don’t mistake a denomination for the church itself, which is the Body of Christ. This structure establishes the local congregation as the focal point, the top of the organizational chart.”