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News Archive
Theological Task Force beginning to put pieces
together
Final report due in September.
February 24, 2005
LOUISVILLE —The Theological Task Force
on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church will meet in Dallas
next week, March 2-4, to work on its report to the 217th
General Assembly in 2006.
The report is due September 15, 2005.
The group will be working to bring together
the various elements of its mandate, namely, “to lead the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in spiritual discernment of our Christian
identity…on issues of Christology, biblical authority and
interpretation, Christology, and power.” Further, “The
task force is to develop a process and an instrument by which
congregations and governing bodies throughout our church may reflect
on and discuss the matters that unite and divide us….”
The planning for next week’s meeting has
been coordinated by task force member Sarah Sanderson-Doughty,
a pastor in Lowville, NY. Frances Taylor Gench, professor at Union-PSCE
and task force member, will lead Bible studies on testing and
discernment. A study of the Lord’s Prayer, prepared by Stacy
Johnson, professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, will be
an ongoing element of the task force’s times of worship
and reflection, which were planned by Joan Merritt, an elder from
Seattle. Johnson and Merritt are also members of the group. There
will also be sessions on remaining theological and polity issues
on which task force members have not had an opportunity to share
their views and personal experiences with each other.
The task force first met in December 2001. Over
the last three years, members have attended to their mandate by
releasing various resources, including two videos, to encourage
congregations and governing bodies to “reflect on and discuss
the matters that unite and divide us.” Members of the task
force have also shared their work in over seventy presentations
to presbyteries and groups throughout the church. They presented
a preliminary report to the 216th General Assembly in 2004.
Previous meetings of the task force have normally
highlighted a pair of topics, one theological and one related
to Presbyterian history and/or polity. Worship, Bible study, and
prayer have focused on the theme of each meeting. The upcoming
meeting is designed to bring together the different topics of
the mandate to enable incorporating them in the final report.
The format will provide time for prayer and reflection as task
force members strive to clarify what they have learned from previous
meetings and discern the way forward.
The task force will meet again in July, when
the final report will be formulated.
Contact info: Sharon
K. Youngs, Communications Coordinator, Office of the General
Assembly; (888) 728-7228, ext. 5750.
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